Jun 21 2007
Celtic to Boost Inner City Football
I’ve written before about Association football making inroads in American inner cities. This trend is about to becoming a steamroller, as Scottish Premier League champions Celtic F.C. have announced plans to build soccer academies in 30 cities in the northern United States and Canada.
The thing that interests me here is that most American inner cities are basketball hotbeds, and for a long time, many kids saw basketball as a ticket out of life in the projects. After all, we play basketball everywhere, in no small part because it’s cheap. All you need is a ball and a goal, and you can play.
Of course, the same is true with Association football, which may explain why football and basketball are arguably the two biggest sports on the planet right now. Equipment for other sports is much more expensive. With American football, you need helmets and shoulder pads. With baseball and cricket, you need bats and hats and gloves and a lot more balls. With hockey, you need ice and sticks and sweaters. With golf, you need clubs and lots and lots of land. Soccer and basketball are far simpler, though, which boosts those sports’ talent pool and with it, their worldwide appeal.
In America, however, soccer has always been viewed as a game for suburban kids, while the inner city kids played hoops almost exclusively — mostly because that’s what was there. Guys like Irv Smalls Jr. are starting to change that, though, and now that a club as big as Celtic is getting involved, that change may come a lot more quickly than many people expect. The impact this has on the American sports landscape could be stunning.
Think about it — what if NBA stars like LeBron James or Allen Iverson were exposed to both basketball and football? Which might they have chosen? The next LeBron might very well have this choice in front of him. Maybe he’ll decide it’s more fun to play with his feet than his hands. And maybe he’ll be just as dominant with both.
I have a feeling Celtic won’t be the last European football club to establish a beachhead in the low income sections of American cities. On the surface, these football academies can help kids stay out of trouble, but underneath, the potential for finding and developing raw talent could be massive…
(Spotted on The Offside.)
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I was one of those suburban kids who grew up playing soccer in the 1970’s. We also played street soccer on our own, ie, unorganized pickup games. Soccer is perfect for this. Futsal even more so, since the small low bounce ball doesn’t travel as far and you can easily play the game in a small area.