***Official 2026 World Cup Thread***
- Thread starter ISU3PtLand
- Start date
No kidding. Not going to happen. Too many options, and soccer is pretty far down the list.
Parents pushing kids into basketball, baseball, wrestling and hockey? Maybe kids just like those sports better? You're right about little kids playing soccer though. My son played until 4th grade and then wanted to play baseball instead. Pretty common.
but if the NCAA really wants to get into the feeder system game like it is with other American pro sports it really needs to get its head out of its ass and adopt FIFA rules and regulations. while it continues to insist on "American college soccer", which is extremely different from what's played anywhere else in the world, it's irrelevant.
There are many instances of football players not participating in the sport until junior high, that’s too late for soccer. Basketball has youth stuff but many are still exploring other sports until high school or later.
To me it comes down to money, when soccer gets the boosters like the other sports then it has a chance.
Your first paragraph is 100% correct, the second doesn’t really matter.
Soccer is totally skill based, that’s why every year in football and basketball you hear stories of some breakout player that just picked up the game recently. Soccer that just isn’t possible. The skills you develop from an early age shape your entire future in the sport and the US doesn’t have those opportunities available yet the way every other competitive country does
Honest question, how is college different? Is HS similar to college or FIFA? What is club level taught? My kids played it when very young and it was more of an introduction and exploratory type thing. Although wrestling started in PreK and US wrestling is different than the world wrestling.
Baseball, hockey and wrestling are similar.
The only time you really hear of a basketball player picking up the sport late they are usually close to 7 feet tall.
Money is definitely a driving force. To play competitively as a youth, you need to be in a league and the cost isn't exactly cheap. Then, once they get older, the opportunities to make money are better in other sports. To build the necessary infrastructure would take an investment on several levels. When the ROI is greater for parents to steer their kids to other sports, it doesn't help.
Simple you don’t play college soccer seriously in any other part of the world then the US. By the time you’re 18 you would be playing professionally or for fun.
Club or academy level teams are taught skills that the rec leagues just aren’t because the rec leagues usually have parents as coaches who don’t know what they are doing compared to coaches that played at a high level and understand the game.
Footwork, passing, using both feet, shooting, every little action has a ton of skill and body control that gets learned at a very young age that if the foundation isn’t in place it just doesn’t get a chance to reach its full potential
Speaking of immigrants our best player that the president just went to bat for is a birthright citizen who didn't even grow up in the US. The irony.
He said college soccer is played by different rules, I am curious what those are.
lol.
The pro academies. European teams coming to the United States. There is massive amounts of money flowing into the game. Just because it isn't the uncle humoing nil mechanism doesn't mean lot of $$$ isn't being deployed.
I agree to a degree. But I think the primary issue is the kids that have this skill, have already moved onto another sport in the U.S. by ages 10. Not because we don’t have the athletes.
Kind of a chicken/egg type thing. Part of the reason the U.S. doesn’t have the developmental resources Europe does, is there isn’t the demand for it like there is with football, basketball, baseball, golf, track, even hockey in the northern states.
Where there is more demand for it, on the women’s side, we have the best program in the world.
After the way Argentina played vs. Cabo Verde, I'm not at all surprised Egypt is winning.
