In 2008, I featured a piece on siblings Alexis and Amber Hernandez. Mexican-Americans who have grown up in the Central Valley of California, they had at the time both recently been called up to play for Mexico’s U-17s. Today, I return to this story by focusing on the club which helped them to develop. The South Valley Chivas Academy in Porterville, California has, for the past several years, been developing young players against tremendous odds, including poverty, isolation, and cultural differences. Yet despite these challenges, the academy has succeeded in developing several promising young players, including Amber and Alexis, and become an official academy for Mexican powerhouse Chivas.

The academy formed as part of Chivas’s sangre nueva (new blood) effort to develop young talent. While at a player identification try-out in 2005 for young players that Chivas Guadalajara put on in San Bernardino (it drew 15,000 players and showed the top brass in Mexico that there was the potential for a US-based team; later that year Chivas USA was founded), Alexis was identified by then scout Dennis te Kloese. Esmaldo and Gilbert kept in contact with te Kloese and when Chivas decided to establish actual affiliated academies in the United States, South Valley Chivas become the second one.

Photo: South Valley Chivas Academy

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Two encounters with foreign fans inspired Los Angeles-based filmmaker Pablo Miralles’s current project, the documentary film about the US-Mexico soccer rivalry called Gringos at the Gate. The first came at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, where he was on assignment for Los Angeles television stations. An English fan he was interviewing said to him, “You know what I’m most scared of? I’m scared that Americans will actually start caring about this sport.” The thought of this clearly spooked the (slightly inebriated) English fan, who proceeded to start crying. Which led Pablo Miralles to wonder: What was it that would lead a fan halfway across the world to shed tears over the possibility that the US would become a soccer power?

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River Plate’s young midfielder Diego Buanotte is currently in the hospital, recovering from injuries he suffered in a car accident in which he was involved on December 26. Buanotte was lucky; three friends traveling with him in the car were killed. Buanotte’s father told the media that, in addition to fearing for his son’s physical health, he worries that about psychological trauma that young Diego will likely face.

Diego Buanotte’s car after the accident (photo: Olé)

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When England recently announced the potential host cities that will host games if that country is awarded the 2018 World Cup, one stood out: Milton Keynes. The MK Stadium that would host games is home to MK Dons, among the most controversial teams in England. MK Dons are controversial, of course, because they are the first “franchise” club in that country. As Tom Dunmore has chronicled extensively at Pitch Invasion, the club formerly known as Wimbledon FC was taken over, moved from London to Milton Keynes, and attempted to claim the club’s long history (ultimately unsuccessfully). What makes MK Dons – and thus the potential staging of World Cup games at its stadium – so controversial is the novelty of its history. It is the only team to have broken the longstanding connection between clubs and the community in which they grew up. Indeed, this connection is part of what gives many clubs in Europe their unique character (think, for instance, of Barcelona’s Catalan identity). So strong is the connection that Premier League trial balloons about the possibility of staging 39^th games around the globe were shot down by outraged fans, incensed that clubs were putting profit over everything else.

The Football Supporters’ Federation protest sign against the 39th game (photo: Football Supporters’ Federation)

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Any list of soccer meccas in the United States would have to include Nevada Smith’s. The bar, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, has bringing in the soccer faithful of New York since 1994. Today, on any given weekend day, the bar shows games from morning till night. Matches from England, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United States and beyond (catering to a group of supporters of SK Brann, Nevada Smith’s even shows Norwegian league) fill the bar’s many televisions spread over two floors. Weekends are “a constant coming and going of people,” Nevada Smith’s owner Jack Keane told me recently. “On a busy Saturday, there’s no doubt that we have between 2000 and 3000 fans that come through the doors.”

Fans at Nevada Smith’s (photo: New York Daily News)

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When I travel abroad, people often tell me that the United States is good at soccer only because they import foreigners to play for the national team. While this strategy was key in our development as a soccer nation, it is far, far less common today. The 1990s saw the US scour European leagues for players with American connections, coming up with gems such as Ernie Stewart and Thomas Dooley (both of whom had American servicemen fathers) and duds such as David Wagner and David Regis (the latter was a Frenchman whose late call-up into the 1998 World Cup squad led to great friction within the team and was a large part of the team’s horrible showing in that tournament). But since the turn of the century, the US has invested a tremendous amount of money into youth development, and nearly all of its players have been born in this country. Despite this, the image of the US as a sub-par team that must import foreigners to achieve success has lingered. Yet ironically, in recent years the US has helped to develop several players who have gone on to play for other countries internationally.

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