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[quote=Anonymous]Facts are always helpful.

"As of 2006, over 24 million Americans play soccer. There are 4.2 million players (2.5 million male and 1.7 million female) registered with U.S. Soccer. As of 2012, thirty percent of American households contain someone playing soccer, a figure second only to baseball."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_in_the_United_States

"A Gallup poll released last week found that 7% of Americans named soccer as their favorite sport to watch in a survey completed during December. While that may not sound like much, the figure represents a significant, three-percentage-point gain from just four years ago. Soccer is the only sport to post such a large increase. Football (37%, down from 39%), basketball (11%, down from 12%) and baseball (9%, down from 13%) all showed declining numbers. Hockey was at 4%, up from 3%."  https://www.forbes.com/sites/filipbondy/2018/01/08/soccer-will-soon-be-americas-third-favorite-spectator-sport/#7f87c5cc3c53

Population of the US - 325 mn.  That means soccer is the favorite sport of 22.75 mn Americans (325 * .07).

In other words, there are more Americans into soccer than the entire population of countries like Chile (18 mn), Netherlands (17 mn), Belgium (12 mn), Portugal (10 mn), Sweden (10 mn), Serbia (9 mn), Costa Rica (5 mn), Croatia (4 mn) and Uruguay (3.5 mn).  http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

Yet all those countries have open soccer markets, with independent clubs competing to get promoted or avoid relegation.  And all of those countries have fully funded youth academies, in many cases [b]even in their lower divisions[/b].  How many 2nd, 3rd or 4th division clubs in the U.S. even have a youth academy at all, let alone a fully funded one.  Yet in Europe and SA it is common.

It is the absence of pro/rel that cripples the lower divisions in U.S. Soccer, not the other way around.  Without the opportunity for promotion, there is little incentive to invest.

Calling the EPL "just one league in Europe" is more than a little misleading.  The kid who is the subject of this thread is at AZ Alkmaar not Arsenal.  AZ is a mid-table team in Holland's 1st division.  They are in a city of 110,000, surrounded by picturesque Dutch countryside, not jam-packed suburbs.  Their stadium holds less than 18,000.  They don't have a huge TV deal. The revenue of the Eredevise as a whole is about 1/2 of MLS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue#), and that's not considering the $150 mn per team MLS owners have to pay now to even get into the league.

Yet is there even one club in this entire country that puts the level of investment into their youth players that Aethan's dad describes?

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