BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, False Dilemma, and Loss Aversion, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 15% saturation with 499 hits. Analysis detected 2,734 faulty-reasoning hits from 3,320 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 55.2% and a BS Rank of 58% (8,440 of 19,908 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 57.60% of the article peer group.
The postmortems on the U.S.
Men’s National Team’s elimination in the round of 16 during this World Cup had a lot of ground to cover: exposing the American pay-to-play club system, admiring the human-development-forward youth sports system in Norway, considering the aggressive pre-professional academy system in England, understanding how private equity is hollowing out a working-class sport.
For my part, I can tell you that as the father of a reasonably skilled young player who has been in the sausage factory of this world, I know youth soccer in America reflects some of our worst national systems.
We have lived it.
The first time a coach tried to tell me what my older son was, my son was 6.
My son had finished a week of soccer camp that ended with a tryout for a selective travel team in Dallas.
We did not know he was being evaluated that week.
A coach called me and laid out a whole future for a young boy who still wanted to be held during thunderstorms.
Our son crawled faster than other kids walked.
He didn’t care for a basketball hoop.
T-ball held no interest.
He loved dance class, especially tap.
He was a physically intrepid toddler seemingly powered by cold fusion.
I was a keen but mediocre soccer player, and his mother was a very good one, captain of her team at a competitive school.
When our Dutch friends gifted my son a mini soccer ball emblazed with the logo of Ajax, the legendary Amsterdam club, my son kept it at his feet for years.
He’d kick around with me at home, play with his nanny and her family, Hugo Sánchez– and Maradona–revering Mexican Americans.
When his mom would return from her taxing job, she’d kick off her shoes and play one-twos with our son.
I played defense on him as he dribbled past me in the narrow hallways of our house, encouraging him to use both his feet, cheering when, at 4, he could trap the ball and turn in one motion.
Two years later, when that Dallas coach called me to offer my then-6-year-old the chance to join “his” team, all the grown man spoke of was finality.
In his eyes, my son was a finished product.
The coach said that my son was “a natural at defense.
We seem him as a Paolo Maldini.
A Philipp Lahm.”
For the soccer newbie, that’s like saying a child barely old enough to brush their own teeth unsupervised is going to be a Myles Garrett or a Scottie Pippen.
The coach said he was going to send me the sign-up forms and a contract.
A contract.
It would cost $2,000 to join the team for a six-month “season.”
We’d pay that twice annually.
Another $200-plus in uniform costs.
A hundred for a bag.
Lexus dealers don’t move this fast with junk charges.
He tried to hang up before I responded, but I had done my research.
I asked a couple questions: Why does this league play games 5 vs. 5, reducing the number of touches, compared to 3 vs.
3?
And why are you talking positions about a kid so young?
The academies at Barcelona and at Ajax—two of Europe’s best—don’t lock a kid into a position until their teenage years.
The coach sighed.
“If he’s going to be on a team, he needs a position.
And, hey, everyone’s got to get their position sometime.”
We did not sign the contract.
Instead, my son played as he had before.
It did get harder over the next year.
Kids his age were not hanging around the park to play pickup games.
They were already in the circuit of piano lesson Monday, tennis lesson Tuesday, and, of course, travel soccer team practice on Wednesdays.
Our second child, his younger brother, was still a toddler and absorbed both my and his mother’s attention.
I was hitting my limits as a training partner.
Nutmegging Dad and curling free kicks past Dad and then asking Dad for a particular kind of pasta for dinner will eventually lose its charm.
An impulse took hold : My kid really likes something that he is also good at.
I can’t let that desire of his die on the vine.
I want to offer him something more.
When I let the program director know that my son would not be returning next year, the conversations unraveled.
He asked if we were going to another club, then ran down the other clubs in the area before I had a chance to tell him that, no, my son is simply not doing travel soccer next year.
The Princeton club coach said that every year my son didn’t play travel soccer, the more he’d fall behind his peers, and that he might not be able to return to the club.
I tried to be diplomatic.
I mentioned that my son would always play soccer, but he wants to do other sports like skating, swimming, rock climbing, and squash.
I told the coach that I’m sure he’d agree that avoiding specialization and exploring other sports helps with general athletic development, reduces injury risks from overtraining, and, you know, is fun and good.
I reached for a reference I thought he’d understand.
Holistic training—that’s how Spanish club Real Sociedad runs its academy, another talent factory that counts current Spanish World Cup stars Mikel Oyarzabal and Martín Zubimendi among its alumni.
“All I know is that travel soccer is the only way your son will get better, and every year he doesn’t do travel, he’s losing opportunities.
Let’s call it a gap year, and you call me next spring,” he said.
If the goal is to produce a winning men’s national team, then so be it.
Forces besides private equity will need to take an interest in youth soccer.
You want American soccer to be more inclusive and more focused on developing the average kid’s experiences with the world’s most popular game?
Great!
Let’s do what the Dutch did and install Cruyff Courts from sea to shining sea.
Let’s set up public facilities like the Norwegians with AstroTurf fields.
Let’s create more car-free zones in cities so kids can actually play in the street.
Let’s ban selective soccer clubs for kids under 12, as the Norwegians did.
Let’s get private equity out of kids’ sports.
This past winter was wonderfully snowy in central New Jersey.
My Texas-born kids had never seen real snow before, and after a few weekends marshaling the neighborhood kids into multi-hour snowball fights and expeditions around the creeks and woods of our neighborhood, they got bored.
Cabin fever arrived.
Through the soccer grapevine in Princeton, I found out that a few coaches who had left one of the intense, expensive travel teams in the area were doing their own low-key sessions in the gym of a small local Catholic school.
The fee for 12 Saturday sessions was reasonable.
I signed my children up, both my older son, who loves soccer, and my younger son, who doesn’t really, but loves his brother and loves to tag along.
The gym was quiet.
The coaches introduced themselves to me and to the boys and invited them to warm up however they saw fit.
A few more families trickled in, one speaking Dutch, one speaking Russian, another speaking Spanish.
A dozen kids showed up, one or two as experienced as my older son, the rest ranging from pure rookie (my younger son) to happy casual.
The coaches conducted the children like an orchestra.
The coaches were from Bulgaria, themselves trained in the Soviet academies of the Balkans in the 1980s.
The children began still, with one foot on top of the ball.
For 10 minutes, it was basic drills for foot and ankle mobility, rolling the ball across all the surfaces of the foot.
When my younger son struggled and lost his balance, one of the older, serious-looking coaches—a coach whose biography mentioned his training in Sofia, his career playing in the smaller leagues of Eastern Europe—came to him and patiently helped him for minutes, even taking his ankle and gently showing him how to move his foot to the right position.
It became a beautiful sound: children practicing with learned adults helping them, those adults never raising their voices, never chiding a child for a mistake, but instead showing them how to move, how to notice the progress you’ve made, and how to be satisfied with it.
When I saw a father on the sidelines throw up his hands in frustration at that, I lost another fragment of hope for us.
So that was my son’s first and only year doing travel soccer.
He might do it again, a few years from now.
The madness of the system won’t change a lick.
Even the indecision and halfway-everything of the system won’t change.
When I let the program director know that my son would not be returning next year, the conversations unraveled.
He asked if we were going to another club, then ran down the other clubs in the area before I had a chance to tell him that, no, my son is simply not doing travel soccer next year.
The Princeton club coach said that every year my son didn’t play travel soccer, the more he’d fall behind his peers, and that he might not be able to return to the club.
I tried to be diplomatic.
I mentioned that my son would always play soccer, but he wants to do other sports like skating, swimming, rock climbing, and squash.
I told the coach that I’m sure he’d agree that avoiding specialization and exploring other sports helps with general athletic development, reduces injury risks from overtraining, and, you know, is fun and good.
I reached for a reference I thought he’d understand.
Holistic training—that’s how Spanish club Real Sociedad runs its academy, another talent factory that counts current Spanish World Cup stars Mikel Oyarzabal and Martín Zubimendi among its alumni.
“All I know is that travel soccer is the only way your son will get better, and every year he doesn’t do travel, he’s losing opportunities.
Let’s call it a gap year, and you call me next spring,” he said.
If the goal is to produce a winning men’s national team, then so be it.
Forces besides private equity will need to take an interest in youth soccer.
You want American soccer to be more inclusive and more focused on developing the average kid’s experiences with the world’s most popular game?
Great!
Let’s do what the Dutch did and install Cruyff Courts from sea to shining sea.
Let’s set up public facilities like the Norwegians with AstroTurf fields.
Let’s create more car-free zones in cities so kids can actually play in the street.
Let’s ban selective soccer clubs for kids under 12, as the Norwegians did.
Let’s get private equity out of kids’ sports.
This past winter was wonderfully snowy in central New Jersey.
My Texas-born kids had never seen real snow before, and after a few weekends marshaling the neighborhood kids into multi-hour snowball fights and expeditions around the creeks and woods of our neighborhood, they got bored.
Cabin fever arrived.
Through the soccer grapevine in Princeton, I found out that a few coaches who had left one of the intense, expensive travel teams in the area were doing their own low-key sessions in the gym of a small local Catholic school.
The fee for 12 Saturday sessions was reasonable.
I signed my children up, both my older son, who loves soccer, and my younger son, who doesn’t really, but loves his brother and loves to tag along.
The gym was quiet.
The coaches introduced themselves to me and to the boys and invited them to warm up however they saw fit.
A few more families trickled in, one speaking Dutch, one speaking Russian, another speaking Spanish.
A dozen kids showed up, one or two as experienced as my older son, the rest ranging from pure rookie (my younger son) to happy casual.
The coaches conducted the children like an orchestra.
The coaches were from Bulgaria, themselves trained in the Soviet academies of the Balkans in the 1980s.
The children began still, with one foot on top of the ball.
For 10 minutes, it was basic drills for foot and ankle mobility, rolling the ball across all the surfaces of the foot.
When my younger son struggled and lost his balance, one of the older, serious-looking coaches—a coach whose biography mentioned his training in Sofia, his career playing in the smaller leagues of Eastern Europe—came to him and patiently helped him for minutes, even taking his ankle and gently showing him how to move his foot to the right position.
It became a beautiful sound: children practicing with learned adults helping them, those adults never raising their voices, never chiding a child for a mistake, but instead showing them how to move, how to notice the progress you’ve made, and how to be satisfied with it.
When I saw a father on the sidelines throw up his hands in frustration at that, I lost another fragment of hope for us.
So that was my son’s first and only year doing travel soccer.
He might do it again, a few years from now.
The madness of the system won’t change a lick.
Even the indecision and halfway-everything of the system won’t change.
When I let the program director know that my son would not be returning next year, the conversations unraveled.
He asked if we were going to another club, then ran down the other clubs in the area before I had a chance to tell him that, no, my son is simply not doing travel soccer next year.
The Princeton club coach said that every year my son didn’t play travel soccer, the more he’d fall behind his peers, and that he might not be able to return to the club.
I tried to be diplomatic.
I mentioned that my son would always play soccer, but he wants to do other sports like skating, swimming, rock climbing, and squash.
I told the coach that I’m sure he’d agree that avoiding specialization and exploring other sports helps with general athletic development, reduces injury risks from overtraining, and, you know, is fun and good.
I reached for a reference I thought he’d understand.
Holistic training—that’s how Spanish club Real Sociedad runs its academy, another talent factory that counts current Spanish World Cup stars Mikel Oyarzabal and Martín Zubimendi among its alumni.
“All I know is that travel soccer is the only way your son will get better, and every year he doesn’t do travel, he’s losing opportunities.
Let’s call it a gap year, and you call me next spring,” he said.
If the goal is to produce a winning men’s national team, then so be it.
Forces besides private equity will need to take an interest in youth soccer.
You want American soccer to be more inclusive and more focused on developing the average kid’s experiences with the world’s most popular game?
Great!
Let’s do what the Dutch did and install Cruyff Courts from sea to shining sea.
Let’s set up public facilities like the Norwegians with AstroTurf fields.
Let’s create more car-free zones in cities so kids can actually play in the street.
Let’s ban selective soccer clubs for kids under 12, as the Norwegians did.
Let’s get private equity out of kids’ sports.
This past winter was wonderfully snowy in central New Jersey.
My Texas-born kids had never seen real snow before, and after a few weekends marshaling the neighborhood kids into multi-hour snowball fights and expeditions around the creeks and woods of our neighborhood, they got bored.
Cabin fever arrived.
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Through the soccer grapevine in Princeton, I found out that a few coaches who had left one of the intense, expensive travel teams in the area were doing their own low-key sessions in the gym of a small local Catholic school.
The fee for 12 Saturday sessions was reasonable.
I signed my children up, both my older son, who loves soccer, and my younger son, who doesn’t really, but loves his brother and loves to tag along.
The gym was quiet.
The coaches introduced themselves to me and to the boys and invited them to warm up however they saw fit.
A few more families trickled in, one speaking Dutch, one speaking Russian, another speaking Spanish.
A dozen kids showed up, one or two as experienced as my older son, the rest ranging from pure rookie (my younger son) to happy casual.
The coaches conducted the children like an orchestra.
The coaches were from Bulgaria, themselves trained in the Soviet academies of the Balkans in the 1980s.
The children began still, with one foot on top of the ball.
For 10 minutes, it was basic drills for foot and ankle mobility, rolling the ball across all the surfaces of the foot.
When my younger son struggled and lost his balance, one of the older, serious-looking coaches—a coach whose biography mentioned his training in Sofia, his career playing in the smaller leagues of Eastern Europe—came to him and patiently helped him for minutes, even taking his ankle and gently showing him how to move his foot to the right position.
It became a beautiful sound: children practicing with learned adults helping them, those adults never raising their voices, never chiding a child for a mistake, but instead showing them how to move, how to notice the progress you’ve made, and how to be satisfied with it.
When I saw a father on the sidelines throw up his hands in frustration at that, I lost another fragment of hope for us.
So that was my son’s first and only year doing travel soccer.
He might do it again, a few years from now.
The madness of the system won’t change a lick.
Even the indecision and halfway-everything of the system won’t change.
When I let the program director know that my son would not be returning next year, the conversations unraveled.
He asked if we were going to another club, then ran down the other clubs in the area before I had a chance to tell him that, no, my son is simply not doing travel soccer next year.
The Princeton club coach said that every year my son didn’t play travel soccer, the more he’d fall behind his peers, and that he might not be able to return to the club.
I tried to be diplomatic.
I mentioned that my son would always play soccer, but he wants to do other sports like skating, swimming, rock climbing, and squash.
I told the coach that I’m sure he’d agree that avoiding specialization and exploring other sports helps with general athletic development, reduces injury risks from overtraining, and, you know, is fun and good.
I reached for a reference I thought he’d understand.
Holistic training—that’s how Spanish club Real Sociedad runs its academy, another talent factory that counts current Spanish World Cup stars Mikel Oyarzabal and Martín Zubimendi among its alumni.
“All I know is that travel soccer is the only way your son will get better, and every year he doesn’t do travel, he’s losing opportunities.
Let’s call it a gap year, and you call me next spring,” he said.
If the goal is to produce a winning men’s national team, then so be it.
Forces besides private equity will need to take an interest in youth soccer.
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