Through Brian Lewis of the New York Post's Extra Time blog comes word that MLS has relaxed its rules regarding the signing of academy players.

The highlights:

Teams can now have two Generation Adidas (remember, those don't hit the cap) players at any given time rather than one.

Teams can now sign four academy players per year rather than two (per year).

Academy players belong exclusively to that club and can not be pried away by another team.


A few thoughts on this development after the jump.

We're talking about small steps here, clearly. But they're important steps, and I'm glad to things are changing, even if the changing don't seem of great import.

The growth of academies will be slow (and possibly painful); it's unrealistic to expect things to change overnight, and Major League Soccer has shown that they will move slowly and carefully in almost every aspect of administration.

If these rule changes allow for a club (I expect it will be New York first) to debut an academy-bred youngster that makes an impact at some point in the next two years, I will be ecstatic. Tangible results are what we're looking for here, and while I may want the league to remove the shackles and let these teams go full bore, a professional player produced outside of the confines of the college system will be enough (for the time being).

If the teams can prove that they're capable of managing these academies, keep costs within reason, and produce some solid pros, those aforementioned shackles will come off quickly. MLS knows that it can't rely on the draft forever, and that quality will improve with kids brought up to the senior squads in professional environments.

I may sound like a broken record, but I have no faith that simply drafting players out of college and sticking them in a professional environment at 21 or 22 will allow for significant strides in quality. The game is simply too different, and the training time too limited, for American players to be any better than adequate (on average). If we want to produce stars, kids that will capture attention and lift the league to new heights, I am convinced it will have to be done through academies.

Rant over. Let me know what you think of the rule changes: will they have any real effect, or is it all just still window dressing at this point?