'It’s only working for the white kids': American soccer's diversity problem

I can see taking a shot at it after college. Taking a few years to chase the dream is fine, when you have your degree. But, it would be a hard sell for me as a parent to have my kid pick a minor league career over a college scholarship. I imagine the calculus would be similar for low-income parents as well. Baseball is the weird outlier in American sports, where only a small percentage of players have a college degree. Bouncing around in the minors for years, then being cut and ending up unemployed and undereducated is much more common than ending up like Bryce Harper.

Anyway, this is moot for me. My kids aren't more than average when it comes to athletics.

 

This is why I would prefer a high school/college based development system over an academies based system.

 

Kid going to college who play baseball. If they went to a baseball school are hoping to do well enough so they are offered a major league contract after their Sophmore year. There not finishing college if they are offered a contract before.

If they try out for the minor leagues baseball chances are they will never see the major leagues.

I knew a guy who spent 16 years in the minor leagues. He knew everything their was to know about baseball. He coached a club team here. But he never went for the great player. Anyone who wanted to play for the Brooklyn D's he took. He lost a lot of his better players to competitive clubs. He did not care he just want to produce good players.

I asked him what is the most important thing for a baseball coach. He said a big van.

 

And John O'Brien left the US as a teenager to join Ajax's academy and he is now working on his doctorate.

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/65117/john-obrien-who-left-high-school-to-sign-with-aj.html

 

Sure, give it a shot. One of my law school classmates played minor league baseball for two or three years after college. I think he even deferred his law school admission by a year to give himself one more season to try to move up the ladder. He has no regrets about that.

As for soccer, I mentioned this in response to the "Abolish the Draft" thread in MLS: YBTD about the draft supposedly restricting the player pool: I think the MLS draft actually increases the player pool, because many of the seniors in the draft are much more opportunistic than committed to pro soccer. Take, for example, Cameron Porter, who scored that important goal for Montreal in the CCL. He was a good college player, but not considered a top pro prospect before Montreal took a flyer on him in the draft. He also has a computer science degree from Princeton and probably wouldn't have much trouble finding a job that pays 6 figures. If he didn't get drafted, he'd probably never have tried to go pro.

 

I think it's just not in the culture of poor american kids to play soccer. Too bad because if these kids worked passionately on soccer tricks instead of maybe basketball, America would produce some top level athletic attacking freaks with a lot of flair.

 

If inner city kids really loved soccer and started playing, i think the scouts will come to them.

 

How else do you fund anything?

Money has to come from someplace to pay for fields, equipment, coaches, transportation, etc.

No sport in the US is free to play at a Youth Level. Neither is any activity like music, art, etc.

 

It's not like someone decreed it to be so. This question is so...bad...that it doesn't merit a response beyond this.

 

Plenty of "inner city" kids already play Soccer.

 

1) Because it's fun.

2) In the streets/parks/vacant lots.

3) By playing the game.

 

...So 'coaches' could profit'...

 

But that still gets us back to dollars and cents. We don't have a network of local clubs with relatively stable finances that can train kids for free. Youth sports simply didn't develop in that way in this country.

Again, where does the money come from to allow kids to get training for free?

 

Tooth Fairy. Obvs.

 

We do have a system of free (or almost free) player development: high school sports. But, American soccer fans seem to have an aversion to that system, for some reason.

 

There are plenty of really good high school coaches, along with plenty of poor ones......just as there are in club soccer, certainly in North Texas.