Do we even care about the children?
I’m a dreamer. As a kid, soccer was my sport. I spent hours and hours building my skills with a soccer ball. I ran and ran. I went to every practice. I learned strategy. I was good. I thought I could go pro one day. I was captain of my high school team. I walked on to the team at my University, and promptly twisted my ankle during tryouts. I gave up that dream, partly because I hurt myself and missed making that team, and partly because during tryouts, I saw that I was not exceptional. I was good, but so were all these other guys, and many of them were taller, stronger, and better shots than me.
My own dream was dashed, but I held onto another dream for longer. The dream was that the USA would build a soccer culture and come to win the World Cup. It seemed possible. As a kid in the 1980s, I watched all the high schools around me start soccer teams. One day, there was only basketball, football, wrestling, and track, and the next, we had soccer everywhere. Soccer was the sport of the future. It seemed like just a matter of time before the USA would catch up to the other countries. It seemed like it might happen in the 1990s. In 1994, we did well in the World Cup, and a new national soccer league started, the MLS.