Great ATL story that again talks about Pay-to-Play

The lack of numbers hurts the article.

 

What we would really need for that is more professional clubs. There are only two business models for player development that have any track record of actually working:

1) Pro Club (usually a bigger club) signs player, develops player, uses player for major roles in big games, and wins/revenues return the value
2) Pro Club (sometimes a smaller club) signs player, develops player, transfers player to bigger club, and the fee returns the value

Compared to these, the FIFA fees are mainly magical thinking, because the FIFA fees are both very irregular and moderate in size. That's the dealbreaker--you might be able to base a business model on irregular payments if they're huge, or moderate payments if they were very regular, but they can't be both irregular and not that large.

 

Good article... another underrepresented demographic too is rural areas in the country. That said, this seems like a great way of growing the sport in the inner city.

I’d add that what could have a significant impact is a simple solution to expand school soccer to both spring AND fall.

 

As a coach in HS, the season runs from preseason in June, then 3 weeks off and one last push late July. Then its 2 games a week August until November or so, depending on how well you advance. Then my players play on a rec league team in the spring/summer which Im not allowed to coach because of "recruiting" that could take place as I coach a public school and the rec league is area wide.

I feel having a shorter fall and longer spring season would be beneficial in a lot of areas. Or just split the season entirely. The one caveat I think is a lot of children in school play other sports too, and a lot of parents would fight it. You have some regions like in the Northern States were basketball is huge and football in the southern sections. Interesting idea though, that I think has some legs.

 

Dallas made nothing from Hyndman or McKennie. Solidarity payments and coaching fees would have been something.

 

Shaq Moore, Shaft Brewer, the two brothers for Argentina (one played for Everton I think). Sure I've missed some. They did get money for Richard Sanchez and Alex Zendejas and might get some if Acosta is sold. It would be an interesting list to have of all MLS players who moved on for free and an updated tab of how much teams would have received from solidarity payments.

 

Acosta plays for Colorado.

 

Yes, but they asked for 50% of any money made if he's sold.

 

Without question, there are certain obstacles that would need to be cleared...

But a few points to point out:

Soccer is still somewhat known as a rich, white kid sport. Which, being white, but growing up in a rural town, I’d like to make the distinction that it’s a rich, big city, white kid sport. More to the point, when we think of Little podunk towns across America, there’s an absolute vacuum for recruiting. I get, most bang for the buck is in the cities, but currently there’s only a handful of major metropolitan areas which get scouted. Moreover, the town I live in now, Greenville, SC, is far from podunk. It might not be Atlanta or New York City, but Greenville is a decently sized urban area, especially, when accounting for the surrounding areas. But even still, the focus of recruitment is not in even these more mid-sized cities.

And, circling back to middle and high school, by playing year round, we would help to tackle this problem. Specifically, in regards to eliminating pay to play, as kids would have the opportunity to play year round, despite lacking the socioeconomic status to play club ball...which even rec level, is not cheap. For a lot of players, this rules them out. While poorer, inner city families cannot afford the expenses, rural families also have the added stressor of travel. Ultimately, what happens is the big city, rich kids still have the advantage of both the disenfranchised, inner city families and also the rural families. Meanwhile, these are the kids who, could be said, have more hunger and drive than the kid who eats orange slices. In a sense, school soccer = blue collar soccer; club soccer = white collar soccer. We need both.

Therefore, to cut the head off the problem, what needs to happen is school soccer needs to be a much greater initiative from the USSF. This doesn’t mean that the DAs don’t need to be the focus, but that school soccer should be a critical complimentary piece to that focus.

And, to add one other point on school soccer, try to play the games on Friday nights when possible... if football is going on then play it on Saturday night. We need to turn school soccer into entertainment night, similar to football. As far as growing the overall popularity of the sport, I believe this would pay some of the greatest dividends. Advocate for Pep rallies, bands, whatever, but make the sport a focal point of entertainment to every community in America. If the USSF could get involved somehow to advocate for coaches to make in-roads on this it would be huge. For instance, facilitate a study to show the money that could be had by promoting school soccer into the spotlight. This way coaches and interested parties can show the school board why they should act.

Lastly, on multi-sport kids, that’s going to happen. But one thing I know, it’s a lot easier to recruit kids to play school soccer over club soccer. You get the baseball kids to play in the fall season, and the football players to play in the spring, mixed in with the dedicated kids who would play year round.

*apologize for the long response, but I see this as one of the simplest solutions to end the pay to play problem in the country.

 

Good story on high school soccer I posted in another thread.

The slow death of high school soccer – and why it could cost Jürgen Klinsmann

"On 10 February 2012, less than a year into Klinsmann’s tenure, the US Soccer Development Academy announced the birth of the 10-month season for all the youth clubs and players affiliated with the program. This meant that high-school kids who also played academy had a choice to make: one or the other. The idea was simple: if young players want to reach the highest levels (NCAA, MLS) and have wider exposure to scouts and coaches across the nation, then the obvious route is to prioritize the developmental leagues. Klinsmann’s biggest focus – right from the get-go – was to emulate the European model".

 

I would focus that on earlier years of school, the elementary and middle school years. As far as high schools go, to the extent that there's been any problem, time is already fixing it. Also, high schools are a little late in the game to be looking for future pros.

But it would be intriguing to think about the concept of USSF going into younger schools and establishing partnerships that create and enhance soccer programs. One of the essays I'd seen on German soccer indicated that the government put a lot into programs for young children, because soccer is their chief means of physical education and exercise at that age. And soccer has a distinct advantage over most of the American sports in that seven year olds can more straightforwardly play it.

The question, as with everything, is money. There are apparently about 90,000 elementary schools (and then maybe 15-20k middle schools) in the US. It is far beyond the reach of US Soccer at this point to effectively engage with all or even most of them. What I'd think you'd have to do is systematically start reaching out to school districts to see where engagement is desired and money could be matched or leveraged. That adds a lot of bureaucracy and time, but I don't think it's really to be helped if you want to accomplish something long term.

 

In this regard towards elementary schools (or middle and high really) I would argue the answer is to more or less create the argument through a thorough study and analysis of why soccer would be beneficial, hire regional directors, and then allow the masses then to advocate in their community. In other words, USSF needs to mainly create the formula and nudge it in the right direction.

Example: Say, I’m an interested elementary school teacher (or whatever that allowed me to have interest in elementary aged soccer)... I schedule a meeting with the school’s board of directors of why the soccer team should have XYZ. They come back and say, how is that in my best interest, I mean the best interest of the school? My response back to them, based on the empirical evidence provided by USSF blah, blah, blah would do blah, blah, blah.

...That said, I wouldn’t undermine the importance of high school soccer. True, a kid who hasn’t touched a soccer ball until 9th grade isn’t likely to be the next Mbappe. However, what can happen, kid X who never touched a ball until 9th grade, tells his little brother, who looks up to kid X, to start playing in 1st grade. In other words, those kids are still probably the primary older peer role model they have, as most elementary kids have a kid in middle or high school who is their primary social influence, as they break out way from their parents. Moreover, plenty of kids play soccer in elementary years, but it’s not until middle/high school and ultimately college, when they give the sport up.

 

We need more female coaches, especially at high schools. Let the men focus on football and track.

 

Sure, but it'd be an expensive battle to wage for a war soccer is generally already winning. Soccer will pass baseball in about 4 more years in total boys' varsity participation, and the way it's going, will catch basketball in the not that distant future. Soccer may well be, within a couple decades time, the second most popular boys HS sport, after football (the other sport it could pass is track & field). The growth of the sport at the HS level has been slow, but inexorable, occurring over several decades. In 1980, basketball had 4.26 times as many HS participants as soccer did. Today, that figure is 1.21 times, with the gap closing with every passing year.

This chart is copy pasted from my thread tracking HS soccer participation:

Sport........'79/'80.....'17/'18....% Change Baseball..415,860..487,097....17.13% Bsktbll.....569,228..551,373....-3.14% Football...937,677.1,035,942..10.48% Track.......524,890..600,097.....14.33% Soccer....133,649..456,362.....241.46%

You can see soccer came from a place of not even being in the same tax bracket as the big HS sports to a place where, aside from football, it's right alongside them.

 

I humbly submit that you cannot make blanket statements about High School soccer seasons. Georgia plays in the spring. North Carolina in the fall. I think Florida plays girls in the winter... starting in October.

 

Stan, good stuff.

Q on American Football... Is the trend in recent years showing flat or down with new awareness on risks of CTE? Strikes me that it's only a matter of time.

 

Slightly down, but it's not a bloodletting, at least not yet. 1,109,278 in 2011 to 1,038,179 now. But keep in mind it 'should have' grown with population if there were no issues at all.

 

I can't tell if this is a grumpy old sportswriter who hates soccer take or a whacko third wave feminist take, but either way it's a terrible take.

 

What's the trend for Lacrosse? It was growing at a very high rate not too long ago at the youth and High School level. It's also very popular as a spring sport in Texas, and Colorado. In addition to its' traditional hot beds of Maryland, Long Island and Central New York State. It's also grown in popularity steadily in South east PA and New Jersey in the past 20 years.

 

Lacrosse is growing at a solid clip, by about 25% in the last 8 years, up to 110k now. It has a long way to go to catch the main five sports at that rate, but it is showing solid growth.

 

It's neither. There aren't enough soccer coaches in this country and female coaches are underrepresented even in girls' sports like volleyball and softball.

In the lower Hudson Valley, New York, where I live now "23 percent of girls basketball and girls soccer coaches were female in the last year, while 38 percent of softball coaches were women."

The same goes for most regions across the US as a simple Google search proves. Soccer doesn't have enough specialist coaches and most coaches are men. So let's encourage more women to become coaches. Seems like a no-brainer.

 

Lacrosse can be expensive, that may hold it back IMO.