soccer is dying in America; viva la baseball

The data is in and the result is inescapable: soccer participation is rapidly declining in America.  What’s that, you say?  There must be some mistake!  Soccer is the fastest growing sport in America!  More kids play soccer than baseball, which is dying out!  Soccer is far safer than football, which is losing participants because of concussion fears! 

Wrong, wrong, and , um, wrong.  According to a thoroughly researched article in that bastion of good journalism, the New York Times, youth soccer participation has fallen significantly in the good old U.S. of A.  Over the past three years the percentage of 6-12 year olds playing soccer on a regular basis has dropped by 2.3 million players, or nearly 14%.  The problem, according to the article, is cost.

This is ironic, as one reason why people have long predicted that soccer would supplant baseball as a youth activity was that baseball required expensive equipment while soccer needed just a ball and a couple of goalposts.  Apparently leagues such as the American youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) charge $190 for kids to compete in a 16-game season.  Given that all that’s needed is a ball and some goalposts, that’s a lot of overhead.  Hope Solo, the goalkeeper on the US 2015 World Cup champion (women’s) soccer team, was quoted as saying her family would not be able to afford to support her soccer playing if she were a kid today.

If cost is an impediment to kids playing baseball and developing into professional players, then how has it been possible for San Pedro de Macoris, a city in the Dominican Republic that in no way resembles Beverley Hills, to produce 76 major league players and earn the nickname “The Cradle of Shortstops”?  As someone who spent many summer days playing baseball with odd-sized bats, a rubber ball, and only half of us wearing gloves, kids will find a way (when prices aren’t jacked up by adults).

There is also the issue of placing too much pressure on players when they are too young.  Players in other countries have numerous options when playing competitive soccer; no such infrastructure exists in America, where young players must either make prestige traveling teams or play pick-up games in the park.  Imagine the pressure if a young baseball player wanted to be in the major leagues, but there were no college teams, or AAA, AA, or A minor league clubs.  Talented players are being weeded out before their talents have the chance to manifest themselves.

The methods by which future soccer superstars are identified is the subject of the book The Away Game by Sebastian Abbot, which raises these concerns.  A book review in The Atlantic compares that book on women’s soccer (Under the Lights and in the Dark, by Gewndolyn Okenham), and points out that girls' soccer has a better system of developing talent than boys' soccer.  Maybe that explains why the American women’s soccer team has won the World Cup while the pathetic men’s team was eliminated from this year’s World Cup by losing to Trinidad and Tobago, a nation with the population of Dallas, Texas.

The development of youth soccer should be taking on a certain urgency in the United States, given that we are co-hosting the World Cup in 2026.  Given that the field will be expanded from 32 to 48 teams, and that the host country is traditionally given a bye into the proceedings, we should at least avoid the humiliation of not even playing on our home turf.  But what are the prospects that the United States can go from a country incapable of beating Trinidad & Tobago in a preliminary round to one that can credibly challenge France, England, Brazil, Belgium, Croatia, and Germany for the championship in eight short years?  The answer is, of course, “None whatsoever,” especially if kids continue to abandon youth soccer in droves, as they are doing now.

But let’s look on the bright side—there’s always women’s soccer, where we have some of the world’s best players and a winning tradition.  Let the boys play baseball; we won the World Baseball Classic in 2017, and our odds of winning the next one are slightly better than the odds of our men’s team winning the World Cup in the next 50 years.