The new cover story in The New York Times Magazine, “How a Soccer Star is Made,” is a long and detailed article about the intense training that has grown up around youth soccer academies in Europe and what American soccer organizations can learn from their way of doing what has become very big business. [Dutch soccer team] Ajax puts young players into a competitive caldron, a culture of constant improvement in which they either survive and advance or are discarded. It is not what most would regard as a child-friendly environment, but it is one that sorts out the real prodigies — those capable of playing at an elite international level — from the merely gifted. From a very early age — sometimes even before a boy has even started school — these players’ careers are contracted, licensed and traded — or in the typical parlance of the sport, bought and sold. As the New York Times reports: No one pretends that its business is other than what it is. “We sold Wesley Sneijder for a ridiculous amount of money,” [trainer Olav] Versloot said. “We can go on for years based on what he was sold for.” … [British team] Fulham, like Ajax, is often a seller of talent. It recently sold a 20-year-old to Manchester United for seven million pounds, or more than $10 million. “It’s a little ugly talking about the financial terms,” [Coach Huw] Jennings said. “I don’t like to do it. It feels not too far off from the slave trade.” With an estimated 10,000 boys being trained by clubs in England alone, the demand for young players — in quantity, at least — may be greater than the number of interested UK youth. Jennings said that his scouts, in response to the “unsuitability of the indigenous population of Britain” — children who are too sedentary and spend their time with video games — were increasingly focused “on the inner city of London, among Africans, Eastern Europeans and Caribbeans.” Even Drogba’s injury, which may keep him out of the World Cup, won’t stop poor boys who grew up playing soccer in dirt fields from wanting to be like him. For an upcoming episode of Vanguard, “Soccer’s Lost Boys,” I travelled to Africa and Europe to examine the dark side of this growing network of recruitment, and to track down the ambitious young African players whose dreams make them an easy target for shady scouts. Unlike European academies where players pay very little to train, these kids’ families are bilked of their meager savings with promises that their boys could be the next Drogba. What happens after that—boys abandoned along the way, often without any money, papers, or ability to return home to their families—is the tragic, ugly underbelly of the beautiful game. Watch the trailer for “Soccer’s Lost Boys,” premiering on Current TV on Wednesday, June 16, at 10/9c, after the jump: added by: MarianaVanZeller
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