The United States soccer community is grieving after our failure to qualify for the World Cup, probably with good reason. Kids across the country will miss out during their formative years on cheering together for their country in the World Cup of the sport they love. Everyone who plays soccer or cheers for the US team is in some small way a part of our national soccer project. Given the diversity of the soccer community and the divisiveness in our country right now, that moment of unity behind our soccer team in Russia might have been sorely needed and will surely be sorely missed. Of course missing out on the World Cup has negative commercial implications for our soccer federation too.
If the United States wants to compete with rest of the world in soccer, it will need to dispel the myth that soccer is a suburban sport in this country, and that starts by respecting low-income communities, urban and rural.
I returned this week from the World Football Summit in Madrid where I spoke on a panel hosted by the FC Barcelona Foundation and international NGO streetfootballworld about the social impact of soccer. As the founder and CEO of Street Soccer USA, I am fully invested in making the benefits of team sports available to youth and families for whom logistically and financially the pay to play model of youth sports is inaccessible.
As the Aspen Institute’s Project Play and Time Magazine have recently highlighted, youth sports is a multibillion dollar industry. The US Soccer system is designed to cater to the suburban community with a high willingness to pay. The effect is corrosive to what would be real soccer communities and clubs that enhance the social fabric in low-income communities. Talented players are recruited away to expensive clubs with scholarships that help those clubs fill out their rosters so clubs can collect fees from those who signed up to pay. Likewise talented coaches from low income communities who would love to contribute locally are lured financially to coach outside their neighborhoods. The result is the myth that soccer is a suburban sport, but don’t tell that to the hundreds of kids in Street Soccer USA’s free community club in Sunset Park Brooklyn that fills our field beyond capacity everyday. Don’t tell it the street soccer club we built overnight in Claremont Village in the Bronx where there simply wasn’t an opportunity for kids to play before, or to the club we built comprising Yemenese refugees and their families in Tenderloin, San Francisco, or the over 1,000 Somali and Latino youth we are just beginning to serve in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The list goes on an on across our growing network.
While US Soccer institutions are serving up soccer as a strategy to deliver anti-obesity curriculum to youth, what youth want is the chance to play regular organized soccer. While these institutions send in suburban soccer coaches to offer Urban Soccer Diplomas to coaches in low-income urban areas, the irony is not lost on the student, but only the teachers. The US Soccer Foundation has started a mini-pitch initiative for low-income areas, which we applaud. We look forward helping ensure the success and utility of these mini-pitches.
Groups like Street Soccer USA and other examples like former San Antonio Mayor Ed Garza’s Urban Soccer Leadership Academy are taking a different, bottom up approach. We take immense pride in our players, our parents, and our communities. The work of Street Soccer USA is to enhance and develop their potential. Through Street Soccer USA, and through our parent company, national housing and social service provider, HELP USA, players learns the coping, leadership, teamwork, and life skills that are the basic building blocks for success academically, professionally, and civically. High quality, low cost facilities are developed, social capital is created, and parents and young adults in the community are connected to further education, job opportunities, and relevant social services. By delivering on the goals of private philanthropy, public sector leaders, nonprofit partners, and corporate citizens, Street Soccer USA is able to deliver its programs free of charge in low-income communities where logistically and economically team sports and its benefits are inaccessible.
On top of the broad base of participants, we are now building soccer schools that can nurture those will real aptitude in soccer, but who lack only the opportunity. We are building them together with AFE, the Spanish Player Union, an entity comprised of current and former professional players without commercial interest, but with players’ interest at heart. Not only will our players get to play, but they will get the best instruction possible from those who know best. We don’t have to build from scratch either. Existing local clubs like Buenavista FC in Red Hook Brooklyn and Kensington Soccer Club in Philadelphia already have models in place but struggle with capacity. By enhancing their offering we can elevate these programs and supplement them with social service wrap-arounds and achieve social and soccer good at once. Endorsed by social responsibility departments of ESPN Corporate Citizenship and UNIQLO as well as the New York City Council, our efforts are gaining momentum. Most recently, thanks to $250,000 in seed money from LA84 Foundation and City Council President Herb Wesson’s office, Street Soccer USA is replicating our model in Los Angeles where we will target 33-50% of our participants from LA’s Family Resource centers serving homeless families.
What does success look like? Take for example, Marchel, a youth of Caribbean heritage in Flatbush, New York. Low-income housing developer Flatbush Garden’s Chief Executive, JJ Bistricer, recruited Street Soccer USA to build a community club for Flatbush Gardens residents by building a Street Soccer Park. Marchel joined our Flatbush club and recently earned a scholarship to Cristo Rey Charter School. Marchel is excelling on and off the field, playing for the high school, our partner club Buenavista FC, and his grades are putting in on track for college. Marchel, who joined as a 12 year old, developed his soccer skills quickly. He may not play in a World Cup, but he may play in college his coaches say, and he’ll certainly be a civic leader and role model to others. His younger brother is getting to play and develop earlier. Who knows to what heights he and others who just need an opportunity to play may ascend. We humbly suggest that the future of US Soccer, if it is to be successful, should look to the social sector for the expertise and approaches that it might embrace through partnership to help our national soccer project be all that it can.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Cann
Street Soccer USA