I’ve taken a pretty heavy break from consuming anything soccer related since the dog days of the World Cup, a phenomenon which is mightily rare for me. If there are games to be watched, I have historically had a hard time saying no, and there seem to be more games to be watched now than ever before.
But considering some fluctuations in the rhythm of my personal life, I’ve realized the lack of fervor to consume any and all footy possible is actually pretty easy to explain.
First, I have been without steady employ for a few months, starting right around the opening of the World Cup. I watched more games this World Cup than I ever thought I’d be able to, more than any previous World Cup, which is and was exhausting in itself.
Also, because I’ve been (what we’ll call) between jobs, I’ve had to cancel some of the streaming services I’ve relied on to watch games.
This financial uncertainty, paired with a recent conversation I had with a friend who works full-time in the game, drudged up for me the age old philosophical dilemma that seems to have haunted U.S. Soccer and it’s many tendrilous divergencies since the dawn of time: the pay to play model.
A brief overview of this model can be summed up thusly: in order to play, you have to pay.
That definition is admittedly an oversimplification. To add another layer of detail, here in the States, for the most part, in order to receive what most would agree to be the highest level of coaching and development opportunities, it’ll cost you. There are still plenty of free or low-cost options out there, but it is assumed that those options are for the unconvinced, uninterested, recreational stalwarts. Not the players who see some kind of future in the sport, whatever that might look like.
One of the most popular answers to why soccer is the world’s most popular sport is that all one needs is a ball (which can be purchased for quite cheap; many can even be found for free at local parks’ lost and found boxes), and a space of one’s own to kick that ball.
Now we have run into our first obstacle, assuming a ball is an easy enough thing to procure, which in many places it may not be. Assuming it is, one needs space to move and kick and be free to explore the bounds of what can be done and learnt to do with a ball at the feet.
I was lucky enough to grow up with a back yard, where I was able to do just that, but many children aren’t so lucky.
Public parks and streets become incredible resources in the life of a young, burgeoning footballer. These become holy grounds and classrooms.
These so far are the first knock against the notion that the pay to play model is hampering U.S. soccer, by limiting who can play the game. When it comes down to it, if a young person wants to play badly enough, and can get their hands on a ball, then there is nothing really from stopping them from becoming masterful at controlling that ball with their feet.
Which leads me to my first thought on why soccer is the U.S. isn’t at the level it might be in other countries, even ones with similarly newfound interest in the game: we don’t appear to have cultivated a resourcefulness-centric culture, but instead a culture of compartmentaliztion between disparate parts of our lives, where we do an activity only when it is time to do that activity.
While that’s a bit of a long winded thought, what it really means is that I believe young players have been sold a message that if they (their family) can pay for them to receive “quality” coaching, then they get sufficient enough training and development at training sessions, two, maybe three times a week.
There is no way a young player will ever get to the highest level training two to three times a week for an hour at a time. It’s never happened before, and I don’t foresee it happening in the future.
Young players need to play every day, and they’ll only do that if they truly love the act of playing. I realize this is a blanket statement, and there are of course many players in our country that are obsessed with the game and play everyday, but until our culture around the game, how we see it in our lives, becomes one saturated with desire, obsession and a natural place in everyday life, we won’t see the type of players we hope to see at the rate we hope to see them.
The second thought that came to mind when considering the pay to play system was actually tangential to the act of play itself. It’s the notion of the pay to watch model.
In the capitalist society we live in, we accept that in order to consume entertainment, we must pay. But what if what was marketed and sold as entertainment was needed as educational material?
There are many great resources for watching the game be played for free. There are Youtube channels dedicated to streaming classic games, and any manner of clip of play imaginable. There are community organizations that provide at risk youth free tickets to games as an enrichment. There are countless local college teams of every level that don’t charge for admission into matches.
But what we really want to be watching is commodified to a point of difficulty to obtain. If a young player can’t observe the movements, systems, body language, ingenuity, combativeness and work rate of the modern players and teams, how are they supposed to know what level is appropriate for themselves?
Young players need idols to look up to and emulate. If we price them out of being able to see the game the way it is being played and the way it should be played, how can we expect them to somehow play the game the way we hope it to be played?
If a young player doesn’t have the chance to observe what a player like Thierry Henry or Ronaldinho do with the ball, live and in the moment, then they’ll never know that such feats can be accomplished with a ball.
Again, this a cultural element, and I come bearing no answers. Instead I just hope that as the years tick on, the U.S. sees adjustments in the way we make the game available to all players.
Leave a Reply