Not until American boys and girls play feral soccer on their own, for the love of the sport, will the nation develop its own Jordan, its own Pujols, its own Crosby or Malkin, its own Maradona.
George Vecsey, New York Times, June 24 2009
It shouldn't take an PhD to make a connection when looking at the great breeding grounds of football – the favelas of Rio, dirt pitches of Africa, the cobbled streets of Marseille or La Boca. Similarly in the US, and unlike modern soccer, the roots of the sport stem from working class immigrants. The first FA dates back to 1884 and San Francisco has an active four tier league which dates as far back as 1903. The clubs that made up these early leagues – Albion Rovers, French A.C., Bethlehem Steel and Kearny Irish – were obviously often centered around ethnic communities and factory workers.
One of the difficulties however with the sport's early popularity was the size of the United States. The distance between the East Coast and the West Coast is approximately that of London to Moscow. Even baseball failed to introduce any West Coast teams to the MLB until 1957. In fact it was probably baseball itself that proved the biggest hindrance to the growth of the football in the United States. Just as football was growing in popularity from the 1930's to the 50's, with the introduction the World Cup and televised matches, the United States, pulling itself out of the dregs of the Great Depression, was becoming a world superpower and cementing it's national identity. Immigrants were eager to assimilate and follow the American sports of baseball and gridiron.
Fast forward to the end of the century, past the circus experiment of the NASL and the New York Cosmos, as the US qualified for Italia '90 – their first World Cup in fifty years. Soccer was now being played by millions of youth around the country. They weren't, however, playing in their neighborhoods or during recess at school; they weren't playing in the projects in Harlem or the streets in Compton. In fact every single member of the USA's 1990 World Cup team had been to or was in college. If America's youth wanted a more competitive environment than the public recreational leagues they had to join club teams. You had to pay for uniforms, league fees, insurance, traveling expenses and sometimes even overnight stays at tournaments. Because these clubs were not connected with any professional clubs, only those who could afford the expensive costs were able to play and progress to the higher levels. By the mid-nineties the term “soccer mom”, suburban mothers carting their children to and from sporting events in minivans was a household phrase and, incidentally, proved a major talking point in the 1996 presidential election.
In comparison its nearly impossible to find out who was the last university graduate to play for the England national team. For millions of kids around the world the dream of professional football is the only way they can see of getting out of the lower classes. As Eduardo Galeano points out in his book Football in Sun and Shadow, these youth often have a choice between a life of crime or making it in professional football. Its impossible to believe that this won't affect the style of play on the pitch.
Across the powerhouse continents of South America, Europe and Africa youth academies scout and recruit the best talent, provide uniforms, coaching, transport to matches, education, and often room and board. Granted this system has its own problems – from the difficulty of moving countries at a young age to the horrors of child trafficking – but these are mostly consequences of the greed and commercialism in football rather than the academy system itself.
As long as the development of talent comes from the middle class through club teams and then at college the United States will struggle to reach the world standard. Vecsey's phrase “feral soccer” sums up of the crux of the issue perfectly. If the US Federation wants to attract America's youth to the sport they'd find much more success sending Thierry Henry and Lionel Messi into Queens in a Ferrari F430 to play a game of keepy-uppy than all of MLS's marketing dollars or fifty dollar tickets to see Europe's top clubs engage in preseason pointlessness.
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