Pay to play

[Anonymous]

My 13YO joins these Nigerians at our park a couple nights a week. It is awesome soccer. They turned him down for over a year, now they let him play and he's in there like any other player.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because we don’t have a lucrative pro league at the top to fund it.

Yes we do.

They just want to keep their money and let parents fund it instead.

I'll put the greed of NFL, MLB and NBA owners up against anyone. But they reluctantly recognize that paying for talent maximizes their profitability, so those are big-money sports. A youth coach in one of those sports who can identify and develop talent, and steer it to the next stage, can live a very comfortable life indeed. A kid who shows talent will have no problem finding someone to cover their bills.

In soccer, the money flows the other way, up from the bottom. In youth soccer, not only are families expected to pay all the costs but their also expected to kick some up to the higher levels. DC United used to come to our club all the time talking about "partnership" opportunities, which to them meant one and only one thing: us giving them money.

Incidentally, it's the same for soccer referees. That nice guy who refs your kid's game has to pay an annual registration fee to US Soccer. About a quarter of that fee goes to subsidize the pay of MLS referees.

Wait, are you claiming that NFL, MLB, and NBA actually fund youth coaches? I've never heard that before. Do you have a source?

They don't directly pay coaches, no. They do provide support to leagues. For example, every player in Little League in DC has his uniform provided by the Nationals, they've also built some fields. The money that flows to coaches is more indirect -- consulting fees, apparel contracts, things like that. I know a guy who runs a basketball program in DC who went to the NCAA final four as the guest of the NCAA. There's just a lot of money sloshing around and if people think you can influence where talented players end up you can soak up some of that money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because we don’t have a lucrative pro league at the top to fund it.

Yes we do.

They just want to keep their money and let parents fund it instead.

I'll put the greed of NFL, MLB and NBA owners up against anyone. But they reluctantly recognize that paying for talent maximizes their profitability, so those are big-money sports. A youth coach in one of those sports who can identify and develop talent, and steer it to the next stage, can live a very comfortable life indeed. A kid who shows talent will have no problem finding someone to cover their bills.

In soccer, the money flows the other way, up from the bottom. In youth soccer, not only are families expected to pay all the costs but their also expected to kick some up to the higher levels. DC United used to come to our club all the time talking about "partnership" opportunities, which to them meant one and only one thing: us giving them money.

Incidentally, it's the same for soccer referees. That nice guy who refs your kid's game has to pay an annual registration fee to US Soccer. About a quarter of that fee goes to subsidize the pay of MLS referees.

Wait, are you claiming that NFL, MLB, and NBA actually fund youth coaches? I've never heard that before. Do you have a source?

They don't directly pay coaches, no. They do provide support to leagues. For example, every player in Little League in DC has his uniform provided by the Nationals, they've also built some fields. The money that flows to coaches is more indirect -- consulting fees, apparel contracts, things like that. I know a guy who runs a basketball program in DC who went to the NCAA final four as the guest of the NCAA. There's just a lot of money sloshing around and if people think you can influence where talented players end up you can soak up some of that money.

Most of that money sloshing around is provided by parents though, right?

Uniforms and tickets are great and all, but that's not what pays the mortgage.

By comparison, almost every MLS team has a youth academy that is fully funded by the first team. Players not only get uniforms, including training gear, and tickets, but also 4 x/ week training by A-licensed coaches, plus games, fields, travel, hotel, meals, ... everything's paid for. Even DCU which is one of the only ones to not be fully funded, is heavily subsidized. Players pay $2K but when you add it all up - especially the travel - the club is easily putting in $2-3K per player on top of that.

I don't think there's anything comparable in any other sport in the US.

[Anonymous]

Ironically in a lot of other countries soccer is looked at as a blue-collar sport or a sport that is played by the poor people in that country. Mainly because there are barely any costs to participate and there is always someone who can step in and volunteer coach. Like in England, wealthy families went their kids to play tennis or equestrian or something else besides soccer for that reason. It's a sport for the commoner.

[Anonymous]

Especially in South America to, what sport you play reflects your social class

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:Here's what you have in several other countries. (I can't speak to all 200 or so, but it's what I've found in a few European countries, at least.)

1. A pro club's academy, where kids play for free.

2. Small clubs for which the families pay roughly what we pay for rec soccer. Sometimes, those clubs are subsidized.

3. Pickup soccer.

----------------

Here's what we have in the USA:

1. A pro club's academy, where kids (usually) play for free.

2. A youth club's academy or elite program, where parents' expenses easily run into the high four-figure range.

3. Every level of travel soccer below that.

4. Rec soccer.

5. Rarely -- pickup soccer.

--------------------

So, a couple of things to consider ...

1. There are a lot of efforts to give pickup soccer a boost. Some from the U.S. Soccer Foundation, which is currently suing the U.S. Soccer Federation to keep its name. Some from people like Martino, cited in that article. Some from local organizations.

2. Other than that, the obvious difference in the USA is that middle level (numbers 2 and 3 above), where families pay four figures for "travel" leagues of various levels.

So do we want to get rid of that? Well, let's consider this ...

1. How many scholarships are funded by the people paying $3,000?

2. Many of you complain about teams coached by "parent volunteers." OK. How are you going to pay for pro coaching if each player is chipping in $150 and you have fixed costs like fields ($$$), insurance ($$) and referees (pennies)?

3. You know where you have sports in which the players pay very little, if at all? And it's where every football, basketball and baseball player who can make a team plays?

You guessed it. High school.

So for U15 and above, should we simply disband "travel" soccer? If you're in a pro or otherwise subsidized academy, fine -- we're seeing more kids in MLS making their pro debuts at 15 and 16. Maybe the kids at the next level play high school soccer for part of the year and something akin to American Legion baseball for another season. The kids at this level aren't going pro in their teens -- their aspiration is college, and there's always a chance they'll blossom in college and move on to the pros.

And if you don't make a high school team, there's always rec, as opposed to the multitude of travel teams in this area with kids who don't make the high school teams but still consider it necessary to drive all over creation to play games at some supposedly elite level.

What would we do with all the displaced coaches? Here's where the USSF surplus can actually make a difference. In Germany, you can't go far without hitting a federation program that trains players from various clubs, developing and identifying talent. USSF has something like this now, but it's nowhere near the level we see elsewhere. (You could argue that it *used* to be ODP.)

Solidarity pay and training compensation, which may have taken a big step forward with yesterday's verdict in the Crossfire case, will help. So will the surplus.

But I've run the numbers. You're not going to subsidize every travel player's escapades with solidarity pay and the USSF surplus. If you have 1 million travel players paying $2,000 each, that's $2 billion. Good luck with that.

So we have a choice. We can quit paying for EDP, CCL, VPL and whatever the next "elite" league is, and we can do something closer to what we see overseas, buttressed by existing scholastic infrastructure and targeted spending on training centers and pickup facilities.

But then how would we brag about our kids on DCUM?

So college programs will come recruit from rec teams in this model?

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:
So do we want to get rid of that? Well, let's consider this ...

1. How many scholarships are funded by the people paying $3,000?

2. Many of you complain about teams coached by "parent volunteers." OK. How are you going to pay for pro coaching if each player is chipping in $150 and you have fixed costs like fields ($$$), insurance ($$) and referees (pennies)?

3. You know where you have sports in which the players pay very little, if at all? And it's where every football, basketball and baseball player who can make a team plays?

You guessed it. High school.

So for U15 and above, should we simply disband "travel" soccer? If you're in a pro or otherwise subsidized academy, fine -- we're seeing more kids in MLS making their pro debuts at 15 and 16. Maybe the kids at the next level play high school soccer for part of the year and something akin to American Legion baseball for another season. The kids at this level aren't going pro in their teens -- their aspiration is college, and there's always a chance they'll blossom in college and move on to the pros.

And if you don't make a high school team, there's always rec, as opposed to the multitude of travel teams in this area with kids who don't make the high school teams but still consider it necessary to drive all over creation to play games at some supposedly elite level.

What would we do with all the displaced coaches? Here's where the USSF surplus can actually make a difference. In Germany, you can't go far without hitting a federation program that trains players from various clubs, developing and identifying talent. USSF has something like this now, but it's nowhere near the level we see elsewhere. (You could argue that it *used* to be ODP.)

Solidarity pay and training compensation, which may have taken a big step forward with yesterday's verdict in the Crossfire case, will help. So will the surplus.

But I've run the numbers. You're not going to subsidize every travel player's escapades with solidarity pay and the USSF surplus. If you have 1 million travel players paying $2,000 each, that's $2 billion. Good luck with that.

So we have a choice. We can quit paying for EDP, CCL, VPL and whatever the next "elite" league is, and we can do something closer to what we see overseas, buttressed by existing scholastic infrastructure and targeted spending on training centers and pickup facilities.

But then how would we brag about our kids on DCUM?

So college programs will come recruit from rec teams in this model?

And high school, like they do in other sports.

You may say I'm a dreamer, etc. ...

It’s somewhat ironic that many of the high school coaches also coach high cost travel teams on the side.