alt Hacker NewsYeah, this difference occurred to me while traveling in rural Mexico. To play soccer all you need is a ball. So you can go into the poorest villages that have little in the way in infrastructure and all the kids are playing soccer in the dirt road or a random field, etc. And often enough adults join in because they were once the kids too.
So it's this very pervasive, almost universal shared experience there. Totally different than my experience as a kid in the 80s that did indoor soccer briefly.
One observation my friend made while we were talking about this one time down there, is that basketball plays a similar role in the US. Yeah you need a hoop not just a ball, but that ends up approachable. In fact my neighbor down the block keeps a portable hoop set up in the parking strip so long as it's dry out, and right now a couple kids are playing some casual 1 on 1 lol.
Anyhow it's really clear that having a huge community available with few barriers to play and learn makes a huge difference.
Now that I think about it another similar experience was seeing my ex that grew up in Taiwan play some ping pong in a bar here in the US. She didn't particularly care about ping pong or play it much, but because she was immersed in it at school as a kid she could still smoke anyone in that bar easily lol.
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Cricket is even more accessible: you need a bat (which could be a piece of wood), but you don't need space. You can compress the game to play in a 1.5m wide alleyway between two buildings.
I think this is why it became so popular in India etc.
> Yeah, this difference occurred to me while traveling in rural Mexico. To play soccer all you need is a ball. So you can go into the poorest villages that have little in the way in infrastructure and all the kids are playing soccer in the dirt road or a random field, etc.
The same is true in Argentina. And in school kids play almost every recess too.
A lot of very prominent player from Argentina had this kind of humble beginning too.
I played soccer during recess at school. I was inept at it. I was terrible at football, too. I really stunk at basketball. Berry berry bad at baseball. Sank at swimming.
I thought the concrete ground is much more important for basketball, otherwise the ball would bounce all over the place. In comparison, muddy ground for soccer is part of the fun.
The counterpoint to this is that, broadly speaking, Mexico is demonstrably no better at soccer than the US when it matters. A common talking point in recent years is that the US league is actually better at developing Mexican talent than the Mexican league, though that somewhat reflects different incentives.
I think a core issue is that US and Mexican teams rarely have an opportunity to compete against teams significantly better than themselves. Furthermore, structural constraints within both leagues limit the amount of talent separation that can occur between teams, so it looks a bit like being stuck in a local minima in terms of talent development.