Daniel Meloy

Staff reporter for DetroitCatholic. Detroit City FC supporter Notre Dame and Liverpool fan. Lover of books and people who read books.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

I know, I know, don’t feed the trolls. But the idea is football clubs should make their teams affordable to the community to develop players, build credibility in the community, and for players that make it, sell those players and invest those profits back into youth football.

[Alexi Lalas @AlexiLalas]

Youth soccer (youth sports) is a competitive market with businesses selling a product that obviously customers are willing to pay for. I’d love if soccer was free to all. But who is going to pay for all this free soccer?

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

We know the problem. We know the solution. We know why we won’t fix it.

[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.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

@JRzepecki @MattGajtka I understand the need to dissect all the reasons why the US didn’t win this World Cup, and many sports commentators who only pay attention once every four years has a hot take. But here’s the reality. Yes, the US football scene is WAY better than 10 years ago. But bad days happen

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Casual reminder the best footballer in the world is 5-foot-7, 160 pounds and wouldn’t make most high school basketball teams.

[Josh Wiesel @Jwiesel13]

Christian Pulisic is a prime example of the United States not having its best athletes playing soccer

There’s just no way there aren’t guys in the NBA & NFL who wouldn’t be better than him if they would’ve started playing soccer at a young age

He’s a wimpy small athlete

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

@JRzepecki @MattGajtka Soccer is a sport where “you’re an athlete, you’ll be good at this,” doesn’t work. There is a reason why Usain Bolt didn’t play football for Jamaica.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

I think the most annoying part of being an American soccer fan is listening to national media pundits dissect every World Cup exit as "What needs to fundamentally change for the U.S. to win."

Sports are hard, and sometimes, your team loses. Just go get 'em at Copa America.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Too mentally and physically exhausted to make it out to Keyworth on a weeknight. So supporting @DetroitCityFC from home tonight.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The World Cup begins tomorrow, and many will watch the matches. Soccer reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off on our own, but a path we learn to walk together. Anyone who does not know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, has not yet understood the game. Anyone who does not know how to live with and for others has not yet understood life. #ApostolicJourney

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Grand Prix hot take: While, as an "event," it's cool to have the Grand Prix downtown and accessible to everyone, most race fans know the Belle Isle circuit produced better racing.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

In this house, we recognize the Jacobite succession.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Possibly unpopular opinion: Detroit's PWHL club should be called the Red Wings.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

I'm all for dialogue, but if you step to the microphone during Q-and-A and you begin with, "Not a question, but a comment." I'm all for whoever is running sound to immediately turn off the mic.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

@tom34587 @CatholicArena @StJosephShrineD https://t.co/p6I8S6h4Un

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

@tom34587 @CatholicArena Gratiot Avenue by Eastern Market. Across the street from @StJosephShrineD

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

A blessed Feast of St Joseph the Worker and a Happy May Day, where you and your sister picking flowers (weeds) from every house on Commonwealth Avenue on the way home from the bus stop to present to your mother is a perfectly normal thing to do.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

A wire news story used numerals for an amount between zero and nine. Downfall of society; we might as well have just let the Communists win.

[Ave Maria Radio @AveMariaRadio]

On #Epiphany, Daniel Meloy w/ Detroit Catholic joins @vanessadenha to review the latest news out of the @ArchofDet / Dr. Robert Collins discusses his new Ignatius Press book, "You Visited Me: Grace and Healing in the Modern Medical Center." Listen at Noon EST on Ave Maria Radio!

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Tonight, I’m sponsoring my brother -in-law as he is welcomed into the Catholic Church. Mary, watch over us all.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

https://t.co/BRGeXFcX8t

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Chrism Mass remains one of my favorite celebrations in the church. All the priests of the dioceses gathered to celebrate with the bishop.

[Daniel Meloy @DanielPMeloy]

Regardless of where you are in the endless culture wars, liturgical debates or "who lives in the right side of 8 Mile" nonsense, it shows we're all one in Christ.

Blessed Triduum.