Following comments from former LA Galaxy star Zlatan Ibrahimovic lambasting the price people pay for sports in the United States, ESPN FC’s Alejandro Moreno joins Kay Murray to react to the outburst from the now AC Milan striker. Moreno says Ibrahimovic is “absolutely 100% correct” in what he says, and goes one further by saying that soccer is undoubtedly a sport of privilege in America.
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The reason why soccer is perceived as a sport for the privileged in the US is because the privileged can’t compete with the skill level of inner city youth in the other major sports. So they end up playing soccer which doesn’t attract the best athletes in the US.
For American soccer to get better, more American kids have to want to become soccer players. The MLS has to attract more big name players (with money of course). Essentially become like the NHL which is dominated by foreign players. But it has to attract these big name players with the hope that it will inspire a new generation of American kids to be the next Messi or Ronaldo.
It's not just expensive, it's exclusive in other ways. I'm seeing soccer camps being invite only at 5-8 years old. You should not be cutting off kids that young from high level coaching. So if kids doesn't already have exposure then they don't have the skills to get invited to these programs. A football or basketball coach will take a good young athlete with work ethic any day of the week. Training them up is your job as a coach. Their skill would catch up.
I ran and coached track. We had kids go from novice to placing in the Jr Olympics. Even some of the less talented kids developed.
Football is still the sport of the working class.
IF U PAY 300 BUCKS TO PLAY… AT LEAST TEACH THE BASES
They do not care about skill here in the us. They cant tell who can be developed. Speed Size Strength gets looked at here.
Title 9 required colleges to have more women's team sports. The women's team sports at the Tokyo Olympics won 3 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze. gold in basketball, volleyball and water polo. Silver in softball and bronze in soccer. The men only won gold in basketball. It seems supporting female athletes pays off in the medal count. So support your local women's sports. The women's team took a knee and for the first time wasn't supported back home. They lost big time to Sweden and lost to Canada as well. US didn't even qualify for men's soccer at the Olympics. That's how bad they are. Mostly non athletic boys play soccer.
You don't want to play soccer in the streets of USA. You could get run over by a car or truck. In the inner cities there are mostly buildings and no fields to play on. There are some Latino schools where soccer is played. The growth should be going after getting Latinos to play it. Many Latinos need to exercise more to lose weight. Soccer could be the way.
Anything other than this current system is socialism, and we don’t do that here ??
Not to say I would have been a pro but once I got to middle school my parents pulled me out bc of how expensive soccer was getting and had me play play football ? bc it was set up through the school and cost pennies compared to playing club soccer
Its sad cause I grew up playing American football and basketball, but Soccer became my favorite sport after being exposed to it through fifa and the world cup. I feel robbed that the common man in the U.S is basically kept from being a part of this sport. Hopefully that changes
The sheer World influence, it's
HUGE size and crazy amount of money USA has, it'll be world champions by 2050, I don't like it…only some people there like football and they disgrace the game there…but their population and monetary power is enough to win them a WC soon
Cant speak for other areas of america, but i cant count how many times the coach's child gets a starting spot when they are outplayed by other kids.
put litle soccer courts in every neighbourhood, in 20 years time you could have a great group
Coaches kids don’t pay. The ones who can afford it. Lol it’s subsidized on the backs of the poor. Lol
Most American boys like to lift weights to become a real he man , who doesn't get sand kicked in his face. Soccer players run too much and are skinny like badminton and table tennis
Players.
I've always said with america being as big as it is and there no denying they love there homegrown sports.. But if they just adopted the Europe football system the dots would connect because we outside of America know how football works with youth to grassroots. They would have the best league in the world and all the best players WOULD leave European leagues because they could spend like the China league and have massive state fanbase.. But because they won't change it will always be a joke retirement league….
Another ridiculous attempt to bad-mouth America. No country gives more opportunities to uplift poor athletes than America. Not even close. Add the benefit of collegiate scholarship, which isn’t present anywhere else, and this sentiment only the rich athlete prospers is a joke. Ask Clint Dempsey if being poor stopped him from his goals.
Ask a poor baseball player in Germany how hard it is to become elite, or a poor Scot basketball player if there are many opportunities. Bet its much harder for them than for a poor American soccer players. Not because countries don’t like the poor, it’s cus they don’t care for the sport.
it works in the rest of the world, but america being america,, need to reenvent the wheel !! so stupid
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they do not want to change it they want it this way to keep sport down.
Soccer is like the 4 popular sports in usa
Unless the system changes the US will struggle to be successful in the world stage.
In high school, the coach was also a coach in a travel program. When tryouts came he didn't pay too much attention and just picked the players he knew from travel. The whole system is messed up.
Reason soccer doesn’t work in America is because our youth has so many options of things to do along with the opportunity to play a different sport every season of the year. Many youth players in America play sports for fun. Other countries the youth use it as a way to get out of poverty or really have zero options besides soccer. American youth many of them play hockey in the winter along with basketball volleyball swimming wrestling, in the spring American youth play baseball softball lacrosse and spring track, and in the fall do you play football soccer. During the summers American youth and their families take vacation so the kids can have a break before they go back to school and sports. Now if you take all American youth and just give them to sports to play we would dominate you guys in everything because our athletes are so much better than the whole world it wouldn’t even be a contest. Imagine our football players who are living God’sDidn’t have football the play and just played soccer. You’re trying to tell me any soccer team in the whole world will be able to compete with these guys physically giving the exact same body physiques they have today just throw in the skill of soccer besides football with other countries professional athletes.
I disagree! Once in Middle school in 7th grade school sports begin for every American youth. This is a free (Tax Payor) program the last through senior year. If the Player has the gift of playing Professional the responsibility of the Schools Athletic director to inform the colleges. College scouts from around the world are given the opportunity to watch this individual play. If the player has the gift, trust the world will know.
The solution is easy: look at ANY country outside America and copy their system. In Germany you pay 15 Euros a Month (at most) to play in a youth club. Thats because the gouverment is backing EVERY official team in Germany. The lower league clubs are basically all non-profit. The money you guys spent on your new stadiums, you could have spend on that.
The size of USA adds to complexity as well I would imagine.
Come on, build some futsal fields (like the open basketball fields you already have) in the inner city, in rural areas, promote the foundation of state and county level amateur leagues, that way it is possible that people could create a cultural link with a team, look Argentina, soccer teams are related to social, geographical even neighbouring differences, there, soccer culture wasn't built from the top to the bottom, even though there are examples of upper class teams, most of the teams create bonds with its people, with their fans, if working class people could play and identify with the sport, the attendance could be higher and make it more profitable for advertisers and create more jobs
I've asked my kids youth soccer coach why so many drills? Shouldn't you let them just play and let them build a rapport and shoot idk maybe let them hangout w each other after practice! Nope in the USA all these kids lives have become scheduled! It's insane I've seen more kids by the age of 10-13 lose Interest simply because it's just daddy's the coach and I'm his son or daughter smh. Oh well adjust or screw it move on. But ya it's a noticeable problem
I would also add to Moreno, that the media plays big role in soccer society and in sports in general, for example, when I lived in Spain, the national TV always had soccer games/la ligua on tv for free to watch…also when i dropped my kids at school, most of kids go to school with soccer ball in their hand, and wearing their idol player that they dream to be like him in the future, however when I moved to US I had to pay a TV membership of certain channels to be able to watch MLS games, or go to bar and hope they have the right channel to watch the game…. I believe that its hard for the media to generate money from soccer.
The problem that ALL of the critics of American Soccer do not realize is that we cannot have the system the critics want the US to have. The Reason? In 36 of the 50 States, it is ILLEGAL for any child under the age of 16 to be under a professional contract. The reason is that with the exception of movies and television, no child can participate in any sort of apprenticeship program that pays them a wage, and that includes soccer! Under US laws a child can be in a pay to play system OR they can be in system where all of the costs are paid for by a charity. However any system like they have in Europe would result in the prosecution of the adults involved.
In order for kids to play soccer growing up, they need to have rich and educated white dad, and hot soccer mom usually blonde or brunette, live in a rich urban place and buy a minivan for weekend soccer purpose. 🙂
Luckily it’s getting better.
The biggest issue with the MLS by far is fact that we have salary caps. The salary cap for the MLS is currently $4.035 million per team and the average MLS player. earns an annual salary of $52,500 (source sportekz.com). Salary caps keep the league competitive as it lowers the skill disparity between teams, however, it doesn't promote talent within the system. The salary caps effectively act as a binding price ceiling would for any other commodity in an economy. Binding price ceilings create a deadweight loss in any economic system because they disincentivize suppliers who will supply less than would naturally be demanded. If you're an athletically gifted American kid you will choose to play either football, baseball, or basketball because that is where all of the money is. It is already risky to give up education opportunities to pursue an athletic career so the payoff needs to make sense for an athlete. $52,500/year is simply not enough of an incentive.
Another example of a binding price ceiling is Venezuela's price controls on food. Nicolás Maduro president and head of Venezuela's United Socialist Party implemented binding price ceilings on produce and other essential food items which caused farmers to supply less food than Venezuelans would have naturally demanded and need. This has led to food shortages and famine in Venezuela nicknamed the "Maduro Diet".
And Before you go saying "Well there are salary caps in the NFL, NBA, and MLB and they're still the top leagues in the world for their respective sports, in addition to consistently outbidding the MLS for athletically gifted youths in the US" you have to realize that two things are true.
1) The salary caps in the NFL, NBA, and MLB are inordinately high in comparison to the MLS, and for the player market the caps are way less binding or potentially not binding at all at this moment. At the end of the day, you make more money in other sports than soccer if you are a kid growing up in America.
2) The NFL, NBA, and MLB have little or no competition from leagues oversees. The MLS on the other hand is a controlled market league competing against free-market leagues oversees (Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 all have no salary caps. La Liga has a more complicated system but Barca's cap limit was set at a whopping $738 Million last I checked). The MLS will never be able to outbid for top world talent, or even top domestic talent which means competition in the league will always be weaker. Pulisic's salary alone from Chelsea last year would be over twice as much as an MLS team's total available salary cap. And yes I'm aware of the MLS's Designated Player Rule or "David Beckham Rule" but bringing in one top player per team doesn't really increase the competitiveness of the league that much.
If the MLS did away with salary caps or at least matched the salary cap numbers from other domestic sports leagues they would be able to compete with other domestic sports leagues for promising athletic talents AND be able to afford overseas superstars to make the league more interesting and competitive in the world landscape. Interest in soccer would rise in American and the teams would actually become more profitable, as would the MLS. Teams would be bidding for domestic young natural athletes (because they believed they actually had a chance to have them play soccer as opposed to switch to another sport) and it would suddenly make fiscal sense for teams to pay players to play for their youth academies instead of it being the other way around.
It isn't that the US doesn't have the athletes. It isn't that the US doesn't have the money or the resources. Its that the MLS is basically run like an uber controlling socialist system that has to compete against free-market systems oversees. Yes, our league isn't lopsided like the big 5 European Leagues. But no, we will never be relevant on the world stage with our system. We're effectively experiencing what is referred to as a "Brain Drain" in economics terms. Where the most competitive people in a country leave to go to another country that presents them more potential to be successful.
TLDR: Salary caps in the MLS may promote equity between teams but GREATLY diminishes the US's potential talent pool, diminishes US interest in soccer, and therefore stunts the growth of the sport in America. Thanks for listening to my sports economics Ted Talk.
It's football man
In Sweden it is not complicated at all, parents and older players help out together.
America would be a top 3 team every single year if given the same attention as other teams
Most pro players never started with a trainer they started from nothing bare foot and fought their way while having fun
I wrote a thesis paper, back in college, as to why soccer will never be a top sport in the U.S. One of the other reasons is that other sports are held in such high regard i.e American Football and Basketball and Baseball. Those sports garner the attention of the youth from an early age, even though most kids do start off by playing soccer as a young child, but that is only seen as a quick stopping point before getting into more "serious" sports.
In Germany it cost 82,-€/Year. ?
Its really f*** up. My kid tried out for select this year and made 3 different select teams. Sadly i had no idea how much it cost to play on these teams. Im not paying that amount and investing all that time. I told the coaches thanks but if you want the kid to play then you can pay for the kid to play. Its ridiculous. If you dont stand up to them and say no then this will never end
no one likes US
The best players come from the gutters and streets. In the US you need money, connections and attend college to consider playing professionally. How often do you see players being recruited from open try-outs? Close to none.
Klinsmann said this years ago
I’m just saying there has to be a way how Europeans afford to make football cheap and in america it costs so much for the players.
The sport is the worlds entertainment and your charging the entertainers to preform forgetting at some degree you can commercialize them even at lower levels with tickets, food,amenities indoor facilities do this. Why not have events for weekend games from kids or teens where even casuals want to hang out and spend money like in American football games for high school.
It’s not a priveledge if you have to pay for it…