Reply to Yahoo story: Why the world's game is a white game in the U.S.

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Reply to "Yahoo story: Why the world's game is a white game in the U.S."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Gotta push back on the "soccer-crazed" culture idea. I live in Europe in a country which Americans would associate with "soccer-crazed," and it's not really that big of a deal. Kids don't dribble balls down the street. Pickup games aren't happening in every spot of free ground. Lots of kids play other sports. In fact, *most people* don't even really follow the professional leagues.

Lots of kids drop out of soccer around the 14-15 year age range because they decide or realize that they will not be professionals and want to spend their time preparing for university and their future profession. The kids who are on track to become professionals start seriously training to become professionals. They have the mechanism (i.e. the educational tracks) to do this. In the US we do not (mostly).

As an analogy, it reminds me of the axiom "Quantity has a quality all its own." It's the American way--our Sherman tanks in WWII were crappy, but we had enough of them that they were effective enough!

Doesn't work in international football. If we want success, we don't have to wait for a "culture change" and we can't just feed hundreds of thousands of kids into the hopper and hope that some gems will sort themselves out. We have to do the work of teaching kids how to play. [/quote]

+1.  American clubs don't really have great incentive to develop players. They care about populating or expanding the club more than development. [/quote]

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