Cruyff grew up in Amsterdam in the 1950s at a time when children played in the streets. Those days are long gone, so now we need to find solutions to the problem of how children learn the game. They no longer learn the game through endless hours of playing in the street but do so now in more structured environments. This is the same everywhere in the world.

Children learning the game now need quality coaches who know what they are doing, who understand the game of soccer and who understand youth development.

I would like all youth soccer players to have the opportunity to receive quality coaching without having to pay a small fortune for the quality coaching.

The US youth soccer is dominated by the “pay to play” model. As the name suggests, you pay money just to play a sport and sometimes you have to pay a lot of money.

Welcome to the USA and welcome to one of the reasons why the US will struggle to dominate soccer on the global stage.

Who are you paying?

The Club Administrators

The Directors of Coaching (DOC) are not volunteers. They don’t show up at the field unless they are being paid. Many DOCs are earning 6 figure sums. Not for them a day job like the rest of us and then volunteer their hours in the evenings and the weekends.

Some clubs I know have relatively small fees of approximately $600.00 per year but the level of fees increase based on the level of the league that you are playing in, therefore,  allegedly the higher the quality of the league, the more you pay. Many of the larger city based clubs have fees up to $5,000 per year. Then these same clubs have paid coaches.

The Coaches

Many of these coaches have their coaching badges, they have ticked the administrative boxes, some have foreign accents, and  they are paid to coach. Some coaches are part-time, and some are full-time. Some are good and some are not.

The Leagues

Now that you have paid to be on a team, every parent will want their child playing on the best team, playing at the highest level, which means traveling all across a state every weekend and often times out of state to play meaningless youth games. Also let’s not forget the hotel costs, the travel costs, the uniform costs and the referee costs. It all adds up.

To get on one of these  travel teams you must “try out”. Why are there “try outs” in American soccer, even at recreational level? What are they looking for? They are not looking for talent but rather selling a product.

Why pay thousands of dollars to play soccer? It’s absolute madness but parents get sucked into travel soccer, being on the best team, being with the so-called best coaches etc. Sadly, this is the norm in the USA.

The “pay to play” model that dominates the American soccer scene is inherently socially unfair. Minorities are disadvantaged because they cannot afford to pay the fees. And by minorities, I don’t mean the African Americans or the Hispanics or the newly arrived immigrants from South America but instead I mean the kids from working class and poorer backgrounds.

By contrast, growing up in Ireland, I think my annual club dues for youth sport was the equivalent of $25 per year. This got me the uniform, the team, the teammates, the coaches, and it was like that all the way up to senior level. Why? Because everyone was a volunteer. We played the game because we loved to play the game and money was never a barrier. If you were good enough to play at the highest level, you got a chance. If you had the talent, you had the opportunity.

“After all, the chief business of the American people is business.”
President Calvin Coolidge

It is the same in soccer where the business of US youth soccer is to make money and it is not about developing talent. Middle class kids pay big money to play soccer in the USA and hope to go to college on soccer scholarships where the level of soccer is of a very low quality, whereas elsewhere in the world working class kids play soccer and become professionals.

IN THE USA, WORKING CLASS KIDS CANNOT AFFORD THE FEES
TO PLAY THE GAME THEY LOVE AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL
AND THEY ARE LEFT BEHIND.

Soccer in Europe is like basketball in the USA. Basketball is socially equitable  in the USA because it is played in the playgrounds. Maybe some kids don’t want to go to a playground because it is in a socially deprived neighborhood, but the point is this; kids are not excluded from playing the game by high entrance costs. They may be excluded because middle class kids don’t live in poorer class neighborhoods, but those middle class kids can still play basketball without exorbitant costs involved.

Why not the same with soccer?

Sadly, there is such a lack of knowledge of the game of soccer in the US that parents do not coach wrongly believing that they have to pay big bucks to have their children taught how to play the game. Wrong!

All you need is a ball. You don’t need a referee, or shin pads, or soccer cleats or even goals. Children just need to play, whether it is in the house, in the garden, the yard, the street, the school playground or a local indoor venue. At the end of the day, it is all about ball mastery. And sadly, in the USA, the overwhelming majority of kids (easily 99.9%) cannot master the ball. Instead of the player dominating the ball, it is the ball that dominates the player. The photo on the homepage is of a player all alone with a ball at his feet putting in countless hours of solitary practice seeking to improve his touch.

And parents can become coaches and very good coaches if they want to, and children can play without being in expensive team set ups. Yes, you need to be able to dominate the ball but to play soccer, you need a team with coaches who know what they are coaching, and parents can become great volunteer coaches if they are taught to be so.

Coach the coaches and give the children an opportunity to play soccer at an affordable cost.