Part 3 in a 3-Part series about our player rankings. See here for details on our TeamRank process and criteria.

Missed a part? Read Part 1 | Part 2

In the first two articles I spoke about how we do our rankings and how you can best interact with our rankings process. At this point I think it’s worthwhile to discuss the purpose of these rankings, both what they are and what they are not.

As a news and information site, TopDrawerSoccer.com endeavors to tell its readers what is going on out there in the soccer world. As club and college soccer have been our points of focus, we are attempting to let people know who the good players are. Originally Players To Watch didn’t include rankings, but only a list of players we had identified as having an exceptional quality.

The switch to a format where we rated and ranked players came out of demand. The fact is that people LIKE to see rankings. The traffic on this part of the web site is second to none, and as a news and information site that is also a business, it makes perfect sense to do this. Ultimately we rank players because you want us to.

That is the sense in which our lists are a service to our readers, not in the, “we’ll get you recruited” sense. Coaches tell me all the time they look at the lists. They help provide input by which we make our determination on rankings. Sometimes they tell me they disagree with the rankings. They definitely will check on players that they’ve learned about from our site, but of course they evaluate themselves.  The “service” we provide is information to readers. When I started the web site way back when, the idea was to serve the game and the players who play it, by addressing key issues and highlighting their efforts. This is another way of doing that, but we are not a recruiting service.

Perhaps I should not add this here, but I want to also say that our rankings are also not defining who these young men and women are, or their value as human beings. The reaction I sometimes get from people who are unhappy with the ranking makes me wonder if they in fact do define the players in such a way. I love soccer and I appreciate ambition and being driven, but just as in a championship there is only one winner, there is also going to be only one of each slot in the rankings. For the overwhelming majority of those who are not #1, we’d better be able to deal with the realization of that better than what I often see in my inbox.

Ultimately the rankings are meant to be enjoyed. It’s part of the discussion (not the be-all, end-all, but part of it) about the game that many of us love to be involved with.

I hope all of this helps shed some light on our process and my heart as we try to do something positive for the game and the players who play it. As always, I am indebted to you all for your support of the web site and I hope you will continue to read as we enter this new era of Players to Watch. I also wish you all a happy New Year.

Missed a part? Read Part 1 | Part 2

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