The 2017 Boys IMG Academy Top 150 fall update is out today, and the top five remain unchanged, but there are many others in the rankings who have made significant moves or who have entered the list for the first time.

Residency member John Nelson has proved his worth with the U17 Men’s National Team and climbs from No. 20 to No. 13. The defender from Ohio has selected to the travel roster for a tour of teams in the northwestern United States in March. San Jose Earthquakes forward Kaya Fabbretti continues to tear up the scoring sheet in the U14 Development Academy, with 25 goals so far this season, and moves from No. 76 to No. 33. Bethesda-Olney forward Matt Matzelevich spent a week with the U17 MNT in Bradenton last fall, and performed well enough to be invited on the upcoming trip to the northwest, raising his stock to No. 35 on our list.

Many players at this youngest age group in the IMG Academy 150 are appearing on the list for the first time.  Among those are South Carolina United Battery midfielder/center back Alex Henderson, Minnesota Thunder defender Jake Meier, Seattle Sounders midfielder Samual Rogers, and Fort Wayne United center midfielder Joel Harvey. Henderson, who debuts at No. 49, moved from midfield to center back mid-season and has started all 25 of the Battery’s U16 Development Academy matches this year, quite a feat for a ninth grader. Meier, like Henderson, has started each of the Thunder’s U16 Academy games and enters our rankings at No. 80. Rogers, tabbed by our staff as a top player at the U14 Academy Showcase in California last fall, comes in at No. 98. Finally, Harvey is a left-footed commodity in the Great Lakes region, receiving high praise from our scouts, and lands at No. 95.

In addition to the IMG Academy 150 update, we have made key changes to the regional rankings which will be unveiled throughout the week. Some of the additions include DC United forward/midfielder Andres Villanueva, NJSA 04 center back Niko Louvoulos, Baldwinsville YSA forward/midfielder Lukas Rubio, Pateadores defender/midfielder Michael DeSisto, South Carolina United Battery center back Charles Grondines, and many more. Keep checking back to see who else made the lists.

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. The priority here is for club, college, national team and other select team coaches on the ground, but especially when we can gain corroborating opinions. The more layers of opinions we can gain accumulate the better, as our role is primarily to aggregate those viewpoints, rather than making our own determination as to a player’s quality.

As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom so that coaches will be freer to share their assessments. 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 as well as our challenge of sifting through thousands of players nationwide. That kind of data can be helpful, but the: “How can you not have rated my kid? He is awesome” communique, while compelling, will be consigned to the virtual trash.

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 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 newest version of the rankings here.

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