u/FutureSailor1994

I watched this new interview with Ed Foster-Simeon, the CEO of the US Soccer Foundation (not Fed), and they talk a lot about the pay-to-play problem in American youth soccer. It explains why we have such a hard time getting talent from different economic backgrounds compared to other countries. The Foundation is trying to fix this at the grassroots level instead of just scouting for pros.

Some of the things they are doing include building mini pitches in under-resourced neighborhoods so kids have free places to play. They also fund after-school programs to cover the costs that usually keep lower-income kids out of sports, and train local coaches to be mentors rather than just scouts.

It is really interesting to hear how changing local infrastructure could help US soccer, and they make some good points about what the sport can learn from pickup basketball.

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/hhNdA0fHoOE

Thanks! Enjoy!

Hey everyone,

I was looking at the SF Rec & Park data recently and realized the city officially maintains 142 public tennis courts. I loved and used to play tennis, but it just made me laugh realizing that we have just two dedicated, completely free, public hard-courts exclusively designed for small-sided soccer by comparison. (Edit: aka futsal)

I know the city and Bay FC built that new hard-court mini-pitch at Crocker Amazon (http://sfrecpark.org/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/2023), and I see there a hard pitch in Coronado Park.

But outside of those couple of spots, finding a 100% free, zero pay-to-play, totally public hard-court specifically designed for small-sided pickup just isn't a thing here.

Does anyone know why the park infrastructure was built like this?

Is it just a historical park design thing, an insurance/space issue, or did tennis players just have an incredible lobbying group back in the day? It seems crazy that in a city this dense with such a massive soccer community, we have exactly two dedicated hard-court for pickup, yet you can trip over a tennis court in almost every neighborhood.

I'm genuinely just curious how this specific disparity happened. Does anyone know the history here?

“We are not seeking to make the current system more affordable,” federation COO Dan Helfrich said Thursday. “We’re trying to create a new system that then we make highly affordable. It’s a really important distinction.”

Full article: https://nypost.com/2026/07/16/sports/us-looks-at-eliminating-pay-to-play-system-after-world-cup/

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What I found interesting: The article directly states that US Soccer wants to achieve "alignment at all levels of the sport" in addition to expanding access and educating coaches. Sounds like they noticed the success of Spain.

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What are your thoughts on this? Will it work? How? Is it just talk? Any quotes in particular that jumped out at you?

TLDR: Should we implement a reciprocal ban the same way? 🤔

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I wanted to bring up something that has been incredibly frustrating lately regarding how our community is treated compared to how certain rival fanbases treat us.

Many of us have recently noticed that if you have active participation in r/ussoccer or r/USMNT, any attempt to comment on r/ThreeLions is met with an immediate, automated removal, as seen in the screenshot I attached. The message we get claims it is because our community has a "history of brigading and trolling."

We are essentially pre-judged and banned from even engaging in basic football discussion just because of where we post.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a massive blind spot. We constantly see their fans coming into our spaces, pretending to be USMNT supporters to sow discontent, brigading our threads, and aggressively demeaning our players and our team. If we point this out, the usual argument is that it is just a place for banter.

But is it actually banter when the rules are only applied one way?

If their community gets to pre-emptively block any USMNT fan to protect their space, why are we expected to just sit back, take the toxicity in our own backyard, and turn the other cheek?

I want to ask the community: how should we be handling this? Should our moderators require them to contact the mod team to prove they aren't just wind-ups, or is there a better way to address this clear double standard?

Seems FAR worse than a simple shove, since it targets the head/brain of a player.

I know everyone has different ideas on how to build a program, so I am just throwing this out there to see what you all think. I am not saying the team needs to copy Spain exactly, but more so wondering about the benefits of having one consistent tactical identity taught across every age group.

From what I understand, Spain basically makes all their teams play the exact same style, and they start with kids. There is a heavy focus on patient positional play. They teach them to pass and move and are always making triangles all over the pitch. You even see their goalkeepers splitting lines with short passes instead of long balls that just give the ball away. It seems like there are lots of small details that get ingrained into the players super early.

This approach obviously came from the Barcelona philosophy that was pioneered by Cruyff and improved by Guardiola.

You can see it working at even at non-Spanish clubs too. Manchester City has been doing the same thing for years by making their youngest academy teams play the same exact possession based style as the first team. After copying this approach in 2012, City was able to transform a once lackluster academy that previously struggled with academy-to-superstar hoodoo into a world-class, self-sustaining pipeline that seamlessly integrates elite youth into the first team while generating hundreds of millions in pure profit from player sales. Players like Palmer, Foden and O’Reilly (list goes on) show it is working pretty seamlessly.

When you look back at Spain, their youth squads are constantly dominating European tournaments, and those kids eventually slot right into the senior squad looking completely comfortable.

Do you think the team could ever benefit from adopting a system like this? Would it make sense to enforce a strict tactical identity from the grassroots up, or are there simply too many logistical hurdles in this country to make it realistic? I would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives.

Look at this disgusting X post 🤦‍♂️. What exactly do people expect them to do? Are they supposed to lock themselves in a dark room and stare at the wall until the season starts to prove they’re upset? These guys are humans with lives, families, and offseasons. Playing for the national team is an immense pressure cooker, and it feels like a weird parasocial expectation to demand that they essentially go into mourning after a loss.

If you’re still losing sleep over that World Cup loss, at least have the fucken decency to let the players sleep in peace.

https://x.com/pootsobotka/status/2075703851575824620?s=46