Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
As you all know, I am not a soccer aficionado, although I have been watching a lot more soccer since my daughter took up the sport quite a few years ago now. I think I have a better appreciation for the game (the women's game is more respectable, btw, because they don't spend all their time fucking flopping like beached fish).
I watch Taylor Twellman criticize the US soccer machine. I think he's an excellent analyst and his points are well taken. But I will tell you, from my perspective, what the real problem is. (And to be fair, nothing he said and nothing I will say will be an excuse or even an explanation for why the USMNT lost to fucking Trinidad and Tobago. Jesus.)
Soccer, like many sports now, in this country is not for poor kids. You might not think that this makes any sense at all since it certainly is for everyone else, the world over. But here, what I am going to call The Great De Facto Segregation, which used to apply to mostly schools and neighborhoods, is destroying youth sports.
If your kid wants to play soccer competitively, she needs to be on a club team early on, before there is an option to play for a school, which costs money. If they show any talent and want to continue, they need to play travel, which costs money. Dues, uniforms, fees, gas money, hotels, gifts for coaches, meals away from home, team parties, skill-position extra coaching, etc. It's not cheap. And it's a year-round slog.
You may think, "Well, if they're not on a travel team, they can just play for their schools." Nope. If you want to play for a good school team (public or private--and we're obviously not talking about private schools are we?), you better have been playing travel for years before you try out or you won't get a spot. Worse yet, travel players with ambitions of a scholarship (read: 80% of players) often don't even play for their schools because all of the good coaches are connected to travel teams and playing for your school is often looked at very negatively and may be considered a step backwards. And that's if you even have the time. The better travel programs require you to choose one sport and will not tolerate you missing their practices or games when there is a conflict. So, even if you're pretty good without going to travel, you're playing with and against unskilled players and being instructed by shitty coaches.
Finally, if you're still pretty good and want to try to play at the next level, college coaches won't even see you play to recruit you. They're all at the college showcase tournaments that the travel juggernaut sets up. The relationships between travel coaches and schools run deep. And travel teams have all the talent and have been highly coached since they were little kids.
So, our best black and Latino kids don't even try to play soccer. Hell, the same thing is going on in basketball, except the love of basketball in poor communities is so strong that parents are killing themselves to pay for their kids to get on travel basketball teams. But if US soccer can't draw black and Latino athletes to soccer at a young age, they're never going to be able to compete, no matter how many billions we spend on soccer as a country. And I say this with the understanding that Germany, for example, is lilly white and is a powerhouse. That's not us.
TM
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