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Anonymous wrote:To me she looks like a great player in YouTube video of her playing/practicing. I don’t watch a lot of youth soccer. Is she that much better compared to other kids her age in our area?

Yeah, I think so, though I’ve seen a few amazing kids (one of whom also has a contract at 17 I think).

Jordan Canniff has been a great player for a long time - no Nike contract though.
https://washingtonspirit.com/2018/10/04/spirit-academy-md-forward-jordan-canniff-called-up-to-u-s-u-17-womens-national-team/

Just going to Penn State.

How does a 13 year old get a contract in comparison?

Canniff goes to a regular old high school and doesnt' seem to have parents whose full time job is promoting her.

They kind of do, but apparently not successfully.

Jordan is doing great, on the u20 NT, so I’d call that pretty successful.

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Anonymous wrote:They spent $60,000 on a turf field behind their house so Olivia could literally train in her backyard. She began homeschool in fifth grade and eventually, K.C. Moultrie’s father's primary job became Olivia’s training.

a little different than Messi and Pele that couldn't even afford a new soccer ball, or in Pele's case--shoes!!

Where was Messi at 12? Pele? LOL maybe he was fighting for field space with the dinosaurs?

Pele turned pro at 15. He's still the youngest player ever to score in a World Cup.

Messi went to La Masia when he was 14 after having already been signed as a youth player at a pro club.

Their upbringing and socioeconomic status, opportunities was FAR different from Olivia's whose father quit his full-time job to promote her and paid for a $60k turf field in the backyard.

Pele and Messi used soccer as a way out of their circumstances, an escape. Quite different.

Messi also needed medical treatment that his family could not afford. Barca took care of that.

Rexach starts to explain how Messi came to find the perfect environment at Barcelona; how it all seems so natural these days. But back then, it was not so simple. Joan Gaspart had become president that summer, Luís Figo had left for Real Madrid, and Barcelona were in crisis. And as for Messi, he was special, sure, a player they thought would make it to the first team. But in 2000, you didn’t just sign a 13-year-old and certainly not a 13-year-old from Argentina.
They had to find work for his father. They had to pay for the hormone treatment that, painfully, Messi injected into his legs every day. That was not cheap at almost $1,000 a month. And the £40,000 they agreed to pay Jorge Messi annually was a lot of money; some thought it too much for a player so young about whom there could be no guarantees. A foreigner, Messi could not play with the Juvenil A team and was initially able to play only in Catalan competition. In the dressing room, they often referred to him as el mudo, the mute one.

Messi moved into the Hotel Rallye and from there to a flat on the Gran Vía de Carlos III with his family. From the windows of the Rallye, you can see the Camp Nou barely 50 yards away. But it was no foregone conclusion that Messi would get there; certainly not for Barça. As he played, his father waited and waited. The original agreement had been laid down early but nothing had actually happened. Other clubs were interested, Messi’s agents warned, clubs such as Real Madrid.

“His dad was getting angry and said Leo was leaving,” Rexach later told the sports daily AS. On 14 December 2000, he met for lunch with Minguella and Gaggioli at the Pompeia tennis club. “We’ll go elsewhere,” Gaggioli told him. Rexach pulled out a serviette from the little plastic holder and started scribbling: “I, Charly Rexach, in my capacity as technical secretary for FC Barcelona, and despite the existence of some opinions against it, commit to signing Lionel Messi as long as the conditions agreed are met.