Jbo

NEW: Infectious disease doctor advises avoiding fresh produce — even if washed — as the explosive diarrhea outbreak spreads rapidly throughout the U.S.

It’s time, I need to pick a Premier League team! I’ve been locked into the World Cup since I was drafted in ‘02 and the global games from Copa to Euros to AFCON for over a decade Narrowed it down to: Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, or Man Utd. Who should I choose & why?

So you think the American taxpayer should fund youth soccer? You should definitely run for office on that. What about piano lessons, SAT prep, dance, math tutoring, horse riding, fencing etc? Should taxpayer fund those? Also, our goverment financially supports many sports.

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?

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?

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.

Tobias Harris adds nothing that the Spurs were missing. Harris is a low volume, middling efficiency shooter, and he’s a replacement level defender. There were far better targets with the mid-level. San Antonio also could’ve cashed in picks with a trade instead. Don’t love it!

Bobby Marks on Kawhi Leonard: "I think there's a lot of playoff teams keeping an eye on what happens with Kawhi Leonard." Malika Andrews: "What playoff teams?" Marks: "Maybe his former teams."