Today we release another new Players To Watch National Top 150 Ranking on TopDrawerSoccer.com This time it is the 2015 Boys class we’ve been investigating.

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 throughout the spring. Next week it’s 2015 Girls.

Topping the list this time is Angel Heredia, a central midfielder with the San Jose Earthquakes who is holding down a starting spot on the U17 Men’s National Team despite playing up a year. He brings a good balance of toughness and skill to the field and has a strong soccer brain as well.

Flashy forward Wesley Wade of New York Red Bulls and Florida defender Tommy Redding, both regulars with the U17 MNT, come in at #s 2 and 3 respectively.

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, 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, and of course college and club 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 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 read the first ever version of the 2015 Boys Top 150 here. As always, thank you for reading TopDrawerSoccer.com.

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