Alex Chen
When Cristiano Ronaldo was a child, he was sharing a room with his three siblings and begging the local McDonald’s for food (Maloney). He later went on to be one of the greatest soccer players of all time. Many of the world’s greatest soccer players from around the world were born into poor families and lived in poverty before their rise to fame; however, in the United States, that is not the case. In 2015, journalist Roger Bennett and University of Chicago professor Greg Kaplan conducted a study on the backgrounds of the players on the US men’s soccer national team, comparing them with the backgrounds of players from other professional sports in the US. They found that the players on the US men’s soccer national team came from communities with higher income, education levels, and white populations than average in the United States, whereas NBA All-Star players and NFL Pro-Bowl players were below the national average in the same categories (Solomon). Why is it that soccer in America is played by athletes that tend to be wealthier and whiter? Well, it all starts at the youth level.