Four young kids kicking a soccer ball on a beach in Portugal partly explains why America is where it is with the beautiful game. The group of four became six. Then eight.
Then nine. Girls. Boys.
Men. Women. No cones.
No lines. No goals. No nets.
No officials. No coaches. No sanctioning fees.
No schedule. Just a ball. Dribbling.
Bouncing. Bending. Passing.
Tapping. Even to the untrained eye the ball control, and eye-foot coordination, looked damn near perfect. Similar anecdotal examples are all over the place in Portugal, a modest nation of 10.
4 million people. A person in America with its population of 336 million may go years without seeing such a scene here in the United States. “You can’t force a kid to play on the streets here,” FC Dallas youth and boys’ academy directory, Chris Hayden, said in a phone interview.
America and its relationship with soccer has only been solidified since the early ‘90s. That’s roughly the time when we decided to care about a sport that is deified in every other nation on earth, and the game has grown steadily here ever since. Americans who grew up in the ‘80s, or before 1995-ish, could not have conceived the state of the game would be where it is today in this country.
A viable, stable professional league. A growing market to watch the leagues all over the world. Hosting World Cups.
American players playing in the top leagues overseas. America is good at futbol , and still not even close to the best. The results this summer illu.