While soccer teams typically field 11 players per side, there may actually be as many as 13 or 14 Mexican nationals on the field at some points during the game. This is because there are five players of Mexican-descent on the United States team and several of them have dual citizenship. One of the players, Edgar Castillo (Puebla), even played for the Under 23 national team of Mexico from 2007 to 2008. Due to the fact that he never played at the senior level he was able to switch to the United States team in 2009 according to the rules of the international soccer governing body, FIFA.
Omar Gonzalez (LA Galaxy), Michael Orozco (Puebla), Joe Corona (Club Tijuana), and Jose Torres (Tigres) comprise the other Mexican-descent players on the 23-man U.S. roster. Together they represent 22% of the U.S. team, much higher than the proportion of Mexican-descent individuals in the U.S., which is just over 10%. This is not that surprising given that the U.S. has long struggled to make soccer catch on among the mainstream public and that Mexican immigrants to the U.S. bring with them the passion of their country’s most popular sport.
What is really surprising is that the addition of Latino and specifically Mexican players to the U.S. Men’s National Team is only a fairly recent development. Not too long ago, the great U.S. forward Clint Dempsey, was the closest we could get to Mexican roots on the U.S. team. His claim to fame was that he grew up in Texas and learned his style of attacking soccer playing with his mostly Mexican peers in leagues created and dominated by that ethnic group. While many of these players were never recognized beyond their local leagues, Clint had the good fortune of also playing on an organized traveling team in Dallas, which was how he was recruited to college and eventually recognized by the National Team scouts.
Except for the training in less recognized Mexican leagues, Dempsey’s ascent has been the typical route for United States soccer players. This summer I had a conversation about this with my uncle, who coaches a pretty successful high school soccer team in a largely immigrant and working class Chicago suburb that is predominantly Mexican. He lamented that despite being only a few hundred feet from where a Major League Soccer team plays, a team that sometimes actually used the high school field for practice, the coaches and scouts failed to recognize the immense talent of his players.
My uncle explained that rather than look at the high school level for talent, or even younger, scouts followed the same model of player development that we see in basketball and football: colleges are the de facto minor leagues and recruiting sites for players. The problem with this is that many Latino players who may not be college bound are overlooked. Their careers reach a glass ceiling in Sunday leagues as they work in blue-collar jobs.
In the United States, soccer has long been a game of the elite, played at prep schools and more recently in highly organized and expensive suburban leagues with a mostly white demographic. This gave rise to the idea of the soccer mom, a highly invested parent who has the abundant resources to invest in the recreation of her children. While the financial and time resources of soccer parents are high, what they do not have much of is a deep understanding of soccer and an appreciation for the artistry and creativity in the game.
For these children, soccer may lead to an athletic scholarship at a reputable university, but more than anything it serves as a way to a free education rather than athletic development as it does in NCAA football and basketball. So, these players move into white-collar jobs debt free, seeing this as their path to prosperity rather than through professional sports. Without a powerful domestic professional league to jump into, it is no wonder that they don’t operate as basketball and football players do. Not that they should, as that model is fraught with problems of exploiting the status of “amateur” students to make money for the university. But there are other ways.
A possibility is to emulate the developmental leagues in Europe and Latin America, where children as young as 9 and 10 play on teams sponsored by professional teams with the idea that talent will be recognized early and youth will be trained into future superstars. These youth teams scout each other and offer paths to the most elite leagues in the world. Lionel Messi of Argentina was recognized this way by Barcelona as an eleven year old. In fact, the MLS has begun to take this very approach.
It sometimes takes a more concerted approach and a strong and wise leader to take advantage of this new infrastructure. The United States seems to have this in Jurgen Klinsmann, the former German soccer superstar and current coach of the National Team. He has noted that he would really like to develop a unique homegrown American style of soccer and that a big part of that is looking to some of the greatest American young soccer talent, Latinos.
Some, like former National Team player Alexi Lalas, have suggested that American (white) players would be excluded with such an approach, but he seems to be missing the point about just who is an American. Focusing on bringing up Latinos may be just what the United States needs to truly develop an American style. And for those Mexican-descent children who find that they may have been looked over in their, they can still have a chance for soccer glory south of the border-it may be just the remedy that Mexican soccer needs as well. And they may already be on this path; they have two American-born players on their squad in Carlos Salcido and Isaac Brizuela. It may not matter who you cheer for at all tonight.
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