Three million, four hundred and sixty-nine thousand human beings.

That’s the population of Uruguay in 2018.

Back in 1950, when Uruguay won the World Cup by beating Brazil in Brazil, their population was about 2.1 million folks. Brazil’s population at that time was just under 54 million people.

A lot of those engaged with soccer have looked at the success of Uruguayan football (15 Copa America titles, 2 World Cup victories, loads of internationals playing at the highest levels) and tried to understand it. In this article, I will simply compare and contrast it with the framework on the sport offered up by Sunil Gulati, and by its very comparison lay bare some of the fundamental flaws in the thinking of the American soccer leadership of the past twenty years, giving us a foothold into a much better paradigm for American soccer going forward, and a platform to demand from – and upon which to challenge – any ostensible candidates for soccer leadership next month.

These comparisons are especically cogent in light of Gulati’s latest reported comments about the “nonsense” he sees in various ways of thinking about soccer’s future. Gulati submits:

“…We have $150 million in the bank. That’s from 10-15 years of savings…To end pay-to-play, to do a little back-of-the-envelope analysis, without knowing what every kid pays, would mean paying $150 million a month, every month to end it. There’s nowhere in the world that has no pay-to-play. What you want to make sure of is that anybody can afford it. But you have millions of kids playing, and the thought that we’re going to end play-to-play is nonsensical…”

In taking a good look at Gulati’s submissions, where he starts his analysis – there WILL/MUST be pay-to-play – and the framework on it – wholly economic, as suits an economics teacher, which Gulati is – is itself instructive.

Let’s jump back to Uruguay (wildly successful by any measure in their soccer development, and certainly entirely dominant relative to the U.S.’ efforts) for a moment.

Did you know that in and among Uruguay youth leagues, there are no standings? Zero records of wins and losses. Why? Well, the focus isn’t on wins and losses (or giving ignorant parachute parents simple – simpletonic – reasons to justify their $10K a year on a “travel team”), its on practicably getting young people better during practice at aspects of the game (not the game itself, a distinction with a difference) and demonstrating that development during matches; who actually wins and loses is largely irrelevant in that work.

Did you know that ONFI – one of the two bodies organizing youth play in Uruguay – exclusively utilizes the “7 v 7” format in games for kids ages 5 to 9, and the “9 v 9” format for games for kids ages 10 to 13? Why? Well, for similar reasons that Brazilian youth programs deploy futsal as a primary developmental tool for youth understanding of the principles of any game of football…it’s easier to see what the coach is talking about with less bodies in the way of the dynamics. Once you can see and experience those dynamics that are being coached, the easier it is to both see them in 11 v 11 play and to exploit them in “breakdowns” in areas of the pitch where, even if there are 11 other defenders on the pitch, there might be far less to manage. Of course, Gulati and the glitterati name and blame the “culture” of American soccer for the reasons why futsal and small squad play aren’t central to the youth setup, as if culture isn’t, sociologically, simply “daily ways of life,” and as if governing bodies don’t by their very choices help determine what daily ways of soccer life will be. But doing that would mean owning the privilege you gain from the status quo (more on that later).

Did you know that in Uruguay you cannot come near a sideline to coach young people of ANY age in soccer without – at minimum – a yearlong license course (and that’s the minimum…that’s the, like, minimum they’d demand of the above-linked Edinson Cavani, if HE wanted to coach…almost all Uruguayan youth coaches have MUCH more training than that…)?

Did you know that in Uruguay youth soccer programs are assessed in their quality and effectiveness as a whole, across the lifespan of the youth, and not in their age bracket segments?

Did you know that the VAST majority of playing opportunities for Uruguayan youth are NOT play-to-play? That they are in fact free at the point of participation for youth players?

Now which model, given any comparison of success between Uruguay and the USA, would you want to implement? Which one should be on the lips of every candidate for U.S. Soccer President?

And, importantly, why would Gulati break breath to even talk about pay to play in this context?

Understanding Gulati means understanding a maxim of political analysis, namely “where you stand depends on where you sit.” And Gulati sits in a space rife with privilege.

I mean this in the deepest, social justice/social progress sense. Privilege here means being able to be stone-cold ignorant to the truth of other people, places and systems, with little to no consequence. We all have some privilege; we all have, as MTSU scholar Jacqui Wade puts it, “A couple of nickels in the quarter.”

But we’ve got to own our nickels. Gulati, and those like him, who have always operated within a US Soccer that, connected with the CONCACAF of Blazer and Warner, saw and positioned itself as the North American expression of FIFA luxury, access and power, never thought about and to this day cannot conceive of a model for American soccer that begins with the most vulernable in mind. Of course, no perspective that starts and is centered in “soccer as economic engine” will ever do that, and so Gulati operates at multiple removes from the reality that’s necessary to transform US Soccer into a useful experience for most Americans, most of the time, while in every instance keeping track of the humanity of the most vulnerable. In fact, if Gulati were reading this right now, his force-field of privilege would be turning these words into the literary equivalent of the teach talking during the Peanuts episodes.

He, and those that think like him, can’t hear a different model going forward, even if, like the Uruguayan example, the truth of the matter is right there in front of him to see.

But what we need is a group of women and men who can see that future clearly. A group who own their nickels and say, for example, “No, I don’t think about soccer for the differently-abled everyday. That reflects my privilege…but if you are differently-abled and love soccer, that’s all you think about, and we need modes and forms of the soccer experience that ensure you can participate.”

We need men and women who recognize, unlike an economics prof, that almost nothing that we’ll remember on our deathbed begins and ends with its economic value…that, in fact, most things we deeply care about either have infinite value to us in that system, or no value at all (either rendering that framework less than useful). It’s the old test I’d deploy ats a university visiting professor at Towson U. in Maryland when confronted with the ECON 101 boyz making their way into a humanities class with Milton Friedman-on-the-brain, thinking that every single thing is economic, and coming to a physical standstill when I submitted “Tell me the value, in U.S. dollars, of your mother’s love for you.”

Like those young students, Gulati and his ilk are left at a standstill when the larger cultural significance of a shared world sport in its American expression is demanded and desired. It’s they “why” behind why Gulati is now going places and speakign out with such bitterness toward the way the tide has turned against his “legacy,” with him not even realizing that that notion of legacy itself is a vestige component of a framework (started in tacitly racist ways under Rous, exploded under Havelange and Blatter and concretized here under Blazer and Warner) that failed us from the start, and we’re happy to see fail in the end.

Challenge any candidate you support on these matters directly: form where do they derive their soccer privilege, and how do they “own their nickels” to move beyond them to deliver a platform for the sport that works for most of us, most of the time, while tracking the vulnerable?