Can the World Cup change how Americans look at youth soccer?

Why do kids play soccer?

Likely for the same reasons they play other sports.

“We survey youth in every community,” says Jon Solomon, research director for the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, “and having fun and playing with friends are by far the top reasons. Winning ranks lower, chasing a college scholarship usually ranks even lower than that.”

The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization designed to ignite human potential and build understanding. And yet, in terms of youth sports …

“We've created this system by adults that is more about highly competitive, commercialized structure, when a vast majority of children are clearly saying that's not why they play or why they want to play,” Solomon says.

The goal of Project Play, Aspen Sports & Society’s signature initiative, is to build healthy communities through sports and get more kids playing. (The national average is about 55 percent.)

It sees a crucial opening with the World Cup, which begins in June in sites throughout North America, including 11 in the USA. The final will be held July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Project Play has zeroed in on a sports-specific report for the first time, as well as on the New York City region, with its State of Soccer New York City/North Jersey report. Aspen shared the report with USA TODAY Sports ahead of its Tuesday, April 21 release.

“What if the legacy of this World Cup is that we shift the soccer culture from all this pressure to play?” Solomon says. “The World Cup offers this unique opportunity for any leagues or policymakers or coaches and philanthropists and private partners to collaboratively address systemic challenges within their community.

“And my suspicion is that in many other communities, if we were to look specifically at the soccer culture, you would see many similarities. Now, there'd be some differences - New York City is so dense, particularly when it comes to fields and the sheer number of people who live there.

“I would say, though, that many of these recommendations could be applied in other communities for soccer.”

Glen Rock players (New Jersey) celebrate a goal in front of the New York City skyline in a 2020 game against Lyndhurst.

USA TODAY Sports spoke with Solomon and Kira Pritchard, senior program officer at the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which commissioned the report. Using their insight, as well as the findings of the report, we came up with five suggestions all soccer (and sports) parents can use.

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Kids play sports because sports are fun. Parents might have other agendas. Can we reclaim the joy of pickup play?

“The Courts” of suburban Kearney, New Jersey, were once an asphalt proving ground for future American World Cup stars. Kearny-raised sons of immigrants — Tab Ramos, John Harkes and Tony Meola — once played pickup soccer there in the 1970s and 1980s.

Across our country, you would be hard-pressed to find a pickup soccer game not organized and coached by an adult, or club director.

“Soccer is just such a unique sport in that you go to almost any other country around the world, it is a fairly easy sport to play,” Solomon says. “You pick up a ball, you go out and play, you find, maybe, some makeshift goals, you play on the street or some dirt or local field.

“And in America, of course, we have the pay-to-play model that really can prevent children from playing.”

Mike Mara, executive director of the Kearny Thistle United youth soccer organization, grew up playing at “The Courts.” Today, he hosts street soccer events, where coaches set up the venue, provide pinnies and perhaps rebalance teams.

“Otherwise, we just let them figure it out,” Mara says in the New York City/North Jersey report. “There’s no instruction. Just let them play.”

Kearney recently built a $24 million youth sports complex to host organized games, and Mara sometimes leaves gates ajar to facilitate access.

“We can’t undervalue pickup games,” Mara said. “You learn quickly how to solve problems without a coach and you learn who you are as a player.”

In New York City, where many schools lack proper fields, Street Soccer USA operates school leagues, non-school programming and pickup play.

Every school partnership mandates that fields remain open during weekends and evenings, with New York City Public Schools managing permits to prevent pay-to-play clubs from monopolizing the space.

The Street Soccer USA model creates a high-quality hub that facilitates local, walkable tournament and league play plus everyday access. The Bronx’s Claremont neighborhood, located in the poorest congressional district in the U.S., benefits from Street Soccer USA programs, while the organization plans to open community soccer park in Queens in May.

“It's one thing to renovate a park space, a school space, but to actually program it and make sure that youth have access, families have access, that will be  a major milestone within this initiative,” says Pritchard of the Tisch Illumination Fund.

Rec and travel players play for the same reasons, and they're not the reasons you might think

The Tisch Illumination Fund seeks to expand access and opportunity for New Yorkers and foster healthy communities. Tisch officially launched Play to Thrive, a multiyear initiative designed to expand access to youth sports and strengthen mental health and well-being, at last fall’s State of Soccer Summit in New York City.

The Summit provided key insight for the Project Play report on the sport in New York City and North Jersey.

“We had coaches, had state soccer association people, and these are soccer parents as well,” says Solomon, who has helped Aspen Sports & Society execute 17 state of play community reports in different parts of the country. “The key thing we heard (was) they want to reclaim the joy in soccer, that the sport has become overly commercialized, increases the pressure on kids to perform.”

According to Aspen’s survey, completed by 693 youth soccer players who live in New York City or North Jersey, they most value playing with friends (48%), having fun (46%) and improving skills (45%). Winning (23%) and pursuing scholarships (13%) rank much lower.

“Yet the system is driven almost entirely by competitive goals, often overlooking the sport's broader physical, mental, social and academic benefits,” Solomon writes in the report.

The report also found minimal difference in opinion when you separate recreational and travel players.

“These kids who we largely think are on this different pathway and it costs more money, they're playing for the same reason,” Solomon says.

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Find opportunities to give girls more equity in soccer, and watch them thrive

When Yale Averbuch West found herself at recess as a kid in Montclair, New Jersey, she was the only girl playing soccer. She played with all boys, which made her nervous.

“I didn’t feel welcome,” she says in the report, “and when I see in kindergarten my daughter now throw out a ball and she and her friends stand on the side whispering to each other while the boys play, I’m like, ‘No, this is exactly what we’re trying to avoid!’ ”

Averbuch West is now general manager of 2025 NWSL champion Gotham FC and a former U.S. women’s national team player.

Gotham FC’s Keep Her in the Game is a social impact program that works with coaches, parents and players to address the higher dropout rate that adolescent girls experience compared to boys in sports.

GIrls represent 38% of high school soccer players in New York City and approximately 42% from North Jersey counties Project Play analyzed, below the U.S. average of 45%, according to state and national data.

“They’re doing a lot of good work about how to continue to have girls continue playing and looking at it beyond just the competitive skills, but some of the cultural issues, biological issues that girls and boys are different and have different needs and interest, including things like sports bras and going through puberty,” Solomon says of Keep Her in the Game.

“And it's a cultural issue, too, and we heard this from girls and focus groups as well that some don't feel comfortable playing with boys; they feel intimidated or boys may ignore them or harass them or not pass them the ball. And so co-ed settings at younger ages, maybe there's some value, but we need more girls-only specific programming and pickup play - we found it through several examples - are ways that girls feel like more comfortable to enter into the sport.”

The report urges programs to recruit more female coaches, including mothers, who reflect girls’ identities and provide a “visual roadmap” for young female athletes to see a tangible path for their own future.

“We're working with Girls Leadership,” says  Pritchard, of the Tisch Illumination Fund. “They're a nonprofit out in Oakland, California, and they are focused on centering girls’ voices and empowering the adults and girls' lives to  enhance across education, and they have been the curriculum backbone for Keep Her in the Game. How do you cultivate a positive atmosphere with practice? How do you talk to girls? How do you give feedback? How do you build teamwork and other kind of team building activities within the game?”

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Kids youth sports cost a lot, and that cost is a barrier for their parents

Across all demographics, the report found, the high cost of participation is the top grievance among youth players.

“I tend to find that the kids may not know the exact cost, but I think kids are smart, smarter than sometimes we give them credit for it,” says Solomon, of Project Play. “There can be indirect pressure that they just feel like, ‘Oh, I know my parents are spending a lot of money on this sport and putting a lot of time into; I need to do well.’ Sometimes they can feel pressured that way.”

Overall, 32% of surveyed players cite expensive team fees as a major issue, a figure that spikes to 41% among children from low-income households.

New York City kids, the study also found, are only driven to practice 56% of the time, compared to 92% in North Jersey. Kids in the city take the bus 36% of the time and the subway 32%.

Only 21% of low-income youth have access to a car ride for travelling to play, compared to 86% of high-income youth.

Players reported one-hour subway commutes and missed tryouts due to transit errors. If they can’t get there, they simply don’t play.

We have the power to make things better in youth sports

The report encourages youth coaches, parents and administrators to think outside the box with soccer.

Many children in the region live in “soccer deserts,” where the nearest quality field requires bus or train trips if parents are unavailable to drive.

The report emphasizes prioritizing high-quality playing spaces in underserved urban areas. Smaller spaces are cheaper to build. Be creative, it says, such as using existing outdoor basketball courts or school gyms for futsal, a 5v5, small-sided indoor version of soccer.

Youth organizations, the report says, need more oversight. We can all look inside them about what their offerings are doing for us.

It notes, for example, how club coaches over-roster teams to maximize fee collection, effectively sidelining players to fund professional staff.

It highlights how the best soccer programs recognize that early athletic ability rarely predicts future success.

Instead, they prioritize positive environments and quality coaching. Project Play recommends equal playing time for all children through age 12, arguing that benching players stifles growth.

“There's also the idea of creating transparency and oversight in youth sports organizations,” Solomon says. “This is not just gonna change overnight about how highly commercialized sports is, but one thing that we talk about in the report is to protect families, to try to restore trust, federal and state authorities could require mandatory financial transparency for all youth sports organizations, particularly those with nonprofit status, that could be public disclosures of their revenues and expenditures and executive compensation and how they allocate these proceeds. Right now, it’s highly isolated with very limited transparency.”

The theme gets back to Solomon’s question about the lasting impact of the World Cup, which the report underscores:

“What if the legacy of the World Cup for kids is pretty simple — return fun to more kids so soccer becomes a lifelong pastime rather than a stressful elite pursuit?”

Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.

Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him atsborelli@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can World Cup change how American parents, kids view youth soccer?