PLD tournament

PLD Accepted teams list

ADRENALINE FC 04B
ALLEN SPORTS BADGERS FC 04B
ANDROMEDA FC 04B RED
AUSTIN TEXANS 04B NTH
AYSES 04 BOYS BLACK
AYSES 04 BOYS GOLD
AZZURRI FC 04B
CLINTON FUSION 04
COPPELL DEVELOPMENT ACADEMY CDA 04B PREMIER
DALLAS RAYADOS 04B
DALLAS ROMA F.C. 04B
DALLAS TEXANS 04B RED DALLAS (PREV SOLAR 04B)
DALLAS TEXANS 04B STH (HERNANDEZ)
DC UNITED SC 04B
F.C. WARRYORS 03B
FC AZTECAS RED
FC DALLAS - ETX 04B LEDESMA
FC DALLAS 04B GOLD (F: ANDROMEDA 04B GALL)
FC DALLAS 04B NORTH RED
FC DALLAS WTX 04B - LARA
FC DALLAS WTX 04B GABE
FC DALLAS YOUTH 04B CENTRAL
FC DALLAS YOUTH 04B NORTH WHITE
FC DALLAS YOUTH 04B PREMIER
FC DALLAS YOUTH 04B RED
FC DALLAS YOUTH 04B WHITE
FC DALLAS YOUTH 05B PREMIER
FC FORCE ESS 04B
FC FORCE ESS 04B WHITE
FC PREMIER 04 BOYS
FC PREMIER 04B GREEN
FEVER UNITED 04B NICHOLS
GREATER LONGVIEW SA FC DALLAS-ETX 04 BOYS HASKINS
GSA FORCE FC 04B WHITE
HAMMERS WEST 04B
LEON FC ACADEMY USA DFW LEON FC 04B (TITA)
LIVERPOOL FC AMERICA 04 BOYS FOWLER
LIVERPOOL FC AMERICA 04 BOYS HUNT
LIVERPOOL FC AMERICA 04 BOYS SHANKLY
LIVERPOOL FC AMERICA 04 BOYS SOUNESS
MAGIC CUNAGUARO
MANSFIELD REVOLUTION MRSC 04B MEDINA
MCKINNEY UNITED 04B
MIDLAND UNITED CHIVAS (GHOSTRIDERS)
NYSA CELTIC 04
OLYMPIANS RED 04B
SOLAR CHELSEA 04B
SOLAR CHELSEA RED 04 BOYS
SOUTH LAKES COSMOS 04 BLUE
SOUTH LAKES COSMOS 04 WHITE
SPACE CITY FC SCFC 04B
SPORTING UNITED 04B
TEXAS THUNDER 04B
TEXAS TITANS FC 04B NORTH ANGELL
TSC HURRICANE 04 ROBERTS
TSC HURRICANE 04 UMELO RED

56 teams entered. Have they ever had a bronze bracket for PLD? Thats lots of teams and games to schedule.

http://events.gotsport.com/events/schedule.aspx?EventID=45888&Gender=Boys&Age=12

The brackets and schedules are out for the PLD.

Bracket #3 looks to be the toughest in the Gold Division with both Solar Farley and FCD Gold ( Gall ). Heard Gall picked up a lot of new players to make team even stronger. Should be a great weekend.

lots of lookin, no yakkin...

Gall looks much improved, SR04 looks strong with their possession game, these 2 are headed into a direct collision...

PLD right now in '04 bracket is advancing a team that finished 4th in their bracket, over the 3rd place team that beat them.  Odd application of tie breaker rules.

Tournament Rules posted on their website state:
Winner, runner-up, and wild card teams will be determined in the following priority order: (1) Points Total, (2) Head to Head, (3) Cum Goal Difference . . .

Hmmmmm. Looks like a pretty clear rule. That is if PLD plays by the rules.

Should have only been 8 teams in the top division anyway with no wild cards. Not sure why PLD officials decided to have divisions of 12, 16, 16, and 12 when 8, 16, 16, and 16 would have made more sense with 56 teams. Does this make sense to anyone? Any conspiracy theories out there involving PYSA vs. CCSAI?

As it was...I have to feel sorry for the poor 3rd place Mansfield 04B team that won head to head against 4th place FC Premier 04B, but was not awarded the wild card per the rules. Its bad enough they got grouped into the top gold division where they along with 3 other teams should have never been in the first place, but then to screw them out of a wild card they earned? Wow.

May not be true, but I heard that the 3rd place team "passed" on the possible wild card spot

It was not true we were never contacted about the wild card spot. We found the tournament staff was very poor in their communication. The joke is on us since we didn't get our spot in the quarter finals and PYSA still got what they wanted. Next year easy decision not to come back.

That really stinks Turk. Plus its not like this tournament was right in your own back yard, as it basically was for the FC Premier team that you guys beat head to head. Why even offer "wild card" slots for advancement if the rules to award such slots are not even going to be adhered to?  Thats just asking for trouble.  Which goes back to my point earlier:  Why did they have divisions of 12, 16, 16, and 12 with 56 teams?  Common sense says have divisions go either 8 or 16 whenever possible to avoid the need for "wild cards".  As the 04 bracket turned out, Classic League D1 teams dominated Gold and therefore should have only included D1 teams (especially if they are going to screw over the D2 teams anyway), Silver A should have been D2 teams, combined with any D3 teams that wanted a bit more of a challenge (No D3's should have been in Gold as they were), Sliver B (or whatever the 3rd level was) should have been the bottom of Classic League D3 and top Plano teams (There should have been no D2 teams, so why it contained a D2 Liverpoo team who I suspect beat-up on all the Plano teams I don't know (see previous conspiracy comment), and finally the bottom division, Silver C )or whatever Silver/Green BS rainbow color they called it should have contained EVERYONE else.  Whatever happened to Platinum/Gold/Silver/Bronze/Copper anyway, jeeeeeez.

Congrats to Gold Division Winner Solar Red....another predictable result, but hopefully you at least got some competition from the other top D1 teams who also played well.

Congrats to Silver A Division Winner LP Fowler.....sorry that my team and other D2 teams stuck in Gold were prevented from joining you in the Silver A division.

Im not sure I can offer congratulations for divisions below that as I don't know the results, and if LP Shankly did or does win the final (as they should being a D2 team playing down at least 1 or 2 levels) I am not sure I'd be sincere.  Surely a club the size of Liverpoo can field more than 1 top level team.  Does this puzzle anyone else? Whats going on over there?  Other big clubs like Dallas Texans, FC Dallas, and Solar seem to always have more than 1 horse in the race, usually 2, 3, or even 4 top teams.  Maybe its just an anomaly with the '04 Age Group.  Things will surely get better with the new Age Pure thing:)

Glad we weren't the only ones who saw that we clearly didn't belong in the Gold division. We registered for Silver. Before schedules came out, our coach contacted PYSA to make sure we were placed in a silver bracket and were abruptly told that the Gotsoccer rankings would determine seeding. That was a farce. The average ranking in NTX for Gold division was 10. We were ranked 46. The average regional ranking was 25. We were ranked 151. Our previous record against Gold teams was 1-8-1, with a goal differential of -36. A child on Sesame Street could see that our team didn't belong in Gold. We even suggested moving one of the two highly ranked teams from the large club that didn't have a team represented in Gold, and put us in their place in one of the Silver divisions and was told there was nothing they could do. Finally, when PYSA threatened to seek sanctions against us if we withdrew from the tournament, we showed up and played - our boys didn't care who the opponent was, they just wanted to play. A few parents even tried to talk to tournament officials prior to the first game about the poor seeding and were told that if we were so concerned about being beaten so bad in the Gold division, then we should just play rec soccer.
Well, our boys showed up, played lights out the first game and got an upset 1-0 win over FC Premier (Opoku) - not a bad result for the first ever game for this newly formed team. Then the reality of the Gold division set in with 5-0 and 7-0 losses to FCD Premier and FCD Borgarello - both teams are very good teams and hats off to them on the way they played. In the end to see the PLD officials bypass its own tournament rules and ignore our head to head win over FC Premier and send them to the Quarterfinals, was a slap in the face. Then again, life's not fair.

They likely did all this just so people wouldn't comment on playing on the little fields at Highpoint.

True that Allen04. Seems if you make people mad enough with one thing, they forget all about the other things that they should be complaining about. Those were some small fields. I thought we might be playing 6v6:) Brilliant strategy on PLD's part.

I agree that "life is not fair". It just stinks that there are individuals more than willing to intercede on behalf of life to guarantee it. I am not a fan of wild cards, lottery tickets etc, and think that everything should be earned so I hope that no one takes me the wrong way, but a division of 12 for the top division? Even 16 would have been better because it would have eliminated the need for wild cards and allowed all of the top 4 teams in the age group to receive a #1 seed for their bracket. Then, even though they might still have an easy path, at least they would not need to expend so much energy in bracket play in what was surely a long weekend for all of the players regardless of skill level. Last team standing wins I guess:)

allen04 wrote:They likely did all this just so people wouldn't comment on playing on the little fields at Highpoint.  

Little fields on the side of hills, I get the name...."Highpointe" since the field we played on definitely had one. It's a shame that for our semi and final we were given two crap fields, one with pot holes filled with loose dirt and the side hill with the view. Oh well, the boys had a good time.

Sorry to sabotage the 04 forum for my rant.

Maybe they should have focused more on running a "quality" tournament vs. a "quantity" tournament and limited the number of teams.  Perhaps someone will offer an invitational tournament with appropriately matched teams and proper fields to suit the level of play.  Otherwise we'll all be stuck with a Pretty Large Debacle next year:)

Disappointed at the level of professionalism from Plano staff. Its all about the money not about the kids.

Compass custom wrote:Disappointed at the level of professionalism from Plano staff.  Its all about the money not about the kids.          

Says every McDonalds everywhere!

Turk7056 wrote:Tournament Rules posted on their website state:
Winner, runner-up, and wild card teams will be determined in the following priority order: (1) Points Total,  (2) Head to Head, (3) Cum Goal Difference . . .

Hmmmmm.  Looks like a pretty clear rule.  That is if PLD plays by the rules.

I understand the complaint but how are they supposed to figure the wildcard when three teams have 8 points after bracket play? FC Premiere, Mansfield and Roma all had 8 points. If you go head to head Mansfield beats FC Premiere but then what do you do with Roma, also with 8 points in bracket 3? I think at that point they went back to goal differential to split the three way tie. Not sure how else they could do it. No dog in this fight and I had no idea how they would decide it when I was looking at it Sunday afternoon.

Thats why they should have never had a division of 12 since they had more than enough teams to make divisions of either 8 or 16 that would not require wild cards. Mansfield definitely earned the spot over FC Premier, but then what about Roma? If the goal differentials being compared involve different sets of teams that never met head to head, isn't it rather pointless too? Apples and Oranges. Again, someone needs to offer a Labor Day tournament that directly competes with the pretty large disappointment, and make it invitational. Maybe only accept the top 16 teams per AG, and use a QT the weekend before to determine who the top 16 are. Can't believe no one has jumped on this already, there is $ to be made:)

winkipop77 wrote:Thats why they should have never had a division of 12 since they had more than enough teams to make divisions of either 8 or 16 that would not require wild cards.  Mansfield definitely earned the spot over FC Premier, but then what about Roma?  If the goal differentials being compared involve different sets of teams that never met head to head, isn't it rather pointless too?  Apples and Oranges.  Again, someone needs to offer a Labor Day tournament that directly competes with the pretty large disappointment, and make it invitational.  Maybe only accept the top 16 teams per AG, and use a QT the weekend before to determine who the top 16 are.  Can't believe no one has jumped on this already, there is $ to be made:)

Agree that if you can avoid wildcards that is probably best to prevent these situations. Maybe they should put in a rule that if you are 4th in the bracket that precludes you from advancing so it would have only been the two teams in contention for the wildcard. Even then, you have to go to goal differential for two teams that played totally different competition and you are right, that is not apples to apples

In the end I think the four best teams in the Gold bracket wound up in the semifinals so the seeding was pretty good on those teams. The semifinals were tight games and any of those four teams could have won the entire tournament. A tight finals that went to overtime and two teams slugging it out in the heat. Long weekend.

Should be a fun and unpredictable season.

SnookumsConCarne wrote:

Compass custom wrote:Disappointed at the level of professionalism from Plano staff.  Its all about the money not about the kids.          

Says every McDonalds everywhere!

I don't know of any business that can stay in business treating the customers poorly. I rarely go to McDonald's but when I do they greet me with a smile and a level of professionalism.

winkipop77 wrote:Maybe they should have focused more on running a "quality" tournament vs. a "quantity" tournament and limited the number of teams.  Perhaps someone will offer an invitational tournament with appropriately matched teams and proper fields to suit the level of play.  Otherwise we'll all be stuck with a Pretty Large Debacle next year:)

Why would you ever play for a tournament run or scheduled by RH?

Teams have complained for years about RH and PLD, but they keep going back. What are our options? PLD attracts a lot of teams and many teams think bigger is better. Arlington is small and less competitive in comparison to PLD. GLASA tried to go up against PLD for like 30 years and finally gave up. PT doesn't have a Labor Day tournament. Clubs won't put on a Labor Day tournament, because their teams want to play in PLD. U90C tried once and failed. But, if they had a Labor Day tournament and made it their qualifier for SuperCopa's, they would take teams from PLD.

Folks. This dialogue about the wild card is not real interesting.
Please yield more color about Gall and Farleys teams still not being able to unseat Solar Red.
Four in a row?!
This is an interesting topic.

Tacoboyjr wrote:Folks. This dialogue about the wild card is not real interesting.
Please yield more color about Gall and Farleys teams still not being able to unseat Solar Red.
Four in a row?!
This is an interesting topic.

Thats not interesting that was expected!!!