Amazing quote:
"Here's something the American game has spent 20 years pretending isn't true. Soccer is a poor kid's sport that the United States turned into a rich kid's hobby. Everywhere else on earth the game grows out of dirt. You learn it barefoot on a lot full of broken glass and splinters and a ball that's more tape than leather, and you learn it mean, because the kid across from you is playing for something and you can see it in his eyes. That's where the art comes from. The hunger underneath it.
The U.S. flipped that on its head. Here it's $3,000 club fees and travel tournaments and parents in folding chairs filming highlight reels for college recruiters. Manicured fields, matching kits, a trainer for this and a specialist for that. We took the poorest kids' game in the world and made it a country club for the comfortable, then wondered why the product came out soft. Pretentious. Entitled. Allergic to the part of the game that actually hurts."