Zachary White

[𝐍𝐚𝐮𝐭 🐝🇵🇷 @RMNAUT]

FALL AND WINTER GANG WE UP

[Brett Merriman @shmerriman]

A credit score but for how efficiently you board/get off a plane

[Noam Blum @neontaster]

We’ve reached peak “every day will be pizza day in the cafeteria if I’m elected class president.”

[Mason @brxxklynbxby__]

Influencers are the private equity of culture: draining whatever’s “cool” until higher prices and worse experiences push out the original fan base. Then they move on to the next thing, leaving the original to die as fans lose interest or the ability to participate.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

No caption needed.

[Dish @D1SCHER]

August is a top contender for worst month of the year

It’s like 90-100 degrees every day

Basically no sports on

School starts back up for pretty much everyone

I’m struggling to find a peer that’s as bad on the 12 month calendar

[heather @anchorlines]

so she’s an 11

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

UNREAL 😳

[erin chack @ErinChack]

Ginger ale tastes best on a plane because it is a beverage of the gods and when you fly you are closer to them, radiating in their light

[Kish 🇭🇹 @kishswim]

If this country is serious about soccer they’ll start paying more attention to the USL instead of the MLS

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

A lot of people told us we should stop eating only at fast food chains, so we have tried to more eat local spots during the last days. This was our dinner today in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s also where we’re staying tonight.😊

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

Our second stop in Kentucky. We were told that Kentucky is all about horse racing, so we went to Keeneland Racecourse and visited some of the horses. They sell for insane prices. It’s a sport we didn’t know anything about, but after talking to the people who showed us around and hearing how crazy it gets on race days, we decided we have to come back for a race here.🐎

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

That‘s a wrap from Tennessee. We had the most amazing few days here. We would‘ve loved to stay longer, visit Memphis or the IndyCar race in Nashville tomorrow. But that‘s just gives us a reason to come back again for a visit, maybe next year already for the CMA fest which many told us about. Now it’s time to explore Kentucky!

[Lexington Sporting Club @LexSporting]

Who else thinks @FreddyLA7 should stop by Lexington Sporting Club 🙋

[CFCDaily @CFCDaily]

🚨🏆On this day 1 year ago: Chelsea won the FIFA Club World Cup. [FIFA]

[Lawrence Dockery @ldock93]

I know we're all very upset about them going out without even a whimper, but I'll be damned if the six games from Senegal to Bosnia wasn't most fun I've had watching this team in forever.

Now, please, go out and capitalize on this momentum

[BOUTROS ⽊ @boutros555]

At basically every turn of this tournament, both the positive and the negative, this guy has been pure class, embodying the American spirit.

Make him the face of your team going forward, I say.

[Sebastian @WhyNotSebastian]

The most depressing thing about loving soccer in the USA is seeing the pattern of everyone not care, then misunderstand, then get hype, then clown on soccer once the USMNT lose, then just move on.
Repeat every 4 years.

[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.