Per Capita Player Production in American Women’s Soccer: On WPS Rosters and Soccer Opportunities
Where do American soccer players come from? The simple answer is California. The more complicated answer offers an intriguing chance for the amateur cultural geographer in me to analyze the rosters of American professional teams—something I did a few weeks ago prior to the MLS season to consider the state of the men’s game, and something I’m doing this week on the women’s side as a nod to the start of the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) season.
The idea is that knowing where elite players come from offers a thought-provoking, if imperfect, picture of how the game works for different types of people and places. In this case the general picture suggests some similarities in the geography for male and female American players, but also highlights the peculiar demographics of soccer in the US.
When I analyzed the MLS rosters I suggested four key factors in men’s player production: population, climate, soccer culture, and immigrants. After looking at the WPS roster it strikes me that for women’s player production I have to swap ‘social class’ for ‘immigrants’ in that equation; American women’s soccer seems disproportionately represented by players from relatively wealthy suburban areas, while relatively underrepresented by players that are first or second generation immigrants.
Take Connecticut for example. The state with the highest per capita income in the US also has the highest per capita women’s player production of any US state (by my calculation there are 6 WPS players from among Connecticut’s 3.5 million people). On the MLS side, in contrast, all Connecticut has to offer is the Revolution’s Pat Phelan (and even he was born in Houston and went to prep school in Massachusetts). Certainly socio-economic status is not the only thing going on in Connecticut; there might well be some kind of ‘Kristine Lilly’ effect, for example, where her impressive longevity and prominence has inspired her younger fellow Connecticuters. But across my analysis there are suggestions that opportunities in women’s soccer are based on a combination of class and culture that probably limits the American game.
But I’ll explain my analysis more first and let you interpret the data for yourselves. And then I’ll explain a bit more about what I think it all means.
http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/wp-con...te-595x386.jpg
As when I looked at MLS rosters a few weeks ago, the goal here was to identify where players spent their formative years. But what does “formative” mean for a soccer player? I’m going teen years (pre-college) on the logic that it is during that stage of life when people decide whether to fully commit to the game. I realize, however, that an argument could be made for other stages.
I suspect, for example, that college is particularly important for women’s player production—more so than for men. Whereas MLS rosters are loaded with teenagers who never bothered with college, or players who went for a year or two, the American contingent of WPS players almost all played four years of college soccer. In fact, the only teenager in WPS is Swiss import Ramona Bachmann—who turns twenty in December. In age, and in other ways, WPS American players are more homogeneous than the American players in MLS (there are, for example, only seven American players in WPS over age 30).
Nevertheless, because college programs are often more of a geographical mish-mash, the focus here is on states and metropolitan areas as hubs for youth development in American women’s soccer. It was somewhat easier to find that data for WPS players than it was for MLS players both because the WPS web-site is much more informative and because there are fewer women’s players. Using the WPS list of players as of 2010 opening day, and cross-checking with college player profiles and with Wikipedia, I ended up with a spreadsheet of where 137 American players in WPS spent their adolescence. As I noted when looking at the men’s players, I’m sure I got a few minor details wrong—but with large enough numbers the statistical inferences can still be right.
Where do American soccer players come from? The simple answer is California. The more complicated answer offers an intriguing chance for the amateur cultural geographer in me to analyze the rosters of American professional teams—something I did a few weeks ago prior to the MLS season to consider the state of the men’s game, and something I’m doing this week on the women’s side as a nod to the start of the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) season.
The idea is that knowing where elite players come from offers a thought-provoking, if imperfect, picture of how the game works for different types of people and places. In this case the general picture suggests some similarities in the geography for male and female American players, but also highlights the peculiar demographics of soccer in the US.
When I analyzed the MLS rosters I suggested four key factors in men’s player production: population, climate, soccer culture, and immigrants. After looking at the WPS roster it strikes me that for women’s player production I have to swap ‘social class’ for ‘immigrants’ in that equation; American women’s soccer seems disproportionately represented by players from relatively wealthy suburban areas, while relatively underrepresented by players that are first or second generation immigrants.
Take Connecticut for example. The state with the highest per capita income in the US also has the highest per capita women’s player production of any US state (by my calculation there are 6 WPS players from among Connecticut’s 3.5 million people). On the MLS side, in contrast, all Connecticut has to offer is the Revolution’s Pat Phelan (and even he was born in Houston and went to prep school in Massachusetts). Certainly socio-economic status is not the only thing going on in Connecticut; there might well be some kind of ‘Kristine Lilly’ effect, for example, where her impressive longevity and prominence has inspired her younger fellow Connecticuters. But across my analysis there are suggestions that opportunities in women’s soccer are based on a combination of class and culture that probably limits the American game.
But I’ll explain my analysis more first and let you interpret the data for yourselves. And then I’ll explain a bit more about what I think it all means.
http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/wp-con...te-595x386.jpg
As when I looked at MLS rosters a few weeks ago, the goal here was to identify where players spent their formative years. But what does “formative” mean for a soccer player? I’m going teen years (pre-college) on the logic that it is during that stage of life when people decide whether to fully commit to the game. I realize, however, that an argument could be made for other stages.
I suspect, for example, that college is particularly important for women’s player production—more so than for men. Whereas MLS rosters are loaded with teenagers who never bothered with college, or players who went for a year or two, the American contingent of WPS players almost all played four years of college soccer. In fact, the only teenager in WPS is Swiss import Ramona Bachmann—who turns twenty in December. In age, and in other ways, WPS American players are more homogeneous than the American players in MLS (there are, for example, only seven American players in WPS over age 30).
Nevertheless, because college programs are often more of a geographical mish-mash, the focus here is on states and metropolitan areas as hubs for youth development in American women’s soccer. It was somewhat easier to find that data for WPS players than it was for MLS players both because the WPS web-site is much more informative and because there are fewer women’s players. Using the WPS list of players as of 2010 opening day, and cross-checking with college player profiles and with Wikipedia, I ended up with a spreadsheet of where 137 American players in WPS spent their adolescence. As I noted when looking at the men’s players, I’m sure I got a few minor details wrong—but with large enough numbers the statistical inferences can still be right.
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