Why the parent mentality mixed with the US pay to play system is the problem with US Youth Soccer

Soccer ⚽ is an entertainment act for millions of children in the summer, but that does not result in a greater and better quality of American professional players.


The United States is sportily dominated by three giant Goliath’s who cannot be defeated by any David. Baseball, football and basketball have invaded the homes of citizens, who seem to grow up believing that the rest of sports are just games that serve to kill leisure. Under this mentality and within the framework of a country where economic stability and social order allow us to bet on projects without a crisis throwing away what we have worked on, has found a small space. This place is so narrow that it even had to be renamed "soccer" to enter into the language of the fans.

By the power of millions, Major League Soccer (MLS) has managed to seduce star players that any club in the world longs to have. These arrivals, coupled with the Latin influence coming mainly from Mexico and Central America, have given the league some competitiveness, but it has yet to find its identity. For this, it takes a deep work of the teams in the lower divisions that has begun, but that does not seem to bear fruit. To understand why the results are not in sight, it is necessary to understand how the foundations of soccer work.


Unlike the NBA or Major League Baseball, MLS teams are clubs and not franchises, so there is a place for the development of the inferior. Parents expect that coaches are going to magically develop players who spend on avg 3 hours total weekly with a team in practice. I’m sorry but that’s recreational sport type of practice hours. Kids will never develop into elite technical players like that. The clear differentiation between professional and recreational is not well defined in clubs and is intermingled within the pay to play system. So how do the youngest develop their soccer skills? Children who play soccer don't usually watch soccer. The United States has a system in which schools and clubs that do not have MLS equipment work together so that the younger ones are constantly active. Between March and October, with a recess in June, most schools, depending on the climate that prevails in the area, stop their sports activity and that's when these complexes come into action.

Those whose main activity is soccer usually receive about 1,500 children who come with the obligation to only have fun and train to enjoy a sport that parents do not see as a future source of work. "The child is going to play, not be a soccer player. Yes the act of playing a sport needs to be fun, but pathway to professional soccer needs to be competitive and non entitled and should reward and incentivize the student who puts more effort to become better outside of team practice. All of these clubs are private and the seasonal fee is around $ 1600-2500 so few can afford this luxury. In addition, these institutions rent the facilities to universities or other entities. When the season is over, they close their doors. One particularity that unites soccer-playing kids is that they "don't watch soccer," Far from wearing their favorite team's jersey or talking about what happened at soccer stadiums over the weekend, kids have fun kicking a ball while wearing NBA franchise or baseball team apparel. Clubs organize regional tournaments to encourage competition. Parents often choose soccer for the full training it provides and to avoid harming their children's health. Several studies indicate that sports such as American football have consequences for professional players and this "has alerted families,"

All this system is accompanied by applications for telephones and mobile devices that both the clubs and the entities in charge of organizing the regional tournaments. There is way to much structure and politics in youth soccer. All this takes away from the actual fun of playing the sport and the seriousness of the competitiveness for others. There needs to be a hard cutoff and clear line distinction between recreational and competitive soccer inside the club system. Which for many clubs it does not exist. If not you will always have differentiated mentalities among parents which can lead to problems within teams. Clubs are forced to keep the majority of parents happy. Which includes both the serious ones and the ones treating it as a hobby. Why? Because if they don’t they lose money. Youth soccer in the US is like socialism. What happens when you have a fair, play all, equal system with low fanaticism in the pool of players. Well, we see the results in the players we produce. You get back what you put in. The incentive is not there to be great at it and master it. In this structure where fun is the main objective, fanaticism has no place. Fanaticism is what creates super stars. Kids obsessed with players, teams and practicing. Coaches have an obligation to promote "fair play as the main value and this is demanded by clubs and parents," The children's relatives usually watch the matches from the stands, although far from living them with euphoria, they just enjoy that their children are having a good time.

Clubs train twice and play one game a week. Coaches are also obliged to make twice a year a report of each player that summarizes his balance, in order to justify a possible change of team within its category, either by improvement or by involution, placing them in team A.B,C. These politics inside clubs coupled with the entitlement mentality and the differentiating opinions towards development, competitiveness and recreational are killing the growth of the sport and the production of elite world wide players. A country that puts soccer second to the three giants and that has no fanaticism within the youngers base will never develop super star soccer players. This whole system, which could be used to create footballers and finally make the United States a world power, aims to remove smiles from young people, instead of training them as professionals.


The MLS feeds on stars who are close to retirement and on Latino footballers. However, even if the boys dreamed of being soccer stars, reality would slow them down. MLS does not have enough teams in a country with a population of more than 320 million. This cocktail, added to the stars who arrive in the league year after year, makes it practically impossible for a child to become a soccer star in the United States. That's why this structured and organized system is struggling to bear the winning fruit.
 
Last edited:
OK. I'll bite. So much wrong in this. The highlights:

*The issue isn't that there aren't enough MLS teams. The issue is because of the shared ownership system and salary caps, MLS players aren't paid that much. Daniel Steres for the Galaxy for example makes $150K a year. For someone coming out of college, that's a paltry return on investment. Lampson, the backup keeper, makes $75K a year. For a professional athlete from the US that's nothing. For the big bucks, you have to go to Europe, and that's difficult given the national quotas, our tax laws, and their immigration laws, not to mention getting training out there due to child labor restrictions. But for someone from Jamaica or Central America, that amount of money is very enticing and is one of the reasons why those countries have done so much better in world competition with the introduction of the MLS.

*The stuff about kids not following or watching the pros is nonsense. The boys at least all play Fifa (my son plays online with both his current and former teammates). My son during conditioning can always be seen with his manchester shirt. His teammates have been seen in their LAFC, Liga MX, and Premier league favorites. Might be different for the girls, and even among the boys there are different levels of interest, but any of the kids who attended One Soccer during the World Cup or WWC knew the players on the national team up and down.

*The one or two hours a week thing is true only at the younger ages. As you move up the ages and the standings, that changes. The reason that happens at the younger ages is to avoid injury and burnout. The stuff about summer is also ridiculous. That's the nature of the US having such a long summer break, which is why those activities happen in the summer (you aren't going away to residential camp in the school year, and I was shocked when my son's tour guide at a middle school mentioned he was with LAFC academy because that particular school is pretty demanding and with a long commute its hard to envision how the school work gets done).

*This misses the main point about why people don't obsess about becoming soccer pros. The US soccer world is about college admissions and scholarships (much like the AP classes, the fake charities, the science fair projects, the activism, and the other sports are). That's what the system is build for. You want a pro system? You have to build a residential academy system geared (on both the male and female side, though the female side will lose money and have to be subsidized) towards creating pros (which means incentivizing the MLS to create them by opening up a transfer fee market.

Where'd this come from? Is it your magnum opus?
 
I can summarize your argument as "Soccer is not a high cultural priority in the US, and until it does the US won't produce any world class players".

1. Player development isn't free. Since US Soccer and MLS don't share transfer fees with youth clubs, how else are the clubs supposed to stay in business?
2. Soccer pros don't get paid much. You like to brag about your daughter a lot. What's a better goal for her? To get a scholarship to UCLA where she can get a degree and make connections? Or train 4-5 days a week to be a professional player in a league (NWSL) where most players make $25k? I'll leave arguments for the boys side to someone else.
3. US Soccer is a good ol' boys network with poor leadership. Bad leaders produce bad results. Coaches produce poor results and don't pay any price. The development program is on too small of a scale for a country this large. There are many things wrong. The men's team is proof of this, and the women's team succeeds in spite of it.
 
$4k+ for 10+ years = $40k, well invested over 10 years it could double to $80k . Theres your college tuition.
 
$4k+ for 10+ years = $40k, well invested over 10 years it could double to $80k . Theres your college tuition.

Depends on what kind of school your kid is looking into. If it's a competitive school like Berkeley or UCLA then even super smart and accomplished kids get turned away. I see athletics as a shortcut around the normal admissions process.
 
Depends on what kind of school your kid is looking into. If it's a competitive school like Berkeley or UCLA then even super smart and accomplished kids get turned away. I see athletics as a shortcut around the normal admissions process.

Case in point - my son with 3.2 GPA and better than average test scores got early admission to a UC school through the soccer program. My daughter, with 3.95 GPA and better test scores than her brother, but no athletic interest by any school, got waitlisted to the same school (she got in after we had passed the time waiting with visits to all the other UC campuses that had already accepted her).
 
Back
Top