LIFESTYLE
WE DON’T NEED
SOCCER MOMS—
OR DADS, OR
COACHES
LENORE SKENAZY
BETWEEN THE TWO of them, Carlo Celli and
Nathan Richardson—both language pro-
fessors at Bowling Green State University
in Ohio—have coached youth soccer for
about 30 years.
Sweet, right? Actually, they say they
were doing it all wrong. The problem isn’t
that they were coaching improperly. It’s
that they were coaching, period.
All kids really need to learn the game,
Richardson says now, is “a ball, a place
to play and some older kids to play with
them.” Instead, we have delivered them
into the soccer-industrial complex—a top-
down, adult-run, structured, supervised
system that drains all the joy out of the
game and, not coincidentally, all the cre-
ative genius. Celli and Richardson submit
that the reason the U.S. men’s professional
team was knocked out of World Cup con-
tention so early is that we’re raising “soc-
cer robot s.”
They didn’t always feel that way. For
a long time, the two men happily put
local kids through their drills, starting as
young as age 3. Then one morning, two
of their 9-year-old players showed up to
practice with their younger sisters, and
one brought along another kid who hadn’t
played soccer before. The day was shot—
they’d just have to let everyone goof off.
The kids proceeded to do just that,
running around like puppies and making
up moves. They laughed and yelped, and
when the hour was up, they didn’t want to
go home. Celli and Richardson saw some-
thing they hadn’t witnessed since their
own childhoods: kids who weren’t practic-
ing the game. They were playing it.
And that, they realized, is the key. To
get good at a game, kids need to play it,
and adults need to get out of the way. So
they stopped interfering and saw their
players improve week by week. Their new
book, Shoeless Soccer: Fixing the System
and Winning the World Cup (Carlo Celli), is
inspired by that experience, and by Pelé,
the greatest soccer player of all time, who
was known as “The Shoeless One.” He
grew up so poor in Brazil that he played
in the street without footwear or even a
ball—he used a sock filled with rags.
The solution is not to take away our
children’s shoes. But when kids play on
streets rather than grass, the game is
faster. Their reflexes get quicker. Same
thing when they play with a bunch of
different-sized balls or in a smaller space.
And if somehow they do end up barefoot,
they will immediately learn to kick prop-
erly—because if you strike a ball with
your toes, you will howl in pain. But most
importantly, without coaches yelling and
a trophy on the line, kids are free to impro-
vise, just like Pelé.
We’ve been getting this wrong from
the beginning. America didn’t used to be
a soccer country. When we finally began
to pay attention to the game, it was via
TV, watching championships. “You see
a giant green, grassy field, with referees
and coaches and players on the bench—it
looks like it is this elaborate thing,” says
Richardson. “But soccer is really the sim-plest game imaginable. The infrastructure
should be incredibly minimalist.”
We assumed our kids needed uni-
forms, cleats, shin guards, and of course
a whole lot of adult involvement. Eventu-
ally that translated into an expensive
proposition—youth sports are now a $
billion industry—and one that eats up all
a child’s free time. “The amount of travel
the kids do these days, to play in sports,
it’s insane,” says Celli. “Kids are spending
more time in the car than actually playing
the game.”
The pair’s solution is as simple as it
is radical: Give soccer back to the kids,
at least through middle school, and let
mixed ages play together.
Simple, right? But there’s a problem.
Send your kids out to kick around a ball
old-school and they might not find anyone
to play with, because everyone else is off
at an adult-led practice. So the key is to
get local Parks & Rec departments to offer
a more shoeless version of the game. Dial
back the trophies and travel. Send the par-
ents off to get a coffee, or better still, have
the kids arrive by bike.
And then let them play like Pelé.LEN O RE SK ENA Z Y is pre sident of the nonprofit
Let Grow and founder of Free-Range Kids.14 OCTOBER 2018 Photo: Nikada/iStock