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I recently had the good fortune to spend a week on a soccer trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina as a staff coach with the United States Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program and to experience the exhilaration that comes with seeing the sights of a beautiful city for the first time. I was also confronted with some eye-opening comparative realities about the stark cultural differences in what participation in sports can mean to kids in different parts of the world.
Our itinerary called for us to practice and play in a number of facilities in or close to Buenos Aires and it didn't take long to get a sense from the locals about those that have and those that have not. Our team mostly played and trained at the youth complexes of professional clubs and the quality of the playing environments ranged from modest to pristine. These were the facilities provided for those kids fortunate enough to be selected to step onto the lower rungs of the lengthy ladder of Argentine soccer that might one day lead to playing as a professional. Being invited to be part of such a club usually involves living in a dorm with regular meals and high-level coaching and is a privilege that for many youngsters would be akin to winning the lottery.
The professional clubs have scores of registered youngsters who all share the dream of one day making it to the top. There was an edgy, focused air about the kids we watched practice and played against; this was indeed serious business for them and not something to be taken lightly. The answer to why these young boys carry themselves with such determination could usually be found within a half mile of any of the training complexes; that is where the kids who hadn't been selected were often to be found playing. Kids in ragged clothing, beaten-up shoes and of varying ages could be found playing on dusty patches of rutted dirt amongst broken bottles, rocks and ubiquitous stray dogs.
The tall fences surrounding the professional complexes separated the lucky few from the wishful many and the lower working-class backgrounds, and in some cases abject poverty, from which many of these youngsters spring follows a sociological pattern that can be found in most countries around the soccer-playing world. Soccer is, in essence, the world's street game; except in the United States.
There are probably numerous reasons and theories as to why the game has been absorbed by the American middle and upper-middle class and, truth be told, this country already has basketball as its street game so it would be hard to insert soccer in its place. The fact of the matter is that soccer is one of the most popular participation (as opposed to spectator) sports in the United States and its spread and popularity has been enabled and enhanced by the money poured into it by its participants.
As I watched our clean-cut, well-educated high school freshmen and sophomores play against their earthy, pragmatic Argentine counterparts it struck me that the game was merely a vehicle for both groups of kids.
For the locals it was a vehicle to two destinations; one being the glory of becoming a vaunted professional star in a soccer-crazed country, perhaps even a god in the mold of the nation's living deity Diego Maradona; the other being the slim, slippery tightrope leading to an escape from the poverty of the barrio.
By contrast most American kids are fortunate enough to be able to see soccer as a recreational opportunity, a fun distraction, an opportunity to travel and meet other kids that can be picked up and put down whenever it suits. Additionally there is the undoubted benefit of soccer as a vehicle for gaining access to, and perhaps even paying for, a college education. Very few Americans make a career out of the game or see it as a viable means to escape poverty.
It was clear in the heat of the Argentine summer that although there was spirited competition and a commonality of playing rules and codes of conduct whenever we took the field, that was pretty much where
the similarities between teams ended. We were told that most of the Argentine kids would be released at age 17, at which point the club relinquishes all responsibility and the under-educated youngsters are sent back to their families or left to fend for themselves in environments that often feature high unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse and gang membership. The soccer dream is over, the lottery lost.
The American kids will almost certainly pursue collegiate degrees and most will voluntarily walk away from their soccer days to pursue other goals, their sporting dreams fulfilled.
In Argentina, as in most soccer-obsessed countries, the bulk of the money is to be found at the top of the game (picture an inverted pyramid) with the huge, fanatically-supported professional mega-clubs existing as iconic goals for the young, hard-scrabble working class kids to aspire to. Fortunately for those of us who ply our trade as coaches in the United States much of the money is in the broad base of the American soccer pyramid beneath the professional level and resources for high school, club and especially collegiate programs are the equal of many professional complexes in other countries. Because of the presence of other, long-standing American sports such as baseball, basketball and football it is debatable whether soccer will ever achieve the level of popularity it enjoys in other countries and presumably the money will stay at its lower levels and the high quality experiences young people are afforded will continue to be the norm.
As we rode around Buenos Aires in our air-conditioned vans, shopped in tourist boutiques and took our meals in our comfortable hotel it occurred to the coaching staff and many of the youngsters in our squad that their soccer experience had in fact become a vehicle to yet another destination, one of appreciation and realization of our collective good fortune; a place not always too readily acknowledged by those of us that are the "haves" of the world.
