Analysis of “US Soccer’s Secret Scouting Network” Part 2

So I wanted to dedicate a whole blog post to my favorite part of the article: the last quote. “It’s hard to hide good players. If you’re a good player we’ll find you.” Really?! It’s impossible to hide talent? So all these years we’ve had the most talented players represent us? I’m not just talking about the national level here, I’m talking U-23s (Olympic age), U-20s, U-17s, age groups where we have failed to qualify to world cups and failed to make it to the Olympics.  If talent can’t hide, then that means we have always fielded the best players that we have in the country. In that case, why the need to expand the scouting network? We should have just kept it at 3, because I’m sure they would find all the talent that there is in this country since there is no way to hide it.

The article states, “US Soccer quietly built an expansive scouting network to remedy this deficiency and patch the many cracks through which talent flowed away from its player pool.” This deficiency refers to the USSF not doing a good job in, “unearthing talent from the underprivileged inner-city areas.” HOLD ON. I thought you couldn’t hide talent.  What is falling through the cracks then?! The article mentions the pay-to-play model which can exceed $10,000.  Easily at least half the salary of many people. How can the underprivileged ever afford that? It’s impossible.  The article doesn’t really get into how they are finding these underprivileged players, except for tips that the scouts get from certain coaches.  Again it goes back to what many people see as the deficiency in US Soccer scouting, it relies on who you know and money.

There was a comment in the article from a 23 year old that lives in San Antonio. He goes into how there is no Major League Soccer team and a NASL team was just introduced there. He writes that it would be impossible to cover every square inch of the United States or at least a lot of money would need to be spent to cover areas such as San Antonio. Somebody responded to his post and said that he was old enough to get himself into a position to be seen by the right people. “Even if you have to fly to get there.” This is the problem. Some people think that it’s easy to just pack up and leave. To leave everything and everyone; that we have parents to lend us the money.  There shouldn’t have to be a choice between trying to follow your dream and paying your bills or helping your family.

It’s frustrating because I know that our country has at least 11 players that have the talent to beat any team from any other country. There shouldn’t be a reason why our only expectation should be to get out of the group stage of the World Cup. The problem is looking in the right places to find these players AND develop them. I’m one who believes that you are either born to play soccer or you are not. Those that are born to do this sometimes are not so lucky and get pushed to do other things for whatever reason.  We need to be able to help these players develop without them having to sacrifice something else.  

We DO have the talent in this country, we just NEED to come up with a way to stop it from falling through the cracks and not just pretend that it’s not falling anymore.