The pay-for-play debate

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most good AAU players don't pay anything.

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There is money changing hands though.

I don't know, I just saw Twellman's rant about ending pay-for-play but then he only casually mentioned the lack of coaching and came away thinking it should be the other way around.

Well soccer needs to be started very early, so we are already late to identifying talent. Basketball and football have support structures through high schools, and their development in their teenage years doesn't necessarily need professional coaching, as they can make up for that lack of coaching through athletic ability.

Baseball has a sporting culture where the notion of paying to play isn't that unusual. In contrast, it is fairly unusual in soccer. Given that we are always comparing ourselves to other nations who do more with less people, it's obvious that pay to play isn't the best way to get the most out of population.

But the academy structure developed organically from the way European cities were designed. Pay to play fits in with American culture at large, and any real academy set up has to account for it. What would help is large scale professionalization of coaching.

I'd love for a group of rich people to set up a series of schools in a small area the size of Uruguay or something and do a comparison between pay to play and traditional academies. Unscientific yes, but it would take the resounding success of the academy model to end pay for play.

Given the required technical skill, pay to play is just an inefficient way of developing that technique.

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It's still pay-for-play yet the inner city is still well-represented.

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Bc you can find a basketball court anywhere

Not so much a soccer patch or a hard court you can play on

In Europe every court you can play both on

I´ve got a great pitch for seven on seven (little ones) or five on five.

Gofundme?

Purely a culture thing. Our poor inner city kids play basketball. Our poor rural kids play football that's organized through schools, and like someone else said football is a sport you can start as a teenager and be fine. Most other countries poor kids play soccer, and that start at like 3 years old. We'll start to get there, I mean the first big soccer generation is just now starting to have kids. It's going to take guys who loved soccer starting their kids young like fricking Earl Woods. Look at Pulisic, son of a professional player.

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My three year old pretty much exclusively sleeps in one of his City kits,

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Time to report you to child services.

To paraphrase Sir Issac Newton "We stand on the shoulders of Giants". As each generation is more and more exposed to soccer players will get better and better. You compared soccer to baseball. How many little league coaches played baseball. As far as travel league baseball is concerned little Johnny is decent at baseball. Dad played in High School and maybe coaches Johnny and is a successful _________. He sets up a travel team around Johnny and foots the bill for those that cant pay to so that Johnny has a decent team around him. Johnny's dad is invested in the process. We are and have been raising the giants for this country for soccer to grow and hit the point where we will now raise the Soccer Johnny. With my very limited experience around pay for play Soccer I have already met one Dad of a Johnny.

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The most obvious counter point is From where would the money to pay coaches come? We must have pay-to-play because there is no other way to pay professional youth soccer coaches. Can anyone dispute that??

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I can easily dispute that

Like Broksi said the FA pays coaches but its even deeper than that.

The way it works is money filters down from transfer fees to the lowest level. If a big time club pays say 30 million for a player. Not all of that 30 million goes to the selling club. A % is written into each players contract to filter down money to the local club/youth set up/ academy who developed them. This pays for the kids to play, travel, boots, kits and trainers. Its why you routinely see some youth clubs keep pumping the best talent into the best academies. Take Rashford for example. He came from Fletcher Moss who has been sending players to United and City for years. Each time a player joins one of those clubs academies, they get paid, and keep getting paid if the player keep transferring clubs.

This is why some youth clubs in American have been filling lawsuits bc they see no money on transfers for players who go to an MLS club and then maybe move somewhere else. The money trail stops at MLS and USSF.


But the USSF makes so much money on the pay to play model with league fees that they have no reason to change it.

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Therefore, the money must come from somewhere

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