Soccer in the Hood

A great article I found in the Vault…  Still relevant…  by Mark W. Wright

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Pretty boy David Beckham recently told CBS’ 60 Minutes that he’s “passionate about the fact [soccer] can grow [in American] and the potential is huge here.” But he cautioned his interviewer, adding, “Things aren’t going to turn around and get bigger [in the U.S.] in the next six months or a year. It’s going to take five, ten years to obviously grow the game.”

That may be, but Becks is missing one very important point that no one in the sport in America wants to identify: Soccer will never truly flourish here until Black kids in the ‘hood embrace it. Until there is a Black face —and with all due respect to Freddy Adu and his skills, we are talking about a Black, American born-and-bred face — plastered across the tube, a la LeBron James or Reggie Bush, the world’s most popular sport won’t matter in the world’s most powerful country.

But the onus isn’t on Black kids. The game has to be marketed to them—meaning corporate America has to buy in (by building fields, support rec leagues, supporting high school programs, etc.) and share some of the money that’s spent on soccer in white suburbia, where some 18 million kids play every year, according to FIFA.

Our kids are playing, but somewhere between ages 8 and 11, we lose them to other sports. We’ve been here before, though. Pele was 34 when he came to America in the ’70s to take the game to new heights. But like Becks, he was past his prime.

But maybe the tide’s starting to turn. Prominent Hollywood entertainment executive Joe Roth (and majority owner of Major League Soccer’s new Seattle franchise) says he’d “rather have five Jozy Altidores than five David Beckhams.”

Altidore is a 17-year-old scoring sensation who plays for MLS’ New York Red Bulls as well as the U-20 National Team (with Adu). Altidore, coincidentally, just became the second youngest athlete ever featured on an EA SPORTS videogame cover.

“In Altidore,” Roth pointed out, “we’ve got a dynamic player who isn’t even 20. He’s the one the 15-year-olds can identify with, the type that can bridge the disconnect between the countless 5-year-olds playing out there and older teenagers who lost interest.” Just imagine if we had initiatives like Concrete2Green or FC Harlem — organizations devoted to developing the game of soccer in urban and disadvantaged communities in the United States, supported by Nike and Home Depot and Honda?

Imagine how many Jozy Alitdores would “pop up.” We don’t hate Becks here; we love him, in fact. But what he’s been tasked with he will never complete–not without Black faces and American accents.

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