How you can help U.S. Soccer. You can click on the home page and from there you can contribute! http://www.ussoccerfoundation.org/GNT/PST.html I contribute three times a year. You can send in as little as $25. Please give me your thoughts on this, positive or otherwise.
Contributing is certainly not a bad thing. But the most effective fund-raising efforts of this sort depend on contributions from corporations or family foundations. I'd argue that, as an individual, you'd be better supporting soccer in the U.S. by buying MLS season tickets. I just renewed my package with the Burn...the same seats since Year 1.
I believe you can do both. Any fan can talk to the company they work for and support contributions. It's ALL good.
I received a thank you letter to U.S Soccer Foundation contributors from Bruce Arena. In it he stated that the U. S. Soccer Foundation as given over six million dollars for player development programs through the U.S. Soccer Federation and through programs like Project 40. He said that other soccer programs supported by the Foundation has also help produce players like Donovan, Beasley, Wolff and Cobi. Why he didn't mention Eddie Johnson is a mystery. If you read some of the Grants for the last four years you will see a lot of them going to inner-city soccer programs. Eddie got his soccer start in an inner-city projects soccer program. You may have noticed that the U.S. Soccer Foundation is VERY often one of the sponsors of televised MLS and National Team games.
Eddie Lewis is from the inner-city? Inner Plano? I have given the last couple of years and have the card to prove it.
EJ's from Florida. The roster at mlsnet.com says his hometown is Palm Coast, Florida, which doesn't exactly sound inner-city to me, but maybe he grew up in a different town. Bussey's from Dallas, I believe, though he went to high school in Plano -- in fact to the same school one of my kids goes to now, Plano East.
Eddie and his mother lived in a housing project when he started playing soccer. He did start playing soccer in an inner-city soccer program. Almost all cities have "inner-city" areas and inner-city soccer programs are not always in large cities like Dallas. For example, Galveston has an inner-city soccer program and has received a couple of grants from the U.S. Soccer Foundation. There are also suburbs with inner-city soccer programs. Inner-city soccer programs usually provide free soccer clinics. They also provide fee-free and equipment-free leagues. Sponsors provide equipment, referees ref for free, and coaches (even in the clinics) don't get paid. I have coached in inner-city soccer clinics off and on for quite a while now. Also, Gbandi might have played on an inner-city sponsored select team. I know that at least one of the fullbacks on Donovans U.S. Nat'l U17 & U20 teams played on the inner-city select Houston club. I'm pretty sure it's the Houstonians that are the inner-city select club that made the final four in the national club championships and has had several teams in the Dallas Cup. An under 12 team from this club made it to either the semi's or finals a couple of years ago. Here's a kicker. Suburban kids in the Houston area are now playing on the teams, and it is causing quite a stir as they are not from poor families.
Thanks for the info. This is a little off-topic perhaps, but I'd like the sociologists to come up with a different adjective other than "inner-city" to describe a poor, minority area. When you think about it, the $1 million+ condos on Turtle Creek are as close to downtown Dallas as the rundown homes and housing projects in the Fair Park area, yet I doubt anyone says a kid who grows up in a Turtle Creek condo comes from an "inner-city" background.