By Mike Woitalla
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Soccer Federation hiring a staff coach, Carlos Juarez, and charging him withreaching out to the Latino community, which had been generally excluded from mainstream American soccer. We spoke with Juarez in
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Soccer Federation began offering its coaching licensecourses in Spanish. Carlos Menjivar certified some 3,000 Latino coaches with E, D and C licenses while serving, from 1997 to 2002, as a U.S. Soccer National Staff Coach, MulticulturalOutreach and Development.
“Making the courses available in Spanish was of great importance,” says El Salvador-born Menjivar. “They had been scared of taking coachingcourses. They spoke English in their daily routine, but were not confident enough to take a course in English where things had to be explained clearly, corrections made. Where they were underpressure, because they were being evaluated and taking tests.”
Juan Carlos Michia, who remains a U.S. Soccer staff coach, was hired in 1996 in a similar role toMenjivar’s.
“We were the only two Latinos guys covering a country of 300 million people,” says Menjivar.
But their work made an impact, bringing thousandsof Latino coaches into the fold of mainstream American soccer, which had largely neglected its Latino community despite its deep roots in the game and an obvious source of talent.
“Isee coaches I had in my courses now coaching in the Development Academy,” says Michia, while Menjivar says he saw many go on to coach club, college and high school and get B and A licenses.
“The strategy was a sound one,” says Rene Miramontes, who preceded Menjivar before becoming assistant coach of the Colorado Rapids in 1997. “Educate thecoaches, then educate the players.
“Credit to the folks at U.S. Soccer, because they actually devoted the resources to the Hispanic community. Once we began to get the word out, thekey people in the Hispanic community — which often had a ‘What do they know about soccer’ attitude — began to see the value of this.”
Through the courses, theFederation staff made contacts.
“We’d had to have players to demo,” Miramontes said. “We’d see talented players and asked about them. ‘Do you know anymore?’ … ‘Do you want to scout for us?’ … And we started building a player identification network.”
Besides the coaching courses, Michia and Menjivarwould urge unaffiliated Latin leagues to come under U.S. Soccer’s umbrella and they held player ID camps for Latino players in metropolitan areas around the nation.
“We had toeducate and convince coaches, parents, administrators,” says Michia. “They didn’t know about ODP stuff. They thought that was about going to the Olympics. We had to translate the ODPforms in Spanish for them to know what it is.
“The Spanish and American media helped a lot, spreading the word to get coaches and players to come out.”
Alsoinstrumental in outreach to the Latino community was the creation Latin American Soccer Coaches Association (LASCA), inspired in part by Steve Sampson, the fluent Spanish-speakingU.S. national team coach from 1995 to 1998. He had encouraged Hispanic soccer coaches and administrators such as Ric Fonseca, Luis Sagastume, JoeSupe, Ralph Perez and Frank Rojas, then president of the CSA South, to organize, give a voice to Latino coaches, and help the integration process. LASCAgained the support of the NSCAA.
“Our goals and objectives were to simply to make a very concerted effort to, on a national level, identify and promote Latino and Latina coaches,players, game officials, organization/league leaders youth and adult, and whenever possible incorporate them into the U.S. Soccer landscape,” says Fonseca, who served as L.A. City College coach andAthletic Director for more than two decades.
Now, two decades later, the U.S. youth soccer landscape is profoundly more diverse. Pay-to-play remains a serious barrier to low-income kidsin the Latino community and beyond, but U.S. youth national teams, whose coaches includes Tab Ramos and Hugo Perez, have a significant presence of Latino players.
“All of our efforts in this area are part of a long-term plan to be more inclusive generally, but with a special emphasis on the Hispanic community,” says U.S. Soccer PresidentSunil Gulati. “That community is growing and is enthusiastic about the sport, so it’s an obvious connection.
“What are those efforts? They are many. It’s thehiring of scouts and liaisons and later head coaches; it’s media and technical materials in Spanish; it’s training centers in areas previously overlooked to identify and develop talented youngplayers; it’s in the composition of our Board of Directors; it’s all of those things and many more. But most importantly it’s an understanding that it would be foolish not to dedicate resources to agrowing, able and enthusiastic Hispanic community.”
One decade ago, the only Latino coaches on U.S. Soccer’s national staff were Michia and Roberto Lopez, whocovered Region 2 from 2003 to 2011.
Lopez, who immigrated to Florida at age 12, in 1969, coached the Clearwater Chargers to a runner-up finish in the 1991 USYS Snickers Cup U-17 NationalChampionship.
“When I moved to Florida there weren’t any youth leagues,” Lopez says. “I played in the ethnic adult leagues, where you had Latino teams, Greek teams…
“Then I became a youth coach. On the way to the national finals, the teams we played teams had hardly any Hispanic players,” he says. “They were mainly uppermiddle-class white kids. I figured economics had a lot to do with it.”
When he joined U.S. Soccer, his main responsibilities were coaching education and scouting for the U-14 andthe U-17 national team program. But he also held player ID camps in Midwest Latino communities to look for “players you’re not going to see at a State Cup.”
Lopez hasreturned to Clearwater Chargers and coaches its U-18 Development Academy team.
“If you look at the families of the players on my roster, I have 15 different nationalities,”says Lopez. “Peruvian, Uruguayan, New Zealand, Scottish, English, Cameroon …”
Mainstream youth soccer, he says, has started to reflect the diversity of the U.S.population, and U.S. Soccer’s scouting network — with nine Technical Advisors, nearly half Hispanic, and 100 scouts — is casting a wide net.
“In the old days,” saysLopez, “I thought there were a whole lot of Latin kids all over the place that we haven’t discovered. Waiting to be discovered. Once I got in there I saw the amount of work my colleagueshave done and other people have done. I’m sure there’s kids we’re missing, but I don’t think there’s too many kids we don’t find anymore. News travels fast now.”
Miramontes says the Development Academy “is not complete, but overall does a pretty good job of identifying Hispanic players and bringing them in.”
Michia, now in his18th year as a U.S. Soccer staff coach, says a major difference today compared to the earlier years is it has become much easier to connect with the Latino soccer community.
“It’s like day and night,” Michia says. “At the time, we had to educate the minority to let them know there was a chance to be in the national team. Sometimes I think about itand I laugh, because I had to chase coaches and players to come to the Training Center. Now we send one e-mail — and get everyone in one place.”
(In Part 3, the Youth SoccerInsider will check in with Hugo Salcedo, who became the second Mexican-American to represent the USA at a world championship when he appeared in the 1972 Olympics and has playedvarious roles since advocating for Latino talent in the USA.)
Read “Latino Inclusion: How far have we come? (Part 1)”
(Mike Woitalla, the executiveeditor of Soccer America, is co-author, with Tim Mulqueen, of
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Love Carlos, he certified me on my F course and called me Mourinho only after I was given a nicely worded advice on how to look like a coach to the kids after I showed up wearing Levi’s to a course.
One problem I noticed in the ODP and collegiate level as a player and a coach is that many coaches will choose players on their athletic ability not technical or tactical awareness. I hope this will change, however its difficult for hispanic players to thrive in a country that at one extent or another vaules athleticism over technical ability.
I’m sorry to say, Cisco, that it is still happening at all levels of soccer. I believe attitudes are changing though and I’ll use my own son as an example. He has plenty of ball control but is small and slow Nevertheless, he just made a local 13s pre-academy team. I hope other physically late developers can have a similar chance.