Death of the American Youth Soccer Player

[rainbow_unicorn]

Um.. a bunch of the MLS teams are affiliated with NWSL teams. In Phoenix its RSL/Royals same as the pro teams and youth teams boys and girls. Why wouldn't they want to do the same with their academies and youth leagues? They have the infrastructure and if they can develop boys for MLS why not girls for NWSL? They only thing they lack right now is the league and it appears GA may be the one they go to. It may be a ways out but this would logically be how it starts.

A bunch? There's one...Utah Royals.

You ask why not develop girls since they develop boys? Simple answer...money. MLS view their boys academies as an investment...if you have one legit homegrown player every few years that balances the cost to run their academies. The same does not apply to girls/NWSL.

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I've just seen it happen where we had hopes for the LA Galaxy girls academy to provide similar opportunities...only to see it fade away. NWSL will continue to let existing clubs do the heavy work of development and just hand pick whichever HS aged star they want from anywhere in the country.

 

[tjinaz]

A bunch? There's one...Utah Royals.

You ask why not develop girls since they develop boys? Simple answer...money. MLS view their boys academies as an investment...if you have one legit homegrown player every few years that balances the cost to run their academies. The same does not apply to girls/NWSL.

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I've just seen it happen where we had hopes for the LA Galaxy girls academy to provide similar opportunities...only to see it fade away. NWSL will continue to let existing clubs do the heavy work of development and just hand pick whichever HS aged star they want from anywhere in the country.

Well I would say Don Garber (head of MLS) would disagree. Portland, Orlando and Houston also share ties as Royals and RSL.

The Expansion of NWSL and Larger Partnership with MLS – Distinction Agency

distinctionagency.com

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

Until US Soccer gets an angel investor (or a socialist government program like China or the USSR) who doesn't care how much money it loses looking for and developing top talent, there won't be any change in this story.

I'm not Chinese myself but I've got a buddy who is and also a huge soccer fan and is eternally ashamed at how bad China is at soccer lol.
He explains to me that the Chinese government has not spared any expense at trying to improve its national team. They've basically got unlimited money and resources at their disposal. Xi would write a $10 billion check tomorrow if it means they could have a competitive national team on the world stage.

They've tried:

• Sending their most physically gifted youth (and out of 1.4 billion people, it was truly the freakishly gifted athletes) to Brazil so they can grow up there... did not work.
• Artificially pumping MASSIVE amount of money into the domestic league and paying absurd salaries to South American and European guys past their primes (basically did what Saudi is doing before Saudi did) hoping that'll raise up young national team players... did not work.
• Tried to naturalize foreign players as Chinese citizens... did not work.

In the end, too much corruption, too much nepotism, too little hunger (for the players)...

Not saying money pumped into US soccer will be as a big failure as China... but just pointing out sometimes money thrown at a problem doesn't solve the problem...

The only other thing that could potentially bypass this fundamental conflict of competing interests would be if the US were a truly soccer-crazed nation like Brazil or Argentina where the volume of interest was so massive that pay-to-play models couldn't choke all the talent out the enormous free options available the way that club soccer has done to AYSO.

That's not likely to happen in our lifetimes.

Agree with this. If us Americans loved soccer as much as we loved American football, it's game over for rest of the world, IMHO.
It's just that... that'll never happen. Forget out lifetime. Not in a million years.

 

[Grace T.]

I'm not Chinese myself but I've got a buddy who is and also a huge soccer fan and is eternally ashamed at how bad China is at soccer lol.
He explains to me that the Chinese government has not spared any expense at trying to improve its national team. They've basically got unlimited money and resources at their disposal. Xi would write a $10 billion check tomorrow if it means they could have a competitive national team on the world stage.

They've tried:

• Sending their most physically gifted youth (and out of 1.4 billion people, it was truly the freakishly gifted athletes) to Brazil so they can grow up there... did not work.
• Artificially pumping MASSIVE amount of money into the domestic league and paying absurd salaries to South American and European guys past their primes (basically did what Saudi is doing before Saudi did) hoping that'll raise up young national team players... did not work.
• Tried to naturalize foreign players as Chinese citizens... did not work.

In the end, too much corruption, too much nepotism, too little hunger (for the players)...

Not saying money pumped into US soccer will be as a big failure as China... but just pointing out sometimes money thrown at a problem doesn't solve the problem...



Agree with this. If us Americans loved soccer as much as we loved American football, it's game over for rest of the world, IMHO.
It's just that... that'll never happen. Forget out lifetime. Not in a million years.

Firstly China has made vast strides in soccer going from a zero culture to one of the contenders in Asia. That said you are right they’ve been less success in building a program than in other sports and like the usmnt they’ve failed to break into the top bracket.

China though illustrates the same issue as in the us: the Roi is too small. The national league has a small payout for supporting players versus the rewards they can get in other sports, the influence they can obtain by rising in the party cadres, or the financial success of going into any of the academic fields. And soccer (being a sport based on iq, athleticism and a long term skills acquisition) requires a very large pool to find the diamonds in the rough. And sports just aren’t that popular among Chinese parents (too much of a risk your kid won’t get tapped and if he does that he’ll flame out given the odds a pro career are tiny and there is no academic fallback since admissions to university are strictly test based and tracked). The roi runs up hard against Confucianism in the culture. Every minute spent by a u8 in soccer is a minute not spent studying for exams.

 

[Orangeteam]

There are too many cooks in the kitchen. There is no real plan, structure, or hierarchy.
Every few years there's something new, it gets funded, has a great marketing plan, but regardless of whether the idea is good or not the program or funding is pulled usually from a lack of patience.

In contrast. I'm really enjoying watching the All Japan High School Soccer Tournament right now and what Japan has done with federation and programs.

 

[Grace T.]

There are too many cooks in the kitchen. There is no real plan, structure, or hierarchy.
Every few years there's something new, it gets funded, has a great marketing plan, but regardless of whether the idea is good or not the program or funding is pulled usually from a lack of patience.

In contrast. I'm really enjoying watching the All Japan High School Soccer Tournament right now and what Japan has done with federation and programs.

Because we have the problem that soccer tries to be everything to everyone: people looking to get kids exercise on a team, people looking for trophies, people looking to play high school, people looking to play college, people looking to play pro. The big distortion is college sports. Get rid of all college sports except for gridiron football/cheerleading and basketball and the system becomes radically simpler in that you can copy Europe: handful of pros (mostly male) plays academy, everyone else plays tiered rec.

 

[Orangeteam]

Because we have the problem that soccer tries to be everything to everyone: people looking to get kids exercise on a team, people looking for trophies, people looking to play high school, people looking to play college, people looking to play pro. The big distortion is college sports. Get rid of all college sports except for gridiron football/cheerleading and basketball and the system becomes radically simpler in that you can copy Europe: handful of pros (mostly male) plays academy, everyone else plays tiered rec.

Excellent point about the reasons for playing.

 

[outside!]

Agree with this. If us Americans loved soccer as much as we loved American football, it's game over for rest of the world, IMHO.
It's just that... that'll never happen. Forget out lifetime. Not in a million years.

In the 70's, there was zero youth soccer in most of the USA. In much of California, there are now more kids trying out for HS soccer than there are kids trying out for football (and that is just talking about boys, add in the girls and it is not even close). Many HS football programs do not have enough players to form JV teams. If you include both boys and girls, I would not be surprised if a majority of large high schools across the country have more soccer players than football players. At some point, some schools will drop football and soccer will have the homecoming game.

It is a shame that US Soccer is ignoring the one advantage that the US has over the rest of the world, our large infrastructure of HS sports. Everyone complains about "pay to play". HS is free and anyone can try out.

 

[tjinaz]

In the 70's, there was zero youth soccer in most of the USA. In much of California, there are now more kids trying out for HS soccer than there are kids trying out for football (and that is just talking about boys, add in the girls and it is not even close). Many HS football programs do not have enough players to form JV teams. If you include both boys and girls, I would not be surprised if a majority of large high schools across the country have more soccer players than football players. At some point, some schools will drop football and soccer will have the homecoming game.

It is a shame that US Soccer is ignoring the one advantage that the US has over the rest of the world, our large infrastructure of HS sports. Everyone complains about "pay to play". HS is free and anyone can try out.

Problem is HS is hit or miss. You get a quality coach or a math teacher that played in HS 15 yrs ago? That and season really isn't long enough to make a difference. Back in the day when kids played 4 sports that may have worked but now with kids playing 10 or 11 months a year they cannot maintain the skill level and soccer specific fitness to compete against club players.

You are right about the concussion and injury dangers moving kids out of American Football and towards soccer though.

 

[espola]

Because we have the problem that soccer tries to be everything to everyone: people looking to get kids exercise on a team, people looking for trophies, people looking to play high school, people looking to play college, people looking to play pro. The big distortion is college sports. Get rid of all college sports except for gridiron football/cheerleading and basketball and the system becomes radically simpler in that you can copy Europe: handful of pros (mostly male) plays academy, everyone else plays tiered rec.

Give up the athletic scholarships across the board for all sports. Teams that turn a profit can advertise themselves as "The Official your_favorite_sport Team of your favorite school". The money currently being spent on athletic scholarships could be invested in students likely to become contributing alumni someday and in heavily funding programs of intramural sports and extramural club teams (perhaps paying for their equipment and uniforms, pay for their coaches/managers, and for limited travel expenses).

Many large schools have enacted their athletic program funding in part by a vote of the student body at some time in the past, requiring all registered students to pay a fee to support intercollegiate athletics. It may be necessary for the current student body to agree to alter some of those terms depending on their "founding documents".

 

[Grace T.]

In the 70's, there was zero youth soccer in most of the USA. In much of California, there are now more kids trying out for HS soccer than there are kids trying out for football (and that is just talking about boys, add in the girls and it is not even close). Many HS football programs do not have enough players to form JV teams. If you include both boys and girls, I would not be surprised if a majority of large high schools across the country have more soccer players than football players. At some point, some schools will drop football and soccer will have the homecoming game.

It is a shame that US Soccer is ignoring the one advantage that the US has over the rest of the world, our large infrastructure of HS sports. Everyone complains about "pay to play". HS is free and anyone can try out.

This is true. My son's private high school does not have a jv gridiron football team but does have 3 boys teams in soccer (frosh/soph though is basically for kids who do rec or only pe soccer). Even several public schools have had high profile blowups of their varsity football programs last year. However, that is NOT true of the D1 and D2 football schools, which are more competitive, like Mater Dei or St. John's. D1 teams in Cali have even dominated schools in TX. What's going on in high school football is essentially the same thing that is happening at MLS Next clubs: potential pro and college talent is congregating in places where they can be seen due to cutbacks in the recruiting staff of both pro and collegiate organizations. That means weaker programs don't have a lot to pull from. You may be right it might force schools to drop football and have soccer be the homecoming game, but I'm not sure. The weaker programs are also smaller schools which in the next 10 years will likely fail anyways due to declining enrollment rates. The big public high schools will be just fine, and the private schools that focus on football are on an upswing because they can congregate talent by offering scholarships while public high schools have a more difficult time giving out recruitment perks (but it still does happen).

Problem is HS is hit or miss. You get a quality coach or a math teacher that played in HS 15 yrs ago? That and season really isn't long enough to make a difference. Back in the day when kids played 4 sports that may have worked but now with kids playing 10 or 11 months a year they cannot maintain the skill level and soccer specific fitness to compete against club players.

You are right about the concussion and injury dangers moving kids out of American Football and towards soccer though.

The private schools have pe programs that do soccer for kids that are not in club or only do rec. The private schools (except for smaller religious schools usually Catholic offering tuition at a discount) also usually have someone who knows what they are doing. I did my D with the then current goalkeeper coach at my Catholic alma matter who was required to carry the D to keep the position. Crossroads and cathedral have done extremely well because of their excellent coaching staff. The hit or miss thing is mostly a public schools issue.

Give up the athletic scholarships across the board for all sports. Teams that turn a profit can advertise themselves as "The Official your_favorite_sport Team of your favorite school". The money currently being spent on athletic scholarships could be invested in students likely to become contributing alumni someday and in heavily funding programs of intramural sports and extramural club teams (perhaps paying for their equipment and uniforms, pay for their coaches/managers, and for limited travel expenses).

Many large schools have enacted their athletic program funding in part by a vote of the student body at some time in the past, requiring all registered students to pay a fee to support intercollegiate athletics. It may be necessary for the current student body to agree to alter some of those terms depending on their "founding documents".

I agree but it's not just a scholarship issue. It's also a preferential admissions issue.

 

[NorCalDad]

Because we have the problem that soccer tries to be everything to everyone: people looking to get kids exercise on a team, people looking for trophies, people looking to play high school, people looking to play college, people looking to play pro. The big distortion is college sports. Get rid of all college sports except for gridiron football/cheerleading and basketball and the system becomes radically simpler in that you can copy Europe: handful of pros (mostly male) plays academy, everyone else plays tiered rec.

I think this explains a ton of it for sure. This migration from rec to club has been a massive culprit and driven by parents not wanting or being able to put the volunteer time in. The clubs, in turn, see all the dollar signs. It has watered down club soccer drastically and made rec soccer a non-starter. Now clubs have to cater to the full range of player level. This has also introduced even more ethically challenging scenarios (parents with too much leverage/money, coaches in it for the wrong reasons, and shit ton of unethical non-soccer decisions being made). We like to blame the all the "letter leagues" but they're really not to blame -- it's pretty much what @Grace T. points out. There's no cohesiveness in the ecosystem...heck even intra-club there's little cohesiveness. My hope is eventually all the best players, ones with the highest aspirations all land at MLSN/GA clubs.

 

[Grace T.]

I think this explains a ton of it for sure. This migration from rec to club has been a massive culprit and driven by parents not wanting or being able to put the volunteer time in. The clubs, in turn, see all the dollar signs. It has watered down club soccer drastically and made rec soccer a non-starter. Now clubs have to cater to the full range of player level. This has also introduced even more ethically challenging scenarios (parents with too much leverage/money, coaches in it for the wrong reasons, and shit ton of unethical non-soccer decisions being made). We like to blame the all the "letter leagues" but they're really not to blame -- it's pretty much what @Grace T. points out. There's no cohesiveness in the ecosystem...heck even intra-club there's little cohesiveness. My hope is eventually all the best players, ones with the highest aspirations all land at MLSN/GA clubs.

I agree except that I don't think the migration from rec to club has been primarily driven by volunteer hours. I agree it's a factor, and has been especially prominent with the collapse of rec in the last 4 years due to all the requirements (my son is doing AYSO reffing and spent more than 6 hours doing his licensing....I had to put in 8 just to get my license updated and if I was starting from scratch it would take longer). The bigger issue was that AYSO had volunteer coaches that didn't know what they were doing and lumped everyone from the VIP player to the future pro in the same bracket. That move started in the 90s. Someone here (maybe espola) recommended an excellent book (some horrible title deriding soccer moms) outlining what happened and the early shenanigans present in club soccer.

 

[NorCalDad]

In the 70's, there was zero youth soccer in most of the USA. In much of California, there are now more kids trying out for HS soccer than there are kids trying out for football (and that is just talking about boys, add in the girls and it is not even close). Many HS football programs do not have enough players to form JV teams. If you include both boys and girls, I would not be surprised if a majority of large high schools across the country have more soccer players than football players. At some point, some schools will drop football and soccer will have the homecoming game.

It is a shame that US Soccer is ignoring the one advantage that the US has over the rest of the world, our large infrastructure of HS sports. Everyone complains about "pay to play". HS is free and anyone can try out.

High school soccer is terrible for advanced players. I would argue it was better back in the 80s as the number of players playing club soccer was significantly lower and high school soccer was an excellent way to be seen. The soccer wasn't great though -- I think the ball was made of stone if my memory is correct. Go watch any HS soccer game today and you'll see just really bad soccer. I don't care who the coach is. Don't get me wrong -- I think the social aspect of HS sports is great. For 90% of the kids it's a great opportunity to feel connected to something that's not academics. It promotes fitness, etc. But if we're talking about how make the US better in soccer....HS soccer just isn't it. We need to get the best players playing together a lot. At the grassroots level we need to see more futsal courts built at our schools. We need as many kids playing pickup futsal as we see kids playing pickup basketball.

 

[NorCalDad]

I agree except that I don't think the migration from rec to club has been primarily driven by volunteer hours. I agree it's a factor, and has been especially prominent with the collapse of rec in the last 4 years due to all the requirements (my son is doing AYSO reffing and spent more than 6 hours doing his licensing....I had to put in 8 just to get my license updated and if I was starting from scratch it would take longer). The bigger issue was that AYSO had volunteer coaches that didn't know what they were doing and lumped everyone from the VIP player to the future pro in the same bracket. That move started in the 90s. Someone here (maybe espola) recommended an excellent book (some horrible title deriding soccer moms) outlining what happened and the early shenanigans present in club soccer.

I would put that all of that in the same bucket. Parents don't have (or don't want) to spend the time to fulfill the requirements (perhaps the requirements are too extreme -- but I think things like SafeSport certification are a good thing). Nor do parent coaches have the time to learn proper coaching techniques, etc. As a result, non-volunteering parents want "the best" for their kids and think they should be trained by professionals. It's no different than the proliferation of private schools. Growing up in SoCal, Mater Dei was pretty much the only private school around. How many are there now? That's a bit of a tangent, but you get my point. Parents are, understandably, looking for a leg up for their kids. For most that means spending money.

 

[Mystery Train]

I'm not Chinese myself but I've got a buddy who is and also a huge soccer fan and is eternally ashamed at how bad China is at soccer lol.
He explains to me that the Chinese government has not spared any expense at trying to improve its national team. They've basically got unlimited money and resources at their disposal. Xi would write a $10 billion check tomorrow if it means they could have a competitive national team on the world stage.

They've tried:

• Sending their most physically gifted youth (and out of 1.4 billion people, it was truly the freakishly gifted athletes) to Brazil so they can grow up there... did not work.
• Artificially pumping MASSIVE amount of money into the domestic league and paying absurd salaries to South American and European guys past their primes (basically did what Saudi is doing before Saudi did) hoping that'll raise up young national team players... did not work.
• Tried to naturalize foreign players as Chinese citizens... did not work.

In the end, too much corruption, too much nepotism, too little hunger (for the players)...

Not saying money pumped into US soccer will be as a big failure as China... but just pointing out sometimes money thrown at a problem doesn't solve the problem...



Agree with this. If us Americans loved soccer as much as we loved American football, it's game over for rest of the world, IMHO.
It's just that... that'll never happen. Forget out lifetime. Not in a million years.

The corruption piece (as well as general idiocy and incompetence) is why communist athletic endeavors like China and former USSR have their ceilings. However, as Grace pointed out, China has certainly improved with that investment.

But your point stands, and ultimately we agree that the BIGGEST factor is the passion/culture. China's leadership may really want to push soccer success, but if the general population doesn't have a strong soccer culture (the way they do with swimming, diving and gymnastics apparently) they, and the US and all countries, will continue to find middling success. It's no wonder that the countries that win World Cups are countries where soccer is the top sport and have populations that live and die with their teams.

I'm just saying that if you want a chance to overcome the fact that we have an only moderately passionate soccer culture but still farm the huge youth scene in the US for better talent, you'd have to ditch the idea that you can also make money at it.

 

[tjinaz]

This is true. My son's private high school does not have a jv gridiron football team but does have 3 boys teams in soccer (frosh/soph though is basically for kids who do rec or only pe soccer). Even several public schools have had high profile blowups of their varsity football programs last year. However, that is NOT true of the D1 and D2 football schools, which are more competitive, like Mater Dei or St. John's. D1 teams in Cali have even dominated schools in TX. What's going on in high school football is essentially the same thing that is happening at MLS Next clubs: potential pro and college talent is congregating in places where they can be seen due to cutbacks in the recruiting staff of both pro and collegiate organizations. That means weaker programs don't have a lot to pull from. You may be right it might force schools to drop football and have soccer be the homecoming game, but I'm not sure. The weaker programs are also smaller schools which in the next 10 years will likely fail anyways due to declining enrollment rates. The big public high schools will be just fine, and the private schools that focus on football are on an upswing because they can congregate talent by offering scholarships while public high schools have a more difficult time giving out recruitment perks (but it still does happen).

The private schools have pe programs that do soccer for kids that are not in club or only do rec. The private schools (except for smaller religious schools usually Catholic offering tuition at a discount) also usually have someone who knows what they are doing. I did my D with the then current goalkeeper coach at my Catholic alma matter who was required to carry the D to keep the position. Crossroads and cathedral have done extremely well because of their excellent coaching staff. The hit or miss thing is mostly a public schools issue.

I agree but it's not just a scholarship issue. It's also a preferential admissions issue.

Hmmm so you are saying if i paid for school instead of club soccer it would solve the issue?

 

[Grace T.]

Hmmm so you are saying if i paid for school instead of club soccer it would solve the issue?

Depends what you want to do. If your kid is only interested in training and hanging out with school friends, you’d have to avoid the big sports schools (like crossroads, cathedral, mater dei when it comes to boys soccer) but most have a soccer pe and intramural program with a chance to make fresh/soph and jv if you take it seriously. However to varsity you either have to wait until senior year (and sit on the bench) or play club soccer (how high depends on the school). There was a thread here recently from a public school kid complaining that as a rec player who is athletic he couldn’t make fresh/soph which was filled with club players. The private schools will go out of their way to play as many kids as possible but it still depends on demand in the particular program. So sadly the answer may be (if you want to varsity) you have to pay both

 

[outside!]

High school soccer is terrible for advanced players.

Sometimes, but not always. You also missed my point by focusing on individuals and the near term instead the collective soccer culture and the future. US Soccer could help to make HS soccer better if they treated it more like professional soccer treats international soccer (World Cup, etc.). Players and coaches take a break from their club and play in a new environment for a short period of time. This would serve to spread soccer culture and allow players that cannot afford club soccer to play a more advanced game. In the long run it would improve US competitiveness by creating a larger pool of players and a more unified soccer culture.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

Firstly China has made vast strides in soccer going from a zero culture to one of the contenders in Asia.

I like your contributions and agree with a lot of what you say... However, HARD disagree on this statement. China is a laughingstock in Asia in terms of soccer... in other sports, sure, they're powerhouses in many and competitive in many others... But in soccer? The embarrassment is widely known...

They've essentially exerted power to expand the World Cup Finals field so they could presumably get in...

Yet, they're LAST in the final qualification group for 2026 World Cup and they're not getting in...

2026 FIFA World Cup qualification (AFC) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's unbelievable actually... that in a population of 1.4 billion people, they can't find 11 people to kick a ball into a net 100 yards down the field... I'm a math guy... but I can't even begin to quantify their ineptitude with numbers...

( Source: I watch a lot of AFC soccer... )