Summer Ranking Update for 2016 Boys

by Robert Ziegler

August 13, 2012

Today we release another summer update for the Players To Watch National Top 150 Ranking on TopDrawerSoccer.com This time it is the 2016 Boys graduating class we are revisiting.

As part of our continuing effort to improve Players To Watch, we are now ranking four graduating classes each of boys and girls. We’ll continue unveiling these updates throughout the summer. Next week it will be 2016 Girls.

Cameron Lindley

For the 2016 Boys, U17 Boys National Team starting midfielder Cameron Lindley remains at #1 in the ranking. You can see the full rankings list here.

The regional rankings for 2016 Boys will be unveiled beginning Tuesday and through Friday for our 16 regions in this class. Many new players are being added to these lists as we continue hearing from each area.

As far as how we arrive at the rankings, it’s no simple task.

We keep a national database of players as the starting point for our rankings (if you’re not in it, enter a profile here.

We track an extensive list of selections to national team camps and other honors including USSF Development Academy (Boys), ECNL (Girls), and U.S. Youth Soccer National League event and season awards, plus U.S. Soccer Training Centers, ODP, id2 and other player identification programs.

From there we look at additional signs of top player performance in a club environment, with the help of an extensive network of observers around the country, especially college club and other coaches on the ground (recruiting interest shown is a major factor). As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom. Another policy is that parents’ opinions about their own children are not considered, but you are welcome to provide feedback about honors and other details that may be of help to us in keeping their profiles up to date and sifting through thousands of players nationwide

In the end, there’s always some level of subjectivity about players, because after all, how good someone is relative to someone else is largely a matter of opinion, but we do our best to make our rankings as educated an opinion as can be.

The rankings will now be updated every quarter. Keeping current rankings for 8 classes of 150 players each is no small task, and it is counterintuitive to think the rankings would change daily or weekly. We will announce each update.

So that’s it. You can see the latest update here.

As always, thank you for reading TopDrawerSoccer.com