Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer.

Hey, everybody, we got a great show for you today.

Marcus Cherez is here to talk about the youth cohort, the youth cohort in MLS.

It's come up on the Monday review a little bit, but Marcus is much more knowledgeable than Vince

and certainly me. So I relish the opportunity to hear from him. Marcus, how are you doing?

Couldn't possibly complain. I'm excited about MLS.

And, yeah, that's a fun thing because I haven't always been super excited about MLS.

So, yeah, I'm happy to talk about this and I'm excited to get started.

So definitely it's more exciting this year than last year when it comes to

young players getting opportunities, right?

Yeah, I think it's more exciting than it probably has been in a few years.

And I think that's following the sort of wave of of just like the the youth kind of pipeline and where

things are at i kind of i think of things in sort of four-year chunks alongside the world cup and i sort of

kind of package classes together in four-year chunks.

Classes being like birth year.

And I think the last wave for me was like 2003, four, five, six.

And broadly those classes have been, they're one, they were impacted heavily by COVID.

I think the infrastructure just in kind of MLS and X also was just

kind of still building. And so those classes largely have been, you know, somewhat disappointing.

And I think what we're starting to, and because of that, their impact in MLS has been, you know,

less exciting. You're seeing, we've seen less players kind of come through, have a big impact at a

young age and get moved to Europe.

...