Despite a US soccer boom, the sport has made barely a ripple in African American communities. Could unlocking this talent base revive the failing national team?

Soccer found Robert Russ when he was in the seventh grade – not that he was looking for it. Like most African American kids at his Washington middle school, he had no interest in the game. Soccer, everyone had told him, was either for white children in the suburbs or Latino immigrants, not kids like him.

Then one afternoon someone waved him on to the playing field. By the end of the day, he was in love with a new sport.

A LeBron James for soccer would change the game for African Americans Robert Russ, coach

Soon came the taunts from his friends, telling him that he wasn’t playing a real sport. That what he was doing wasn’t really black. That he was wasting his time.

“If you’re African American and you play soccer, you get picked on a lot,” Russ says. “People are going to say you’re trying to be Hispanic,” he says.

He never cared about the teasing; he enjoyed the game too much. But now that he’s 20 and working with young inner city players, Russ notices how few look like him. He’s sure peer pressure has a lot to do with that.

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While soccer has boomed in the US, becoming a staple of suburban life, it has barely made a ripple in African American communities. As Russ talks, he watches a tournament played by children from Washington’s poorest neighbourhoods. Of the dozens of kids, most are Latino, and only a handful are African American. It’s hardly representative of a city that is 49% black.

It’s a picture that’s repeated across the country. One of the world’s most democratic games, played on streets and in alleys around the globe, would seem a natural fit for America’s predominately black inner cities, where basketball thrives on playground courts.

Instead, it’s almost non-existent.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Teenagers watch a game during a soccer tournament in Washington DC. Inner-city coaches say it’s a struggle to attract African American youngsters. Photograph: DC Scores

A failing national team

For the first time in more than three decades, the US men’s team will not be competing at the World Cup. The national team has been unable to develop dynamic, creative players who can compete at an international level. Many see the roots of this failure in the expensive, well-organised network of pay-to-play suburban leagues. Some parents spend more than $10,000 (£7,420) a year on membership fees and out-of-town tournaments.

Those competitions are often where college coaches find recruits and national scouts identify prospects. Children in poor neighbourhoods in places such as Washington are priced out. Even the select few who get scholarships struggle with the logistics of reaching training fields far from public transport routes.

Mentally, the kids aren’t even thinking soccer is accessible Amir Lowery, former MLS player

As a result, millions of children don’t ever try soccer – including some of the country’s best athletes.

“To not be allowing non-white kids to develop shows why we aren’t in the World Cup,” says Amir Lowery, a former Major League Soccer player and executive director of Open Goal Project, a DC nonprofit working to provide minorities with more access to high level soccer opportunities, and level the playing field in youth soccer. “A kid playing basketball and American football can see a chance to play in college, they see a path through,” he says. “If you want to play soccer [beyond high school], there’s no path there. You don’t ever see college coaches at high school games.

“Mentally, the kids aren’t even thinking soccer is accessible.”

Lowery, who is black, grew up in a middle-class part of Washington’s well-to-do northwest quadrant, exposing him to an elite system. The players he coaches today aren’t so fortunate, and his attempts to recruit basketball or football players are declined.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest For the first time in more than three decades, the US men’s team did not qualify for the World Cup. Photograph: Ashley Allen/Getty Images

Mark Lewis came to the US from Jamaica as a teenager, and has always been perplexed at the lack of African American kids playing soccer. As a youth coach, he has spent much of his adult life trying to change perceptions of the game in predominately black DC neighbourhoods such as Anacostia.

Several years ago, he became a coach at DC Scores, a non-profit group that mixes soccer with art at inner-city schools. He’d convince kids lingering near his practice sessions to join a team. He even placed soccer balls in his backyard, hoping to spark curiosity in those walking by.

“I never see a kid in Anacostia carrying a soccer ball,” he says as he watches the same Washington tournament with Russ. “In the white neighbourhoods you see that every day.”

Waiting for a black Messi

It’s often said that the game simply needs to be introduced to black communities, either with the creation of new fields or the addition of school soccer programs. Nicole Hercules once tried to explain soccer to a group of African American kids in her hometown of Rochester, New York. One child gazed at her black skin and asked: Where are you from?

“It was such a gut punch. I said: I’m from here, just like you!” Hercules recalls. “But until they see more people who look like them playing soccer, they don’t think they can do it.”

What if a great black American soccer player suddenly emerged? “A LeBron James for soccer would change the game for African American kids,” says Russ.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Howard played for Manchester United and the US national team, but in the unglamorous position of goalkeeper. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

As a kid Russ could look up to Tim Howard, the black player who was the US goalkeeper through three World Cup cycles. But Russ, a keeper himself, knows the great American breakthrough star will have to be be a playmaker, someone dynamic. Someone like Lionel Messi.

“I think in America we will develop a better Messi,” says Keith Tucker, a longtime soccer coach in Washington’s black neighbourhoods. And Tucker, who is African American, believes this “better Messi” will be black. The problem is just how long it might take.

“It’s hard to start a league on this side of town,” he says. “You need professional coaches to start summer camps and bring quality coaching. You need to start kids young. And you need professionals who parents feel comfortable leaving their three-year-olds with. Then you need lots of volunteers to make a league work.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Keith Tucker believes that a quality league with the hope of a direct path to the US national team would go a long way to creating interest within black communities. Photograph: DC Scores

Churches, Tucker says, can provide the community, but not the coaching expertise. City leaders have not made soccer a priority for financially-strained recreation departments, and aside from DC Scores – with whom he coaches – there isn’t an emphasis on soccer in Washington’s schools.

Many years ago, DC’s powerful black mayor Marion Barry ordered the recreation department to push youth soccer. For a brief time, it seemed the sport might catch on. Then Barry left office and the initiative died.

'White soccer teams don't pay upfront': how race unlevelled US playing fields Read more

Along with many others, Tucker blames the US Soccer Federation for not doing enough to develop and feature African American players. He wonders why US Soccer won’t come into black neighbourhoods in Washington and other big American cities to establish leagues, staffed with top-level coaches like those in the wealthy suburbs.

A quality league with the hope of a direct path to the US national team would go a long way to creating interest within black communities, he says. Kids will believe they are part of a “family”, the way they do in established basketball leagues throughout African American neighbourhoods.

Until that happens, the world’s most democratic sport will remain a novelty – something for the white and Latino kids to do in the suburbs.

Part three of our in-depth look at soccer and race in American cities runs tomorrow.

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