Louisville City announced yesterday that its boys academy teams had been accepted into the Elite Clubs National League (“ECNL”) heading into the club’s first academy season this fall. City will be the first Kentucky youth soccer club to join the league.

“ECNL has proven itself to be a leader in youth development competition,” Sanchez said. “The standards that each club must have to be a part of the ECNL organization will enable it to continue to be a leader in youth development.  We are looking forward to our future players being tested both regionally and nationally against some of the best youth players on a regular basis.”

Louisville City press release, March 25, 2020

High level youth soccer in the U.S. is still kind of a wild west scene, but since the introduction of US Soccer’s Development Academy a few years ago, it’s become more stratified. Most DA clubs these days are MLS academies. There was recently a split in the national DA competition to separate MLS clubs from non-affiliated clubs, in spite of those non-MLS clubs’ success in the league and tournament play year over year.

ECNL has become a landing spot for many of those disgruntled clubs. ECNL’s girls league is, in the opinion of several observers, superior to the girls DA league. The league may start to populate with more USL academies as those start rolling forward.

In any event, this is some big news for Louisville City. If the most talented kids in the area previously wanted to play in the highest levels of U18 competition, they had to pick up and play their club ball in Indianapolis or Chicago, where there were DA and ECNL clubs. Now they’ve got one in their own back yard. Iron sharpens iron, as they say. VAMOS MORADOS.