The ins and outs of US youth soccer: learning about loyalty and success

Abstract

This paper discusses one aspect of competitive youth team soccer in the US: the tension between loyalty and success. Teams use rituals to encourage parents and players to place loyalty to the team over individual goals and self-interest. But competitive teams value team success over loyalty to its players. And youth learn to place self-interest over loyalty to the team, even at the cost of friendships. This becomes an important lesson for youth in a competitive economic system, where success in adulthood is often defined in economic terms. Thus, competitive youth soccer reproduces an upper-middle-class habitus familiar to many of the families that participate in youth sports in the US. The pursuit of desirable careers typically demands geographic mobility and the routine abandonment of significant others. It is a taken for granted aspect of the upper middle-class worldview, learned at a young age in competitive team sports such as soccer.