I'm not big on Us soccer but one thing I always noticed was the US was white white white and pitiful

Are we doing something wrong or is it just a lack of talent at that level?

Watching France for a few and they got more Africans than Nigeria on their squad.

>is it just a lack of talent at
>that level?

How does that work?

Black athletes are playing basketball and football

i.e. the US's best athletes are trying to crack the 3 professional leagues

if our elite athletes decide to take up soccer in the youth leagues and stick with it

that would change the racial dynamic of the USMNT, IMO

looking at the active roster disagrees with you

https://www.ussoccer.com/mens-national-team/latest-roster#tab-1

are black athletes under represented here?

The fact that our team isn’t much, much more Hispanic is a far bigger sin.

The parents are still rooting for teams from back home
kids grow up in 2 worlds, bilingual, and sometimes conflicted about who to root for/give allegiance to

It happened to that dude Rossi a few years back
he chose to play for Italy
(failed miserably but that's another story)

i will never understand why half of us soccer's money doesn't go into academies in the most mexican parts of the southwest.

and also more black players.

US Soccer as a structure is built for upper middle class families.

When Nike does something good in the hood, what do they do? They build a basketball court or a football field.

If they started investing in soccer in the same way they do those other sports, withing 10 years the US Soccer would look totally different.

>US Soccer as a structure is built for upper middle class
>families.

At a certain level soccer becomes pretty cost prohibitive for a lot of people- not just black people obviously, but given the demographics of the US, you can make certain conclusions.

and then they might get pulled into the system

Most of the coaches are white dudes, with a decent representation of Latino's as well - given the US History with soccer, it kind of makes sense. (I'm in California)

Early on in AYSO I've seen a lot of talented black/minority players put in the backfield or maybe defensive midfield almost exclusively, and the white players get more scoring opportunities. So their experience is basically taking the blame for losses, being asked to run their ass off, and basically serving as table setters for the coaches kids who get to play fun positions. I think they lose a lot of black/minority talent that way too.

I was going to ask where people are from...based on one of the replies pointing to soccer being cost prohibitive

I wanted to push back on that...having lived in Philly and now LA...there are no shortages of soccer fields

especially out here in LA

plenty of fields

and they are always packed...almost exclusively with latinos

so your answer makes sense and maybe gets at the deeper issue

because I don't think there is an issue with cost...unless the organized teams/leagues are charging an arm and a leg

but then that leads to another set of questions comparatively

how do people afford to participate in bball/fball leagues?

also, soccer is part of high school athletics

anyway, thanks for your perspective

I think the coaching/hierarchy has alot to do with it

I remember a friend in HS on the bball team...and the fball coach was desperate for him to tryout

he flat out refused...for weeks

I imagine if coaches approached players...that might help open the flood gates

Soccer is such a perfect product

it hurts every WC that we suck so bad

but at the upper levels (this feels like it starts around 13 or 14) if you want to get good coaching and get on the good squads that get shine and recognition the cost adds up pretty quick.

and those leagues cost many $1,000's per year, starting when you're an early teen.

at that point you have to basically be all in financially.

i played club ball 10-14 before i burnt out on the sport for a while. too time consuming and it got to be more of a slog than it was fun.

i think my folks spent upwards of $4K a year on it (from the registration alone like $1100) and then travel/tournament fees/other random bullshit

summer camps were mad expensive too but i remember our coach got us in for free because his pops name is on Wake's soccer stadium.

>i think my folks spent upwards of $4K a year on it (from the
>registration alone like $1100) and then travel/tournament
>fees/other random bullshit
>

And travel and travel cost aren't included. The $1000 is just a registration fee. Throw on top of that, some squads charge a non-refundable tryout fee. I've seen these fees anywhere from $20 to $500 in my rurAL area (south-central Pennsylvania).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the US program is like Ned Flanders Parents

"we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"

Maryland/VA ...shit is expensive to play on a good traveling squad

I mean a sport like ice hockey is going to trend toward wealthier families because it costs money to play between equipment, ice time, etc. Even lacrosse I can see being a little pricey and it's also a regional game. But soccer? That should be VERY accessible given the limited amount of investment in what's required to play. I know now field upkeep is more expensive and stuff but just to practice you don't need anything extravagant. In Latin America *every* kid has access to soccer. Pricing our young people out of it is a huge mistake for both our youth and the health of the sport in this country.

and certainly up top. they were by FAR the fastest players on the field so they played up top. also anecdotal, but different from your perspective.

While this is true it doesn’t mean that they would turn out to be great fútbol players.

Perfect example, one of my dudes I grew up with played goalie. Now this dude wasn't straight hood or nothing like that, but he wasn't a good student. But we ran track together, he played basketball and he was an all around good athlete....but soccer? He was a BEAST. Ended up being all state, but because of them grades...and the fact that he was unapologetically Blk, couldn't sniff any major university scholarships. Still ended up playing in a German league.

Structurally, there were fields and leagues in our town, and in our area there were a lot of folks from the Carribean, so there was a cultural structure for the game, but in school, the only two other blk youth on the team were kids with upper middle class money. They didnt advance in the game past high school.

My boy was a good athlete...he wasn't a Terrell Owens or a Nate Robinson level athlete, and despite race and structural deficiencies dude ended up playing professionally in Europe. There is a reason european and asian leagues put a cap on foreign players...them squads would be 80% African.

He was VERY good - the best on all of his teams through middle school. But he's also VERY good at football. And the soccer coaches in his area made him choose - if he was going to play soccer he had to do it year-round and not play any other sports. He wasn't about to give up football, so he chose to play football in the fall and run track in the spring.

I don't know if the year-round soccer thing is the case broadly, but most talented black athletes who are good at multiple sports aren't going to choose soccer if it means they have to give up everything else.

>
>And the
>soccer coaches in his area made him choose - if he was going
>to play soccer he had to do it year-round and not play any
>other sports.

I fucking hate this attitude with coaches in youth sports. It's disgusting that kids are pressured into specializing. Fuck adults who do this.

My son plays U6 for a park district. The kids play against each other on teams once a week. Some of the kids from the park district, my son included, play on a competitive team against other park districts and clubs. My son loves it but it is year round with indoor and outdoor seasons. He recently started playing goalie and they want him to attend an additional goalie practice. My wife told the coach she was hesitant to add the extra practice because it would cut into my son's other activities, the coach told her our son is good and it is time to consider him playing more competitively and less recreational. My wife thinks six is too young to start focusing on one sport or activity. I want my son to try other sports during indoor season, but he refuses.

I mean no one forces you play year round but it is definitely encouraged. I can't imagine how it will be when he gets older.


-------------------------------------------------------
Keep the crack raps up that shit is double plus what-ever-the-fuck.
Everybody's afraid to say that it just sucks to watch talented motherfuckers pretending they sell drugs - EL-P

ex, i've never played organized football but when i was a kid my favorite way to pass the time w/ my pops was to run routes in the backyard and catch the purposely fucked up throws my dad would toss out. that footwork and body control work has paid off immensely in bball, soccer and even other random sports i have picked up like tennis.

that pressure won't let up either. It just gets worse.

Here's the starting squad from the last national team game:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/MWX7C4/2nd-june-2018-aviva-stadium-dublin-international-football-friendly-ireland-versus-usa-the-usa-team-group-photo-MWX7C4.jpg

>Here's the starting squad from the last national team game:
>
>https://c8.alamy.com/comp/MWX7C4/2nd-june-2018-aviva-stadium-dublin-international-football-friendly-ireland-versus-usa-the-usa-team-group-photo-MWX7C4.jpg
>
I'm looking at this kinda crazy, because the US squad has never been really white. There's always been a pretty diverse group. I can't remember a time without a couple of black guys.

it's a divisive issue, but this has some good overview

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/jun/01/us-soccer-diversity-problem-world-football?CMP=share_btn_tw

Like with the rest of America's dysfunctional institutions, money and a false sense of entitlement, in some ways stemming from racist beliefs, are undermining the potential for success and growth for everyone.

“I don’t think it’s systematic racism,” says Nick Lusson, the director of NorCal Premier Soccer Foundation an organization to grow soccer in California’s underserved communities. “It’s just a system that has been built with blinders to equality.”

huh? that sounds like systematic racism to me.

its not like folks sat around like lets make this mad expensive to keep the poors and minorities out. it just ended up in a place to where the cost became prohibitive compared to other sports.

many programs are introducing scholarships to talented kids that cant afford it but from experience that creates a whole nother type of shitshow within these organizations. one that actually is based on racism/classism.

>huh? that sounds like systematic racism to me.

Maybe I'm mis-understanding the OP, but I feel like I read/hear this narrative pretty regularly, whether it's for soccer or every 4 years during the Olympics and some Americans start wondering why they're not crushing it at <insert random sport, likely handball, here>. I get the underlying point, that there's so much unexplored talent that could be put to better use in the US than being the Xth-better player in basketball/football, but it still seems like such a uniquely American framing of the issue, the sports equivalent of neo-cons thinking force will solve any foreign policy problem.

Since we're talking about soccer here, for a lot of the countries seen at the WC, that is THE major sporting event, uniting the whole nation in a way nothing does in the US, by any extent. In a lot of cases the lack of population has been overcome by the passion, dedication and organization to figure out a system that can provide the most success at that stage (see: Uruguay, Iceland...). Not saying any of that cannot be replicated on a smaller scale in America, but even if the current lackluster efforts of US Soccer are overcome, there's still something to be said for having a grassroots culture of the game. It exists on fields all over the country, but the vastness of it makes it a very big challenge to coalesce into something coherent. Maybe the MLS is the right solution to that (if US Soccer figures out the minor leagues thing), maybe not, but IMO the culture is still ages away from existing organically, and that is the toughest thing to replicate and sustain.

is an argument I saw years ago that another big issue/difference is that even if American kids are playing soccer when they're young (we actually have a very high participation rate, it just ends right around the age of 13), it's almost never the sport they play with their friends when they're just fucking around.

So there's this instinctual, totally preoccupied aspect of playing the sport that goes missing for a lot of kids, even if they were inclined to want to play soccer over other sports.

Imagine if basketball players only ever played basketball in organized, controlled environments, and never ever in pick up games from the time they were 10 years old. The sport and talent would be totally different.

This original point was made I think in an article about the God, Clint Dempsey. He grew up in a working class part of Texas and he and his very diverse group of friends always played pick up soccer first, not other sports.

Lo and behold, he's one of the best, most creative players this country has ever turned out.

too many 2nd gen immigrants eat and breathe soccer for us not to compete with the rest of the world....but this is only one of the problems..coaching is a major problem too

MLS and other entities are investing in coaches for academies and development teams and what not, we invested all that money in JK at the USMNT level, etc. At some point we just have to realize the passion hasn't come that far, and also recognize that to get the best talent we have to cast a very wide net.

they should just focus on getting good players to build a respectable team.

FACTS... the US will never be on par with the rest of the world in fútbol.

I was raw as shit but since we played at recess a ton I was good at scoring because I was fast.

One day a teammate told me I wasn't a good player because I didn't share the ball, all I did was score goals.

I thought that was the point of the game?

Anyways.. now that I have 2 girls I"m thinking soccer would be good for them.

and that article posted above, holy shit. That's scary. Is AAU basketball expensive? I can't see how soccer is so expensive when all you need is a ball and some shin guards and shoes. I get the travelling teams are more expensive but its like we are purposely phasing talent out for personal gain.

There are a lot of aspects to it, but you have to consider the fact that Soccer isn't making people money like the other big sports in the US. There are likely costs that would prohibit underprivileged kids from participating in any of these sports, but other people are probably willing to foot the bill if they think they can scout a young Lebron or whatever, it's an investment that those sports organizations can probably afford. The reverse if true for Europe etc. where you see these stories with the likes of Mbappe/Lukaku etc, the sport doesn't have that pull here.

i really have no idea, i never played organized bball outside of youth rec leagues. i know there is a fair amount of travel involved with some of them too. i would imagine the elite AAU teams with high end coaches aren't cheap either, but again i really don't know which is why i'm asking.

>I was raw as shit but since we played at recess a ton I was
>good at scoring because I was fast.
>
>One day a teammate told me I wasn't a good player because I
>didn't share the ball, all I did was score goals.
>
>I thought that was the point of the game?

But in a more organized game, the players who play for dolo can be easily isolated or taken out of the game by a good defender or a manager with a plan to neutralize your impact.

By contrast, if you're able to share the ball (or more importantly, identify where the defense is granting you space), you can keep the defense guessing-- are you going to distribute the ball, or carry to space? Are you going to shoot from the D, or play in your winger cutting in?


>Anyways.. now that I have 2 girls I"m thinking soccer would be
>good for them.
>
>and that article posted above, holy shit. That's scary. Is AAU
>basketball expensive? I can't see how soccer is so expensive
>when all you need is a ball and some shin guards and shoes. I
>get the travelling teams are more expensive but its like we
>are purposely phasing talent out for personal gain.
>
>
>

Running straight downfield and scoring will get you only so far, especially if you come up on a team/player that knows that is the only thing you have. Even players that have skills on the ball and skills only are easy to read and contain by a disciplined defender. All those youtube stars that have tons of ball skills, they aren't playing even low level professionally for a good reason.

No harm in getting your kids into the game at a young age and if they show any sort of propensity for it or have fun, then you have tougher choices to make down the road. But just because it turns into a bureaucratic, expensive nightmare at the upper 30% level is no reason to not let them play at all.

Granted, that was a mostly experimental lineup of B-team players mostly based in Europe, but that starting lineup had:
5 black players
2 white guys
2 latinos
1 Asian American
1 Whatever Set DeAndre Yedlin claims


Diversity isn't the issue. Quality is. Until the game stops being the province of the wealthy in this country, or there is at least a more inclusive scouting system established, that is how it will always be.

Youth club soccer is a mind-melting cash grab that actively works against the growth of players and the game (IMO), and the powers that be are so deep in it's pocket they can't even fathom that the sport is played at the same or better levels outside of $150/month club setups.

∆∆∆∆∆. This all day.

with both NYCFC and Red Bulls in Brooklyn and the comment he always makes is how incredibly diverse and (immigrant-centric) his son's teams are.

If these youth programs and players are an indication of the direction US soccer is going in, it will only continue to be as diverse as the group posted in post 7, not 'white-white-white' as the OP states.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3C5OUk9rUrc1Z2063bZSD8K2Lhg=/0x0:3681x2676/1820x1213/filters:focal(1547x1044:2135x1632)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55149943/692067140.0.jpg

I had no idea and wanted to thank you for showing me that photo. I had no idea.

last time I watched was Donavan and the red headed dude

it seems like we're always in rebuilding and the young bright stars we have coming up always seem to "unlucky" with injuries in their prime and never reach their full potential.

There are a few transcdent players in this batch and the one behind them, if they just get to play. Weah+Pulisic COULD be a magical pairing.

That's amazing

Mom is Jamaican, dad is George Weah.

in America like it's polo or some shit
when in literally the rest of the planet it cuts across all class boundaries, from the slums to the mansions

Some of the best players came from dirt and others from regular ass middle class homes, a few even from the upper crust

But here it's like if your household makes less than 70k, FOH

soccer is arguably the least expensive sport one can play. you just need a ball. if we had enough poor people in this country playing street football rather than pickup hoops, we'd be just as good at soccer as we are at basketball, regardless of how much USA Soccer charges for its bullshit.

the "problem" is that only Hispanic poor and middle class people are really into soccer in any major way. the rest of the poor and middle class are playing other things. it's not really a problem, it just means those people rock with different things. but it does mean there's a hard ceiling on how good we can be.

Anything that can be commodified and monetized will be.

Y had leagues when we were kids but all the Black kids went to the Community Center so we didn't play outside of recess

We played organized little league and pee wee football but soccer was never presented to us as an option.

and the Black friends we had who did were either rich or had parents who wanted them to stay away from the bad apples aka the black kids

There are only a few Black American stars in the sport and I'd guess they're more famous overseas than here. I doubt many poor black kids are even aware of the money out there in the sport because they don't have the role models to idolize.

So the sport is largely left to more affluent families that use it primarily as a way to keep the kids active, maybe teach them some life lessons (team work, hard work, etc), round out their college profile and (long shot) maybe a scholarship.

I think the math for most black families here is that you can get all of the same potential benefits from football and basketball and still give yourself the chance of being a rich and famous star at home.

it's money. if MLS paid more on average like the other major 4 sports in this country, you'd see a huge surge in poor young black kids playing the game trying to go pro. yes players like Ronaldo are making big money in Europe but that doesn't really resonate with the average poor kid here in the states. there's a reason why you see a lot of families crying and hear a lot of "lifelong dream" talk at the NBA and NFL draft. becoming an overnight millionaire for top players is a very real motivation for young kids that doesn't quite exist here in the States for soccer. the average salary for the NHL is like $1.5M which is the lowest for the Big 4 sports. the average in MLS is like $200-300k. once that comes up to $1M per player in MLS, things will change quickly. a lot of so-called soccer purists here in the States always talk about how we shouldn't "Americanize" soccer when that's exactly what we should be doing.

would even want that.

Most would much rather prefer rooting for people that look like them even if most of them are from Canada and Europe with names they can’t pronounce.

Similarly I feel there are a significant amount of soccer people who don’t want to see Team USA look like France’s squad.

They are some of the same people who say they don’t really “care for” the NBA or they prefer to watch college ball.

>Similarly I feel there are a significant amount of soccer
>people who don’t want to see Team USA look like France’s
>squad.

granted they're a minority and even more so when the team wins, but we're not so far removed from uber-dumb controversies over Benzema not singing the national anthem (which Platini didn't do either btw)

Also it's amazing how every major competition I have coworkers comment on how France has so few white players, while using every available euphemism to not say it openly ("Matuidi or Umtiti, that doesn't sound very French, hardy har har"). Every single time, like fucking clockwork. With fellow Euros being the worst offenders

when it comes to sports, especially a national stage.

Belgium. France.

Everything Mario Balotelli has faced his whole life.

Because if it was just about money...we would see more black MLBers

i.e. there's more to black dominance in NBA/NFL than a potential financial windfall

>Because if it was just about money...we would see more black
>MLBers

the lack of black MLB players is a whole different issue, but part of it definitely is the money. the opportunity to get big money in MLB isn't the same as the NBA or the NFL. if you're a young athlete with options and you could maybe choose to focus on baseball or basketball, basketball is probably going to win out in that situation. there's obviously other nuances to the whole thing but money is indeed a big part of it.

>i.e. there's more to black dominance in NBA/NFL than a
>potential financial windfall

again, I do realize that there's more to it than that and I don't think that money is all of the motivation but it is a very important factor. since you brought up the MLB ... I don't think it's a coincidence at all that the shift away from the MLB and toward the NBA/NFL for black athletes occurred around the same time as the money in the latter sports started to really blow up.

How old were you when you started playing sports?

I was beginning middle school, around 10-12y.o. when I tried out for the bball team

I wasn't thinking about money, at all

But you're wrong

If money was the motivator, the NFL would be the last option because the contracts aren't guaranteed

We would see more black MLBers if that was the case

And before somebody says baseball is cost prohibitive, DR disagrees

NBAers may make more on average

But there's so many more professional baseball players, leagues, etc...the potential to actually turn pro is greater

The shift away from baseball was after Barry Bonds...somehow he's the fall guy for the steroid era.

and ice skating is hard as shit

though I would argue that there's more black NHL star players now that I can remember. I don't even follow the NHL like that and I know PK Subban is a big time star in the league. when's the last time you remember a black guy being one of the big stars in NHL? there was another black guy who was the MVP of the NHL All-Star game recently. I have no idea how many blacks are currently playing in the NHL but i'm willing to bet it's more than it's ever been (no desire to actually Google it).

however that's not the point I was making. I only referenced the NHL because of the big 4 sports in the U.S. they have the lowest average salary which is still over a million a year per player. if the American soccer league got it's numbers up to that level we'd see a surge in young black players. is that the only reason, no of course not. is it a big factor? absolutely.

I don't think kids are considering contracts on the playground.

>I don't think kids are considering contracts on the
>playground.

do kids know contract terms? of course not. but trust me, they are well aware of the top players in the NBA, NFL, etc. my son is 6 and is well aware of KD, LeBron and Steph Curry. these kids look up to these guys and want to be like them. money absolutely plays a part in how these guys are viewed and treated whether you know details about the money or not. the parents also are aware of how much money these guys can potentially make. if you think that doesn't somewhat play into how much time and effort gets put into youth sports, then i'm not sure what to tell you.

If anything I am a little surprised at how few recent immigrants (e.g. Latinos, Africans, Arabs) are there. I figured the whole squad would be first and second generation immigrants who had the soccer culture from the old country but the nutrition and weight training of the USA.

Like I have said a million times, we don't have a *culture* around soccer here, the passion that other countries have. Our athletes are more than adequate, even given that the top athletes may not pursue the sport in favor of basketball or football or whatever. Are you going to tell me that Uruguay or Croatia produces better athletes than even our B or C team? No way. It isn't about that. We have athletes, what we don't have are *players*

my brother had to coach his kid's soccer team (7 years old), and my brother never played, and knows nothing about soccer. It's 7 year olds, so no big deal, but then imagine a team of 7 year olds in Brazil, there's NO WAY that their coach would not have played.

Not to mention, every time you go the beach there's games being played with some ridiculously skilled players. They have public futsal courts that stay full all day. It's just all over. They're getting way more reps than US players and developing more skills, just because it's such a part of the culture.

These are the kids that will save us from the Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidores and Geoff Camerons.

CHICAGO — With its gables, turrets and iron railing, U.S. Soccer House — as the mansion housing the U.S. Soccer Federation is known — looks more like a fortress than the headquarters of a major sports organization. It is fitting: The federation is on the defensive.

It is bad enough that the men’s national team failed to qualify for this summer’s World Cup, a fact the federation was reminded of daily as the tournament in Russia dazzled global audiences on its way to crowning a new champion Sunday.

The real threat, however, to its mission to make soccer one of America’s pre-eminent sports is here at home, where youth players are abandoning the game in alarming numbers.

Over the past three years, the percentage of 6- to 12-year-olds playing soccer regularly has dropped nearly 14 percent, to 2.3 million players, according to a study by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which has analyzed youth athletic trends for 40 years. The number of children who touched a soccer ball even once during the year, in organized play or otherwise, also has fallen significantly.

In general, participation in youth sports nationwide has declined in the past decade, as children gravitate to electronic diversions and other distractions.

Yet in recent years, while soccer continued declining, baseball and basketball experienced upticks, buoyed by developmental programs begun by Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association.

“It’s lost more child participants than any other sport — about 600,000 of them,” said Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program. As he pointed out, that’s enough to fill every stadium on any given match day during the 2026 World Cup, which the United States will host with Mexico and Canada.

The decline has been felt everywhere: recreational leagues in longtime soccer hotbeds here; high-profile traveling teams from Maryland to California; programs targeted at Latino and immigrant populations in South Texas. High burnout rates from pushing children into travel soccer too young as well as the high costs of programs have also contributed to the lower numbers.

Lisa Sparrow has seen the sport lose kids up close. She’s a regional commissioner of the American Youth Soccer Organization, known as AYSO and one of the federation’s members, in suburban Evanston, Ill. For $190, children compete in a 16-game season; financial aid is offered. Everyone gets balanced playing time, and the league’s emphasis is on having fun and embracing virtues like good sportsmanship rather than winning.

Still, her league lost 250 players — or nearly 19 percent — from 2016 to last year, she said, and registration is trending downward for 2018.

“There is so much competition out there that there’s been talk about bringing everyone under one program,” Ms. Sparrow said.

Some left to sample other sports, she said, and others were lured away to travel teams such as neighboring FC United, for which parents pay up to $2,500 for a nearly year-round schedule. But as the proliferation of club and travel teams has expanded into the preteen levels, and sometimes even younger, many players get discouraged.

“We put them in tryout and team situations before they are psychologically and emotionally ready,” said Chris Moore, chief executive officer of the U.S. Youth Soccer Association. “So if you can’t make a travel team some kids may say, ‘what’s the point,’ and quit playing altogether.”


The exodus of players in youth leagues has drawn recriminations over clubs and leagues that have pushed and profited from a “pay-for-play” model that has turned off parents and kept out talent from poorer, underserved communities.

“My family would not have been able to afford to put me in soccer if I was a young kid today,” Hope Solo, the former goalkeeper of the 2015 Women’s World Cup championship team, said at a conference in New York last month. “That obviously alienates so many communities, including Hispanic communities, the black communities, the rural communities and underrepresented communities. Soccer, right now, has become a rich, white-kid sport.”

U.S. Soccer Federation officials acknowledge that the sport is losing players at a time the federation itself is undergoing critical transition. Ryan Mooney, the federation’s chief soccer officer, said strengthening participation was the foundation of building elite national teams.

“The quality of what you put in is the quality of what you get out,” Mr. Mooney said.

This year, Carlos Cordeiro was elected president of the federation to succeed Sunil Gulati, who declined to run for a fourth term after the men’s team failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

Mr. Cordeiro has promised to increase the numbers in youth soccer by making it more affordable and more inclusive. Currently, American households with more than $100,000 in annual income provide 35 percent of soccer players, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, compared with 11 percent from households earning $25,000 or less.

Brad Rothenberg, who co-founded Alianza de Futbol to develop amateur soccer among Latinos, said U.S. Soccer had invested little in identifying talent in Latino and African-American communities. Over the past decade, his organization has held more than 300 events across the country for young players and has sent dozens of them to club teams in Mexico.

In 2016, however, Mr. Rothenberg, whose father, Alan, was once the president of U.S. Soccer, said the federation told him not to promote its brand to the 250,000 Latinos who attend the club’s events, partly because Alianza had not produced what the federation thought was an elite player, partly because it was not a member of U.S. Soccer.
Image
Many in the soccer community are worried the pipeline of talented players is drying up because of the rising costs of participating in competitive soccer leagues.CreditEd Garza

A spokesman for U.S. Soccer declined to comment about the incident.

“If year after year, at every decision point, U.S. Soccer continues to alienate Latinos and blacks, we are going to sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of the world get better,” Mr. Rothenberg said.

The Urban Soccer Leadership Academy in San Antonio illustrates the potential for growth. It has expanded to more than 500 players — predominantly Latino, low income and considered at high risk of dropping out of school — by working closely with the city’s schools.

Although the federation has installed an academy system to standardize coaching and culture, many believe it chokes off a pathway for young players. Academy members are forbidden to play on their high school or college teams.

“Soccer is the fastest-growing sport in urban schools,” said Ed Garza, the former mayor of San Antonio and president of the academy. “It’s part of the cultural dynamic.

“Why would you want to shut down that potential pipeline?”

When he came here three years ago from the Netherlands, Nico Romeijn, U.S. Soccer’s chief sport development officer, recognized that Americans might want to win too badly.

Parents pay for private coaching and push their children into joining expensive club teams in the hope of chasing college scholarships or even entry at elite schools.

“We need to do a better job of engaging and educating parents,” Mr. Romeijn said.