> That story almost certainly wouldn’t happen today in America, for the simple reason that the youth-soccer culture here is mainly built on a profit-driven “pay to play” system. Parents fork over heavy fees to enroll their child in local clubs that charge for training, field rentals, coaching, and travel. As a result, soccer remains a mostly suburban, middle- and upper-class sport. (Not that soccer is the only game that requires American parents to dig in their pockets: According to one study, the cost of all youth sports rose by 46 percent from 2019 to 2025.)While not untrue, I think this misses the fact why this exists. In the US, large accessible grass fields acceptable for playing soccer, especially in lower income areas, is practically nonexistent. Whereas, you can pretty much find a basketball court somewhere in every neighborhood in America, and sans that, a driveway that has one, which is why you see a lot of kids coming from nothing excelling in that sport, similar to soccer in other countries.
Hacker News