几年前，如果有人提出美国足球界普遍忽视青少年足球这一观点，往往会遭到冷遇或嘲笑。
A few years ago, the idea that the US soccer community at large was neglecting youth soccer was met with silence or ridicule.
在2022年5月的一次电话会议上，美国足协宣布了一项新的集体谈判协议，实际上终结了“同工同酬”的纷争。当时有记者问球员们，打算如何与基层组织者建立联系——这些组织者曾因感到被轻视而心生怨气，甚至在卡洛斯·科代罗（Carlos Cordeiro）因巨大压力辞职后不久，差点又将其推回美国足协主席的位置。球员们本可以就“重视青少年和业余足球”发表一些含糊的客套话，但他们却选择了沉默。
At a May 2022 conference call announcing a new collective bargaining agreement that effectively ended the “equal pay” saga, players were asked how they would build bridges with grassroots organizers who, in a fit of anger over perceived slights, nearly restored Carlos Cordeiro to US Soccer’s presidency not long after he resigned under heavy pressure. They could have offered any vague platitudes about how they valued youth and amateur soccer. They fell silent.
与此同时，在社交媒体上，有人建议美国足协应适当减少对国家队球员的薪酬投入，并将更多资源重新分配给青训发展（正如足球强国所做的那样），这种建议却遭到了抵制。当时，引用《辛普森一家》中那句著名的梗“难道就没人关心关心孩子们吗？！”成了人们表达讽刺的典型回应。
Meanwhile, in the social media sphere, suggestions that US Soccer should be paying its able-bodied national teams a bit less and redistributing more resources to development – as is the case in more successful soccer countries – found a hostile reception. The heavily memed Simpsons reference “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” was a typical sarcastic response.
如今，每个人都在关心孩子们了。但在足球界，这些想法和当年海伦·洛夫乔伊（Helen Lovejoy）在《辛普森一家》中反复尖叫“关心关心孩子们”时一样，显得混乱且自相矛盾。
Today, everyone’s thinking of the children. But the thoughts are as chaotic and self-contradictory in the soccer world as they were when Helen Lovejoy squealed out her “think of the children” plea repeatedly on The Simpsons.
今年夏天，当美国男足在世界杯上的表现草草收场时，舆论矛头指向了“付费参赛”制度以及将许多球员挡在精英青少年足球门外的经济壁垒。9月份，美国U20女足在世界杯上表现平平，部分原因被归咎于俱乐部拒绝放人（或者更广泛地归咎于国际足联未能在合适的窗口期安排赛事），但这一结果与美国青少年足球近期的其他表现相比，并非个例。
When the US men’s World Cup campaign ended with a whimper this summer, fingers were pointed at the “pay-to-play” system and economic barriers that keep a lot of players out of elite youth soccer. The US Under-20 women’s lackluster World Cup performance in September was partially blamed on clubs refusing to release players (or, more broadly, blamed on Fifa for not scheduling such events during appropriate windows), but the result wasn’t an outlier alongside other recent US youth results.
简而言之，孩子们的情况并不乐观。而这个问题并没有通过持续的努力来改善，反而伴随着断断续续的求救声，且往往随之而来的是一些过于简单的解决方案。
Simply put, the kids aren’t all right. And it’s a problem that has been addressed not with a sustained effort to improve matters but with intermittent cries for help, often followed by simplistic solutions.
2026年，最受瞩目、最不断敲响警钟的人是美国女足主教练艾玛·海耶斯。她在切尔西的成功履历，以及率领美国女足夺得2024年奥运会金牌的骄人战绩，都令人无法忽视。
In 2026, the most prominent voice sounding the alarm is US women’s coach Emma Hayes, whose track record of success at Chelsea and with the gold medal-winning US women in the 2024 Olympics commands attention.
2018年，在美国男足未能晋级世界杯后，九名竞逐美国足协主席之位的候选人成为最受瞩目的声音。
In 2018, the most prominent voices were the nine candidates who sought US Soccer’s presidency after the US men failed to qualify for the World Cup.
在此期间，各种力量不断将讨论从一个全面改革方案推向另一个。2011年，时任美国足协青少年技术总监克劳迪奥·雷纳在美国足球教练协会（NSCAA，现更名为United Soccer Coaches）大会上公布了一套课程体系，该体系深受巴塞罗那传控打法的影响。三年后，在同一场大会上，其中一场分会探讨了如何协调三个不同组织的课程体系。
In between, various forces have yanked the discussion from one overarching solution to another. Claudio Reyna, US Soccer’s youth technical director at the time, unveiled a curriculum at the NSCAA (now United Soccer Coaches) convention in 2011 that was heavily influenced by Barcelona’s tiki-taka approach. Three years later, at the same convention, one of the sessions grappled with the question of reconciling three different organizations’ curricula.
多数国家并没有这样的混乱局面。在德国，如果德国足协希望实施类似21世纪10年代初备受关注的“Das Reboot（德国重启）”那样的大规模改革，它就能付诸行动。美国足协却根本没有这种权力，也没有足够的财力。尤其考虑到美国幅员辽阔，要建立一套相当于德国地区训练中心体系的美国式体系几乎不可能。
Most countries don’t have such chaos. In Germany, if the DFB wishes to embark on a massive overhaul such as the heralded “Das Reboot” of the early 2010s, it can do so. US Soccer simply doesn’t have that power. Nor does it have the money, especially given the vastness of a country that would make a US equivalent of Germany’s regional training-center system impossible.
体系混乱只是阻碍美国青少年足球体系改革的障碍之一。最大的障碍则是美国足球界普遍认同的一点，尽管亚历克西·拉拉斯持不同意见：青少年足球的成本太高。这个问题很容易发现，却难得多得多。
Incoherence is just one obstacle preventing a US youth system overhaul. The biggest obstacle is one that most of the US soccer community, Alexi Lalas notwithstanding, agrees upon: Youth soccer costs too much. It’s an easy problem to identify but much more difficult to solve.
并不是在美国找不到收费低廉的足球。在美国，业余足球的花费与英格兰、西班牙、德国等足球传统强国的青少年俱乐部大致相当。职业青训学院通常不收费——至少男足方面如此。美国大多数高中足球项目只要能够进入校队，就无需付费。尽管人们不断担忧足球运动的参与门槛，但疫情过后，参与人数已经强势反弹。
It’s not that it’s difficult to find affordable soccer in the USA. Recreational soccer costs about the same as youth clubs in England, Spain, Germany and other more established soccer powers. Professional academies are generally free – in men’s soccer, anyway. Most high school soccer teams are free to anyone who can make the team. For all the fretting over barriers to entry in soccer, participation levels have roared back to life after the pandemic.
问题在于美国基本独有的一种中间层级——“巡回”足球，费用从四位数低段到五位数低段不等。遗憾的是，职业和大学球探真正看重的唯独是这一层级。巡回足球是球员在足球领域取得任何未来成就的钥匙，也是进入某些学校的入场券——这些学校拒绝高中优秀毕业生，却欢迎有潜力的左后卫。大学和职业队教练或许会把降低准入门槛说得天花乱坠，但他们及其球探显然缺席了高中和休闲赛事，而那里据称蕴藏着数以千计、负担不起巡回足球费用的优秀球员。
The problem is the middle tier that is largely unique to the USA – “travel” soccer that costs anywhere from the low four figures to the low five figures. Unfortunately, this tier is the only one that matters to professional and college scouts. Travel soccer is the key to any sort of future in the game and/or a ticket to admission to a school that rejects high school valedictorians but welcomes promising left backs. College and pro coaches may talk a good game about lowering barriers to entry, but they and their scouts are noticeably absent from high school and recreational games that would harbor the supposed thousands of outstanding players who can’t pay for travel soccer.
巡回足球也吸引那些意识到孩子几乎不可能入选大学校队的家长。炫丽的球衣对孩子们很有吸引力。比赛水平更高，因为没有运动天赋的人会在选拔测试中被淘汰。球队据称更出色，是因为拥有职业教练，但它们是否真的比那些更有和孩子打交道经验的家长教练更优秀，就见仁见智了。对孩子和家长来说，这也是一种社交活动，他们把长途奔波和几乎见底的钱包当作荣誉徽章。
Travel soccer also appeals to parents who recognize their kids have little to no chance of making the cut in college. The snazzy uniforms are appealing to kids. The games are better because those with no aptitude for the sport are weeded out in tryouts. Teams are supposedly better because they have professional coaches, but whether they’re really better than parent coaches who have more experience dealing with kids is up for some debate. It’s also a social endeavor for kids and their parents, who wear their long-distance drives and depleted bank accounts as badges of honor.
尽管这一切听起来令人沮丧且毫无意义，但值得注意的是，巡回足球带来了大量原本未必能够获得的资金。这些资金用于建设合适的球场，并帮助那些没有经济援助就无法踢球的学生获取奖学金。
While all of this may sound frustrating and pointless, it’s worth noting that travel soccer generates a lot of money that might not otherwise be available. That money goes toward suitable fields – and scholarships for players who couldn’t play without financial help.
因此，足球产业体系很难被彻底拆除。更可行的做法是对其进行改革，部分措施就是限制“巡回足球”的“巡回”属性。球员不会在汽车或飞机里变得更强。
So the soccer-industrial complex will be difficult to dismantle. A better bet is to reform it, in part by limiting the “travel” aspect of “travel soccer”. Players don’t get better in a car or an airplane.
2018年的大胆改革或许已经落空，但美国足协正在取得渐进式的进展。该协会正开始通过与美国青少年足球协会（US Youth Soccer）整合，来理顺那些令人眼花缭乱的青少年组织。此前，美国青少年足球协会已经与竞争对手美国俱乐部足球协会（US Club Soccer）联手，将几项重复的赛事合并为全新的“全国1级联赛”（National 1 League）。
The bold reforms of 2018 may have fallen flat. But US Soccer is making incremental progress. The federation is starting to tame the alphabet soup of youth organizations by integrating with US Youth Soccer, which had already joined up with rival US Club Soccer to merge a couple of redundant competitions into the new National 1 League.
这些变化将使邻近的俱乐部更容易进行比赛，而不必为了与XYZ联赛的球队交手而长途跋涉，同时邻近的俱乐部却在ZYX联赛中比赛。此次重组或许也能平息关于特定地区哪个“精英”联赛更“精英”的无休止争论。
These changes should make it easier for neighboring clubs to play each other instead of traveling farther to play a club in League XYZ while the neighboring club is in League ZYX. The reorganization may also bring a halt to the incessant arguments over which “elite” league in a given area is more “elite”.
要理清美国足协在青少年足球与成年国家队投入的比例并不容易。该协会在“国家队”项目上的支出高达数亿美元，但这涵盖了从健全人男女足国家队到青年队、五人制足球、沙滩足球、聋人足球、脑瘫及类似残障人士的七人制足球，以及电动轮椅足球等所有项目。我们所知的是，美国足协将世界杯奖金的80%分给了球员，而其他国家的足协则会将大部分奖金留存并重新投入到青训中，以便在下一届世界杯上卷土重来，再次击败美国队。
Parsing out how much US Soccer invests in youth soccer as opposed to senior-level national teams isn’t particularly straightforward. The federation spends well into nine figures on its “national teams”, but that includes everything from the able-bodied men’s and women’s teams to youth squads, futsal, beach soccer, deaf soccer, 7-a-side soccer for players with cerebral palsy or similar conditions, and power soccer (players in electric wheelchairs). What we do know is that US Soccer gives its players 80% of World Cup prize money while other federations take a majority of their winnings and reinvest into development so they can come back and beat the USA again in the next Cup.
该协会设有一个资助项目，但资金并不充裕。2025年的税务表格显示，该协会在那个财年发放了近400万美元的补助金——这比支付五名女足国家队队员的薪水还要少。其下属基金会“足球向前”（Soccer Forward）旨在利用美国从2026年（男足）到2031年（女足）举办世界杯和奥运会所留下的遗产——即资金——来支持下一代的发展。“足球向前”迄今为止最大的举措是“校园足球”（Soccer at Schools）项目，其目标是“让美国每一所学校都能开展足球运动”。
The federation has a grant program that isn’t particularly well-funded. The 2025 tax form says the federation gave nearly $4m in grant money over that fiscal year -- less than it spent to pay five members of the women’s team. An offshoot foundation, Soccer Forward, is geared toward harnessing the legacy – read: money – of the World Cups and Olympics being hosted in the USA from 2026 (men) to 2031 (women) toward the next generation. Soccer Forward’s biggest endeavor so far is “Soccer at Schools”, which aspires to “make soccer possible in every school in the United States”.
这本身就代表了美国青少年足球发展模式的一个重大变化——因为美国足球界在过去几十年里一直在逐渐与学校系统脱节。从逻辑上讲，这个决定也是合理的：毕竟，美国的每个孩子都上学，只有少数家庭有能力让孩子参加课外足球训练（这些训练通常在放学后或周末进行）。
That alone is a major change in US youth soccer programming, which has been divorcing itself from schools for a few decades now. It’s also sensible on a basic level. Every kid in the United States goes to school. Only a handful of kids can afford to play travel soccer, which takes place after the school day and on weekends.
然而，对美国足球协会（US Soccer）以及整个足球社区来说，最大的挑战在于如何持续保持人们对足球发展的兴趣。如果能够真正将青少年足球的发展放在应有的优先位置，美国这个幅员辽阔的国家或许能够克服一些（虽然不是所有）所面临的挑战。毕竟，在美国，足球并不是最受欢迎的运动项目。如果足球社区只在每届世界杯失利后才采取行动，而在平时却对青少年足球的发展漠不关心，那么足球运动只会停滞不前，甚至可能会变得更糟。
But the biggest challenge for US Soccer (the federation) and US soccer (the community) will be sustaining the interest in making things better. If youth development is given the priority it deserves, the country can overcome some – not all, but some – of the challenges it faces as a sprawling nation in which soccer isn’t the most popular sport. If the soccer community only springs into action with every World Cup loss and otherwise sneers at the idea that the youth game matters, the game will stagnate. Or worse.