I'd like to reiterate the "silver lining" aspect for myself that, although my son could be an elite athlete (and is probably the most pure athletic player on his team, if not the entire club as his age group), he's not an elite soccer player (at least at this point), and I don't think soccer will be a career path for him. As such, I'm not going to push sports on him; I think he'll be able to do just fine in a STEM related career path. In that sense, I'm somewhat glad we're not in a country where he may have gotten funneled into a dedicated sports program at a young age (based on athleticism), and had other opportunities reduced as a result. There are a lot more jobs for software developers, for example, than professional athletes.
Crystal Palace Academy Selection Process - EYE OPENING!
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I actually think it's the late bloomers from poor families that have the hardest time. There are likely some kids at u11 that could be great, but aren't bigger / faster than their teammates and so aren't getting scholarships to the bigger leagues.
It’s possible to be good at soccer and also be brilliant in school. I don’t see a point of playing club soccer if you don’t have the goal of making the top team. You don’t need to make soccer your career but you have to want to kick ass.
I think the sentiment is that it is unequivocally a disproportionate burden for families without sufficient resources, not that it is impossible for all of them.
For example, I am in a position where I can pay club fees, travel costs, etc. If I was not, my son would not be playing club. Yes, in the hypothetical, I might have been able to ask for a discount and made the other cost and time work, but I would not have done so, even if I thought my son was good. I know the general odds of having a successful career in sports, and that's not something I would sacrifice for in that position, given other options. I suspect that's the case for a large number of families where money is tight.
I'd like my son to make a top team; don't get me wrong. He's good, and likes to win, but is not top-tier good at this point.
But many people delude themselves with the level it takes to be "professional". There might be 2M kids in the US playing youth soccer in competitive situations. There might be 500 viable professional jobs playing soccer, for the same range of ages. That's 0.025%. My kid is probably not even in the top 10% for his age; there is a vanishingly small chance he'll ever play professionally, and only a very small chance he'll play in college. I'd like him to succeed, I hope he has fun, and we have the resources to make this opportunity available to him... but I'm not deluding myself about his future soccer prospects either.
If your son is a 99 percentile player, you will likely make that sacrifice and ask for a discount. If parents are crazy enough (willing to make the drive), kids will play club soccer poor or not. The problem with this country is the lack of unstructured play opportunities not pay to play.
To put my perception of my own son's ability in context, he played a bit of volleyball last summer at a camp, which I forced him to go to. He was good at it (because he's a good athlete), played the next year in middle school, and now might play club volleyball. He has just as much chance of playing that sport in college as soccer, if not more, in my estimation, despite not starting until he was 12. He still thinks of soccer as his "primary" sport, but there are a lot of good soccer players in SoCal, and just being a top tier athlete is not enough to be a stand-out soccer player.
Point taken on Kobe and Jordan. Hear you.
Disagree on the transition issue at U18. Under U18 it's virtually impossible for an American to break into Europe unless they hold dual citizenship like Pulisic (Mexico and Canada have the same issue). Over 18 it's also a caps and immigration issue. Restrictions on the number of foreigners on certain leagues, double taxation under the US tax code, immigration limitations since Europe penalizes us right back with our restrictions. Unless the kid transitioning out of 18 is really really special and has already proven themselves, it's just easier for the lower level European team to save the cap and look local somewhere in the Schengen area. They used to be willing to burn that spot for US GKs for example (since US GKs were better at the handling sports...see the career of our own local Ian Feuer), but even that's becoming rarer now since US keepers (like Turner) have been shown to have issues with their feet and Europe is full timing their own keepers earlier and earlier. Our academy teams have done well (not great but well) against the European academy teams....that's not where the problem is...it's that its more economical for European teams to hire their own if they don't have dual EU citizenship and here in the US there's not a robust lower league for them to break in. Also if you compare all the EU+Britain slots against our own, there's a lot to chose from.
My kid's longest stint was at a mixed ethnicity, mixed socio-economic class club. He's also played for a majority minority letter league club.
Lot of problems with this. 1) outside of the top teams for the top clubs, there just aren't a lot of scholarships to go around...someone has to pay the bills after all...and as focomoso correctly points out, it advantages the early bloomers. I've heard anecdotally BTW that there are also teams that cap the number of minority/scholarship players because they don't want to be seen as a "Latino" team and there are cultural issues like the propensity of minority players to use the N word. For those scholarships you generally have to travel them to the white suburbs. The Latino neighborhood based teams have their own economic issues...some TFA MLS Next teams have some of its practices in a fugly grass park...one of the factors leading to what happened at LAUFA was the MLS Next Team was being subsidized by the lower level teams and with inflation it got really expensive leading to the blow up of the vast majority of the lower level teams. Working class Americans just can't afford the rate, and no paying players no subsidies for the top team.
2) the driving is a big difficulty if both parents work, particularly once you hit letter league and the clubs are very spread apart...in the valley we have an ECNL team but no MLS Next clubs that are based there (some teams either hypothetically assigned to the region or teams playing in the region, but none based there) and ECNL on the girl's side has the issue with no teams in the downtown-long beach-downey triangle. It assumes working class parents even have a working car that can make those ungodly driving times with traffic. My kid's stint at the local team the coach was an awesome guy who would go around and pick up the kids for an hour before practice...best coach ever and he could (still does) do it because everyone is local. But that club doesn't have letter league
3) There's a knowledge problem. I didn't know anything until my son got tapped out of AYSO Extras. A lot of the Latino league parents ask me what is this letter league your kid is playing with. And the scholarships for the little ones, particularly out of these neighborhoods are limited (letter league clubs reserve the biggest scholarships for the top flight olders). If they don't transition early, they are already behind other players who have. Some parents don't speak English or English is a second language to them, leading to issues navigating the system, or even knowing to ask for a scholarship as well as pride issues when there's a Latino league team right there which they don't know any better about. The Mexican clubs BTW do scout the Latino league teams. My son was offered a pro trial out of one. But the reality is those Mexican scouts have the same issue...if they don't get them in the academy when they are very young, it's too late.
There is definitely some passionate soccer talent being left on the field because of pay to play.
I'll suggest that pay to play to takes up most of those unstructured (or low cost/low structure) opportunities. They take up all the field space and they take up most of the kids that would play unstructured. My kid shows up to a park with his friends during club break and there's no space because these private trainers show up at 8am to block off their space so they can charge a couple parents 100$ an hour for cone drills.
(Never mind the fact that they could probably make more money hosting a less structured game with light coaching by charging 30 kids 5$ an hour. They don't even have to fake promise results for that money either.)
whatithink
GOLD
Sounds like a first worlder comment. You do know that poor kids have to work earlier, i.e its not a part time job to have a few bucks but an actual job to help put food on the table. I knew one kid working a 40 hour week while going to HS. He was excellent and should have been playing at the top team, but couldn't practice or travel. I know another who had a college scholarship but he had to go to work to support the family. These are not uncommon examples.
whatithink
GOLD
I get the visa issues, but if the kids being produced were of sufficient quality they would be starting in MLS and USL teams at 17/18. The volume suggests they aren't good enough, never mind to even consider overseas.
Except for generational talent they don’t start in the European first leagues either and come off the bench in second leagues. I get though the us doesn’t have generational talent. No mjs. That’s because of financial incentives and we don’t have access to European academies again for the same reason. Ours aren’t numerous so not a wide net and don’t start until 13
whatithink
GOLD
I don't see a problem with the pro leagues loosening their rules or starting their own farm leagues. TBH, the college system, makes far more sense for them given how wide the funnel is and would, imo, be far more economical (solidarity payments) than having to pay for it all out of their own pockets.
whatithink
GOLD
The low salary thing isn't as "bad" anymore. I looked at the MLS salaries (yeah, I was bored) and while 30% are paid < $100K, 60% are paid > $150K, 51% are paid > $250K and 31% are paid > $500K.
I don’t disagree that life is hard without money but my point is just there are scholarships to be had if a player is good enough. I don’t think that much talent is getting left on the table due to financial situations. My kid has played in Hispanic Sunday leagues. Most of the good players there also play club soccer. One of the requirements for a club to access MLS next is it has to give out scholarships.
At least as far as the generational talent issue, it’s the wide net problem. You looking to catch that blue lobster, it behooves you to cast that net as far and wide as possible.
As to the mls next scholarship requirements, that’s exactly one of the reasons Laufa blew up. You need a supporting base to support those scholarships and those neighborhoods simply wouldn’t/couldn’t pay $2000-4000 for an ea2 team with inflation the way it’s been the last couple years (pre Covid the rates were closer to $1000-2000 but everything from insurance to coaches salaries went up). It’s why it’s been so difficult to get a girls ecnl team in the downtown triangle. That means the economics for scholarships are white teams in suburban neighborhoods that must attract paying customers to support those scholarships. It’s probably one of the reasons as well there’s no mls next team on the valley floor.
One of the other aspects of this (which might be implicit in the previous discussion) is that people like me are the parents paying for the scholarships, in that I'm paying $4000+/yr for my kid to play on a second tier team in the local club. As I've noted, I'm unlikely to continue doing this when he's in HS; it's something we can do now, and like a lot of parents when your kid is young there's unknown potential, but at this point it's fairly clear that he's not on the top tier track. So money from parents in my position will start to dry up around HS, unless clubs are using dues from younger teams to fund scholarships for older teams. In either case, the funding is going to bias to higher demographic areas.
If you want to have a wide net, it's going to take money from the professional leagues to fund opportunities in areas where there are not enough "suckers" like myself to pay for opportunities which probably won't pan out for our kids. Plus, as Grace correctly noted, there's a balance with costs also: even for someone like myself in a relatively good middle class financial position, there is a limit that I'm willing to pay, and it's a lot closer to that now than when we started looking at club soccer. I don't know that continuing to squeeze the middle class parents with marginally talented kids is a sustainable strategy to capture the best players nationally.
I don’t have a problem with the club using my dues to help out underprivileged kids. Do it for America man!