My first contact with soccer as an international game was largely defined by my relationship with Noah Toumert, now the executive director of the Cleveland Soccer Foundation, and someone who has largely devoted his career to increasing access to soccer for immigrant refugee communities in Northeast Ohio as a means of cultural integration. But my contact with Noah goes way back, to when we were in elementary school playing travel soccer for Eastside Kickers, which was coached by Noah’s father Mo, who immigrated to the US from Algeria. When we did stretches before games and practices, we counted to ten in French rather than English. That simple practice opened the world to me, and helped ensure my non-adoption of a provincial mindset.
Looking back, it makes sense that Noah would end up doing what he does. Besides the incredible work he’s done over time in Cleveland with the Refugee Response Network, in founding the semi-pro team, Ohio City SC (largely made up of refugees), and helping to bring an MLS NEXT Pro team and the first professional women’s soccer team to Cleveland, he’s established himself as a leader in the non-profit football access space nationally. As an editor for Golden Goal, I immediately reached out to Noah to ask if he’d like to contribute as someone doing work on the ground at the intersection of soccer and politics every day. Gladly accepting, he suggested doing a panel with leaders in the national grassroots soccer space: Drew Chafetz, the co-founder and CEO of Love Fútbol; Mary Connor, the CEO of Common Goal; Justin Morrow, 12 year MLS veteran (capped four times for USMNT) and co-founder of Black Players for Change; Kemba Noel-London, the Executive Director of St. Louis SC’s City Futures program; and Jennifer Tepper, the Executive Director of Soccer Without Borders.
-Billy Lennon
The panel has been edited for purposes of clarity and brevity.
Noah Toumert: We have thousands of clubs, elite academies, MLS development pipelines, and a growing professional game. The infrastructure definitely exists here in the United States. The question is whether it’s been designed for everyone or for a specific kind of family in a specific kind of zip code. And I want to focus on what it would take to expand that access without dismantling everything that works. Who do you all think the current system’s actually designed for, and what do you think it would take to expand that access to make it work for a wider group of kids?
Kemba Noel-London: It’s currently a pay-to-play system, and by design. I think it’s important to understand why it has been set up the way it is. Different structural and systemic barriers control access to any kind of resource. Sport is a resource: an avenue for play, avenue for healthy living, et cetera.
Systemic racism and discrimination is embedded in policy, which is also why soccer looks the way that it does…. Education policy and decisions about funding determine what sports kids have access to, the level of coach, if any. So all of those things kind of stack on top of each other and it comes back to the foundation on which all of this was built on. So part of me thinks we kind of have to dismantle everything. But in America you can’t take the approach of if “we build it, they will come.”. You have to go to communities with a level of humility and acknowledgement about how we got here in the first place and extend an arm in order to bring people into what we hope to be an inclusive space.
Jennifer Tepper: In terms of Soccer Without Borders and the communities that we serve, a lot of that plays out in terms of access to green spaces that are safe to get to. We spend a lot of time getting kids to spaces to play. One solution would be a bus system. Transportation is a huge issue here.
NT: When it comes to the pay-to-play model, do you think that’s the root problem of access in the country or do you think that’s a symptom of something deeper going on?
Justin Morrow: When we talk about access to soccer in the United States, we have to be detailed because in my opinion, I see the grassroots soccer scene thriving in the United States. U.S. soccer would say maybe there’s like four to six million registered youth players in the United States, but they would also acknowledge maybe there’s two, maybe even four, times that amount that are not registered. One thing that we’ve done with Black Players for Change over the past five years is partner with Major League Soccer to celebrate what we call hometown heroes in the MLS All Star host city every year. We use our platform to raise up and lift the heroes in each town that are working with communities and providing them with free soccer programming. Every year we have over a hundred applicants for this program. So I think that soccer is thriving in a lot of ways in the United States.
I think when we talk about restricted access, it’s [at] that ultra competitive level. The problem is the gap between grassroots programming and the race to push kids higher up the pyramid in the club soccer scene. And that’s when a lot of the barriers Kemba and Jennifer brought up come into play in terms of field location and transportation. But I also think the socio-cultural barriers that exist in terms of lack of representation amongst players and coaches plays a big part. The homogeneity of people with money in these teams make it very difficult for low-income kids who come from grassroots soccer programs to assimilate into the culture of these teams, where a lot of kids grow up with everything that they need at their fingertips.
NT: Drew, I know at Love Football you guys have done a lot of partnerships and helped a lot of communities around the world. Does the part of the American soccer system we’ve been talking about differ markedly from international programs?
Drew Chafetz: In the US, in a lot of communities, soccer is not the primary game. We do a lot of work in Philadelphia. We were close with the school district and there are 47 schools across the city that have what they consider to be a zero-play structure. And that’s an amazing thing to say.
I think that when it comes to soccer in the United States, you’ve got two major hurdles: the logistical ones and the cultural ones. And I just want to quickly mention something that Kemba mentioned. She was talking about approaching communities with a level of humility. And I think that that is essential, when you think about safe spaces to play, it’s not just hiring a construction company and cutting a ribbon. It’s about approaching communities in a way that really positions them as central, a leader as a place to play for today and into the future.
NT: Mary I was curious with the large network of organizations that you work with at Common Goal, are there models out there for organizations in the United States that you think are doing a great job to bridge that gap?
Mary Connor: Common Goal exists under this umbrella we call ‘football for good.’ How can we use this sport to shape connections and communities for good? Nobody set out to design the pay-to-play system. Nobody was like, this is the best way to bring soccer to the US.
I grew up in the ‘90s playing, and the goal was to basically prove ourselves on the global stage. Like we hosted this World Cup and then we were like, how do we gain credibility on the global stage that America plays soccer. We started from the top down from chasing this goal, which basically became: how do we win the men’s World Cup in 2010? That was Project 2010, which my brother was a part of.
NT: I think MLS has shown specifically how you can build elite soccer systems in communities by the communities that they’re in. Justin, as the MLS Black Players for Change representative on the call, there are private clubs, there are MLS academies. U.S. Soccer has done so much great grassroots soccer work, and all of them hold different power within the ecosystem. Who would you say is most getting it right?
JM: One role I’ve picked up in that time is a seat on the athletes council at U.S. Soccer Federation [the governing body of all soccer in the US, including the national teams]. The Athletes Council in some shape and form is the voice of a lot of the athletes across the U.S. soccer ecosystem, certainly at the highest level with the national teams of all ages. Our mandate is to look after all of the athletes and bring up issues related to the well-being of future athletes.
Coming from the background that I have growing up in Cleveland, making it pro and having community engagement and social impact in my heart, I want change just as fast as everyone else wants it, you know? So when I got in that seat, I was like, let’s go, I’m here at the table. I have a voice. I’m gonna be loud. I’m gonna tell them how it is. And I think the thing that I realized was I forgot how big the United States is. We’re talking about these local solutions. For an organization like the U.S. Soccer Federation, implementing solutions on its own takes time. As a result, these organizations like the Federation, MLS, USL, NWSL are going to start to work together.
Nationally, what clubs have done for a number of years in creating MLS academies, making it free to play from from young ages, has certainly been a good thing. At the same time, I’ve seen how many players go through the system for the benefit of the one or two guys that are going to make it every year. While those academies have really helped with the professionalization of soccer in the United States, I think that there’s a larger responsibility for these organizations to give kids solid guidance when it comes to their transition out of sports [i.e., to set up the majority of young players who don’t make it to the professional ranks for success in their lives].
NT: I think how big the US is so often doesn’t make it into these conversations. Drew, do you think that Europe is the right comparison for a country for the US in terms of size and diversity? You know, we’re so much bigger than England. Should we be looking at just British academies?
DC: If you’re talking about a grassroots model, I would be probably looking elsewhere.
JM: I think that we need to look at sports in the United States, most notably basketball.
I think one of the things that’s different between the United States is that we have to compete with all of these other sports. Soccer could try to replicate some of what they do and not have to look to what soccer looks like in other countries.
MC: I just wanted to share a story because I spoke about Iceland earlier. Back in the early 2000s they had a really significant issue with alcohol and drug abuse by teens. Something like 46% had abused alcohol or drugs in the last seven days and they took a sport strategy to address it. They decided to invest as a country in free sport clubs across the country. They lowered [alcohol and drug abuse] to 7% in a matter of years, and an unintended outcome of that was the Iceland men’s national soccer team suddenly making it to the quarter-finals of the Euros in 2016.
This isn’t to say that something that works in a country with the population of Kentucky would work in the US, but it shows that asymmetric performance outcomes are possible, even or especially when we prioritize wellness. When a place decides that sport has value for young people in a certain way and designs against that, the performance follows because you’ve now equipped an entire generation with a love of the game.
A chance to play as often as they like, without barriers, without pressure, without expectation of achieving something. And actually that works for performance and you end up with this totally outsized performance outcome for a very tiny country.
DC: That’s a really important point. I have an interesting story as well. I met with the mayor of Medellin many years ago and they have about 800 pitches across the city, taking a very community-centric approach, which I think is quite interesting for a kind of local government to do that. It’s not that way as much across the United States. Department of Parks and Rec, schools: they’re disincentivized to have communities have an engagement and agency around sports spaces and that also leads to lack of use, the space getting dilapidated in, and just not being cared for or communities that don’t have an emotional connection in these spaces. When these things do happen, that’s when you start to get to a situation where there becomes a much bigger opportunity for kids actually to have a generational opportunity to play.
NT: As a soccer nation, we are in large part a country of immigrants. Jennifer, do you find that there are some problems unique to immigrant communities?
JT: On a basic level, the priorities between the US culture wanting to be the best and those of immigrant communities are often very different. Immigrant families don’t necessarily want their kids to get tracked into elite performance pathways. Also, ESL students often aren’t having all of their needs met in school, so we’re then asking coaches to do more than they are equipped to do. [When it comes to, say, joining a travel team, that can be a burden for parents, for whom it sometimes, perhaps often, necessitates a second or third job that takes away from their child or children] Because they want to make the right decisions for their kids. It creates tons of mental [or] behavioral [or] wellness challenges for not just the kid who now doesn’t have a parent around because they’re trying to take on a third job to pay for their elite experience, but also for the parents in thinking about what the best thing is possible for their youth. These are the things that come up in my conversations with families through Soccer Without Borders.
NT: I spent years organizing and coaching refugee and immigrant teams here in Cleveland. when you got down to it, the main reason why kids were there was because their friends were playing and that was what their friends were doing.
Justin, historically, black American communities haven’t really had the same relationship with soccer that they have with other sports. And some of that might be infrastructural, some cultural reasons. But I want to talk about a little bit what that looks like for you on the ground and if you feel like that’s something that’s changing.
JM: There are the more infrastructural problems, of course: we’ve talked about the financial barriers. We’ve talked about some of the geographical barriers. Soccer isn’t a sport that traditionally has been on television in African American communities in the United States. But one thing that is more important than you’d think is soccer becoming cool in their eyes. There’re more black players on the US men’s national team than ever before, and MLS academies have a high number of black players. But also, some of the best soccer players in the world right now are black. You look at Vinicius and what he’s been doing for a number of years and also taking the fight on against racism head on. You see Mbappe hanging out with NBA players and NFL players during the offseason. All of these things really matter in terms of advancing the game. So I hope that continues. I hope this World Cup really pushes it over the edge.
I think the cultural relevancy piece for the African American community is the last thing that’s really needed to get this thing over the edge.
NT: Drew, could you talk a little bit about the public infrastructure piece from your work with Love Football?
DC: We’ve done our biggest initiative in Philadelphia. It’s called Philly Plays. We’re about to inaugurate our 8th and 9th project there and have a few more. Coming before the World Cup and the vision is due, you know, 26 by 2029 or so. These kids are playing on concrete block tops that are in terrible condition. They’re 100 degrees plus during the summer. We just worked in Conwell Middle School, which is in the heart of Kensington, which is considered the opioid epidemic epicenter of the East. Conwell was rated the number one school in the country with gun violence in the immediate vicinity, and parents say they don’t want the kids walking for more than three blocks in that neighborhood. Fortunately we were funded through some of our foundation partners to do a project here. We had about 130 community members that showed up on a Saturday morning and worked all day with us to help build a physical space to play.
A mother stood up in front of the community and said ‘we are bringing childhood back to Kensington. If we engage these communities while building something, the project becomes self-sustaining.