🇹🇹

[🇹🇹 @njPharaoh]

💎

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

When Kobe Bryant said his insane level of confidence came from knowing he’d done all he could to prepare, it taught me that anytime I’m nervous it means I didn’t prepare enough.

[Matt Williams @MattWi77iams]

Two completely avoidable problems the American soccer industry has that hurts sustained growth:

1.) The cost of youth soccer eliminates 75% of the potential player pool.

2.) You can only watch domestic soccer with a streaming service.

[Cody Kakpo @CodyKakpo]

The Moment Van Dijk knew the 2022 World Cup was rigged for Messi and Argentina.

[Martien 🇳🇱 @MartienBall]

Every tweet calling out Argentina and FIFA is getting over 100k likes… people are finally waking up 😭

[TikTok: @looseneck19 @shiderboy]

80K In Week 8 & They Want Us To Believe This Album “Came & Went” 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Tigah Paul 🐅 @TigahPaul]

I look at Houston, which has a massive Latin youth population. You think the best youth soccer players in Houston are playing competitive youth soccer? No, because their parents can’t afford the insane barriers to entry that youth club soccer requires. Soccer should have the lowest barrier to entry. The sport requires a ball, a goal, and a field. Nothing else... but US Youth Soccer is designed to keep the working-class kids out of soccer, many of which is the go-to sport for youth, especially in a Latin-rich area like Houston.

And you wonder why we get our asses kicked every four years in soccer. The American youth that loves the game can’t afford to get into the gatekeeper’s door.

[Emmanuel Acho @EmmanuelAcho]

*Zlatan on Messi missing the PK*

“Everyone misses PK’s. I’ve missed PK’s, Thierry has missed PK’s… Alexi was never asked to take PK’s so he couldn’t miss…” 😬😬

[Mike Herndon @MikeHerndonSk1]

100% true. If you have a six year old who is any good at all in the US, your options currently are:

A) cheap rec league soccer where your child gets zero coaching and no real competition

OR

B) shell out thousands per year to a travel club

Completely broken system.

[𝗙𝗜𝗔𝗚𝗢 🇩🇪 @fiago7]

The sad thing about the World Cup is an entire generation of Americans will become Man City supporters now just for Haaland

[🇹🇹 @njPharaoh]

Had this thought several times this World Cup, my life is drastically different than ‘22 man lol

[Garrett @GarrettQuinn]

World Cup loses hit harder as you age. You think about where you will be in four years, how your kids will be older, if you’ll ever see your country win, your own mortality, and how many more of these you’ll see. I have probably 11-12 left in my life. Unsettling thought, really.

[its me @Jordan_T729]

bc here around age 6, they get a pigskin and a speech that goes like this

[Big Smoke - @Skepta]

Cheaters never prosper 🔂

[𝗠𝗕𝗥. @absolutkylian]

🚨Mohammed Salah on the loss vs Argentina today:

🗣️: “It’s difficult to accept a result like this because I honestly don’t think football was the deciding factor tonight.

We gave everything we had, but when the officiating consistently go against you, it becomes impossible to compete.

I’m not looking for excuses, but everyone watching could see what happened. At this level, you expect fairness above all else. Instead, it felt like they already had their favorites. The entire world saw that today, and that’s all I’ll say.”

[ESPN UK @ESPNUK]

Egypt manager Hossam Hassan says Argentina's win was "entirely undeserved" 😳

[BBC Sport @BBCSport]

"It's clear that this tournament has been fixed."

Egypt's Mostafa Zico was not happy with some of the decisions in their game against Argentina.

[Polymarket Sports @PolymarketSport]

🚨DEVELOPING: Egypt's manager has been at the center of controversy during & after Egypt's 3-2 loss to Argentina...

During the match he made an X with his arms to report a case of racism, however it was ignored by the ref

After the match he was upset with the ref and said:

"It's all about money. They want Messi to stay in the tournament.

In football, many things happen off the pitch because of interests.

What happened was unfair.

Egypt deserved to qualify. We were the better team against Argentina."

"I will say what's on my mind regardless of the consequence, this was clearly a rigged match and the whole world saw it"

"And I want to say one more thing, if they want Argentina to win so bad, why call everyone to come and participate?"

[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.

[🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇫🇷🇪🇬 @salahive]

life when egypt was leading 2-0

[🇫🇷🍁 @cIairefontaine]

the fuck kinda world cup campaign is this 😭😭😭😭😭

[🇹🇹 @njPharaoh]

😂😂😂

[Stacin Goins @LCyance]

You don't get no bitches playing soccer in America, that's a real issue that can't be fixed