We're soft because of suburbs...

[FredMertz]

I honestly believe a lot of the problem is that most kids don't play soccer outside of their teams and clubs. Pickup games (away from the watchful eye of overbearing coaches) are the perfect venue to practice individual skills without being yelled out for being a ball hog. If you're afraid to experiment, you'll never improve.

 

[QuigrNYCFC]

I honestly believe a lot of the problem is that most kids don't play soccer outside of their teams and clubs. Pickup games (away from the watchful eye of overbearing coaches) are the perfect venue to practice individual skills without being yelled out for being a ball hog. If you're afraid to experiment, you'll never improve.

There is some truth to that. I think there is a problem of overcoaching. Beating the creativity out of kids and not allowing them to make mistakes.

 

[Victors87]

I played on my local club's youth team in my home country. When I moved to NYC at 12 with my mother, there's no way she could afford to pay for me to be on a team so I would only play in the summer at the park. At year and a half later I tried out for my HS team and got on.

The team was pretty bad due to us being a small school but our best players were players whose parents could afford to pay for a team and it showed because they were able to get more training, coaching and game time throughout the year as opposed to the 2 month fall season where a 3rd of the games would be cancelled for all sorts of reasons. During the very important development years I only played a game per week plus 2 practices for 2 months out of the entire year. The 1-2 players on teams improved while the rest of us stagnated.

One of my former teammates got a scholarship to play for BC. I turned to cigarettes and alcohol. Not to say I was going to play for a club in a top 5 league, but I never got the opportunity to reach whatever potential I had. And that's my related novel. I'm sure there's thousands of stories similar to mine with kids a lot more talented than me never getting a shot.

Same here. Grew up in the inner city (Washington heights) during thr 90s no soccer programs at school. All the soccer I can get was going to the park and playing pick up with other immigrants and children of immigrants. My high school didnt have a soccer team, yet they would pay for basketball courts in chelsea piers, and park permits for baseball. We formed a soccer club in hs and asked to form a team, but were told no bc it wouldnt be popular outside our group. We were like 30 boys that formed the club mostly kids from immigrants 2nd generation americans (eastern europeans and Latin america) and would play in parks after school. I was offered to go play a team in Westchester but my folks couldnt afford it and i had a friend from Bulgaria, dude was the shit in soccer. He got offered to play in long island his parents paid for like a season and the bulgaria national youth team actually wanted him to try out, but his family went broke after his dad lost his job. He dropped out and worked in construction. Soccer talent wasted.

If anything to this sad story, he went back to college, graduated and we backpacked throught Europe, both professionals, home owners, hes a doctor and i work in IT. So the american dream works in funny ways

 

[NickA]

In my experience, this is what I see...

I've been coaching in a youth league for a while now, girls a few, mostly boys. My area has a decent amount of South American families. I usually get a very mixed team. I will say in regards to practice, games, prep, player support, etc...most of the S.A. kids parents don't care. They hardly bring their kids to practice, show up late to games and are never there to support their kids. The white and black kids parents are very supportive of the team, program and player. They get really into it. Sometimes too into it. It's a shame because you can see the disappointment in some of the kids eyes. I just think that American sports is more of a lifestyle and family affair. The parents get into it and become a part of the landscape. The foreign parents are not used to that. Even when I was a kid, my father didn't even speak English. He bled Azzurri blue. I had and still have family in Serie A. But he just expected me to be a soccer player and that's that. He wasn't apart of it. He wasn't into it like the other families. At one point I couldn't play travel soccer cause no one wanted to drive me. So what I'm getting at with this rant, in my 10 years of being involved with coaching youth soccer, the foreign players families don't support their kids like the others. I'm not saying all, but most. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Maybe it's just something that's happening by me. It's disappointing, because this is the time to mold them and were that desire is forged.

 

[BxLio91]

Seems to me in a lot of cases, they're busting their asses working to get ahead and may not be able to go to games etc.