Although the contest could have only one winner, there were other worthy candidates; this is one of them, a commentary on the disconnect between the youth soccer and the professional game in the U.S.
by John Pini
About a month or so ago I came across this video of Steven Gerrard as a U-12. Even though it’s a pretty short clip, you just get the distinct impression (at least I did) that the youths in this video knew what they were doing more so than, say, my team did when I played in U-12s. My mind immediately flashed to the youth soccer scene in the 1994 film The Santa Clause, where all ten outfield players chase the ball around in one big blob.
At the risk of turning off readers who have read about the anticompetitive nature of youth soccer in the United States a thousand times, let me say here that I’m attempting to establish a different perspective on it than perhaps you’ve read before, as well as offer a solution.
So here’s my hypothesis: youth soccer can be as competitive as other American youth sports if and only if the players are raised in an environment that treats soccer as seriously as today’s parents tend to treat, say, baseball and football. Remember Steven Webb, the guy who wrote that alleged satire about soccer and said he really thinks it’s a boring sport even though his two sons play? And that “they get more exercise and less humiliation from soccer [than from baseball]”? I have nothing personally against Mr. Webb—I played baseball through high school too. But the fact is, parents like this create a self-fulfilling prophesy; of course the kids will treat the game as a chance to expend some energy and eat oranges if that’s what they are taught the game is about!
The most effective tool parents and coaches can use to improve not only the competitiveness, but the quality, of youth soccer in the US is to have the kids watch games at the highest level. Think about it: if you played, or play, or know anyone who plays, youth soccer anywhere up through high school, how many players actually watch any of the European or South American leagues? Personally, I played soccer from under-8s up through high school junior varsity, but I didn’t start watching soccer on the professional level until a couple years afterward, and I know for a fact I’m not alone in saying my understanding of the game has improved exponentially since I began watching. How much better off would youth players be able to read the game if they as much as watched Champions League, or even MLS, from the time they started to play themselves?
Of course there is a small portion of soccer-parents who get it. I see two kids at my church every Sunday morning, one who always wears a Lionel Messi jersey and one an Italian international jersey. One of my brother’s club coaches in something like U-14s showed the team a “top 100 goals of all time” video every couple seasons. And many American soccer fans have heard about Bob Bradley taking his son Michael to the San Siro in his youth. But stories like these are few and far between. The more prevalent this sort of thing becomes, all the better for the future of the game in the United States.
