Crystal Palace Baltimore tempts soccer prospects with fast track to Europe

By Charles Boehm, Potomac Soccer Wire Sr. Writer

Anyone who’s paid any attention to the immigration debate, that touchy topic which has habitually roiled United States politics in recent years, can attest to the enduring reality of ‘economic migration.’ Globalization has prompted an increasingly fluid movement of labor across borders and regions, with messy consequences for governments, businesses and individuals alike – and few industries exemplify this state of affairs like the international market for top soccer talent.

The ruthless pursuit of success and wealth in Europe’s biggest competitions has made player scouting and acquisition a massive business, one that has even grown to include the once-isolated U.S. scene. Groups like the shadowy, Brazilian-based Traffic Football Management (owners of U.S. division two side Miami FC) have targeted our nation as one of the world’s many underexploited talent mines.

Major League Soccer’s cautious growth offers domestic opportunities that were once nonexistent here. Yet ambitious athletes will always crave the opportunity to perform at the peak of their sport – and maximize their own earnings. Substantial hurdles await the North American player who wishes to cross the Atlantic, but the growing sophistication of U.S. player development suggests that such overseas movement will only accelerate.
That evolution fuels Crystal Palace Baltimore’s ambitious plan to rewrite the script for the European dream.

“I think the pitch is, you have a real good chance of making it here. And if you make it here and do well here, we’re a big club in England, big enough that big transfer fees come in for players from clubs like Chelsea and Manchester United and Arsenal,” explained Jim Cherneski, Crystal Palace Baltimore’s technical director and co-head coach. “We offer the kids the opportunity to play – that’s big-time professional soccer already, but it also is the stage for the biggest time, as opposed to being in a reserve team somewhere.”

Founded as the North American arm of its mother club in London, presently competing in the Championship (England’s second division), CP Baltimore hopes to offer young talent a more direct route to Europe. While the team’s owners undoubtedly wish to build a home for professional soccer in the Baltimore area, the ultimate success of their enterprise revolves around grooming future stars with an eye towards lucrative transfer fees down the line, a process that has long been an economic reality for the vast majority of the world’s clubs.

“The truth of the matter is that I think that’s the direction that all professional clubs in the United States are going, and need to go as well – it’s really the lifeblood of most professional clubs over in England, especially those that are in the Championship level or below, such as Crystal Palace right now,” said Keith Tabatznik, the former Georgetown University coach who helps supervise CP Baltimore’s academy program. “Because you survive on scouting players, either developing them so they play for you, or selling them.”

This has proved a tough pill for MLS to swallow. Charged with selling the sport itself to a skeptical American public, the country’s top-flight league is uncomfortable with the idea of being a ‘selling league,’ a dismissive term in many European circles for its tacit admission of second-class status. Perhaps this was a factor in the league’s once-sluggish approach to youth academies, with relatively few MLS clubs wading into the complex world of American youth development until recent years.

Palace Baltimore hope that their approach will be validated by successful trailblazers like Korey Veeder. Cherneski initially spotted the 18-year-old Floridian at a youth tournament in Pennsylvania three years ago as a standout performers for the Clearwater Chargers, the club where Cherneski himself once played and where he has since set up a partnership agreement with Palace. Veeder subsequently moved onto the national team radar, training with Palace in London at age 16 and spending a year in the U.S. under-17 residency program in Bradenton, Fla. before signing with Palace Baltimore earlier this year.

“Being in England was really good, because the pace of the game there is a lot faster,” said Veeder. “So hopefully they’ll develop me more and I’ll be over in London playing with Crystal Palace someday.”

Commonplace around the world for decades, his path constitutes a distinct departure from the American way.

“It’s not something that top soccer players are used to considering,” said Tabatznik. “You’re going away from the traditional route that most of our players take, which is you go through your club in high school and then you go to college, and then see what happens. I think the mentality is changing because we see so many more U.S. players going abroad, and many of them going before they’ve entered any U.S. professional leagues as well.”

Veeder would probably already be playing in south London were it not for British government restrictions on foreign workers. Cherneski and company are working on a loan deal somewhere in the Portuguese second division – will it be Estoril, the club owned by Traffic which is presently home to young Americans Bryan Arguez and Tony Taylor? – so that the pacey outside back can establish his eligibility for a European Union work permit.

At 18, Veeder is young by MLS standards, but already two years older than Victor Moses was when he made his Crystal Palace debut. Moses is the Nigerian-born striker whose exploits in the Championship led to stardom with the England under-19 squad and a £2.5 million ($4 million) transfer to Premiership side Wigan Athletic earlier this month as cash-strapped Palace fight to keep their creditors at bay.

NCAA soccer remains the main destination for talented Americans, even though 18-year-olds in other countries have already been in a professional environment for years. Are American soccer parents prepared to put academics on the back burner and accept the uncomfortable reality that at best, the world’s top clubs see their children as a raw product to be extracted, then polished on Europe’s distant training grounds before being sold at a profit?

“You’re not talking to a lot of people. You’re talking to some very special players with some very special potential,” said Tabatznik. “You have to put the families in a comfort zone that you’re taking care of them, and also taking care of their education as well, in one form or another. But again, it’s an evolving thing.

“As certain things succeed, it builds momentum. If Korey and all that works out well, the experience is good and he’s able to move on, that obviously helps open the door for other people to say, ‘hey, this is a viable way of doing it.’”

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