Early this year while in Texas I met three players from the Houston Dynamo academy. We had an interesting, informal conversation about what life is like for teenagers in a pro club’s youth program. Tab Ramos had come on as head coach a couple months earlier and they were hopeful about his interest in promoting Homegrown players. Then they asked me if Tab had been a good player.
The question took me by surprise, because they’d already impressed me with their deep knowledge of the soccer world. So I did some math in my head. Never a very quick process, but I realized that kids born in 2002-2004, like these guys, wouldn’t know much about the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, the trailblazing American players who moved to Europe in the 1990s, or the launch of MLS in 1996, when Ramos was the league’s first signing.
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