Cantera Dreams: Americans Underground in Mexico

“There are 20 million Mexicans trying to become American and there’s one American trying to become Mexican. We don’t even know how to deal with that! We don’t have the paperwork for that!”

http://www.xiquarterly.com/2013/05/17/cantera-dreams/

Note: This article is being released as a preview of issue three of XI Quarterly. If you like what you read here, you’ll love reading the whole issue, titled Futbol Americano, and featuring 11 great stories about the connections between soccer in North America and the game in the rest of the Americas. Subscribe now!

One hundred feet below ground, Pumas is developing the next generation of stars. The team’s massive youth development center may be in the middle of Mexico City, but, built in the bowels of a former quarry, it is hidden from the metropolis that surrounds it. Where once workers excavated stone that was used to pave the streets of Mexico City, today Pumas carves future stars from the raw material — the hundreds of players — that makes up its famed youth program. Cantera, the Spanish word for quarry is also the word for the youth programs of professional teams throughout the Spanish-speaking world, including perhaps the most famous cantera in Mexico: that of Pumas.

At street level, the entrance to the Pumas cantera is unremarkable. Located in a quiet, middle class neighborhood, a gate manned by several security guards is the only indication that something special lies within. From street level, a windy road leads down to the base of the carved-out former quarry. After a short trip through a tunnel (originally built to shuttle stone out of the quarry) the main field of the cantera is visible. An oasis of green grass in a sea of gray rock, the cantera is clearly not the first inhabitant of this space. Hundred foot walls of stone make the field, which is surrounded by a gym, a cafeteria, and administrative offices, feel like a world completely separate from Mexico City. A set of narrow stone stairs leads even further down, to a second full-size grass field. Next to it are several smaller dirt fields.

There, on those dirt fields, Pumas held tryouts in December. The tryouts were not in themselves remarkable: As one of the most successful Mexican clubs in developing youth players, Pumas often holds such events, looking for talented young players. But among the group trying out this week were five players who had come not from Mexico City or other parts of Mexico, but from the United States.

One of the American kids was a soft-spoken, skinny 16-year-old named Daniel Olea. Born and raised in Escondido, a city 30 miles northeast of San Diego, he had come to Mexico to pursue his dream of catching on with a professional team. Although Olea’s parents are from Mexico, he had never been to the country before. If he were to make it with Pumas, he would have to do so in an environment thousands of miles from home, 100 feet below ground.

Daniel Olea (center) along with other Mexican-Americans trying out at Pumas

Daniel Olea is just one of many Mexican-American kids who have travelled south in recent years, hoping for a professional career in Mexico. A list that users of the website BigSoccer.com maintain is striking for its size (they counted 85 players eligible for the U.S. national team at the start of the 2011-2012 Mexican league season) as well as the difficulty they have in keeping it up to date. Players travel from the United States to Mexico, especially at the youth level, with amazing regularity. Why are Mexican clubs today recruiting Mexican-American players so heavily? A confluence of events, sporting and geopolitical, has led to this situation.

In the United States, the second half of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st have seen two relevant trends: the concurrent growth of youth soccer and the Latino population in the United States. From 1970, when soccer was in its infancy in the United States, the sport has grown to nearly 14 million players today, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Meanwhile, the Latino population of the United States grew from 9.6 million in 1970 (4.7 percent of the total population at the time) to 50.5 million in 2010 (16 percent of the total), according to Princeton scholars Douglas Massey and Karen Pren. A majority of the Latino population in the United States today has family roots in Mexico, and they form the population among which Mexican clubs are finding success recruiting young players.

Youth soccer has grown tremendously over the past 40 years in the United States, and has developed into a uniquely American system. In the United States, autonomous youth clubs made up of largely affluent players have long been the core participants in youth soccer. Much of the growth of youth soccer in the post-World War II period took place in newly growing suburbs, where affluent parents signed their kids up for this new sport. A system of elite clubs developed, many of which charge high fees. These fees, on top of travel, equipment, and other associated expenses, often total thousands of dollars per year, limiting those who are able to take part in this world of elite youth soccer. In his book, “How Soccer Explains the World,” Franklin Foer writes that the sport in the United States “inverts the class structure of the game” that exists in most of the world.

While youth soccer has grown tremendously over the past half century, the professional game has experienced many ups and downs. The meteoric rise of the NASL in the 1970s was followed by its spectacular collapse in the 1980s. Indoor and semi-professional outdoor soccer were the only options for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. And the recent steady growth of MLS has come only after early years in which it was not clear that the league would survive. As a result, the best youth players in the United States have long been developed in autonomous youth clubs, made up of mostly affluent children, totally disconnected from the professional game.

At the same time that youth soccer was growing in affluent suburbs in the United States, the second half of the 20th century saw an incredible rise in immigration from Latin America. For decades, these immigrants, the majority of whom are low-skill workers from Mexico, have quickly found work building houses, mowing lawns and caring for the children of the growing affluent populations who were moving into new suburbs. Many settled in the United States and in recent years their children and grandchildren have taken up soccer in large numbers.

Today, in areas with large Latino populations, there are two major groups of children who play soccer: affluent suburbanites and working-class Latinos. They don’t always play together: Hugo Salcedo, who has over 30 years experience working for FIFA, U.S. Soccer and MLS, estimates that in Los Angeles alone there are around 40 unaffiliated leagues that cater primarily to the Latino community. Recognizing that many players have been ignored, youth clubs affiliated with USSF have worked to bring in more Latino players. Teams have begun to offer scholarships to allow some talented Latino players from modest backgrounds who would not otherwise be able to afford the annual fees to play for elite clubs. MLS teams have set up youth programs in recent years and several have moved toward the elimination of costs for their players, though the financial realities continue to be a barrier to the participation of talented Latino players. Tony LePore, director of scouting for the U.S. Soccer Development Academy system, recently told Soccer America that while 23 of 80 Academy teams are fully funded, “we have a long way to go.”

At the national team level, the appointment of Colombian-born Wilmer Cabrera to be the under-17 national team coach in 2007 was seen as recognition that the U.S. Soccer system as a whole had done a poor job in reaching out to Latino players. As U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati said at the time, “The fact that he is bilingual, from a Latin-American community, is a plus.” Although Cabrera ended his tenure with the under-17s in 2012, the appointment of Jurgen Klinsmann as the senior national team coach in 2011 has heralded a reorientation towards Latino players. Klinsmann made clear soon after his appointment that he wanted to bring in more Latino players, saying in his first press conference as national team boss, “There’s so much influence coming from the Latin environment over the last 15-20 years. It also has to be reflected in the U.S. National Team.”

Despite these efforts, the youth system in the United States continues to see many talented Latino players slip through the cracks. And Mexican clubs, seeing a vast country sitting just across its northern border with many talented young players who also happen to have Mexican citizenship, have swooped in.

* * *

Daniel Olea has not had the easiest of childhoods. The son of Mexican immigrants living north of San Diego, he currently lives with his stay-at-home mother, Reyna Garcia, and stepfather, Javier Arias, who works at a local Subway restaurant. His parents work to keep him out of trouble, and soccer has been the main tool for doing so.

Daniel Olea has loved soccer for as long as he can remember. His mother recalls that “from four years old, his life has been soccer. He’s always had a ball with him.” Growing up around his father and older brothers, Olea was never far from a soccer ball, and he has long harbored dreams of a professional career. His mother remembers Daniel and a cousin as young kids saying they wanted to be professional soccer players. “He’s always said he wants to be someone. He’s always had the idea of becoming a professional player since he was 10 years old.”

Olea’s mother and biological father separated when he was young, and his brother Eric, six years his senior, took on a fatherly role with young Daniel. “When my dad left, he was the one who took charge and he was like another dad to me,” says Daniel. Eric took his younger brother to soccer games, and the kid soon impressed those around him. Growing up in the Mexican-American community in Escondido, as Olea got older he began to be recruited by various teams in unaffiliated “Mexican” leagues. He was so good, his mother recalls, that team after team would attempt to recruit him. “Wherever we went, wherever he played, people would ask us if he would play for their team.”

Olea developed his talent playing for these unaffiliated teams. He had never played for an affiliated team until two years ago, when he got connected with the local club, known as FC Heat. His mother and stepfather were concerned about the cost, but the club, which has a policy of offering financial aid to all who need it, offered to waive his fees.

While at the Heat, Olea has blossomed. Coach Carlos Hernandez has taken the youngster under his wing, and under his guidance Olea has developed into a skillful forward, with guile and inventiveness rarely seen in a 16-year-old. With this burgeoning talent, Olea began to attend tryouts for professional teams a couple of years ago. He attended a Copa Alianza event, in which scouts from Mexican clubs and the Mexican national team look for players in the United States, as well as tryouts held by the Xolos in San Diego. He impressed the Tijuana team so much that they invited him to train with them in 2012. This training, he says, helped him to improve as a player. “Before I went there, I was normal. But after, I was at a whole different level,” he says. The travel time to practices with the Xolos (Tijuana is an hour from Escondido) eventually proved too difficult, and he had to give up on this dream after six months. Though Olea was disappointed, his mother told him “Look, if becoming professional is for you, you’ll get another chance.”

This chance came at a September 2012 tryout organized by the San Diego-based amateur club Sudaca, whose director of coaching brought up scouts from Pachuca as well as lower-division Zacatepec. In this two-day tryout, Olea impressed the visiting Pachuca scouts. They suggested that he work with Jesus Cardenas, a former professional player in Mexico and the United States who now dedicates himself to training young players north of the border and connecting them to clubs south of it. The club saw talent in him and thought that after a few months of intensive work with Cardenas, he could come down to Mexico for a second tryout with the club there.

Working with Olea over several months, Cardenas was impressed by the young player’s talent. Cardenas insists that American-based young players like Daniel Olea have the ability to make it with Mexican clubs, but the typical training schedules do not prepare young players for professional careers. “In terms of talent, you can compare players here to those in Mexico,” he says. “But the difference is the training, simply because in Mexico young players practice every day and in the United States we don’t have that amount of time with the kids.”

In December, Cardenas arranged a trip to Mexico for Olea and several other young players who aspired to professional careers. The trip was originally scheduled to include tryouts at Pumas and Pachuca, but the latter was cancelled after the club’s goalkeeper coach Miguel Calero suddenly and tragically died at age 41. That meant that Olea had only one chance to catch the eye of Mexican coaches who might offer him a contract.

I asked Olea what it felt like when he first arrived at the Pumas cantera. How did he feel, descending into the bowels of that imposing facility? Was he nervous? “No,” he told me. “I felt like I just wanted to be there. Like it was for me.”

* * *

At the same time that the youth soccer structure in the United States has allowed talented young Latino players to slip through the cracks, Mexican professional clubs have been increasing their investment in scouting and youth development. The tremendous growth of Mexican professional soccer in the second half of the 20th century and early part of the 21st has given clubs resources to invest in future talent, including from the United States.

There are many reasons for the increased focus of Mexican clubs on youth, but one involves a chain of events that begins with the many Mexican citizens who headed north to the United States in the post-World War II period. The establishment of a large U.S.-based Mexican and Mexican-American population, many of whom find a connection to their homeland through soccer, has helped teams throughout Mexico. The teams have profited tremendously, selling merchandise, television rights and tickets to a constant stream of friendly matches staged in the United States.

As a result of this commercial success (not to mention the millions they make within Mexico), Mexican teams have grown rich and have been able to purchase some of the most talented players in the Western Hemisphere. Bringing in these stars from countries such as Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and beyond began to worry some in the Mexican federation, who grew concerned that young Mexican players were being overlooked for expensive foreign signings. In response, the Mexican federation put into place the so-called 20/11 rule in 2005, which required teams to give their under-21 players at least 1000 minutes of playing time per season. The rule was phased out in 2011, deemed no longer necessary after it played a large role in focusing teams on youth development, something teams throughout Mexico now do more than ever before.

As Ramon Villa-Zevallos, head coach of the Pumas under-17 team, put it to me at the December tryout, “Here at Pumas, we have a long tradition of developing youth players. Before, almost no one else produced young players. Now, the competition is fierce. … Pachuca, Chivas, Pumas, everyone is doing a good job developing young players. Everyone is looking anywhere they can to bring in good young players.” And with teams throughout Mexico flush with cash and looking far and wide for the next “Chicharito” Hernandez, it perhaps isn’t surprising that their search has taken them north of the border.

Today, young Mexican-American players can be found on the rosters of teams throughout Mexico. Several teams have made the strongest effort to recruit in the United States. These include Tigres and the Xolos, two teams close to the border (Tigres in Monterrey, a little over two hours from Texas, and the Xolos in Tijuana, just south of San Diego). For these teams, recruiting players in the United States is simple, requiring only a quick trip across the border. Roberto Cornejo, assistant general manager of the Xolos, speaking of current star Joe Corona and top youth prospect Alejandro Guido, both of whom spent much of their childhood in San Diego, told me, “These guys are hometown boys. We consider San Diego our hometown as well.” The Xolos have set up two youth academies in the San Diego region, with the hope of finding “a few new Joe Coronas. San Diego as a region has a lot of talent.”

It’s not just border teams that are recruiting players in the United States. Clubs throughout Mexico have done so, with Santos Laguna, Chivas, Pachuca and Pumas leading the way. The reasons for this increase are many, but the most fundamental reason is the improved standard of play in the United States. Victor Nava, assistant coach of the Pumas reserve team, says, “We’ve seen that players in the United States have a lot of quality.”

Mexican-American players in the United States are not only talented, but also have the advantage of having dual citizenship. Limits on foreign players in the Mexican league don’t apply to these players, giving clubs an extra impetus to recruit them. As Fernando Parra, vice president of Zacatepec, a lower division team with several Mexican-Americans on its books, told me, “many teams have looked for young players who can get dual citizenship and come here to play.” The realization, then, that these players are, for sporting purposes, identical to those living in Mexico has opened up the territory in which Mexican scouts can look for talent. Unlike young players from other parts of Latin America, who have limits placed upon them by the Mexican federation and whose signing often requires a complicated visa process, the recruitment of Mexican-American players involves few bureaucratic hurdles. Players scouted today in the United States can be on a plane next week to practice with a Mexican team.

With talent and Mexican citizenship, these players have become a hot commodity for Mexican clubs. As an investment strategy, the economics of signing Mexican-American youth players makes sense. While clubs have to pay to send scouts on trips to the United States, compared to the potential payoff — the onfield benefit of finding the next Joe Corona and/or the financial windfall from selling such a talented player — these costs are minimal, especially for wealthy Mexican clubs with money to burn.

The cost of signing Mexican-American players is also low because most are not signed to professional contracts with their American teams. Because of the particular youth system that has developed in the United States in which youth clubs are often separate from professional clubs, young players rarely have professional contracts and thus can be signed for free. Marco Garces, head of scouting for Pachuca, tells me, “It’s very interesting for us in the U.S. There are forty million Latin Americans, some of them play really well. And they’re not attached to anyone.”

Even as MLS teams have set up youth academies, only around 50 players have been signed to professional contracts under the league’s Homegrown Player Rule. The rest remain free to leave their American team at any moment to sign with a Mexican club. Garces is dumbfounded by this situation. “They don’t ask for compensation,” he tells me. “It’s weird. I can go and watch the Galaxy train and take their players.” Ramon Villa-Zevallos echoes the sentiment: “We go to the Dallas Cup and we see a whole world of talent. And in the United States, there’s no professional youth system. It ends up being really cheap to bring players here.”

There are many reasons why youth players in the United States are not signed to professional contracts, including labor laws affecting the employment of minors and a strict separation between amateur and professional status that the college system uses as a means to determine eligibility. For years, when the only step beyond youth soccer in the United States was the college game and the vast majority of youth soccer players came from the type of affluent families who would insist on their children attending college, this system was rarely called into question. But as the children of working-class Latinos have come to make up a larger portion of the youth soccer players in the United States and as U.S. Soccer and MLS have made more of an effort to professionalize the youth game in order to produce top quality players, the cracks in the system are becoming more and more apparent.

Mexican clubs, acting purely in their own self-interest, have been among the first to see these cracks, and figure out how to take advantage of them. As Villa-Zevallos puts it, “there are a lot of players in the United States who are lost.” He continues: “in the United States, they charge you to play. So players come to Mexico in search of their dream.”

* * *

Daniel Olea’s longstanding dream of becoming a professional player was now closer than ever. After three days of training separately on the dirt fields, Olea and the rest of the trialists were given the opportunity to play against the Pumas under-17 team. As the group of hopeful young players trooped up the stone steps to the main field, nervousness was apparent on their faces.

While the Pumas under-17s were dressed in matching gear, the trialists’ mismatched shorts and t-shirts gave them away as the cobbled-together group that they were. The game started as one might expect, with Pumas dominating. A tricky left winger dribbled around several of the trialists, making them look silly. Pumas scored several goals, and after the first half, none of the trialists looked anywhere near the level of their opponents.

Olea had been on the bench throughout the first half, but was put on to start the second. Played wide on the left, his impact was immediate. Although he normally plays as a forward, his technical ability was immediately apparent. Like the Pumas left winger in the first half, Olea came on and quickly generated a ton of trouble for the right side of the Pumas defense.

Halfway through the second half, Olea spotted a poor touch from the Pumas right back and he rushed in to take the ball. Forty yards from goal, he looked up and saw two defenders in his way. He faked left. One of the defenders bit on his fake, giving Olea space to put the ball between him and his teammate. Splitting the two defenders, he picked his head up and saw the goalkeeper off his line. His right foot went back and he struck the ball cleanly. Up it went, high in the air. The keeper backpedaled, scrambling to catch up to the quickly traveling ball. But it was too late. The ball came down just in time and went straight into the back of the net.

Olea had just split two defenders and chipped the goalie from 35 yards. Everyone around — coaches, players, and other observers — began whispering to each other.

After the game, a Pumas official saw Jesus Cardenas, who was accompanying the American players. He walked over to him and whispered in his ear. “The coaches like Olea.”

In part, the reason that Mexican clubs have, in some ways, done a better job of scouting Mexican-Americans than has the U.S. youth soccer system is a question of economics: as hugely profitable businesses, Mexican clubs have large amounts of money to spend on youth development, allowing them to travel throughout the United States looking for young talent.

18 year-old Tren Biswell, who lives in a rural part of California, was scouted by several Mexican clubs at a U.S.-based tryout, and traveled to Pachuca last summer for a week of training. He told me, “There are so many people in the United States, so many soccer players, and so many get overlooked. … You’ll never see a U.S. national team scout in Visalia.” (Biswell could not sign a deal with Pachuca as he does not have a Mexican passport, leading Marco Garces to exclaim, “There are 20 million Mexicans trying to become American and there’s one American trying to become Mexican. We don’t even know how to deal with that! We don’t have the paperwork for that!”)

Despite the vast reach of Mexican clubs into U.S. youth soccer, several scouts and coaches insist there are many areas for improvement. Most of the tryouts in United States are arranged today through personal connections. As Marco Garces describes the situation, “As long as there are invitations and something happening, we try to go watch. But there’s not a very good structure for how we choose to go to different places and we need to improve in that.”

Some teams are developing a structure by setting up youth teams in the United States. The Xolos have done so in the San Diego area and Pumas now has youth academies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Antonio. These youth academies are new and it remains to be seen how effective they become in funneling players toward the parent clubs in Mexico.

What has become clear, though, is that this recruitment of young players raises many ethical issues. Right now, the informal structure of the movement of Mexican-American players to Mexico has led some with less than noble intentions to take advantage of the system. Daniel Pulido, a young player from San Diego who is currently training with lower-division Zacatepec hoping to earn a contract, told me sheepishly how several years ago he paid $5,000 to a so-called agent who promised to get him trials with several teams in Mexico. Instead, he and several other youngsters were taken to Mexico, where they played a few friendlies against less-than-top-notch opposition. The agent then took off and was never seen again.

Although it is clearly legal for young Mexican-Americans with dual citizenship to travel to Mexico, the ethics of the movement of these players is less clear. Are teams in Mexico giving a chance to players in the United States who are ignored in their home country? Or are these wealthy teams taking advantage of vulnerable youngsters, promising them a future as a professional player, which may or may not ever occur, all the while enriching the scouts, coaches and team officials who profit from their recruitment?

Carlos Hernandez, Daniel Olea’s coach at FC Heat, worries about kids giving up on their academic careers to pursue a soccer dream that is a long shot at best. Hernandez has a reputation for telling them what they don’t want to hear. “I do have the reputation for wanting to send them to school,” he says. “Of course I want to send them to school! If I can send them to school and get a scholarship playing soccer, that’s a perfect world.”

Hernandez worries about kids who give up on their educations to head south to Mexico. Olea is a perfect example, he tells me. “Olea does not like school. He loves soccer. Right now he’s not doing well in school because he’s focusing on going [to Mexico].” Hernandez says that too many players “have this idea, because of the exposure on TV, these guys go and they make it big. My job is to bring them down to reality. I say, ‘What if you don’t make it? How many guys tried out this year? Maybe 100? Maybe 200? How many guys made it to the first team? Not many. So do the percentages, it’s not going to happen.’”

There are plenty of stories of players who have left school in the United States, gone to Mexico chasing a dream, failed and returned home with few options for their future. Hernandez says he knows numerous cases of players who have gone to Mexico full of hope and returned with little to show for their time abroad. Many of them now work low-paying jobs and play in “Mexican” leagues in San Diego. Hernandez has a name for them: “legends of Sunday league.”

It is only a question of time before these ethical issues come to the fore, as nearly everyone I talked to agreed that the number of Mexican-American players in Mexico will only increase in the future with more and more clubs realizing that there is a cheap source of talent just north of the border. The idea of recruiting Mexican-American players, says Ramon Villa-Zevallos, “is no longer a secret.”

* * *

One day after Daniel Olea had scored a goal against the Pumas under-17s, the tryout wrapped up. Olea and other players at the Pumas cantera for the tryout milled about, waiting to hear their fate.

Meanwhile, in the Pumas offices several coaches and officials huddled, making decisions about which players would be offered contracts with the team. The head of the cantera, Jorge Valtonra, sitting at the head of the table asked two coaches who had come in to offer their judgments on the players who were trying out. “Is there material there or not?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said. “Two ‘97s from Veracruz.” They discussed arrangements for those players’ school and housing, and the meeting appeared close to wrapping up.

“Anyone else?” asked Valtonra. “What about those kids from the United States?”

“Yes,” said one of the coaches. “The ’96 kid, Olea.”

An hour later, the trialists were called by the coaches to the field. The coaches thanked them for their effort throughout the week. They then asked Daniel Olea and the two kids from Veracruz to sit on the stone terraces to the side of the field. As the three waited, the coaches told the rest of the group that Pumas would not be signing them. With hard work, they offered, perhaps they could return in the future and have another chance.

The coaches then called the three remaining players over to them. They gave them the news: Pumas liked them and wanted to offer them each a contract. The coaches said the club would be in touch, and offered pats on the back and congratulations.

Having received the news that would change the trajectory of his life, Olea walked over to Jesus Cardenas. Congratulations, Cardenas offered. Olea simply smiled.

* * *

Daniel Olea is now back in San Diego, practicing with the Heat and biding his time until he can return to Pumas. His parents have insisted that he finish his junior year of high school before returning to Mexico full time in the summer. Olea is itching to go and says that, though he’ll miss his family, he is ready for this next phase. Reyna Garcia, his mother, confided to me that she’s worried about him. He’s still a young kid, she tells me, and he’ll be so far from home. Despite her concerns, she’s willing to let her son go, to give him a chance to pursue his dream south of the border, in the country she left decades earlier.

If Daniel succeeds with Pumas, it will bring many changes to his family. The most immediate, his mother told me, is her loyalty. “I’m a Cruz Azul fan,” she told me. “But if my son makes it at Pumas, well, I guess I’ll just have to get a Pumas shirt.”

If you like to read good writing about North American soccer, you may wish to support XI and subscribe to the quarterly print edition.