Soccer Vs America
The United States is widely known as a giant melting pot of different cultures and beliefs. These different cultures have all brought interesting and unknown practices with them. Basketball, Football, and Baseball all originated from the United States, but the world’s most popular game, Soccer, originates from England and has been a sleeping giant in America for far too long. The U.S. Men’s National team is in shambles, but contrary to popular belief, the change needs to come from underneath. The soccer system in America needs to eliminate the class issue, develop better young players, and improve coaching all around.
The United States is a country of 323 million but were still unable to formulate a team that could qualify for the 2018 World …show more content…
soccer has been an underlying problem for years and no one has addressed or attempted to fix it. A study showed that the lowest participation rate in sports from the lower class is in soccer,(Schaerlaeckens) . The youth in America participate more in basketball or football because it is more accessible to them and they feel a connection to the sport. They feel that they can achieve big things by persevering and becoming great at these sports, but that feeling and passion is not present for soccer. This is because soccer is a rich kids sport and is hard to access for low-income families. “It continues to be seen as a white, suburban sport” says Briana Scurry, an African American player who helped the U.S. Women's team win the World Cup in 1999. This quote sums up everything that is wrong with the current state of the sport. The average cost of a travel soccer team for a kid is $3,000 a year, which is an impossible sum for many families, (SoccerAmerica). The pay-to-play system is plaguing the possibility of future stars by denying the lower class families a platform to perform on. It also kills the diversity within the national team. A third of the national team is made up of non-white players, but most of them are only half-american and learned their soccer abroad. Major League Soccer, the top division of soccer in America, is also guilty of being driven by money. One of the youth academy executives stated that his team would only take in players that they felt they could monetize and eventually sell on for a profit, (Carpenter
The United States is a country of 323 million but were still unable to formulate a team that could qualify for the 2018 World …show more content…
soccer has been an underlying problem for years and no one has addressed or attempted to fix it. A study showed that the lowest participation rate in sports from the lower class is in soccer,(Schaerlaeckens) . The youth in America participate more in basketball or football because it is more accessible to them and they feel a connection to the sport. They feel that they can achieve big things by persevering and becoming great at these sports, but that feeling and passion is not present for soccer. This is because soccer is a rich kids sport and is hard to access for low-income families. “It continues to be seen as a white, suburban sport” says Briana Scurry, an African American player who helped the U.S. Women's team win the World Cup in 1999. This quote sums up everything that is wrong with the current state of the sport. The average cost of a travel soccer team for a kid is $3,000 a year, which is an impossible sum for many families, (SoccerAmerica). The pay-to-play system is plaguing the possibility of future stars by denying the lower class families a platform to perform on. It also kills the diversity within the national team. A third of the national team is made up of non-white players, but most of them are only half-american and learned their soccer abroad. Major League Soccer, the top division of soccer in America, is also guilty of being driven by money. One of the youth academy executives stated that his team would only take in players that they felt they could monetize and eventually sell on for a profit, (Carpenter