Kevin Cottrell

Dad to one. UVA Alum. Talking baseball & footy. @LFC @Orioles. Blog ⤵️

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Currently home injured so here are my 2026 #MLB standings predictions, with a (non star) player from each team I am excited to watch #baseball

[Baltimore Orioles @Orioles]

With the 7th pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, we have selected Eric Booth Jr. from Oak Grove High School (MS).

Welcome to #Birdland, Eric!

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

@artpalker Booth, if Pittsburgh wants him and SF doesn’t get him

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

My own little #MLB mock before the fun begins. My favorite fits (non top 3) are Booth to Pit, Burress to KC, Condon to Miami, and Peterson to Cincy

[Jeff Passan @JeffPassan]

BREAKING: Rookie standout JJ Wetherholt and the St. Louis Cardinals are in agreement on a long-term contract extension that will buy out multiple years of free agency, sources tell ESPN. Wetherholt, 23, has been tremendous and is the latest rookie to land a nine-figure contract.

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Second Knights game for me. Got to see Murakami this time 😀

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[george @idobadtakes]

Travel ball is also quietly destroying baseball and basketball. There aren’t many top American-raised players any more.

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital.

I played soccer for 20+ years.

Grassroots.
Academy.
D1 college.
Pursued professionally after.

And I’ll say the quiet part out loud:

The US soccer infrastructure is broken.

In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement.

For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal:

Get recruited.
Get a scholarship.
Play college soccer.

But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path.

From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival.

Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France.

That player has likely been in a professional environment for years.

Training daily.
Playing meaningful matches year-round.
Competing against grown professionals.
Getting thousands more touches.
Learning how to solve the game under pressure.

The gap is massive.

And it shows.

American players are usually athletic.
They are usually fit.
They usually compete hard.

But at the highest levels, that is not enough.

The biggest difference is technical comfort.

We do not move the ball like Spain.
We do not combine like Argentina.
We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood.

That comes down to volume.

Volume of touches.
Volume of street soccer.
Volume of futsal.
Volume of unstructured play.
Volume of high-level training environments.
Volume of meaningful games.

In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23.

Parents spend thousands.
Clubs charge thousands.
Travel teams fly all over the country.
Showcases become the product.
Recruiting becomes the scoreboard.

But the return on invested capital is poor.

We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment.

That is a broken operating model.

And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer.

You inspect the system.

The US has talent.
The US has athletes.
The US has money.
The US has facilities.

But the foundation is wrong.

We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system.

Those are not the same thing.

Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources.

I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer.

I’m saying it because I lived it.

And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

[. @tosinmm_]

Clint Dempsey is the greatest men’s player in American history, always was.

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

The entire point is many of the best SOCCER PLAYERS in this country do not make it professional, much less to the national team. Look at baseball and basketball and how it’s gone from inner city kids to 2nd gen pros + Europeans/Dominicans/Venezuelans making the league

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Never fails that when the US men’s team loses, ignorant people who’ve never played football/soccer at a decent level think random jacked/tall dudes can learn the game and “we’d dominate”

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Poch subs (Pepi and Reyna) made zero impact. Keeper gave away a goal. Poor showing all around #USMNT #mundialdefútbol2026 #WorldCup2026

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

@fer_linaresv @Liv_Agar I don’t either. But then again I don’t see an Italian team winning it for a while longer

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Should save that lol, get fucked

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

What subs would y’all make if you were Pochettino here? #WorldCup2026 #USMNT

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

I remember when Mourinho gave Tahirovic a chance at Roma. He plays in Sweden now 🤔

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Got a bit distracted seeing Pjanić in the stands and started looking up who’s playing in Russia now. Goal was coming, Bosnia have to come out now

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

That inadvertent knee to the head of the Bosnian keeper reminded me of the Karius incident in the Champions League final against Madrid

[Kevin Cottrell @Afro_Baseball]

Gonna live tweet the #USMNT #WorldCup2026 game like the old days