At the tournament we're at I started chatting with a coach who has one of the best boys teams in the country at one of the upper age levels. His team has joined a new "super league" for the top 20 teams in the country. Therewith, he and his team fly all over the country playing soccer. These are 16 and 17-year-old kids, mind you.
I asked him what he thought of that and he said that the move in this direction was pricing kids out of the sport. We both agreed that soccer was the simplest of games. All you need are two kids and something round - it doesn't even have to be a ball. In poor areas, kids are known to create their own soccer ball out of rolled up newspaper fixed together with tape. There are as many variations as you can think of. Numbers of players, shape and size of the playing "field", choices in goal, number and postioning of field players. Soccer is a highly mutable sport that can be played just about anywhere and by anyone.
So, here in America, in the name of developing the very best youth players as possible, we are creating a "premier" soccer system that focuses on excluding the vast majority of players by making it very expensive and requiring huge amounts of time investment by parents in transportation and travel.
As the coach and I talked about this we both noted that some of the best teams we see are stocked with hispanic kids. Most of them are not from wealthy areas. But these kids grow up in an environment steeped in futbol. They don't have to be driven to the sports fields to practice, it is all around them. In their backyards. At school. Their dads, uncles, older brothers all play.
In the area where I live, after the youth soccer teams leave the field (and after my over-40 team drags its collective butt from the pitch), the hispanic players descend en masse to the field. Sometimes there are as many as 50 or 60, sometimes a handful (but usually a larger number). Sometimes they practice shooting on each other, with players taking turns at goal. Usually, they engage in free-flowing scrimmage games without shooting, in which the goal is posession and passing. These games can be 4 v 4 or 20 v 20, it just depends on who is there.
The skills these players show are pretty impressive. They build their knowledge of the game and their vast inventory of skills by repeated scrimmages. There are no paid coaches, no English trainers who used to play League 2 ball in the old country. It's just a mix of ages, older players passing down their skills and knowledge to the younger players. And that's one of the things that's so impressive. There's no separation based on age. The groups make room for the younger kids and the adults can be seen giving tips and suggestions to the younger players.
I imagine this is why some of the poorest countries in the world produce incredible talents like Ronaldinho or Kaka. I suspect it's not because they price the poorest kids out of the game.
Something really stinks in the world of American youth soccer.
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