"Pay to play is killing U.S. Soccer"

This is what I learned over the years. Pay for play parents pay a lot of money so their kids can play with the best. That's why it's killing our men's team. The top players are not challenged from elite player who grew up with elite parents. It's not the elite kids fault and it's not the elite parents' fault. It's the system of everyone wanting their kid on the A team and elite parents will pay thousands to be able to brag about it on SM. Case in point. UCLA Soccer coaches took a male and female elite player for $200K. Elite parents cannot pay a pro team to make their kid a pro. They can only pay a college coach to get in the school and not even freaking play a down.
THIS. RIGHT. HERE. All of it! All for the sake of the gram and the player/s suffer.
 
Yes and no. It’s actually organized more like ayso except tiered. There’s a Dutch series on Netflix…I think it’s called soccer parents. They get as crazy as us over wins losses (there’s pro rel). The clubs and cities tend to donate fields rather than make it a profit center but space is limited (in one episode the team keeps tripping over gopher holes on the dump of a field they are practicing). Parents are the coaches and ars but they have a better understanding of the game since they grew up in it (but the joke is they are still clueless compared to paid professionals and try to get 1 kids father who is a pro player to coach). The affiliated clubs (like the Mexican clubs with Latino league here in the states) get a place to send their scouts and id talent. There is a fee but without having to pay for coaches, ars, and fields it’s much more affordable (another joke is the parents need to work in the kitchen/bar of the club house). There’s even one scene where they get the local pig farmer to sponsor the jerseys and have to wear hogs on their shirts. The show is consistent with what my kid had a few months in Spain with his cousin: practice was in a dirt field outside some apartments with rusty broken goals and a burned out car in the field.

Ps there is a middle pay to play tier some places in Europe for players trying to get selected. My sons YouTube gk pen pal in the uk did that (he no longer plays when he was unable to get an academy slot)

Kids aren’t playing there to get a scholarship, or to be well rounded for college (your test score pretty much is all that matters), or to get on a high school team so the stakes are much much lower. No one is spending $200-300 bucks for a trainer unless they are on that middle track trying to get into an academy and that’s pretty much over by u13.
I wouldn't base any conclusions on European soccer on a fictional TV series.
 
I wouldn't base any conclusions on European soccer on a fictional TV series.
1. Like our own “bad parents” the jokes are funny but true. The “bad news bears” isn’t funny if it isn’t rooted in a grain of truth for little league baseball.
2. They comport to my sons own brief rec stint in Spain which I like to call “the quest for the ever elusive pickup game”, his pen pals experience in the uk as well as what I’ve picked up in the trades
 
1. Like our own “bad parents” the jokes are funny but true. The “bad news bears” isn’t funny if it isn’t rooted in a grain of truth for little league baseball.
2. They comport to my sons own brief rec stint in Spain which I like to call “the quest for the ever elusive pickup game”, his pen pals experience in the uk as well as what I’ve picked up in the trades
The show was pretty funny. Wouldn't mind a bar at the pitch, but it would be a disaster. Does Silverlakes still have a bar? Galway Downs also used to have beer vendors at some tourneys. That might have stopped after the gun incident.
 
No youth dreaming of going Pro ever has to worry about this bullshit in Europe or Central America. This is one reason were going backwards fast with the girls. The men are a big mess because players like Messi never had to wotry about GPA and SAT bull crap to be a baller. The Elites own soccer in America and its all tied to college.

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