Soccer is a funny one. When my son was very young he was quite good and playing one age up. The club said that instead of fielding an "A" and "B" team they were going to field two fairly even squads. They ran trials, picked the best 10 and split them up 5/5 between the teams and then just assigned everyone else randomly. I thought it was great but the parents of the "better" kids all wanted to see an A team.
My son wasn't in the 10. After the trials they ran a game of him and the other two boys playing up an age going 3 on 5 against some of the other from outside the 10. His team (with only 3 players) won by lots... and then the club told us they weren't good enough to play up an age

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Turns out they wanted to drop the better "playing up" kids back to their own age so they could field a stronger team in that age group... which we thought was a fair call - but the club for some reason felt the need to feed us bs. The 3 on 5 trial was actually to find out which of the younger kids the coach in that age wanted to steal back.