Colin Amos

Keep the cymbals splashy and lets take the bass for a walk

[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.

[Rodger Sherman @rodger]

fireworks outside the visiting team hotels all night.... extreme heat and storms interrupting games ... unprecedented, suspicious administrative ruling undoing a suspension ...

sorry world you're on CONCACAF turf now. these concacolors don't run baby

[Rodger Sherman @rodger]

Again, if I were France, I would simply score four goals (three in the first half) against Paraguay. I was told this was easy when the United States men’s national team did it

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

UNC WALKS IT OFF VS. USC TO ADVANCE TO OMAHA 😱

[Zohran Kwame Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani]

we both up now

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

The Arsenal. Your Premier League champions.

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

This belongs to all of us.

[Qadi @Bigqadi]

In the 1930s, average rent was $18 a month. At $0.25/hour, you could pay rent in 72 hours of work. Today, to pay $1000 rent at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, you gotta work 138 hours.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Jennifer Welch: “Every single time a Republican person tells you, ‘I vote my pocketbook and I’m fiscally conservative’ they are a dipshit and a liar who willfully lies to themselves and they are incapable of looking at the historical body of evidence that every single Republican administration has produced”

[Matt Duss @mattduss]

Obama agreed to $1.3 billion in sanctions relief for Iran as part of a deal that prevented both an Iranian nuke and a war.

Trump withdrew from the deal, started a war that will likely result in Iran obtaining a nuke, and gave Iran $14 billion in sanctions relief.

[Duncan Smith @DuncanSmithNBA]

Fascinating watching Joe become more and more terrified of this new world he is largely responsible for creating

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

"Jews don't belong in American society."

Imagine a sitting member of Congress tweeting that. You can't. Thankfully, it'd never happen. And *if* it did, it'd be the end of their career and the biggest story in America.

But Ogles can say this about Muslims without any censure.

[Neil Renic @NC_Renic]

Every new US administration talking about regime change war

[Dan Pfeiffer @danpfeiffer]

Barack Obama reached a deal that prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Trump ripped up that deal.

Now we are at war with Iran to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon.

[Conner O'Malley @conner_omalley]

I’m 62 years old, I live in Tampa, I eat corn and beef everyday, I always have a titleist hat on, and Iran is the biggest threat to my freedom

[InsideCarolina @InsideCarolina]

BREAKING: Five-star NY point guard Dylan Mingo has committed to UNC.

First story on the new Tar Heel: https://t.co/iCnqXPeXgh

[ESPN @espn]

Have your moment, Seth Trimble 🥶

📸: Bob Donnan/Imagn Images