America at Large: Youth soccer mostly about milking the cash cows

A child wishing to try out for Crossfire Premier, a club based in Redmond, just outside Seattle, must pay $15 (€13.60) for the opportunity. If he or she subsequently makes the cut, registering for one season will cost around $2,200 (€1,990).

That fee does not include the mandatory purchase of a full set of kit which runs to just under $400. Any player on one of Crossfire’s elite squads will travel plenty, sometimes to tournaments out of state, so the expenses in that regard will at least double the initial outlay. Most families can expect little change out of $7,000 for the year. For a nine-year-old to play soccer.

Between 13 and 16, Deandre Yedlin played for Crossfire Premier. Then, he moved to the Seattle Sounders youth academy, did a stint at college in Akron, and, eventually, secured a $4 million move to Tottenham Hotspur last year. As per normal Fifa regulations regarding compensation for those involved in the development of players, Crossfire appear entitled to at least $100,000 from Yedlin's fee. They have never received a cent though because US Soccer and Major League Soccer do not recognise the international rules in this regard.

Last Friday, Crossfire, the Dallas Texans and Sockers FC of Chicago, two other notable youth clubs, filed a class action lawsuit against the Major League Soccer Players Union (MLSPU), demanding monies owed and the implementation of a proper payment structure for future transfers. Alumni of the three litigants, Yedlin, Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley, were all named in the case because each has been involved in lucrative moves that should, by now, have reaped financial benefits for the teams they represented in their formative years.

Conflict

In Ireland, this battle was fought and won a couple of decades back when schoolboy clubs won the right to be recompensed for the years of training they gave kids who later ended up making it as professionals in England.

If that conflict seemed a straightforward case of perennially cash-strapped outfits trying to wring deserved rewards from corporations, the MLSPU has tried to paint this showdown as an attempt by avaricious youth organisations to line the pockets of their highly paid coaches.

"These clubs have shown their true colours," said MLSPU executive director Bob Foose. "What's going on is a fundamental attempt to build the youth sports industry, not to serve the youth or help develop our players. This is about developing more jobs for those people working in youth sports, and higher pay."

Astutely enough, Foose chose to focus not on the blatant failure to obey Fifa rules but on the ludicrous pay-to-play culture that is the norm in the American kids’ game. For their part, Crossfire and the other plaintiffs counter that they, and the thousands of travel clubs that charge players exorbitant rates, will use any income from transfer fees to make the sport more accessible to kids who otherwise can’t afford to play for them.

That sounds plausible enough except these are the same people who have made small fortunes by developing an exclusionary model that has turned soccer into a country club sport. In too many parts of this country, it remains the preserve of white, upper middle-class suburbanites. Witness the all-conquering United States’ women’s team being lambasted for its lack of diversity last summer.

“To some of the clubs’ credit, they do have scholarships, they have players they help in being able to deal with the fees,” said Dempsey, whose former club the Dallas Texans recently announced they would be making every effort to reduce the cost from a staggering high of $2,950 per child per year.

“I was lucky enough to play for a club that helped me with that. But there are a lot of talented kids that just play pickup or play men’s league or something, maybe don’t have the money to play club ball.”

In American society, there is a popular misconception that if you aren’t paying top dollar for something then you can’t possibly be getting the best available for your child. This explains why, in so many families, soccer is often the second biggest annual expense after the mortgage. What does it say about a country’s dystopian attitude to recreation that most clubs offer a scheme allowing parents to sign up for a monthly payment plan to cover their children’s fees for each season?

Tales of houses where credit cards were maxed out in order to keep Johnny or Jane on the field are plentiful and an indictment of how, for too many coaches, the sport is more about milking cash cows rather than teaching kids the beautiful game.

Charade

Underpinning the whole charade is the assumption that forking out these huge sums over nine or 10 years will be worth it if the child becomes the next Yedlin or, at the very least, snags a college scholarship.

Of course, that around five per cent of the players will even make it on to university level is why many critics believe this to be nothing short of an especially egregious pyramid scheme preying on children’s fanciful sporting dreams and parents’ wilful ignorance.

Whatever happens in the MLSPU lawsuit, those who have allowed American youth soccer to be more about turning a profit rather than tapping potential all deserve to be in the dock.