Comments by "Digital Footballer" (@digitalfootballer9032) on "Patrick Cc:" channel.

We don't have the huge football pyramid here in the U.S. that they have in the U.K. and many other countries, there is the MLS and a few minor leagues below that and that's all. The problem with this is that you don't have all these lower leagues to prove yourself in and get noticed. We also don't have the youth academies that other countries have. Therefore it's basically pay to play here. You need to have an at least moderately wealthy family that will pay for travel leagues and development programs, or you will get nowhere here. It's because of this that football here is seen as more elitist and not the working man's game it is other places. Baseball here is more like football in other countries where we have the deep minor league system that good players from any background can move up through. I saw this first hand as my small little hometown had a single A baseball team that was an affiliate of the Montreal Expos and big players like Randy Johnson, Marquis Grisom, and Andreas Galaraga all came up through our team and I got to see them all play when they were nobodies, which was pretty cool in hindsight. I wish football was more like it is in other countries here in the U.S. because I played and I loved playing but all of us knew no matter how good we were we weren't ever going anywhere without the financial backing.
3