Rising’s academy grad debuts for club

A week from now, a month from now, certainly a year from now, Phoenix Rising’s 6-3 win over Las Vegas Lights on Saturday will be forgotten. The three points put Phoenix back in the drivers’ seat for home-field advantage in next month’s playoffs but soon, those playoffs will arrive and Saturday afternoon will fade into memory.

For everyone, that is, except Niall Dunn. On Saturday, Dunn — who became the Rising’s first academy graduate to sign with the first team back in July — made his professional debut, two days before his 17th birthday.

“Growing up, wanting to play professional, now I’m here,” Dunn said Saturday, still coming to terms with his new reality.

He is, though, still a realist. He understands that Saturday’s start was likely a one-off.

“Obviously, it would be great to get more games, but now we’ve got playoffs to focus on,” Dunn said.

Getting a lead role doesn't happen after just one game.

“He's not gonna go from academy to starting a game to being our number one center back,” manager Rick Schantz said. “It just doesn't happen.”

Saturday showed why. Las Vegas striker Cal Jennings, one of the USL’s best goalscorers, bagged a hat trick. Even if his talent occasionally shone through, Dunn’s lack of physicality and nascent chemistry with the rest of Phoenix’s backline was evident.

But on Saturday, none of that was the point. Schantz used the game to get Dunn first-team experience precisely because the final stretch of the regular season is a time for experimentation.

“I'm proud of him,” Schantz said. “He was not easy to get through. It was great for him to do it. It was big for the club and we just have to show faith. There's a reason we signed him. We know he's good enough.”

Next season, Schantz hopes Dunn can battle for a permanent place in the 18-man gameday roster. If all goes well, he could consistently break the starting 11, even though he’ll still be just 17.

For Phoenix, though, Dunn’s bigger impact lies in the path he’s forging.

Fifteen years ago, the path to playing professional soccer in the United States was straightforward but antiquated. Unless you played at IMG Academy, the best youth players went to college and then were drafted by MLS clubs. Clint Dempsey — perhaps the best American player of all time — followed that path. So too did countless other national team stalwarts.

Then, in 2008, MLS created the Homegrown Player Rule, which allowed academy players to bypass the draft, in turn incentivizing clubs to invest in their academies.

“Historically, we've been very good up until about 16 or 17 years old,” Schantz said. “When I was in the youth program, our U-17s got third at the World Cup. And then what happens is these kids were going off to college. And no knock against college soccer, there's just so many limitations. … It's not the best, in my opinion, for development from 18- to 22-year-olds.”

At the MLS level, the impact has become obvious over the past half-decade. Alphonso Davies, arguably the best right back in the world, came out of Vancouver Whitecaps’ academy and now plays at Bayern Munich. In the U.S. National Team’s most recent World Cup qualifier, seven of its 11 starters were MLS academy products. Only two played college soccer.

USL, though, has lagged behind. As MLS clubs have begun to reject college players in favor of academy prospects, those college products now fill out USL rosters. That’s not inherently a bad thing. College provides a second pathway for players who slipped through the academy cracks. But academies foster cheap, young players whose skillsets have been molded to fit a club’s philosophy. And, if all goes right, they can be sold to MLS sides or foreign clubs to net a substantial profit.

So in 2020, right before the pandemic hit, Phoenix Rising expanded its youth setup. The club created its own fully-funded professional academy, removing financial barriers to entry for lower-income players and enabling its youth teams to practice more often and play against the country’s best youth prospects.

“Every successful club in the world has an academy structure under its first team,” Steve Cooke, the Rising’s director of soccer development, said in January. Members of the organization's brass have repeatedly stated their desire to operate like an MLS club as they wait in purgatory, hoping the league will eventually admit them.