With my two sons playing in a recreational league in the Bay Area this year, and myself started coaching youth teams last year, I started to reflect on my football experience growing up, and how soccer is developing in the U.S.A.

September, North of France, it was pouring rain. Earlier in the game the goal keeper slipped and badly hit his head on a goal post. After what appeared like an eternity sitting on the bench, the coach called my name. I was eight years old, and it was my official debut on the field. By the end of the game I was drenched, cold, and my legs looked like I went through a mud bath. I was hooked. Soccer is fun!

California is a different weather. My son's first game was early morning, perfect weather: sunny, not yet too hot. There were six games going on at the same time. Parents were lining up the sidelines cheering. That was fun, yet a totally different experience than youth games in Europe.

As a soccer player in France 30 years ago, the weekly routine was typically:

• Wednesday: 2h practice in the afternoon at the training facility for the club.
• Thursday: Check the list printed at the "Cafe des sports", a bar downtown, to see if you were on the A team, B team or staying home this week-end.
• Saturday:
  • Home game: meet at the stadium locker room, wait eagerly for the coach to hand you a jersey with the number you became accustomed to. Dress up. Step on the pitch.
  • Away game: Meet at "Cafe des sports" (It didn't seem to bother anyone to have kids hanging out in a bar 30 years ago), get in the mini-bus, or one of the 2-3 accompanying parents car. Drive to the Away game stadium, and follow the same locker room routine.

As a parent of a soccer player in the U.S. in 2025:

• Each player must buy their kit on top of the player registration fee.
• Each parent drives their kids to each game.
• Players come dressed up to the game. There are no locker rooms. There are no dedicated soccer stadiums either.
• Teams are formed once a year, based on parents financial abilities (and secondarily kids soccer skills for "Competitive" teams).

While attending youth soccer games in Europe can be dangerous, with violent incidents reported every week-end, as a parent, the U.S. Soccer landscape is really nice, akin to a membership for a private social club.

What is a Soccer Club?

The most frustrating experience when you arrive in the U.S. soccer landscape from Europe is that both places use the word "Club" to mean two different realities.

In Europe, a soccer club is a professional or amateur senior team. A small village can have a soccer club with one team, and participate in the lowest division league. Bigger clubs in more populated centers typically have a youth development academy. Financing of amateur European clubs is based on a mixture of local public funds (i.e. city), private sponsorships, beer sales (non-negligible!), training compensation and solidarity payments. Both of these latest two sources of revenue are paid when a player developed at the Club moves from an amateur to a professional status, or moves between professional clubs respectively.

In the U.S. Senior and Youth levels are mostly separated. Furthermore, the top soccer league in the U.S, Major League Soccer (MLS) is a closed league. In many ways a MLS Club is closer to a regional office of MLS, rather than an independent business entity - i.e. MLS players are contracted directly to Major League Soccer (the league), not individual clubs, making them league employees. - Please read the previous sentence again!

A Youth soccer club typically has no senior first team. It's revenue comes primarily from parents paying membership due for kids 5 to 12 years old to participate in the sport - After U12, schools and university provide parallel competitive paths to playing soccer outside a Youth soccer club.

Youth club leagues are a patchwork of private entities - resulting for example in CalNorth and NorCal being two completely separate leagues in North California. These leagues have complex rules to "promote" the sport, such that a Youth club must run a "recreational" league, to participate in competitive matches against other youth clubs within the league - effectively recreating the MLS model at the amateur/youth level. Recreational Players pay membership due to the Youth Club to play in a team that participate in the Club's closed recreational league.

What is the impact on player development?

While the financial incentive of a European soccer club is to develop a player that can have the longest career possible, with a peak in performance at 25 year old, the financial incentives of a U.S. Youth Club is to prepare athletes that can compete for a university education grant, with a peak performance at 18 year old, and a career ending by 25.

This difference has a huge impact on player development with regards to maximizing long-term health, and minimizing injuries. The amount of career-ending injuries amongst U.S. youth athletes is scary.

The financial incentives also have side-effects when it comes to adapt the opposition challenge to growing kids, physically and intellectually.

In a European soccer club, you can often see 30 to 40 kids of "relatively" the same age, with three or four coaches on the pitch on a Wednesday afternoon. A, B and C Teams are only meaningful on Saturdays games, not during practices. Kids have a change to develop alongside, and against, a variety of potential teammates. Each kid has a chance to be evaluated directly by the top coaches on a weekly basis. Once a year, a scout from a bigger club will come by, and coaches will use the occasion to organize analytic tests and gather hard data: 30m sprint time, maximum number of juggles from the left foot, from the right foot, etc.

In a U.S. Youth club, players are split into programs (competitive or recreational), age groups, and teams; Each program, each team, each coach, is his own little island. There is a single hour of try-out per year to decide which kid goes to which team. Try-outs are often small-sided games where players are evaluated by coaches based on the "eye test" - no 30m sprint time, no juggling, no data.

No data! In Silicon Valley! That might explain why the percentage of international players in D1 College soccer has steadily increased over the past ten years, leading to 73% of starters in 2024 Men's NCAA Finals being international players. Once parents get a hold of those studies, U.S. Youth Soccer Club will be forced to review their value proposition, especially on the Men's side. - On the Woman's side, the U.S. has historically been more competitive, and other countries have only recently started to poor resources into their Women soccer teams.