Once again this whole plan is built upon the notion that there are boatloads of untapped poor, disadvantaged Marta-type girls languishing because they cannot pay for club soccer, let alone GDA/ECNL type soccer. Sorry, but that simply not true in this country. I know it’s cliche at this point, but there is very little poor, inner city soccer culture here ... and ESPECIALLY on the girls side. No pick up games, no girls looking for pick up games. The local boys & girls clubs have some boys soccer programs, but barely ever girls soccer programs above a usual gym class. I work with and am on the ground in many of these neighborhoods, and sports in general are barely a blip on the radar for most of these young girls, and if there is any sports that take hold, it’s usually Track & Field and basketball. So the girls who would definitely want and aspire to a residency program with much better academic opportunities than what they could normally get, have little or no soccer foundation or skill to begin with, let alone develop on a GDA level. You might get a bit more from the girls in the suburban working class towns/neighborhoods whose immigrant parents have them playing in local travel leagues and AYSO’s, etc, but they are still light years behind from the skill and training that the current pay-to-play club players have. So you are back recruiting from a pool of middle class/wealthy pay to play girls, whose families would definitely balk at sending their daughters off to a soccer residency program to chase a pipe NT dream, that in the end would barely pay the bills anyway. It’s a non-starter.
It always comes back to the lack of soccer culture at the most grass roots level in this country. The sooner we can accept that the pathway for high level soccer in USA is through pay-to-play with college as the final destination for most, the sooner we can find more suitable tweaks and adjustments that work within those realities. I would love to eliminate 50% of the current leagues across the country, and a total streamlining of the pyramid, but that’s when the “business” of soccer gets jeapardized and adult egos threatened, so we keep heading down this path of “we can do it better” and adding new leagues on top of old leagues over and over again. To be honest, the best way imo, was the way it was 15 years ago before USCS mucked it up. One local league structure with ODP and Regional play for top players/teams.
It always comes back to the lack of soccer culture at the most grass roots level in this country. The sooner we can accept that the pathway for high level soccer in USA is through pay-to-play with college as the final destination for most, the sooner we can find more suitable tweaks and adjustments that work within those realities. I would love to eliminate 50% of the current leagues across the country, and a total streamlining of the pyramid, but that’s when the “business” of soccer gets jeapardized and adult egos threatened, so we keep heading down this path of “we can do it better” and adding new leagues on top of old leagues over and over again. To be honest, the best way imo, was the way it was 15 years ago before USCS mucked it up. One local league structure with ODP and Regional play for top players/teams.
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