This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

Monday, October 3. My second King match. It’s been almost a week since I hopped on the bandwagon, and it still amazes me the machine of King Soccer. Everything, and I mean everything, is stacked against them. Jake was right. Winning is the easy part. Beyond the mountains of poverty, immigration, and language, there are also the hills they must climb that most kids (me) take (or took) for granted. For starters, try getting to a game.

“Ok,” Jake yells. “We’re walking up to 72nd street to get the 2 express train. Then we’ll transfer to the 4 train at 149th street. We take that almost as far as it goes until we get to the Bedford Park stop. Then we’ve got about 10 blocks to walk to the field.” The game today is deep in the Bronx, and those directions will need to be repeated countless more times at each intersection, train change, and exit. It’s no easy thing getting 20 teenagers to stay together for that length of time and distance. Absent is a team bus, van, or soccer-mom procession.

The team stretches down a couple blocks. There are stragglers, slow pokes, and kids popping into the corner bodega to get a snack. Jake, the 24-hour-a-day coach, is constantly spinning and counting and trying to fathom what in the hell happened to Diego (one of his best players). The other kids saw him at school, with his soccer bag no less, but he never showed up after school. But there is no time to wait. They have a little more than an hour to get to the field before the always ticking forfeit timer runs out.

Once in the subway, it’s as if the kids are slow to a point. A couple kids get on the wrong train. A couple kids are arguing over nothing. A couple kids are tempting fate by leaning over the tracks. One adjusts and readjusts his diamond earring. One reads a pocket bible. Diversity at its finest. Somehow, seemingly without paying any attention, they all make it to the game (even the two who got on the wrong train find their way back to the team later on down the line).

New game, same old problems. We arrive at what the PSAL has said is the field, but this can’t be right. This is by far the worst field I have ever seen for a sanctioned high school soccer game. It’s a rock-strewn dustbowl. Net-less goals sit off to the side. Metal barrel trash cans are sporadically standing throughout the field. Before they can play, the teams have to carry the goals into position, hang the nets, remove the trash cans, and place small cones as they walk off the proper distances to delineate the sidelines and penalty boxes. The cones will remain on the field throughout the game.

This constitutes a warm-up and the King players are pissed. It’s hard enough getting these kids to do things they enjoy, much less manual labor when they came to play soccer. For the most part, the players ignore Jake and his orders to help set up the field. A few of the freshman players looking for favors to be returned in playing time help out along with several team managers, while the rest kick the ball around or stand idly by. “Suck it up, boys,” Jake yells. “Just be glad we won’t have to play out here again.” I crack a smile. For the first time since my arrival into New York City, I understand the virtues of field turf even if my knees do not.

New game, same old outcome. 3-1 King. I’m not sure anyone could have played a good game on this field. The ball sailed from one foot to the next in a cloud of dust. It would bounce as if off concrete in one spot and deaden as if landing in deep sand the next. The opposing team never strung together more than three passes, booming the ball as hard as they could nearly every time a King defender approached. It was one of those games that frustrates everyone involved. Even the winners are unhappy, because somehow it feels like they got worse since they last played.

The off-sides issue has not been resolved, and Jake is not thrilled. “Pay attention to that last guy, damnit.” More flailing shots: “Get your knee over the ball. Stop falling away from it.” His final words to the team: “Smile, you won. That’s fun right?” This opens up the stage for words from the team, heckling jokes pointed at each other and Jake, but mostly aimed at the Bronx in a mangled mix of a couple different languages. Nobody is happy about the game, but as with life, you take it in stride. Games like this help bring a team together.

It’s How You Play the Game

There is more to a coach’s purpose than teaching soccer skills. Jake juggles more roles, more whistles, than most coaches. This fact, along with his being taught the game by a Brazilian, is why he teaches a brand of soccer based on freedom and fluidity wherein the players dictate decisions almost as much as the coach. I have only watched two King games, but I think I might be witnessing the future of American soccer. With fewer drills, less structure, and almost no practice combined with more freedom and more games (the team’s schedule is almost doubled with non-league, exhibition games), Jake has found a formula whereby time spent together is as important as how you spend it. This unorthodox approach creates a brotherhood that few, if any, of the players have by blood.

“American soccer is on the rise, but is struggling,” Jake says. “Right now, it shouldn’t be about winning or losing, it should be about how you play the game. Like the cliché, ya know? I think the U.S. National Team could take a cue from us. They need to increase the style, flair, speed, and texture of our game.” These are the things King soccer puts a premium on. For the most part, the kids arrive at King with individual skill. Just like the USMNT. There is little time to practice at King. Just like the USMNT. Tactics, soccer theory and the occasional individualized work-out are all Jake forces upon his team. “Right now American soccer is too structured, too rigid,” Jake theorizes. “They need a mix. They need our kids. I want a mix of Brazilian and English Premier League, but It’s got to become its own form. We can’t be Brazilian. We can’t be a Mexican-style team. We can’t be a European-style team. We have to be American style, which is a mix of our immigrants cultured in with I don’t know what to call it, the Anglo-American? But that is exactly what King Soccer is.”

This is an immigrant country and is becoming more so everyday, and that can only be good for soccer. Just as our country was built from nothing to something by inspired immigrants, so shall go our game. If you ask me, it’s the immigrants that will save American soccer, just as soccer has saved some of them. And King is the living proof.

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(Will MLK be able to balance their fragile existence long enough to add a sixth straight championship? Will another team finally topple the dynasty? The playoffs, and the answers are right around the corner. Check back throughout the fall as I continue to follow the Kings of King).