Its something we have to overcome by allowing youth players to travel go to any development environment they seems fit. We have to stop limiting youth players movement by proximity rules. I can't believe I even have to say that.
My guess is that there would not be a single white Non-Hispanic guy on the roster, that's for sure. This will be especially true if/when soccer becomes more like basketball in that it's played in America's inner cities, instead of suburbia.
If people of Central American origin were that good wouldn't the European leagues would be full of them? The population of Mexico is 127 million. As of August 9, 2016 there were only 13 playing in the top-flight European leagues. The population of Uruguay is 3.5 million. At least 18 Uruguayan players play in the top-flight European leagues. It may seem I have an agenda here, indeed my agenda is to stop stereotyping people or according them certain abilities based on ethnicity.
Latinos have underperformed for the USMNT, time and again: Joe Corona, Edgar Castillo, Ventura Alvarado, Herc Gomez, Greg Garza, even Orozco, Agudelo, Bedoya & Gonzo are not exactly loved by the fans --even though they perform acceptably well, no one's really begging for their presence. Villafaña, Arriola an Acosta have been Arena additions, but truth be told the American fan has become rather lukewarm to Latinos with the Nats.
Jesus Christ, at least debate, instead of nitpicking a ballpark statistic. Either you don't have an argument, which is why you'd like to fixate on a fictional number that I used as a stand-in for expensive development academies, or you do and you're not sharing. Go ahead, let's hear it! Here's an example of struggling to pay for the costs associated with travel teams. This family pays 17,400 dollars/year to pay for 4 kids under 12 in Northern California. http://time.com/money/4037391/soccer-bills-college-family-budget/
That averages to $4350. So that's the starting point. Not 25K. So when did facts start not to matter. Pay for play at $4350 and 25K per player per year is an entirely different conversation. Its not nitpicking. I've been having these discussions on these board for years and its old. Where is all the money going to come from for millions of youth soccer players to play for free?
How is it a different conversation? I'm an American family in California. One parent works, earning 50,000 dollars a year. The other stays at home. Two kids. After-tax income of ~$38,800. Decent health insurance in this State for a family of 4 is $1,200 a month. Mortgage on a $180,000 dollar house is $850, and car insurance is $100 a month. You're down to $13,000 dollars of income before gas, food, and everything else. Your kids soccer costs are $8,700. I sure as hell wouldn't pay that, and I imagine that many other non-fictional parents wouldn't either. Now, the "discussion" was not in fact about pay-for-play traveling teams. It was about the relative importance of "soccer culture" and "soccer infrastructure". The pay-for-play problem is a soccer infrastructure problem because it cuts out low-income families, or families that just can't afford to spend the time to take their kids these vast distances (which, to be fair, is partly a result of living in a giant country) to travel and play soccer. Other countries have educational systems tied into their soccer academies, in a bizarro twist on sports scholarships here in the US. The parents don't need to invest nearly the same amount of time, energy, or money on their kids development. They're already playing soccer the entire time they're at the school in the academy, and the academy provides for travel. Their infrastructure is different. That costs a lot of money, yes. I am not getting into how much, or where it comes from. Because in this case, I don't care. I'm simply pointing out that, no matter how much you "love" the game of soccer, or how much you "talk about it with your friends", you cannot break down a large financial disincentive to play competitive soccer in the United States.
I agree its an issue but its a very understandable one. We have a system much more complex that you state here. We do have very inexpensive rec league teams, and even low income people can get waivers and particularly when they are good and competitive teams often waive fees, we have USSF scholarships for those who can't pay for DA, we have some DA's that are free, All MLS teams are free (except DCU I think). Our system is very similar to our college and medical payment system. Everyone pays something different. Some nothing, some little, some alot and some list price. Your argument is based on list price. Yes its an issue but where is all this money going to come from for every little boy and girl to play for free? My understanding is that most countries educational systems are not tied to professional academies. European countries do not often tie education to sports nor professional sports. Its that professional teams down to very small ones and municipalities tie youth activity and sport to soccer due to its ingrained popularity. You also mention but gloss over the very large issue of our soccer culture concentration due to our large size and lack of soccer culture. All this explains the long arduous route to needing more dollars flow into the game at grassroots level. It will come but not instantaneously.
Once again, I don't care how "understandable" it is. It exists. It does not help our players succeed, and it contributes to our lack of top talent playing soccer and receiving good coaching. Clint Dempsey got driven 6-8 hours/day multiple days a week to play for the Dallas Texans. There are 300,000 people in Nacadoches County and the counties that border it. That should be enough people, with enough resources like coaching, fields, and players, that Clint Dempsey shouldn't have to drive 160 miles to find quality instruction. You keep pointing to infrastructure problems as "culture" ones. It's getting tiresome, and at some point we're going to have to agree to disagree. There's absolutely nothing about nebulously-defined "soccer culture" that provides money for these programs. Players are not created through the consumption of media. Players are created through the instruction of knowledgeable coaches, consistent practice against peers, and individual work on skill-building. Infrastructure makes that happen, not advertisements and TV shows.
Thank you for being the 7,642nd post that points out that pay for play isn't ideal. We all know it. Some people like to complain about problems and some want to solve them. Without knowing why pay for play exists you won't know how to fix it. And please stop mentioning Clint Dempsey's development history. It happened 20 yrs ago. Many things have changed for the better in development in our country. The culture IS changing and that is resulting in more paying consumers of soccer. That brings in revenue. If soccer exists and no one watches it or pays for it where does money come from? I do think that a growing culture is in large part driven by watching soccer on TV and the consuming of the game. Practicing and playing amongst peers and knowledgeable coaches come from the pursuit of dreaming to become the next great American professional player. So no I do not agree that an ingrained soccer culture can exist without the pursuit and consumption of top quality professional football. And that takes time to grow naturally and not demanded to exist by you.
". Mortgage on a $180,000 dollar house is $850, " Wow, how did you pull that off? I"m paying the same on financing 140K at 3.8percent interest
I googled "mortgage 180000 dollar house", clicked on the first rate that popped up. The hardest part is probably finding a house in California for that cheap. But that's ~3 times yearly income, which I've been told is a good rule of thumb when considering purchasing a house. http://www.dollartimes.com/loans/mortgage-rate.php?length=30&amount=180000
May as well just put this to bed. You suckered me into a specific argument on pay-to-play, and I fell for it, my bad. On the wider topic of "culture" or "infrastructure" producing top players, at this point we're just going to have to disagree. They're two sides of the same "chicken or the egg problem". Because how can you get people playing soccer and consuming the media surrounding it, without there being an infrastructure (e.g MLS, a professional league, rec/competitive leagues, etc.) for them to play the sport in? And if nobody cares enough about the sport, then who's going to stick with soccer long enough, or pour in enough personal time, to become good at it? Nobody. We just disagree on the relative importance of culture vs. infrastructure.
They go hand in hand. One feeds the other then feeds the other and so on and so on and ............ The growth of the game doesn't happen in a vacuum, it has to have oxygen to breath and the professional game is that oxygen.
Well, as a starting point, I don't agree with most of those conceits: population absolutely matters, for one. And I would say that Americans are relatively good at soccer. That is, we're better than all but 18 or so top countries and that's pretty good. The issue here is you consider "infrastructure" to be youth development academies, when that is merely one sliver of infrastructure dealing with one sliver of the overall culture required to achieve in soccer (development). This is why I say infrastructure (including the way you mean it, development) is endogenous to culture: if there is not demand for soccer (e.g. people willing to pay to watch soccer matches) then there will be no demand for soccer players or people with the expertise to teach them, obviously. Do you not see how the quality of instruction is directly linked to culture? But even then, the quality of instruction is a separate matter from the kind of learning you're talking about, which doesn't take place in academies anyway. My point with the baseball analogy is that what you consider "infrastructure" is some institution for developing the skills a potential player would learn just by being in a strong soccer culture otherwise. Well, first acknowledge that we've groomed some pretty good players, after all. Donovan has more World Cup goals than anyone in CONCACAF and the same as Michel Platini. Dempsey and Pulisic could both surpass that. That's not too shabby. And this is with a pretty fledgling soccer culture; our domestic league is only a little older than Pulisic himself and we have a better national team than many countries with older and more robust cultures/leagues. So we're not doing badly. But look at it another way: do you think countries like Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast etc. have better youth infrastructure than the US? Those countries have groomed world class players pretty routinely. Freddy Adu had a dazzling compliment of skills when he came to the US at 8; was that because of his youth academy? You're mistaken about that; in the 30s the US had a world class soccer league and soccer rivaled professional gridiron football for popularity. (The story is very interesting and you can read it here: The Secret History of American Soccer. Basically at that time, the US soccer culture was very strong. Accordingly, it's "infrastructure" was also strong -- in this case, I'm using infrastructure accurately to talk about what is needed to support the culture of football: leagues, stadia, training grounds, clubs etc. After the 30s, both the culture of soccer (and accordingly, its infrastructure) died out for decades. Again -- trying to parse culture from infrastructure (and by this, you really mean organized development) is going down the wrong path. They are intrinsically linked. "Infrastructure" doesn't produce players like Donovan and Pulisic, let alone Ronaldo anymore than high school creates the next Steve Jobs. Regimented education improves the level of the average player. And you've pretty much seen that linear growth for the US since the 90s: the average American player has steadily gotten better, the quality of the BEST players is variable (like every country). The truly exceptional players are more or less self-driven. Without a CULTURE that glorifies soccer and holds its players up, showers them with money, prestige, and WAGs, young American athletes will not put in the ridiculous level of hard work and sacrifice to be as good as Ronaldo (or Jordan, or Steph Curry, or Tom Brady etc. etc.). It's changing because kids Pulisic's age and younger have seen lots of soccer on TV and the prestige that club football has abroad in competitions like UCL, Libertadores, La Liga, EPL etc will motivate them; that was unheard of even just when I was a kid.
Which is another "problem" of culture. A player shouldn't have to travel a great distance to play for a local team in a competitive youth league and they don't if we're talking any about other American sport.
That's true but I feel that speaks more about the coaching and culture in this country. I know it's anecdotal but I grew up with mostly hispanics and out of all the ones I knew, about a third actually cared about soccer. The rest were more interested in American sports like baseball, football, and basketball. Those who were interested played pickup or in leagues with very little organization, coaching. Sadly enough a lot of kids fall through the cracks because their parents can't pay to have them play in clubs with better coaching, travel, etc.
Sure, there is definitely some privilege baked into the US system. Whites are more likely to be able to afford our pay to play structure which gives them better access to quality coaching, competition and scouting. The US as a country is getting more diverse. And the academy system is allowing more opportunities for minorities as well. As a result, it's not surprising to see the Hispanic percentage of our youth national teams is on the rise. And yes, I think that will increasingly translate to the full national team as well. But guys like Pulisic (already arguably the best player on the USMNT at 18) and Sargeant (our best U17 player who is looking pretty darn good for our U20s) show the absurdity of assuming that means our future won't have white players. Those two aren't on their respective teams because minorities are being held back, they are they because they are extremely talented.
As soccer advances, several things will happen that will increase the quality of play across all youth levels. As soccer becomes more popular, quality low cost programs will increase in number. this, of course will increase access to all of the things you mention above of for those without the means to pay for it now. This will tend to benefit nonwhites more than whites but plenty of whites are also excluded or deterred by the current system. Ironically, Dempsey is a good example of that. His family really couldn't afford to play Clint in club but made serious sacrifices (both financial and time) to have him play in club. There are currently many kids in a similar situation (some white, many non white). The advantage that nonwhites (specifically kids with immigrant roots) have over whites and most African Americans is the soccer culture. In the suburbs, it is only recently that I have noticed kids playing pickup soccer on a regular basis (last 5-10 yrs or so) but it still isn't at the level that it needs to be to give kids that head start that Latinos and other immigrant populations tend to have. That will come with an increase in soccer density. My kid right now has a few friends that play soccer seriously and sometimes plays with them but often goes with other friends to play basketball because they don't play soccer. Because these two changes are so important and primarily affect two separate populations, I find it difficult to say that our NT will become mostly Latino. In the short run, the Latino players will benefit more because they already have the head start but in the long run, the change in soccer culture may benefit the suburban population just as much...if not more. My prediction is that the biggest overall change that we will see 10-20 years from now is not necessarily a change in demographics but that there will be less of a difference in styles and skill sets between the demographic groups. (stereotype now is that Latinos are technical while whites have poor touch etc). In the future,
You mention current system then use Clint Dempsey as an example. Clint Dempsey's youth development happened over 20 yrs ago. If Clint Dempsey was 14-15 yrs old today he would have easily been at one of the top DA's in TX possibly at FCDallas.
To some extent, we may be speaking of slightly different things. I was referring to the club system which was dominant in his time. While it is true that the MLS academies are now established in many areas (albeit still in their infancy) the club system is still alive and well. I think it would be hard to argue that the base of our development pyramid is mainly comprised by the club system. (the top would be the academies, USL) I would guess that many would say that the pay for play club system is still the most important part of our structured development system. (vs unstructured play/soccer culture). It is for this reason that I considered Dempsey's story to still be relevant.
The amateur club system in the US will inevitably be a large part of our system. I don't see how it can't be in a country our size and our continued infancy in any professional club below MLS. Almost any club below MLS is struggling to survive and not trying to invest heavily in youth development. I see your point that Dallas Texans existed then and still exist now but in name only. I could probably list 50 significant changes in US youth development off the top of my head that make Clint Dempsey's experience 20 yrs ago significantly different than what a 'Clint Dempsey' of today would encounter. Its not even close with so much still to do.
Without disputing anything you say, I would venture to say that the club system is not only still around but larger than ever before. Without looking at stats I would guess that there are significantly more kids playing in the club system. The primary difference between now and then is that the club system represented the pinnacle of youth soccer while now it is the academy system. I don't know how the majority of the players get into the academies but I know they have tryouts, some are scouted but I would venture that the majority play club before entering into the academies. From the academies they enter college, USL and or MLS. In Dempsey's day, the path way was completely through the club. I understand that it is different now. I don't necessarily know to what extent and exactly how it is different but I also believe that it is early enough along in the transition from all club to part club part academy to feel that the club aspect is still dominant. As we move further along the path, we will still have a system that relies heavily on the clubs (as you point out) but they will be far less important because the academies will be more numerous and they will reach further down the pyramid. (Kind of like having a D1 and D2 league with no D3 compared to having D1, D2, D3 D4 professional leagues) I hope what I said makes sense. If not, then maybe I'm just wrong. It has happened.