Home Forums Long Island & Eastern New York Soccer Message Boards Roll Away The Stone Soccer News NY Cosmos suspends youth academy

Cosmos Said “by reviewing the plans of the most successful professional leagues in the world. Those current best practices include rigorous testing on a regular basis, daily screenings by medical professionals and social distancing protocols that are impractical for us to implement or manage within a youth sports program at this time.”
If they can’t do that with their youth organization what makes you think that BWG,Met Oval, SuSA/Abby can implement this level of safety precautions to their youth program...

To better a team it's like a soup,you need better ingredients,all you guys are doing is mixing the soup with the same ingredients

Exactly. No one knows for certain when it will be safe to put kids back on the field again, or what protocols need to be implemented in order to maintain a safe environment going forward. In reality, the only time anyone can ensure a 100% safe environment is when a vaccine or "cure" has been developed and tested. This is not going to happen soon. I hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me that the earliest we will see some semblance of youth soccer again will be in the spring of 2021.

Dear Players, Parents, and Staff,

This program has been on the brink forever. They are using the current pandemic as their ripcord out of here. What a shame. Cosmos should have been the golden egg every kid from LI should’ve strived for.

After careful consideration and internal debate, the New York Cosmos have decided to indefinitely suspend the operation of the Cosmos Academy. It was an incredibly difficult decision, and we are saddened to have to deliver this news.

Speaking specifically to the players, you have put a lot of time and effort into training and competing. You have represented the club with pride and honor. We’re sorry that we can’t continue the academy at this moment in time.

As you are all aware, the recent shutdown of the US Soccer Development Academy has thrown youth development into a state of uncertainty. At this moment, we simply don’t have a clear development pathway for your child. That being said, we don’t think it is fair to ask you to continue to invest your time and money in our academy system. We will take the next year to evaluate our options in the local and national youth soccer landscapes before deciding how and when to restart operations.

Further, the spread of the coronavirus, particularly in New York, makes the possibility of youth soccer teams training and playing again in 2020 very challenging. We are currently evaluating the best protocols for getting our professional players back on the field. In that process we have learned a lot by reviewing the plans of the most successful professional leagues in the world. Those current best practices include rigorous testing on a regular basis, daily screenings by medical professionals and social distancing protocols that are impractical for us to implement or manage within a youth sports program at this time.

I know these are difficult times for all of us right now, and we’re very sorry to have to deliver this disappointing news.

Sincerely,

Erik Stover
Chief Operating Officer
New York Cosmos

Are we doing more damage by not playing and keeping america closed? Will it ever be 100% safe. Nope. Driving a car isn't 100% safe either but we take as many precautions as we can and then we do it.

Car accidents are not contagious to people passing by. Looking for 100% safety is ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it at all.

If you don’t get yourself or your kids the flu shot don’t complain or say your scared either. So hypocritical

That is not why this happened. They are using it as an excuse. The owner bought The Serie A team and they shipped the whole staff to Italy that was running the youth academy. Cosmos youth then started charging. Their trainer quit. The DA fell apart. We all saw this coming before covid 19. If you read the statement it was not closed due to covid. This was the excuse just like DA tried to use. The youth academy was not working for Cosmos. They will not be back. You can bank on that once JB moved to Italy it was over and the parents were in denial.

Partly true. The Cosmos were in a no-win situation in regard to the youth academy. The Cosmos have a professional 1st team, and the entire point of having a youth academy at such clubs is to develop players that will sign a contract with the club and either play for the 1st team or be sold for a profit. Unfortunately for the Cosmos, MLS clubs sit atop the soccer pyramid, and, at the youth level, can (and will) simply take the best talent from lower-tier clubs without any compensation. While this situation may work for clubs without a professional 1st team, it makes absolutely no sense for the Cosmos and other similar clubs - they were spending money on an youth academy to develop players that would ultimately play somewhere else, with no prospect of a return on their investment.

Also, all sports organizations are hemorrhaging money right now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, since no one has a clue when it will be safe to resume normal operations. A youth academy is an additional expense that makes even less sense at the moment, since no one is actually playing anyway.

Yes, I do believe that the timing of the pandemic, the DA shut down, and the uncertainty about how the youth soccer landscape will unfold are factors that most likely only served to expedite and rationalize the Cosmos' decision to suspend the academy - it was probably going to happen anyway, and this just made it easier to do.

The point remains, however, that other clubs, leagues, teams, etc. are also completely unprepared to resume play. An extensive safety protocol that has yet to be defined is going to have to be implemented before anyone can think about putting kids back out on the field.