In this week’s edition of Good Soccer Reads, as compiled by the XI twitter feed, we highlight the record of the newest MLS owner, Borussia Dortmund’s charismatic coach, fixture congestion in Brazil and more. If you want to receive the Good Soccer Reads e-mail digest weekly, be sure to subscribe now!

1. Is Major League Soccer selling its soul?

Jeff Carlisle | ESPN FC | May 22, 2013

Perhaps the biggest news in North American soccer this week was the announcement that MLS will be adding a 20th club, New York City FC, in 2015. The team will be co-owned by the current owners of Manchester City and the New York Yankees, and there has been considerable chatter about the news. But Jeff Carlisle discusses one of the less-featured angles of the new club, which the majority owner of the team, Sheikh Mansour, and the human rights policies of his country, the United Arab Emirates. MLS says that they have vetted the new owners, but questions persist.

But what is taking some of the shine off the announcement are some issues surrounding Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sheikh Mansour is a member of the Abu Dhabi Royal family, and is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. According to Forbes, as of 2009 Sheikh Mansour was estimated to have a net worth of nearly $5 billion. The entire family’s holdings are estimated at $150 billion.

It’s not Sheikh Mansour’s wealth that is problematic, especially now that MLS and NYC FC appear to be backing away from a proposal to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Rather, it’s the human rights record in the UAE. The U.S. State Department’s 2012 Report on Human Rights Practices detailed how the country makes arbitrary arrests and criminalizes same-sex activity.

It is the UAE’s maltreatment of its LGBT community that has left MLS open to charges of hypocrisy. The league has launched a public service campaign titled “Don’t Cross the Line” in which fans are encouraged to practice inclusiveness regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.

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2. Jürgen Klopp rallies neutrals to support ‘special’ Borussia Dortmund

Donald McRae | The Guardian | May 20, 2013

You may have heard of the big game this week, between a couple of German teams in London. Yes, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are facing off for the UEFA Champions League title Saturday, and amongst the discussions about the ascendance of the Bundesliga and the scouting reports for the match comes a profile of Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp. In this interview from The Guardian, Klopp reveals his highly engaging personality, by turns humorous, profane, and sentimental. He also appeals to the neutrals that Dortmund is the team to support for the final.

Klopp has previously compared Bayern to a remorseless superpower like China but he waves away that reminder. “I was tired,” he smiles. “Bayern want a decade of success like Barça. That’s OK if you have the money because it increases the possibility of success. But it’s not guaranteed. We are not a supermarket but they want our players because they know we cannot pay them the same money. It could not be our way to do things like Real and Bayern and not think about taxes – and let the next generation pick up our problems. We need to work seriously and sensibly. We have this amount of money so we can pay that amount. But we lose players. Last year it was Shinji Kagawa.”

He hits his head with his palm. “Shinji Kagawa is one of the best players in the world and he now plays 20 minutes at Manchester United – on the left wing! My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji’s best role. He’s an offensive midfielder with one of the best noses for goal I ever saw. But for most Japanese people it means more to play for Man United than Dortmund. We cried for 20 minutes, in each others’ arms, when he left. One year before that Nuri Sahin went because Real Madrid is the biggest club in the world. [Sahin is back at Dortmund after just four appearances for Madrid and an unhappy loan spell at Liverpool]. If players are patient enough we can develop the team into one of the biggest in the world.”

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3. Stoppage Time: Timmy Chandler opens up on future and stalling with U.S. national team

Alex Labidou | Goal.com | May 23, 2013

U.S. Men’s National Team fans have had mixed feelings about defender Timmy Chandler in recent years. A young player with loads of talent and potential, he played in a number of friendlies for the USMNT before stepping back and declining invitations to competitive matches. There was considerable speculation that Chandler, a dual German and American citizen, was holding out for a call-up to the German national team, but he made his competitive debut for the U.S. in their World Cup qualifier against Honduras this spring and is now cap-tied to the U.S. In this interview with Alex Labidou, Chandler explains his thought process the past few years, and reveals a personal concern regarding USMNT service that affects many people but probably didn’t enter most fans’ minds.

Chandler’s aversion to flying might open him up for more criticism. But looking at his club career, he isn’t used to traveling much. He admits that he doesn’t go too far for vacations and neither of his two career club teams, Eintracht Frankfurt and Nürnberg, have played in either the Europa League or Champions League. The city of Nürnberg is just south of the center of Germany, meaning the longest his team has to go for a match on the road is five to six hours.

Compare that to the Americans’ upcoming match schedule – a trip to Cleveland, followed by a flight to D.C., then another flight to Jamaica, then at least a 10-hour flight Seattle. The travel is not easy for players who have never experienced that before.

“Yeah, that’s why it was hard. You fly all the time for 12 hours. I’m a guy that I can’t sleep on the airplanes. It’s a big problem for me,” Chandler stated.

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4. Why Time May Be Running Out for Brazil’s State Championships

James Young | The New York Times | May 23, 2013

Do you know who likes soccer? Brazilians like soccer, of course. Their love of the sport has helped transform the domestic club season into a mammoth, back-breaking endurance test over multiple competitions. And all of this takes place essentially year-round. James Young lays out the entire situation at the moment, and what the future could hold for the persistent fixture congestion in one of the great soccer countries.

BREAKING NEWS: The Premier League has announced that next year’s top division will be played over seven months, rather than the current 10. The off-season will also be cancelled. Instead, for five months of the year the country’s biggest clubs will play provincial tournaments against their much smaller lower-division neighbors. The Manchester giants City and Utd will be tested by not just Bolton and Wigan, but will also have trips to Hyde, Altrincham and Stalybridge Celtic. Players will risk injury on bumpy pitches, most of the games will be as competitive as a dust-up between Anderson Silva and Justin Bieber, and the resulting fixture squeeze will mean that there will be no time to accommodate FIFA international dates, so clubs will play a host of league fixtures without their star players, who’ll be away on international duty.

Except the sleekly corporate beasts of the Premier League would never stand for such nonsense. Risk Carlos Tévez or Robin Van Persie breaking a leg on a stray divot in Droylsden? Run their finely tuned thoroughbreds into the ground for no financial gain? Hardly.

Those seeking a soccer planner’s dream gone mad should instead look to Brazil. The 27 deeply idiosyncratic estaduais (state championships) run from January until the middle of May (the biggest, the Campeonato Paulista, can last for up to 23 matches). After a generous seven days of rest, the bedraggled players stumble into the 38-game Serie A campaign. At the same time, the better teams will still be playing in the Libertadores (up to 14 games), and even their dowdier rivals will be plodding through the Copa do Brasil. And there’s still the unlovely Copa Sul-Americana to come.

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5. Enter the Hagdome

DJ Switzer | In Bed With Maradona | May 3, 2013

Finally this week, comes a story about grassroots soccer from Dayton, Ohio. Indoor soccer facilities are part and parcel of soccer in North America, both for the sake of convenience and climate. But there’s a special story regarding one such facility in Dayton, one built under unique circumstances. As DJ Switzer explains, it is also special because of the word-of-mouth that has led to its legendary status.

Sure, there are some bright spots: there’s the stellar National Museum of the US Air Force, a so-so arts and entertainment hub in the Oregon District, and having the honor of recently being named as the most affordable city in the country. But negative perceptions remain due in large part to the city’s poor job market. Like other cities in the rust belt, the great recession practically evaporated Dayton’s key automotive manufacturing sector and the city has taken a dive because of it. And adding insult to injury, North Carolina continues to wage a campaign to steal the only thunder the Dayton has ever really had: the birth of flight.

But despite all of that, Dayton does have one thing going for it: an incredibly vibrant soccer community. While only 841,000 residents call the Miami Valley region home, that’s more than enough to sustain over 500 youth teams. There’s also a thriving amateur adult league, boasting co-ed, women’s and two men’s divisions, something that the larger, near-by Cincinnati-metro area hasn’t been able to regularly maintain. All five of the city’s indoor soccer facilities are packed year round with youth and adult leagues. There’s even a fully professional side in the USL-Pro’s Dayton Dutch Lions… some else the neighbors to the South can’t boast.

Now most of those are things that probably half a dozen other cities in the Midwest can claim, if not more. But there is one thing that Dayton offers the soccer community that very few — if any — other city can.

The Hagdome.

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One hundred feet below ground, Pumas is developing the next generation of stars. The team’s massive youth development center may be in the middle of Mexico City, but, built in the bowels of a former quarry, it is hidden from the metropolis that surrounds it. Where once workers excavated stone that was used to pave the streets of Mexico City, today Pumas carves future stars from the raw material — the hundreds of players — that makes up its famed youth program. Cantera, the Spanish word for quarry is also the word for the youth programs of professional teams throughout the Spanish-speaking world, including perhaps the most famous cantera in Mexico: that of Pumas.

At street level, the entrance to the Pumas cantera is unremarkable. Located in a quiet, middle class neighborhood, a gate manned by several security guards is the only indication that something special lies within. From street level, a windy road leads down to the base of the carved-out former quarry. After a short trip through a tunnel (originally built to shuttle stone out of the quarry) the main field of the cantera is visible. An oasis of green grass in a sea of gray rock, the cantera is clearly not the first inhabitant of this space. Hundred foot walls of stone make the field, which is surrounded by a gym, a cafeteria, and administrative offices, feel like a world completely separate from Mexico City. A set of narrow stone stairs leads even further down, to a second full-size grass field. Next to it are several smaller dirt fields.

There, on those dirt fields, Pumas held tryouts in December. The tryouts were not in themselves remarkable: As one of the most successful Mexican clubs in developing youth players, Pumas often holds such events, looking for talented young players. But among the group trying out this week were five players who had come not from Mexico City or other parts of Mexico, but from the United States.

One of the American kids was a soft-spoken, skinny 16-year-old named Daniel Olea. Born and raised in Escondido, a city 30 miles northeast of San Diego, he had come to Mexico to pursue his dream of catching on with a professional team. Although Olea’s parents are from Mexico, he had never been to the country before. If he were to make it with Pumas, he would have to do so in an environment thousands of miles from home, 100 feet below ground.

Daniel Olea (center) along with other Mexican-Americans trying out at Pumas

Daniel Olea is just one of many Mexican-American kids who have travelled south in recent years, hoping for a professional career in Mexico. A list that users of the website BigSoccer.com maintain is striking for its size (they counted 85 players eligible for the U.S. national team at the start of the 2011-2012 Mexican league season) as well as the difficulty they have in keeping it up to date. Players travel from the United States to Mexico, especially at the youth level, with amazing regularity. Why are Mexican clubs today recruiting Mexican-American players so heavily? A confluence of events, sporting and geopolitical, has led to this situation.

In the United States, the second half of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st have seen two relevant trends: the concurrent growth of youth soccer and the Latino population in the United States. From 1970, when soccer was in its infancy in the United States, the sport has grown to nearly 14 million players today, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Meanwhile, the Latino population of the United States grew from 9.6 million in 1970 (4.7 percent of the total population at the time) to 50.5 million in 2010 (16 percent of the total), according to Princeton scholars Douglas Massey and Karen Pren. A majority of the Latino population in the United States today has family roots in Mexico, and they form the population among which Mexican clubs are finding success recruiting young players.

Youth soccer has grown tremendously over the past 40 years in the United States, and has developed into a uniquely American system. In the United States, autonomous youth clubs made up of largely affluent players have long been the core participants in youth soccer. Much of the growth of youth soccer in the post-World War II period took place in newly growing suburbs, where affluent parents signed their kids up for this new sport. A system of elite clubs developed, many of which charge high fees. These fees, on top of travel, equipment, and other associated expenses, often total thousands of dollars per year, limiting those who are able to take part in this world of elite youth soccer. In his book, “How Soccer Explains the World,” Franklin Foer writes that the sport in the United States “inverts the class structure of the game” that exists in most of the world.

While youth soccer has grown tremendously over the past half century, the professional game has experienced many ups and downs. The meteoric rise of the NASL in the 1970s was followed by its spectacular collapse in the 1980s. Indoor and semi-professional outdoor soccer were the only options for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. And the recent steady growth of MLS has come only after early years in which it was not clear that the league would survive. As a result, the best youth players in the United States have long been developed in autonomous youth clubs, made up of mostly affluent children, totally disconnected from the professional game.

At the same time that youth soccer was growing in affluent suburbs in the United States, the second half of the 20th century saw an incredible rise in immigration from Latin America. For decades, these immigrants, the majority of whom are low-skill workers from Mexico, have quickly found work building houses, mowing lawns and caring for the children of the growing affluent populations who were moving into new suburbs. Many settled in the United States and in recent years their children and grandchildren have taken up soccer in large numbers.

Today, in areas with large Latino populations, there are two major groups of children who play soccer: affluent suburbanites and working-class Latinos. They don’t always play together: Hugo Salcedo, who has over 30 years experience working for FIFA, U.S. Soccer and MLS, estimates that in Los Angeles alone there are around 40 unaffiliated leagues that cater primarily to the Latino community. Recognizing that many players have been ignored, youth clubs affiliated with USSF have worked to bring in more Latino players. Teams have begun to offer scholarships to allow some talented Latino players from modest backgrounds who would not otherwise be able to afford the annual fees to play for elite clubs. MLS teams have set up youth programs in recent years and several have moved toward the elimination of costs for their players, though the financial realities continue to be a barrier to the participation of talented Latino players. Tony LePore, director of scouting for the U.S. Soccer Development Academy system, recently told Soccer America that while 23 of 80 Academy teams are fully funded, “we have a long way to go.”

At the national team level, the appointment of Colombian-born Wilmer Cabrera to be the under-17 national team coach in 2007 was seen as recognition that the U.S. Soccer system as a whole had done a poor job in reaching out to Latino players. As U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati said at the time, “The fact that he is bilingual, from a Latin-American community, is a plus.” Although Cabrera ended his tenure with the under-17s in 2012, the appointment of Jurgen Klinsmann as the senior national team coach in 2011 has heralded a reorientation towards Latino players. Klinsmann made clear soon after his appointment that he wanted to bring in more Latino players, saying in his first press conference as national team boss, “There’s so much influence coming from the Latin environment over the last 15-20 years. It also has to be reflected in the U.S. National Team.”

Despite these efforts, the youth system in the United States continues to see many talented Latino players slip through the cracks. And Mexican clubs, seeing a vast country sitting just across its northern border with many talented young players who also happen to have Mexican citizenship, have swooped in.

* * *

Daniel Olea has not had the easiest of childhoods. The son of Mexican immigrants living north of San Diego, he currently lives with his stay-at-home mother, Reyna Garcia, and stepfather, Javier Arias, who works at a local Subway restaurant. His parents work to keep him out of trouble, and soccer has been the main tool for doing so.

Daniel Olea has loved soccer for as long as he can remember. His mother recalls that “from four years old, his life has been soccer. He’s always had a ball with him.” Growing up around his father and older brothers, Olea was never far from a soccer ball, and he has long harbored dreams of a professional career. His mother remembers Daniel and a cousin as young kids saying they wanted to be professional soccer players. “He’s always said he wants to be someone. He’s always had the idea of becoming a professional player since he was 10 years old.”

Olea’s mother and biological father separated when he was young, and his brother Eric, six years his senior, took on a fatherly role with young Daniel. “When my dad left, he was the one who took charge and he was like another dad to me,” says Daniel. Eric took his younger brother to soccer games, and the kid soon impressed those around him. Growing up in the Mexican-American community in Escondido, as Olea got older he began to be recruited by various teams in unaffiliated “Mexican” leagues. He was so good, his mother recalls, that team after team would attempt to recruit him. “Wherever we went, wherever he played, people would ask us if he would play for their team.”

Olea developed his talent playing for these unaffiliated teams. He had never played for an affiliated team until two years ago, when he got connected with the local club, known as FC Heat. His mother and stepfather were concerned about the cost, but the club, which has a policy of offering financial aid to all who need it, offered to waive his fees.

While at the Heat, Olea has blossomed. Coach Carlos Hernandez has taken the youngster under his wing, and under his guidance Olea has developed into a skillful forward, with guile and inventiveness rarely seen in a 16-year-old. With this burgeoning talent, Olea began to attend tryouts for professional teams a couple of years ago. He attended a Copa Alianza event, in which scouts from Mexican clubs and the Mexican national team look for players in the United States, as well as tryouts held by the Xolos in San Diego. He impressed the Tijuana team so much that they invited him to train with them in 2012. This training, he says, helped him to improve as a player. “Before I went there, I was normal. But after, I was at a whole different level,” he says. The travel time to practices with the Xolos (Tijuana is an hour from Escondido) eventually proved too difficult, and he had to give up on this dream after six months. Though Olea was disappointed, his mother told him “Look, if becoming professional is for you, you’ll get another chance.”

This chance came at a September 2012 tryout organized by the San Diego-based amateur club Sudaca, whose director of coaching brought up scouts from Pachuca as well as lower-division Zacatepec. In this two-day tryout, Olea impressed the visiting Pachuca scouts. They suggested that he work with Jesus Cardenas, a former professional player in Mexico and the United States who now dedicates himself to training young players north of the border and connecting them to clubs south of it. The club saw talent in him and thought that after a few months of intensive work with Cardenas, he could come down to Mexico for a second tryout with the club there.

Working with Olea over several months, Cardenas was impressed by the young player’s talent. Cardenas insists that American-based young players like Daniel Olea have the ability to make it with Mexican clubs, but the typical training schedules do not prepare young players for professional careers. “In terms of talent, you can compare players here to those in Mexico,” he says. “But the difference is the training, simply because in Mexico young players practice every day and in the United States we don’t have that amount of time with the kids.”

In December, Cardenas arranged a trip to Mexico for Olea and several other young players who aspired to professional careers. The trip was originally scheduled to include tryouts at Pumas and Pachuca, but the latter was cancelled after the club’s goalkeeper coach Miguel Calero suddenly and tragically died at age 41. That meant that Olea had only one chance to catch the eye of Mexican coaches who might offer him a contract.

I asked Olea what it felt like when he first arrived at the Pumas cantera. How did he feel, descending into the bowels of that imposing facility? Was he nervous? “No,” he told me. “I felt like I just wanted to be there. Like it was for me.”

* * *

At the same time that the youth soccer structure in the United States has allowed talented young Latino players to slip through the cracks, Mexican professional clubs have been increasing their investment in scouting and youth development. The tremendous growth of Mexican professional soccer in the second half of the 20th century and early part of the 21st has given clubs resources to invest in future talent, including from the United States.

There are many reasons for the increased focus of Mexican clubs on youth, but one involves a chain of events that begins with the many Mexican citizens who headed north to the United States in the post-World War II period. The establishment of a large U.S.-based Mexican and Mexican-American population, many of whom find a connection to their homeland through soccer, has helped teams throughout Mexico. The teams have profited tremendously, selling merchandise, television rights and tickets to a constant stream of friendly matches staged in the United States.

As a result of this commercial success (not to mention the millions they make within Mexico), Mexican teams have grown rich and have been able to purchase some of the most talented players in the Western Hemisphere. Bringing in these stars from countries such as Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and beyond began to worry some in the Mexican federation, who grew concerned that young Mexican players were being overlooked for expensive foreign signings. In response, the Mexican federation put into place the so-called 20/11 rule in 2005, which required teams to give their under-21 players at least 1000 minutes of playing time per season. The rule was phased out in 2011, deemed no longer necessary after it played a large role in focusing teams on youth development, something teams throughout Mexico now do more than ever before.

As Ramon Villa-Zevallos, head coach of the Pumas under-17 team, put it to me at the December tryout, “Here at Pumas, we have a long tradition of developing youth players. Before, almost no one else produced young players. Now, the competition is fierce. … Pachuca, Chivas, Pumas, everyone is doing a good job developing young players. Everyone is looking anywhere they can to bring in good young players.” And with teams throughout Mexico flush with cash and looking far and wide for the next “Chicharito” Hernandez, it perhaps isn’t surprising that their search has taken them north of the border.

Today, young Mexican-American players can be found on the rosters of teams throughout Mexico. Several teams have made the strongest effort to recruit in the United States. These include Tigres and the Xolos, two teams close to the border (Tigres in Monterrey, a little over two hours from Texas, and the Xolos in Tijuana, just south of San Diego). For these teams, recruiting players in the United States is simple, requiring only a quick trip across the border. Roberto Cornejo, assistant general manager of the Xolos, speaking of current star Joe Corona and top youth prospect Alejandro Guido, both of whom spent much of their childhood in San Diego, told me, “These guys are hometown boys. We consider San Diego our hometown as well.” The Xolos have set up two youth academies in the San Diego region, with the hope of finding “a few new Joe Coronas. San Diego as a region has a lot of talent.”

It’s not just border teams that are recruiting players in the United States. Clubs throughout Mexico have done so, with Santos Laguna, Chivas, Pachuca and Pumas leading the way. The reasons for this increase are many, but the most fundamental reason is the improved standard of play in the United States. Victor Nava, assistant coach of the Pumas reserve team, says, “We’ve seen that players in the United States have a lot of quality.”

Mexican-American players in the United States are not only talented, but also have the advantage of having dual citizenship. Limits on foreign players in the Mexican league don’t apply to these players, giving clubs an extra impetus to recruit them. As Fernando Parra, vice president of Zacatepec, a lower division team with several Mexican-Americans on its books, told me, “many teams have looked for young players who can get dual citizenship and come here to play.” The realization, then, that these players are, for sporting purposes, identical to those living in Mexico has opened up the territory in which Mexican scouts can look for talent. Unlike young players from other parts of Latin America, who have limits placed upon them by the Mexican federation and whose signing often requires a complicated visa process, the recruitment of Mexican-American players involves few bureaucratic hurdles. Players scouted today in the United States can be on a plane next week to practice with a Mexican team.

With talent and Mexican citizenship, these players have become a hot commodity for Mexican clubs. As an investment strategy, the economics of signing Mexican-American youth players makes sense. While clubs have to pay to send scouts on trips to the United States, compared to the potential payoff — the onfield benefit of finding the next Joe Corona and/or the financial windfall from selling such a talented player — these costs are minimal, especially for wealthy Mexican clubs with money to burn.

The cost of signing Mexican-American players is also low because most are not signed to professional contracts with their American teams. Because of the particular youth system that has developed in the United States in which youth clubs are often separate from professional clubs, young players rarely have professional contracts and thus can be signed for free. Marco Garces, head of scouting for Pachuca, tells me, “It’s very interesting for us in the U.S. There are forty million Latin Americans, some of them play really well. And they’re not attached to anyone.”

Even as MLS teams have set up youth academies, only around 50 players have been signed to professional contracts under the league’s Homegrown Player Rule. The rest remain free to leave their American team at any moment to sign with a Mexican club. Garces is dumbfounded by this situation. “They don’t ask for compensation,” he tells me. “It’s weird. I can go and watch the Galaxy train and take their players.” Ramon Villa-Zevallos echoes the sentiment: “We go to the Dallas Cup and we see a whole world of talent. And in the United States, there’s no professional youth system. It ends up being really cheap to bring players here.”

There are many reasons why youth players in the United States are not signed to professional contracts, including labor laws affecting the employment of minors and a strict separation between amateur and professional status that the college system uses as a means to determine eligibility. For years, when the only step beyond youth soccer in the United States was the college game and the vast majority of youth soccer players came from the type of affluent families who would insist on their children attending college, this system was rarely called into question. But as the children of working-class Latinos have come to make up a larger portion of the youth soccer players in the United States and as U.S. Soccer and MLS have made more of an effort to professionalize the youth game in order to produce top quality players, the cracks in the system are becoming more and more apparent.

Mexican clubs, acting purely in their own self-interest, have been among the first to see these cracks, and figure out how to take advantage of them. As Villa-Zevallos puts it, “there are a lot of players in the United States who are lost.” He continues: “in the United States, they charge you to play. So players come to Mexico in search of their dream.”

* * *

Daniel Olea’s longstanding dream of becoming a professional player was now closer than ever. After three days of training separately on the dirt fields, Olea and the rest of the trialists were given the opportunity to play against the Pumas under-17 team. As the group of hopeful young players trooped up the stone steps to the main field, nervousness was apparent on their faces.

While the Pumas under-17s were dressed in matching gear, the trialists’ mismatched shorts and t-shirts gave them away as the cobbled-together group that they were. The game started as one might expect, with Pumas dominating. A tricky left winger dribbled around several of the trialists, making them look silly. Pumas scored several goals, and after the first half, none of the trialists looked anywhere near the level of their opponents.

Olea had been on the bench throughout the first half, but was put on to start the second. Played wide on the left, his impact was immediate. Although he normally plays as a forward, his technical ability was immediately apparent. Like the Pumas left winger in the first half, Olea came on and quickly generated a ton of trouble for the right side of the Pumas defense.

Halfway through the second half, Olea spotted a poor touch from the Pumas right back and he rushed in to take the ball. Forty yards from goal, he looked up and saw two defenders in his way. He faked left. One of the defenders bit on his fake, giving Olea space to put the ball between him and his teammate. Splitting the two defenders, he picked his head up and saw the goalkeeper off his line. His right foot went back and he struck the ball cleanly. Up it went, high in the air. The keeper backpedaled, scrambling to catch up to the quickly traveling ball. But it was too late. The ball came down just in time and went straight into the back of the net.

Olea had just split two defenders and chipped the goalie from 35 yards. Everyone around — coaches, players, and other observers — began whispering to each other.

After the game, a Pumas official saw Jesus Cardenas, who was accompanying the American players. He walked over to him and whispered in his ear. “The coaches like Olea.”

In part, the reason that Mexican clubs have, in some ways, done a better job of scouting Mexican-Americans than has the U.S. youth soccer system is a question of economics: as hugely profitable businesses, Mexican clubs have large amounts of money to spend on youth development, allowing them to travel throughout the United States looking for young talent.

18 year-old Tren Biswell, who lives in a rural part of California, was scouted by several Mexican clubs at a U.S.-based tryout, and traveled to Pachuca last summer for a week of training. He told me, “There are so many people in the United States, so many soccer players, and so many get overlooked. … You’ll never see a U.S. national team scout in Visalia.” (Biswell could not sign a deal with Pachuca as he does not have a Mexican passport, leading Marco Garces to exclaim, “There are 20 million Mexicans trying to become American and there’s one American trying to become Mexican. We don’t even know how to deal with that! We don’t have the paperwork for that!”)

Despite the vast reach of Mexican clubs into U.S. youth soccer, several scouts and coaches insist there are many areas for improvement. Most of the tryouts in United States are arranged today through personal connections. As Marco Garces describes the situation, “As long as there are invitations and something happening, we try to go watch. But there’s not a very good structure for how we choose to go to different places and we need to improve in that.”

Some teams are developing a structure by setting up youth teams in the United States. The Xolos have done so in the San Diego area and Pumas now has youth academies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Antonio. These youth academies are new and it remains to be seen how effective they become in funneling players toward the parent clubs in Mexico.

What has become clear, though, is that this recruitment of young players raises many ethical issues. Right now, the informal structure of the movement of Mexican-American players to Mexico has led some with less than noble intentions to take advantage of the system. Daniel Pulido, a young player from San Diego who is currently training with lower-division Zacatepec hoping to earn a contract, told me sheepishly how several years ago he paid $5,000 to a so-called agent who promised to get him trials with several teams in Mexico. Instead, he and several other youngsters were taken to Mexico, where they played a few friendlies against less-than-top-notch opposition. The agent then took off and was never seen again.

Although it is clearly legal for young Mexican-Americans with dual citizenship to travel to Mexico, the ethics of the movement of these players is less clear. Are teams in Mexico giving a chance to players in the United States who are ignored in their home country? Or are these wealthy teams taking advantage of vulnerable youngsters, promising them a future as a professional player, which may or may not ever occur, all the while enriching the scouts, coaches and team officials who profit from their recruitment?

Carlos Hernandez, Daniel Olea’s coach at FC Heat, worries about kids giving up on their academic careers to pursue a soccer dream that is a long shot at best. Hernandez has a reputation for telling them what they don’t want to hear. “I do have the reputation for wanting to send them to school,” he says. “Of course I want to send them to school! If I can send them to school and get a scholarship playing soccer, that’s a perfect world.”

Hernandez worries about kids who give up on their educations to head south to Mexico. Olea is a perfect example, he tells me. “Olea does not like school. He loves soccer. Right now he’s not doing well in school because he’s focusing on going [to Mexico].” Hernandez says that too many players “have this idea, because of the exposure on TV, these guys go and they make it big. My job is to bring them down to reality. I say, ‘What if you don’t make it? How many guys tried out this year? Maybe 100? Maybe 200? How many guys made it to the first team? Not many. So do the percentages, it’s not going to happen.’”

There are plenty of stories of players who have left school in the United States, gone to Mexico chasing a dream, failed and returned home with few options for their future. Hernandez says he knows numerous cases of players who have gone to Mexico full of hope and returned with little to show for their time abroad. Many of them now work low-paying jobs and play in “Mexican” leagues in San Diego. Hernandez has a name for them: “legends of Sunday league.”

It is only a question of time before these ethical issues come to the fore, as nearly everyone I talked to agreed that the number of Mexican-American players in Mexico will only increase in the future with more and more clubs realizing that there is a cheap source of talent just north of the border. The idea of recruiting Mexican-American players, says Ramon Villa-Zevallos, “is no longer a secret.”

* * *

One day after Daniel Olea had scored a goal against the Pumas under-17s, the tryout wrapped up. Olea and other players at the Pumas cantera for the tryout milled about, waiting to hear their fate.

Meanwhile, in the Pumas offices several coaches and officials huddled, making decisions about which players would be offered contracts with the team. The head of the cantera, Jorge Valtonra, sitting at the head of the table asked two coaches who had come in to offer their judgments on the players who were trying out. “Is there material there or not?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said. “Two ‘97s from Veracruz.” They discussed arrangements for those players’ school and housing, and the meeting appeared close to wrapping up.

“Anyone else?” asked Valtonra. “What about those kids from the United States?”

“Yes,” said one of the coaches. “The ’96 kid, Olea.”

An hour later, the trialists were called by the coaches to the field. The coaches thanked them for their effort throughout the week. They then asked Daniel Olea and the two kids from Veracruz to sit on the stone terraces to the side of the field. As the three waited, the coaches told the rest of the group that Pumas would not be signing them. With hard work, they offered, perhaps they could return in the future and have another chance.

The coaches then called the three remaining players over to them. They gave them the news: Pumas liked them and wanted to offer them each a contract. The coaches said the club would be in touch, and offered pats on the back and congratulations.

Having received the news that would change the trajectory of his life, Olea walked over to Jesus Cardenas. Congratulations, Cardenas offered. Olea simply smiled.

* * *

Daniel Olea is now back in San Diego, practicing with the Heat and biding his time until he can return to Pumas. His parents have insisted that he finish his junior year of high school before returning to Mexico full time in the summer. Olea is itching to go and says that, though he’ll miss his family, he is ready for this next phase. Reyna Garcia, his mother, confided to me that she’s worried about him. He’s still a young kid, she tells me, and he’ll be so far from home. Despite her concerns, she’s willing to let her son go, to give him a chance to pursue his dream south of the border, in the country she left decades earlier.

If Daniel succeeds with Pumas, it will bring many changes to his family. The most immediate, his mother told me, is her loyalty. “I’m a Cruz Azul fan,” she told me. “But if my son makes it at Pumas, well, I guess I’ll just have to get a Pumas shirt.”

In this week’s edition of Good Soccer Reads, as compiled by the XI twitter feed, we highlight tragedy and growing crisis regarding treatment of referees, the ambitions of a lower league North American club, an early women’s team defying critics and the odds to play on two continents, and more. If you want to receive the Good Soccer Reads e-mail digest weekly, be sure to subscribe now!

1. Soccer violence: Referees under siege

Matthias Krug | CNN | May 6, 2013

Shocking news emerged in the United States last week as a referee, Ricardo Portillo, officiating an amateur game in Utah was punched in the head during the match by a 17-year-old player. Portillo subsequently died from his injuries. The coverage of the tragedy in the United States has tended to focus on what’s wrong with American sports generally, and as Dave Zirin argues, with youth sports in the U.S. particularly, but Matthias Krug takes a global view of what appears to be becoming an epidemic. Focusing on the situation in Europe, Krug finds innumerable incidents in recent years, indicating that the death of Portillo is not isolated, nor is it something that can fully be understood within the context of the American sports landscape.

One Europe-wide manner of tackling the problem has been to move spectators further away from the touchline, thereby reducing their influence on referees.

Still, insults have become so commonplace that some refs have begun to take an aggressive attitude onto the pitch themselves, according to one parent.

“Parents are definitely to blame,” says Cristina, a mother of two who watches her son play in the same match where Ayuso is the referee. She preferred not to give her surname.

“Two members of my close family are referees, so I know what kind of insults they have to hear, and ignore, every weekend.

“But I’ve also seen a referee who insulted the kids — I couldn’t believe my eyes when it happened in my son’s game the other week. It also happens.”

Another factor in Spain is that referees have traditionally been the target of abuse by football fans — though usually verbal not physical.

“We blame everything on the ref,” says Jose, a taxi driver in Madrid, who also did not want to give his full name.

“Even ‘la crisis’ (the financial crisis), if we could. The stadium is the place for Spaniards to vent their frustration. If parents set such a bad example, imagine how the next generation is growing up.”

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2. Orlando City Soccer’s goal rush

Jeffrey Billman | Orlando Weekly | May 8, 2013

Is Orlando City FC the most talked-about lower division club in North America? Until the New York Cosmos return to competitive play, it seems OCFC will continue to receive the bulk of the attention. Although the team currently sits in the third division USL PRO, owner Phil Rawlins has been vocal in his ambition to bring the club to MLS soon, and his story and the successes of the team so far make that narrative convincing for soccer fans generally. But with success comes setbacks and controversy, including moving the team from its original home in Austin, Texas, the roadblocks MLS is putting up to Orlando’s bid, and the recent struggle to get taxpayer funding for a soccer-specific stadium for Orlando City, in anticipation of an eventual MLS berth. In a terrific profile on the situation, Jeffrey Billman examines the current terrain for OCFC, and whether the best-laid plans of a determined owner will be enough.

This confidence, it turns out, was misplaced. State lawmakers were gun-shy, fearful of being seen as providing “taxpayer-funded corporate welfare,” as the powerful Americans for Prosperity labeled the bill. The legislation would have provided state funds to not just Orlando City but all professional teams. Fresh in lawmakers’ minds, too, was the Miami Marlins debacle. Taxpayers paid for 70 percent of the team’s new $639 million ballpark in a deal widely derided as a boondoggle, especially as the team is considered the worst in the league and the stadium sits virtually empty most home games. (Notably, the Marlins’ economic impact study promised $815 million for Miami.)

The lobbyists and Twitter swarms and even Rawlins’ 11th-hour trip to Tallahassee with Buddy Dyer weren’t enough to overcome legislative gridlock and lawmakers’ objections. On May 3, the session’s clock ran out. The bill didn’t even get a vote.

It’s unclear what will happen next. In late April, with legislative machinations still underway, Jones would only tell me that “the franchise would reassess if state funding doesn’t pass.” On the last day of session, with the bill on life support, he said, “I really don’t have a clear plan. As of right now I can’t comment on it.”

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3. Peace-Making on the Pitch: Soccer and Civil War in Ivory Coast

Daniel Stelly | The Soccer Desk | May 5, 2013

If you’ve come to follow world soccer only in recent years, you may be under the impression that the Ivory Coast has long been a power in African football. In fact, their emergence as one of the best on the continent is remarkably recent, as they only qualified for their first World Cup in 2006. Stars like Didier Drogba, the Toure brothers, Didier Zokora, and Gervinho have made a splash and won titles in European club soccer in recent seasons, and brought their national team to heights seldom seen, and Drogba in particular has been a transcendent star in the country. However, this period of success for the national team has corresponded with a decline in the stability and peace of the country itself, culminating in a civil war that took place for much of the last decade. Daniel Stelly recounts these twin changes, and how Drogba brought the country together, perhaps when a uniting gesture was most necessary.

Covered up amid the growing conflict was the Ivorian national team’s victory at the 1992 African Cup of Nations, the country’s first major title of any kind. While the Ivorians had entered the tournament on the back of an undefeated run through qualification and boasted its most talented group of players in years, their championship run in Senegal was anything but straightforward. After navigating through the group stage and slipping past Zambia 1-0, the Elephants topped Cameroon on penalties to advance to the final. They came up against a typically-strong Ghanaian side that featured a pair of legendary strikers in Abedi Pele and Tony Yeboah—no easy task for a young, inexperienced Ivorian team.

However, the Ivorian back line held firm and the Elephants took the final to penalties, their second straight round of spot-kicks. What ensued was one of the longest penalty shootouts in international soccer history, a drama that finally ended 11-10 when Ivorian goalkeeper Alain Gouaméné dove to his right and saved Anthony Baffoe’s low-driven shot. The Elephants were champions of Africa, but there were more pressing matters back home. As thick as the tension surrounding both squads was that night in Dakar, the tensions within the Ivory Coast were slowly driving the country apart.

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4. First women’s soccer team in Philly, 1922

Ed Farnsworth | The Philly Soccer Page | May 8, 2013

Interested in delving into a little-known slice of American (and English) soccer history? Look no further this week than Ed Farnsworth’s profile on the English women’s team Dick, Kerr ladies. After impressing in their native country (and bringing in significant numbers of fans), the team was discouraged and then outright banned from playing in England, and so they embarked on a tour of North America in order to play. Despite facing considerable obstacles on the tour itself, including a rejection to even hold any scheduled matches in Canada, the team played a number of men’s sides, including some familiar teams to students of the game, and more than held their own during the ill-fated trip. For all of the obstacles placed in the development of soccer in general in the United States, women’s soccer worldwide was long perceived to be taboo, despite its popularity when it was allowed to flourish.

Originally a manufacturer of electric rail and twamway equipment, Dick, Kerr & Company was converted into a munitions manufacturer during the war. From informal kick-abouts during work breaks, the founding members of the team that would become Dick, Kerr ladies played their first official match on Christmas Day, 1917, at Deepdale, then home of Preston North End in Lancashire. In front of 10,000 spectators, the team defeated another women’s team from a local foundry, 4–0, with the proceeds from the match being donated to a local hospital.

Dick, Kerr Ladies continued to play other women’s teams in charity matches after the Armistice in November, 1918. In 1920, they traveled to France to play a series of matches against women’s teams there. After returning to England, they played in front of 53,000 spectators at Goodison Park in Liverpool on Boxing Day, defeating St. Helen’s Ladies 4-0. In 1921, Dick, Kerr Ladies played 67 matches in front of nearly 900,000 spectators—an average of nearly 13,500 people per game—all while also working full time factory jobs.

And then the FA stepped in.

Rumblings had been appearing in the press that not enough money was being directed to the charities who benefited from women’s games. Dick, Kerr Ladies also gained no friends in high places when they began to play charity matches for workers struggling to feed their families during the 1921 Miners Lockout. But the issue for many people—which is to say for many men who were appalled by the social changes during and after the war that followed the entrance of so many women into positions in the workplace that had previously been held by men—was simply the idea of women playing a “manly” sport like soccer. It didn’t help that women’s teams like Dick, Kerr Ladies were outdrawing many men’s teams.

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5. The Hemingway Experiment: The Dangerous Winter

Will Parchman | Futbol Intellect | May 7, 2013

Finally this week, if you prefer a more literary article to cap matters off, Will Parchman has you covered. His story is about a very famous soccer player, one who you can likely tease out, but who remains unnamed in the piece. It hardly talks about soccer, but when it does, there is a poignancy that hints at larger depths. Hungry to read more? Isn’t that what the best art does to us?

Last words were weakness to me then and I hugged him and walked to my car. I cried and my cheeks hurt from the strain of it. I did not know if I would play again or what I would do and I drove away from Carson in darkness. This was really the beginning of everything. I was 30 then and I am 31 now but there are miles of cobbles between the two. Let me say why.

I rode into Sihanoukville at dusk. I arrived at the airport and carried my bag off the plane and had no transport. I arranged for a small gas scooter that backfired loudly as you went. I did not know until several miles down the road, which was pitted and overgrown. It was inviting all the same. I did not speak Khmer then and was tricked out of my money, but I could get around and had some left so it was alright. As I said, I rode into Sihanoukville as the sun was settling over the Gulf of Thailand. I turned south and I could see the town by the amber light. The houses were small and dense together and the green-shrouded hills rose behind them and watched over the water with a somber quality. The women were wrapped in color and many men walked by busily. They stared at me but with inquisitiveness and not that wary malice that burns like coal fire. I know both, and the latter better.

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David Keyes on 2013-05-06 at 13.44

Alicia Rodriguez is a writer based in San Diego, California. She is the managing editor of The Goat Parade, a website devoted to Chivas USA. She is also currently an intern at XI Quarterly.

Follow @soccermusings

David Keyes on 2013-05-06 at 13.36

David Keyes is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the growth of youth soccer in the United States and the integration of young Latino players into elite levels of the game. He was previously the editor of the website Culture of Soccer and is currently an editor of XI.

Follow @dgkeyes

In this week’s edition of Good Soccer Reads, as compiled by the XI twitter feed, we highlight more accusations of labor violations in Qatar, a suggestion to alter MLS player acquisition rules, sexuality and religion in sport, and more. If you want to receive the Good Soccer Reads e-mail digest weekly, be sure to subscribe now!

1. Desert heat: World Cup hosts Qatar face scrutiny over ‘slavery’ accusations

James Montague | CNN | May 1, 2013

Two weeks ago, we highlighted the story of Moroccan Abdeslam Ouaddou, who went to Qatar to play professionally after a successful stint in Europe, but left the country under considerable controversy following his allegations that he was a “slave.” It seems Ouaddou was not the only player complaining about labor violations in Qatar, as Roger Montague profiles the situation for French-Algerian professional Zahir Belounis, which is frankly worse than that of Ouaddou. Belounis claims he is trapped in the country, and is willing to go on a hunger strike to be allowed out of the country with his back pay. Lest this be considered a problem for the pro league alone, a case is made that the entire 2022 World Cup is being built on the backs of migrant laborers, whose work conditions also make them effectively unfree labor.

The so called Kafala system — which ties employees to a specific employer — has, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation, been open to systematic abuse and created a de facto form of slavery for the more than one million migrant workers living within its borders.

“Qatar has been quite successful at giving off a progressive image when, in fact, the [labor] system is exploitative,” said Nicholas McGeehan of Human Rights Watch.

“It is the same old story. The Kafala system, the confiscation of passports, the illegal charging of exorbitant agent fees, the inability for workers to access the courts for redress.

“Qatar has an exit visa system so you cannot leave the country without the sponsor’s say. You have a system where workers are trapped in the country and the same old abuses rear their head. Unpaid wages, wages held in arrears. It keeps workers credibly vulnerable,” he added.

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2. One thing Major League Soccer can do to get better quickly

Jonathan Tannenwald | Philly.com | May 2, 2013

One of the topics that has emerged in MLS recently has been potential roadblocks to seeing American players come back to the league from abroad. In particular, the situation where Sporting Kansas City holds forward Herculez Gomez’s rights, and the Chicago Fire currently holding midfielder Robbie Rogers’ rights, despite the fact that neither player appears to want to play for those teams, leaves some to wonder why the rules are set up the way they are. Jonathan Tannenwald steps in, providing a breakdown of the process, offering an alternative system, and talking to league officials and others about the entire system as currently constituted.

Right now, MLS teams can go out during a transfer window and sign almost any player of almost any nationality in almost any country that they want. As long as the player fits within the salary rules and his paperwork gets taken care of, MLS doesn’t often gets in the way. But there is one big exception.

MLS teams can’t go out and sign Americans playing in other countries.

Yes, you read that right. Americans that enter MLS from abroad get treated differently from every other class of player that enters the league, from draft picks to academy products or Designated Players.

Instead of signing with teams of their choosing, Americans abroad are allocated to MLS teams through a system of lotteries and drafts. If a specific team wants a specific player, it can’t have him without navigating that system to acquire his rights.

MLS created the system in its early years as a measure of establishing competitive balance within the league. That is of the league’s hallmarks, and has been since day one.

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3. Brittney Griner, Jason Collins and the Sex of a Story

Jennifer Doyle | From a Left Wing | May 1, 2013

One reason why many MLS fans are eager to see Robbie Rogers return to play in the league is that it would make him the first active and out gay male soccer player in the United States (and one of very, very few around the world). Although Rogers’ announcement about his sexuality was a huge story in soccer circles, NBA player Jason Collins’ similar announcement this week was lauded as a watershed moment in the history of American sports. Although not rejecting the landmark nature of Collins’ announcement, Jennifer Doyle complicates the narrative being used about homosexuality in sports this week by discussing the narratives used in regards to gay female athletes, and contrasts the media attention Collins is getting with that of another basketball star, WNBA 1st pick Brittney Griner.

Even given the diversity of public figures who have come out over the years, Jason Collins is the first pro in one of the sports that anchors mass sports media in the US to come out while still on the roster. As an active player, his livelihood is dependent on a patriarchal, racist and homophobic machine. It is no surprise that it has taken so long for a man in this particular sports environment to identify himself as a member of that class of people mainstream sports culture defines itself against. Coming out is huge.

People have been chiming in with a list of other names. People want to remember the women who’ve been there before. In addition to those mentioned above: Martina Navratilova (who, like King, came out in 1981), Amelie Mauresmo, Sheryl Swoopes, Chamique Holdsclaw, Missy Giove, Natasha Kai, Megan Rapinoe, Vicky Gallindo, Liz Carmouche. There are a lot more gay women in sports, but the media doesn’t quite know how to address them – or their fans. We can see this in how Brittney Griner’s “coming out” is presented as a story about how her coming out is not a story.

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4. New frontier for MLS referees

Jeff Carlisle | ESPN FC | May 2, 2013

One unintended consequence of the Professional Referee Organization (PRO) overseeing MLS officiating this year? The referees have been professionalized for the first time to an extent where they can form a union. Whether you agree with collective bargaining or not, MLS referees will now follow in the same footsteps as officials in all of the other major American and Canadian leagues and have a united say when dealing with their employers. Jeff Carlisle discusses the recent developments, talks to referees and the head of PRO alike about the union, and posits what might be ahead. Who knows what the future brings in this development, but it appears that MLS continues to mature in various respects.

Such is the public perception of unions that they are often linked with two concepts: protection of underperforming members and work stoppages. Given the rather low regard fans have for referees, the former is one concern that has been voiced on social media. But Taylor stated the PSRA’s aims have nothing to do with on-field performance.

“The collective bargaining is all about working conditions; travel, accommodations, training, fitness testing, sports psychology, and support of any kind,” he said. “All of these different things go into a workplace environment. None of that has anything to do with evaluation of performance. If you have a string of bad games, you’re not going to be employed anymore. There may be some formalization of the process, but there’s no way a poor product on the field is going to be protected by this step [of unionization].”

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5. London Team Is Built on One Religion but Has Evolving Identity

Sam Borden | The New York Times | April 27, 2013

Teams built along lines of a single identity are sometimes seen as controversial. Nationality, race, religion — in many multicultural societies, diversity and inclusion is the broad ethic. Yet sometimes, teams are built on a single identity for communal reasons. Such is the case with the London Maccabi Lions, a team in London that has won promotion to a higher league for next season. As a team meant as a community outlet for Jewish people in London, the popularity of the club has expanded rapidly. Sam Borden profiles the story of the club, the changing times that the club is dealing with, and the role of the sport for a very small minority group in a multicultural country.

For years, there has been a perception that Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League team whose fans sometimes refer to themselves as the Yid Army, stands apart as the so-called Jewish soccer club of London. But such a label is badly outdated.

While Spurs’ roster (not to mention global fan base) now includes ethnicities of all kinds, the true Jewish team of the capital is in the borough of Barnet on the northern outskirts of the city, where the London Maccabi Lions play, and host community dinners and bar mitzvah parties, at the quaint facilities of Rowley Lane.

The Lions, who compete in the 10th level of English soccer’s 24-tier system, are different from Spurs — and, really, most other clubs — in a number of ways, starting with their restriction on who is allowed to play for them: by rule, all players on each of the club’s numerous teams must be Jewish.

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6. American Team Reigns in This Devout Soccer League

Joshua Robinson | WSJ.com | April 28, 2013

Finally this week, another story about religion and soccer, but with a very different emphasis. Seminary students at the Vatican play in the annual Clericus Cup, and believe it or not, but the “American” team (they do not use the same standards for nationality as FIFA, although the team is evidently overwhelmingly born and raised in the United States) has dominated the tournament in recent years. What is interesting in Joshua Robinson’s article is that the transformation has happened in a very short time. Can U.S. Soccer take any tips from the team known as the “martyrs”?

And these days, in a competition full of South Americans and Europeans, those bragging rights belong to PNAC students, known as the North American Martyrs, making this one of the few levels of soccer the U.S. can claim to dominate.

“They don’t look like seminarians,” said Felice Alborghetti of the tournament’s organizing body, the Centro Sportivo Italiano. “They look like Marines.”

The seminary has had a team since at least the 1980s, when its rector, the Rev. Msgr. James Checchio, was still a student there. And the way he remembers it, the team was just awful. “That’s where we got the name Martyrs from back then. We lost every game,” he said. “But now, we’re winners, as the martyrs are.”

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Tom Marshall on 2013-04-18 at 13.04

Tom Marshall is a Manchester, England native who uprooted and headed for Guadalajara in 2008. Since then he has specialized in writing about Mexican soccer. He currently covers Chivas for ESPN FC, American Exports for MLSsoccer.com and is a columnist on the Mexican game at Goal.com. He also co-hosts The Mexican Soccer Show podcast.

Follow @mexicoworldcup

Nick Dorrington on 2013-04-18 at 10.08

Nick Dorrington is a freelance soccer and travel writer currently based in Sevilla, Spain, who specializes in soccer in South America. He is a regular contributor to the British magazine When Saturday Comes and also writes for various online publications.

Follow @chewingthecoca

In this week’s edition of Good Soccer Reads, as compiled by the XI twitter feed, we highlight pickup in the lives of Americans, an unlikely rookie in the new NWSL, the role of soccer in the lives of fathers and sons, and more. If you want to receive the Good Soccer Reads e-mail digest weekly, be sure to subscribe now!

1. Pickup soccer connects the generations of American players, too

Gwendolyn Oxenham | SI.com | April 23, 2013

One of the constant refrains when critiquing U.S soccer development is that there is not enough free play for children to rack up their “10,000 hours” in unstructured environments, sometimes playing against people older than them, to sharpen their skills and creativity. XI contributor Gwendolyn Oxenham has written a far-reaching profile of pickup soccer and what it means to elite players, in the U.S. and around the world, male and female alike. Among her many fascinating points, Oxenham argues that for many female players, pickup soccer unlocked the game for them and their families, as an inverse of the common route for many men.

Interestingly, while the U.S. men’s team is a montage of Jamaican, Haitian, Mexican, Serbian, German and Brazilian footballing heritages, on the women’s side, there are no equivalent stories of immigrant fathers passing down the game, of dads placing soccer balls in cribs. Most likely, this is cultural — while female participation in soccer is a given in the U.S., it is not anywhere else. American dads are much more likely to push their daughters in the athletic realm.

A few of the players had fathers in the know: Ali Krieger, the right back who scored the penalty kick to send the U.S. past Brazil in the quarterfinals of the 2011 World Cup, was coached by her father, Ken, from early on. He told the Washington Post, “We were constantly playing: in hallways, in the basement, out in the front yard, in the street.”

Lori Lindsey, a substitute in the center midfield who wowed me when I played against her in college, had a father who was, in her words, “something of a football progressive.” Lindsey explained, “You know, it was the 1980s. It was Indiana. Yet my dad followed the English Premier League and Champions League, all of it. And he was always encouraging us to play with the ball.”

But Lindsey and Krieger are exceptions. Most parents discovered the game at the same time as their daughters. Jeff Heath described watching Tobin as a 4-year-old: “We weren’t paying a lot of attention at the time,” he said. “Cindy and I were good athletes, but we didn’t have soccer on our résumé. But then the other fathers started saying, ‘Who is this little girl stealing the ball from our boys?’”

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2. Meet Thorns FC’s Emilee O’Neil

Chris Singer | Slide Rule Pass | April 21, 2013

Amidst the excitement of a new women’s pro soccer league in the United States, the NWSL, comes a story of a true underdog who made the league and has already played a competitive match. Emilee O’Neil played college soccer at Stanford University, a strong team, but the timing didn’t work out for her to take the chance to play professionally earlier. After moving on from soccer and attending graduate school, however, O’Neil decided to give soccer another shot, and played in the W-League last season while finishing school. When she found out about the formation of the NWSL and the establishment of a club in Portland, the Thorns, the 30-year-old took matters into her own hands, and the rest is history.

But it wasn’t just because of family that O’Neil had her eyes set on Portland.

“I knew from the beginning that Portland would be a great city for a team because of the atmosphere and the Timbers in MLS so it was really the only team I pursued playing for,” said O’Neil.

I couldn’t help laughing when O’Neil told me what she did next.

“I went to the website and called the office and asked if I could speak with Cindy Parlow-Cone. She hadn’t even moved to Portland yet but I was able to eventually get a hold of her and tell her my story,” said O’Neil.

O’Neil played centerback and outside back for Stanford University and featured mainly at centerback last season for the Bay Area Breeze. O’Neil says she’s comfortable playing anywhere on the backline. With the small rosters in NWSL, O’Neil’s versatility will definitely be in her favor. O’Neil’s speed, technical ability and composure on the ball also make her a good fit within what coach Cindy Parlow-Cone wants to do on the pitch.

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3. Get your head out of the game

Stefan Fatsis | Slate.com | April 25, 2013

Abby Wambach is probably the polar opposite of Emilee O’Neil – a very successful professional soccer player who has never had to choose a separate career. Wambach is one of the faces of the NWSL, and is certainly the face of her club, the Western New York Flash. Slate’s “Hang up and listen” co-host Stefan Fatsis was at Wambach’s game over the weekend, where she was rocked by an inadvertent ball to the head at the end of an NWSL match, and despite looking to the naked eye like she had suffered a concussion, remained on the field. Fatsis lambasts Wambach’s recklessness, and more importantly, her team’s medical staff accountability in allowing the star to continue, despite evidence that females suffer head injuries at a higher rate than males, and despite Wambach’s status as a role model to young, soccer-playing girls.

So what Wambach does on the field matters. If she stays in a game after sustaining a blow to the head from a ball traveling 50 or 60 mph, is she demonstrating, as Washington Post soccer writer Steven Goff put it after the game, why she is “[r]enowned as much for her determination and courage as for her scoring feats”? Or is she just being foolish and encouraging young female athletes to follow her example?

It’s not a stretch to say that Wambach and everyone else on the field at the Maryland SoccerPlex—teammates, opponents, referee, coaches, trainers—were reckless with the health of a player. Not a single person appeared willing to do what medicine and common sense have shown to be the sensible thing in similar situations: bench an athlete who has suffered a blow to the head—meaning the brain—that may have compromised her physical condition. Whether the ball ultimately did or did not concuss Wambach is beside the point. She needed to be examined. What if she had been cold-cocked again a minute later?

I described the scene to neurosurgeon Robert Cantu, the co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University and co-author of the new book Concussions and Our Kids. Cantu said it was “absurd” that Wambach wasn’t yanked off the field. “Athletes have to know the symptoms and be willing to pull themselves out when they have them,” he said. Cantu has worked on concussion policies with leagues from the NFL to Major League Lacrosse. Of the women’s soccer league, he said, “If this is any example, they are in the dark ages with their approach.”

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4. Quantifying How Manchester United Won the EPL Title

Zach Slaton | Forbes.com | April 23, 2013

Manchester United clinched the English Premier League title this week, and with it comes many breakdowns of how the Red Devils accomplished it. Zach Slaton provides a statistical approach for understanding United’s success, arguing in part that their consistency got the job done as much as the spectacular goals by Robin van Persie.

The above graphs make a clear case that Manchester United was far more consistent in their points accumulation this year than last.  This year they only went at or below the 1.5 point per match barrier once, while they did so five times in 2011/12.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Red Devils spent a massive twenty-seven weeks at or above a 2.0 4-match running average PPM and nine weeks and counting at a 3.0 PPM.  Across town, Manchester City’s performance dropped off versus last year as much as United’s improved.  Twice this season City fell at or below the 1.0 4-match running average PPM barrier, something they never did last year.  City also only hit the 3.0 PPM threshold twice this year, while last year they were able to put together and maintain four-match win streaks nearly four times as frequently.  City was also far less consistent than United at earning points when they should have, as evidenced by the R² value for their mSq£ residual line in the second graph.  While losses at Southampton and Sunderland certainly hurt the Citizen’s campaign to retain the title, ties at home to Everton, Arsenal, and Liverpool and away to West Ham, Stoke, and QPR took away nearly four points from City’s residual.  Meanwhile, Manchester United had a nearly robotically perfect linear rise in their residual throughout the season.

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5. Act One: Trying to Fill His Shoes (the ones with cleats)

Robert Suarez | On the Fire | April 21, 2013

Finally this week, we wrap up with a connection between soccer and family. Robert Suarez introduces a new series to the Chicago-based site On the Fire with the origins of his story in the United States, beginning with his father. From a boy who tries to wear his father’s soccer cleats to a man who understands the sacrifices it took to cross the border on foot in order to make a new life for himself, Suarez’s story may not be the same as all readers, but there is surely an element to all of our lives found in the essay.

Somehow, the sound of those marching boots became embedded in my impressionable and fertile young mind so early on that I am unable to recall the first time I heard it. It is a sound that is seldom heard today. But occasionally, I will hear a similar sound from someone wearing real metal spiked baseball cleats (yikes!).

On those rare occasions, the memories of my father come to the forefront. Memories of countless Sundays in Chicago, taverns, “el club”,  soccer riots, and my father’s futbol boots…

The phenomena of trying to fill a father’s shoes is a timeless one. In many ways it often is (or should be) the driving force in a man’s life. It is rooted deeply in the male human psyche, and each of us has a unique story because our fathers left us different shoes to fill.

Shoes don’t have names, at least not usually. But fathers do, and my father’s name was Ramon Suarez. He came to our lovely land by crossing the Rio Grande on foot.

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Rachel Anne Jones is an illustrator in San Jose, California. Her work has ranged from murals in a laser tag arena to small graphic design for clients. She often uses a mixed media approach, combining traditional pen and paints with digital techniques, though her favorite type of art is pen and ink drawings. Her online portfolio can be found at rajillustration.com.