'It shouldn’t cost a family $3,000 for a seven-year-old to play 10 soccer games. Soccer is supposed to be the people's game.'
The FIFA World Cup is wrapping up in the United States, and the excitement has been real. Millions visited from around the world to see games in person, creating the kind of electric atmosphere that only the world's most popular sport can generate.
For those of us who love this game already, it is a moment worth celebrating after 32 years since our last World Cup. But when the final whistle blows and the cameras leave, I keep thinking about a different question: What does the World Cup actually leave behind for the kids who will never get to sit in those expensive stadium seats? Major sporting events tend to flow toward communities that are already thriving.
New infrastructure gets built in downtown corridors and tourist zones. Spending concentrates around hotels, restaurants and venues in neighborhoods that were doing fine before the first fan ever arrived. The economic ripple rarely makes it to the ZIP codes that need it most and the tickets for a game are unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. Even for a majority of those who live within sight of the stadiums.
For underserved communities, a mega-event like the World Cup can feel like a party happening two towns over, one they helped pay for but weren't invited to. Underserved communities are four-and-a-half times more likely to lack recreational facilities than more affluent areas. It shouldn’t cost a family $3,000 for a seven-year-old to play 10 soccer games. Soccer is supposed to be the people's game.
In too many places, it still isn't. That’s why we need real investment to ensure the game reaches kids who never had a chance to play at all. The U.S. Soccer Foundation was born as a direct legacy of the 1994 World Cup. This organization grew out of the momentum of that tournament to build the game in communities that needed it most.
After 1994, US Youth Soccer registration grew from roughly one million players to more than three million by 2006. What soccer gives young people goes far beyond the game itself. On a mini-pitch, kids learn to trust teammates, resolve conflict, lead under pressure and pick themselves up after a loss. They develop discipline and resilience in an environment that asks something of them and gives something back.
Research shows sports-based youth development programs improve not just physical health but social and emotional well-being, academic engagement and long-term life outcomes. Soccer is a pathway to opportunity. I have seen firsthand what changes when that access gets created. That’s why my family, through our Zaffirini Family Foundation, has partnered with the U.S. Soccer Foundation to build mini-pitches in our hometowns Laredo and Austin, Texas.
When we cut the ribbon on those pitches, kids showed up immediately. They became important space for communities that needed them. The U.S. Soccer Foundation has now installed more than 850 mini-pitches nationwide, with a goal of reaching 1,000 by the end of 2026. A recent evaluation found that 6.5 million children now live within a 10-minute walk of one.
That is real progress. But the work is not done, and a World Cup that passes through America without meaningfully expanding access in underserved communities will have missed its most important opportunity. Some leaders are already getting this right. New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently launched a $6 million NY Kicks initiative, using World Cup momentum to fund capital grants specifically for community soccer fields in disadvantaged neighborhoods across the state.
In Houston, the host committee's FREEKICKS Soccer program is building and refurbishing 23 pitches across six parks in Harris County while providing more than 1,200 annual scholarships to kids who could not otherwise afford to play. At the federal level, Senator Todd Young is championing bipartisan legislation to build and upgrade youth sports facilities across the country. That is the model every host city, every governor and every mayor should be looking at right now.
The tournament final is already here. The window to shape its legacy will close fast. Corporations, philanthropists and policymakers should be directing World Cup dollars downstream, into the communities that will never host a match but deserve a piece of this moment. Soccer's most powerful legacy was never going to be a stadium.
It was always going to be any kid in any neighborhood that the world forgot, discovering that this game was made for him or her too. The World Cup came to America. The question now is whether we make it come to every American kid.
Carlos Zaffirini is on the board of the nonprofit U.S. Soccer Foundation, which aims to provide underserved communities access to innovative play spaces and evidence-based soccer programs that instill hope, foster well-being and help youth achieve their fullest potential. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own. The FIFA World Cup is wrapping up in the United States, and the excitement has been real.
Millions visited from around the world to see games in person, creating the kind of electric atmosphere that only the world's most popular sport can generate. For those of us who love this game already, it is a moment worth celebrating after 32 years since our last World Cup.
But when the final whistle blows and the cameras leave, I keep thinking about a different question: What does the World Cup actually leave behind for the kids who will never get to sit in those expensive stadium seats? Major sporting events tend to flow toward communities that are already thriving. New infrastructure gets built in downtown corridors and tourist zones. Spending concentrates around hotels, restaurants and venues in neighborhoods that were doing fine before the first fan ever arrived.
The economic ripple rarely makes it to the ZIP codes that need it most and the tickets for a game are unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. Even for a majority of those who live within sight of the stadiums. For underserved communities, a mega-event like the World Cup can feel like a party happening two towns over, one they helped pay for but weren't invited to.
Underserved communities are four-and-a-half times more likely to lack recreational facilities than more affluent areas. It shouldn’t cost a family $3,000 for a seven-year-old to play 10 soccer games. Soccer is supposed to be the people's game. In too many places, it still isn't.
That’s why we need real investment to ensure the game reaches kids who never had a chance to play at all. The U.S. Soccer Foundation was born as a direct legacy of the 1994 World Cup. This organization grew out of the momentum of that tournament to build the game in communities that needed it most. After 1994, US Youth Soccer registration grew from roughly one million players to more than three million by 2006.
What soccer gives young people goes far beyond the game itself. On a mini-pitch, kids learn to trust teammates, resolve conflict, lead under pressure and pick themselves up after a loss. They develop discipline and resilience in an environment that asks something of them and gives something back. Research shows sports-based youth development programs improve not just physical health but social and emotional well-being, academic engagement and long-term life outcomes.
Soccer is a pathway to opportunity. I have seen firsthand what changes when that access gets created. That’s why my family, through our Zaffirini Family Foundation, has partnered with the U.S. Soccer Foundation to build mini-pitches in our hometowns Laredo and Austin, Texas. When we cut the ribbon on those pitches, kids showed up immediately.
They became important space for communities that needed them. The U.S. Soccer Foundation has now installed more than 850 mini-pitches nationwide, with a goal of reaching 1,000 by the end of 2026. A recent evaluation found that 6.5 million children now live within a 10-minute walk of one. That is real progress.
But the work is not done, and a World Cup that passes through America without meaningfully expanding access in underserved communities will have missed its most important opportunity. Some leaders are already getting this right. New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently launched a $6 million NY Kicks initiative, using World Cup momentum to fund capital grants specifically for community soccer fields in disadvantaged neighborhoods across the state.
In Houston, the host committee's FREEKICKS Soccer program is building and refurbishing 23 pitches across six parks in Harris County while providing more than 1,200 annual scholarships to kids who could not otherwise afford to play. At the federal level, Senator Todd Young is championing bipartisan legislation to build and upgrade youth sports facilities across the country. That is the model every host city, every governor and every mayor should be looking at right now.
The tournament final is already here. The window to shape its legacy will close fast. Corporations, philanthropists and policymakers should be directing World Cup dollars downstream, into the communities that will never host a match but deserve a piece of this moment. Soccer's most powerful legacy was never going to be a stadium.
It was always going to be any kid in any neighborhood that the world forgot, discovering that this game was made for him or her too. The World Cup came to America. The question now is whether we make it come to every American kid.
Carlos Zaffirini is on the board of the nonprofit U.S. Soccer Foundation, which aims to provide underserved communities access to innovative play spaces and evidence-based soccer programs that instill hope, foster well-being and help youth achieve their fullest potential.
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