about LA FINCA
La Finca Futbol is dedicated to developing real futbol in the United States.
We want to see the beautiful game played here because we love futbol and it pains us that the US is not contributing to the international futbol conversation. Our "futbol vocabulary" or style of futbol is stunted and isolated. We're not even truly participating in the game.
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We know that's harsh.
The more than 800 men playing in Major League Soccer are all incredible athletes. But our professional league is ranked 10th in the world (some say even lower), and our men's national team 13th.
We think this is because so few of even our best players actually play the beautiful game. (The US Women's National Team history may seem to suggest this is just another men's problem, but we don't think so. More on that elsewhere!)
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And we think the problem starts at the youth level.
Early development in the US rewards individual physicality and league competition over artistry and game understanding and we have suffered because of it. Strength, speed and force, rote passing patterns and set plays can win youth soccer matches; they are a far cry from the qualities of real futbol. And even though this critique has become commonpalce, the fix is still not obvious. There is tremendous financial pressure and tradition working against any substantive changes to our youth systems.
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But we know that the top of the pyramid will only improve after we change how we introduce our kids to the game -- the earliest level of youth development -- because this is where the systematic underdevelopment begins.
The result is a tragically miniscule pool of talent emerging from what is the most played youth sport in America. Achieving true excellence in America professional soccer will also require reforms to the structure of premier and elite youth leagues including MLS Next and ECNL, as well as our collegiate system (which currently sends less than 1% of D1 graduates on to the professional game). We're starting with the kids.
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Why We Are Hopeful
Contrary to the popular and self-defeating belief that some kids are just naturally more talented than others, that some players just have more skills, or that soccer is just "not part of our culture," we've taught high level ball mastery to even so-called non-athletes. Will they all go on to become pros? That's not the point. Creating a sea of young talent is the only way for some to reach the pinnacle of excellence.
Our approach is based on the simple idea that we build competent players first, then we teach them the game.
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This won't be easy.
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Youth soccer clubs do not have a tradition of teaching skill development. That's not just a critique of the USA. Professional futbol academies around the world don't teach basic skills either; they don't have to because kids growing up in established futbol cultures learn skills before joining clubs. So there is no existing model for this. In most of Europe and South America for example, juggling 100 times is a pre-requisite to joining a club team. Imagine that!
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At La Finca, we're familiar with the popular explanations of America's poor standing in international soccer, there are too many competing sports, it's just not part of our culture, we don't pay the player's enough, it's not commercial-friendly, no pro-rel. The list goes on. None explain why our professionals just aren't very good.
By raising up an entire generation of highly-skilled futbol artists, we aim to deliver the talent needed for the US to finally develop a style of play all its own and one capable of competing on the world's stage.
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We welcome everyone to check us out, ask us questions -- we love to talk futbol -- and most importantly, we hope you'll come play.​​​