On Monday, promising Sith Lord apprentices NYCFC dropped a developmental hammer on the U.S. After greedily snatching up 11 local affiliate youth satellites, NYCFC told us what they planned on doing with them.

Turns out, that involves making an entire league.

To my knowledge, nothing on this scale has ever existed in the U.S. It’s common practice for top MLS academies to have pre-academy sides that play in US Club Soccer’s NPL. The Red Bulls’ has been particularly good down the years. It’s also a good way to ease players IDed early into the club’s setup before the Development Academy kicks in at the U14 age. But even those pre-academy leagues have their limit. Almost every league stops at the U13 level, and only one league – the Northeast Pre-Academy League – has U11 and U12 divisions for boys.

NYCFC’s plan advances developmental theory to its next logical step, although its no less power grab-y. This is the money quote.

The Youth League, created and run by New York City FC will help promote and regulate the development of soccer in the New York City Metro area and of the Club’s youth affiliates network, which was recently expanded to 11 affiliates. The League, the type of which has never been seen before at Club level, will follow the philosophy and techniques created within the City Football network.

Firstly, the implications here are deafening. NYCFC has been pulling in youth affiliates since the club’s existence was announced, and it’s hard to imagine they aren’t spooking RBNY (which, since the publication of that article, has finally confirmed a USL PRO side under new leadership). With 11 satellites throughout the area, and with unlimited growth potential, NYCFC already has direct access to literally thousands of youth players. MLS being the font of developmental confusion that it is, it’s unclear what NYCFC’s rights to these players really are. Since these clubs are affiliates and not a direct academy, they probably don’t fall under typical Homegrown rules, which makes this seem calculating to the point of purposeful obfuscation. Further, what’s NYCFC’s Homegrown catchment area in relation to RBNY? What rights does NYCFC have to players who play in clubs in RBNY’s recruitment radius?

And here’s another murky bit of business. Since the Union and Red Bulls’ 75-mile allowable youth scouting radii overlap considerably, the main caveat is that neither club can scout within a 25-mile radius of the other’s stadium. Considering both are in highly urbanized areas, both 25-mile tracts of land are of considerable importance. For the Red Bulls in particular, that includes pretty much all of Manhattan, a chunk out of Long Island that includes Brooklyn and population-rich northeast Jersey. Considering Yankee Stadium and Red Bull Arena are less than 25 miles apart, suddenly the efficacy of all this becomes considerably more confusing.

But what is clear is that NYCFC is operating like you’d expect a big club to operate. They’ve commandeered a foothold in the region’s youth landscape by simply tacking their badge onto preexisting clubs, and they’ve done their homework. Several of their 11 affiliate clubs are within 25 miles of RBNY’s stadium, which would otherwise be an MLS no-no under the generally understood rules (generally understood being a loose, largely unsupportable phrase in this instance). But since NYCFC never actually formed an academy, none of those rules apply. Presumably. We think. Territorial rules regarding affiliates aren’t widely known, but there probably aren’t any.

What does this mean for the future? Who knows? Maybe MLS already has a rule system in place for NYCFC’s recruitment catchment and simply hasn’t published it widely yet. But based on what we do know, NYCFC played the system perfectly. While the league figures out what to do with New York’s two overlapping spheres of influence, NYCFC already has an in with dozens of high-profile soccer families with budding pro prospects in the metro area. Some of those will be disenfranchised RBNY families looking for fresh air crisped by the scent of new money. Whenever the league does decide what to do with NYCFC’s Homegrown boundaries, the club can simply form-fit its signings to meet the necessary requirements. This affiliate setup allows them the liquidity to do so.

As for the soccer itself, this is an invaluable piece of recruiting for NYCFC. No single club entity in the country operates anything like this. NYCFC will be running its own sanctioned league for players at a critical scouting age in an insanely competitive market no other club in the nation can match. And they’re not only avoiding competition with the Development Academy, they’ve probably made U.S. Soccer happy considering the free identification they’re getting via this massive net of soccer money falling on one of the nation’s densest concentrations of untapped talent.

While that U9 bracket seems awfully young by MLS standards, we know that’s prime developmental real estate in global terms. Once NYCFC does set up its own entry for the Development Academy, which is an inevitability, the club will have a smooth vertical line tracing through U9, U10, U11, U14, U16 and U18 levels. Presumably there’ll eventually be a USL PRO franchise thrown on as a cake topper, and the DA’s addition of a U12 age in 2016 could be joined by an NYCFC U13 side in the NPL. If a player made his pro debut at 21, it’ll have been possible for him to play with an NYCFC patch on his sleeve for 14 uninterrupted years.

Even by casual estimates, that’s the longest possible gestation period for a player in a single development system in American history. It’s never even been tried before. So by the same token, it may not even work.

If RBNY’s ownership wasn’t quaking before, it should be now. NYCFC’s shown a shocking amount of agility in its ground-up building project, even if it did utilize dark arts in getting it off the ground. What it means for the future, we’ll soon see.