Red Bull raising the stakes with U-17 national tournament...

Everyone wants to be able to call themselves the national champions of their certain sport. BCS has been trying to figure out the best way to do it in college football. NCAA has created an exciting basketball tournament. Heck, Major League Baseball even calls their champion World Champs (it helps when not many other countries want to bestow that honor and now baseball is trying to rip off the World Cup) but don't get me started about baseball.

Red Bull is going to throw their hat into the ring with the Red Bull National League 17. The awkwardly named tournament will pit the "best of the best" in terms of U-17 soccer teams against each other in four weekend long tournaments.

Here is the format. 16 teams will attend the first event of the season whereas the second and third events will be regional competitions. They will each play three games per weekend and only play each other once in the entire regular season. Standings will be based on the point system: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie and 0 points for a loss. The fourth event will take place in Chicago, May 26-28, 2007, and will serve as the official league playoffs. One team will leave the field that day as the national champion.

The teams competing in the league in 2007 will be split into two regions, as follows:
West Region
Arsenal FC
Colorado Rush
Crossfire Premier
Dallas Texans
Irvine Strikers
Nomads
Pateadores
Solar

East Region
Atlanta United
CASL Elite
Chicago Magic
Chicago Sockers
Concorde Fire
FC Delco
PDA
Scott Gallagher

It will certainly be interesting to follow this league next year. I like that Red Bull is getting involved in the youth game and bringing together the powerhouses of the youth club world. I'm a little curious why their own youth team is not going to be included, but it sounds like one "prize" of winning is a match against the Red Bull U-17's.

Hopefully when all of the MLS clubs have youth teams, they'll be playing in events like this.