Yeah, this difference occurred to me while traveling in rural Mexico. To play soccer all you need is a ball. So you can go into the poorest villages that have little in the way in infrastructure and all the kids are playing soccer in the dirt road or a random field, etc. And often enough adults join in because they were once the kids too.

So it's this very pervasive, almost universal shared experience there. Totally different than my experience as a kid in the 80s that did indoor soccer briefly.

One observation my friend made while we were talking about this one time down there, is that basketball plays a similar role in the US. Yeah you need a hoop not just a ball, but that ends up approachable. In fact my neighbor down the block keeps a portable hoop set up in the parking strip so long as it's dry out, and right now a couple kids are playing some casual 1 on 1 lol.

Anyhow it's really clear that having a huge community available with few barriers to play and learn makes a huge difference.

Now that I think about it another similar experience was seeing my ex that grew up in Taiwan play some ping pong in a bar here in the US. She didn't particularly care about ping pong or play it much, but because she was immersed in it at school as a kid she could still smoke anyone in that bar easily lol.

▲

jandrewrogers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The counterpoint to this is that, broadly speaking, Mexico is demonstrably no better at soccer than the US when it matters. A common talking point in recent years is that the US league is actually better at developing Mexican talent than the Mexican league, though that somewhat reflects different incentives.

I think a core issue is that US and Mexican teams rarely have an opportunity to compete against teams significantly better than themselves. Furthermore, structural constraints within both leagues limit the amount of talent separation that can occur between teams, so it looks a bit like being stuck in a local minima in terms of talent development.

▲

huevosabio 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mexico performs as you'll expect a third world country that loves football to perform, and the US performs as well as you would expect a first world country that is ambivalent to football to perform.

I think the real mystery is, how come Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay play so much better than what you would expect from relatively poor countries?

My guess is that their leagues are fairly developed industries, like you would expect in the first world.

▲

sumanep 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We play football every time in Argentina, not to say in Brazil

▲

eldaisfish 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Football in Brazil has history, legacy, and mind share. I can name several professional teams from Brazil - Flamenco, Corinthians, Santos, etc. I also know of River Plate, Rosario and Boca Juniors from Argentina. This points to the fact that Brazilian and Argentine teams are older than the Mexican teams.

I cannot name a single Mexican team, and that is partly because the oldest club dates back to the 1940s. The oldest Brazilian and Argentina clubs date back to the 1900s.

	▲	loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I cannot name a single Mexican team, and that is partly because the oldest club dates back to the 1940s. Teams like Atlante and América were founded in 1916.

▲

brudgers 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The Mexican Primera favors a unique type of athlete…players who can regularly play at 10,000 feet (3000m) because many matches are played in and around Mexico City. And other clubs are also above 5000 feet.

Add in daytime heat, night cold, humidity and smog and you get a very different practical reality that shapes the pace and tactics of the Primeria and soccer culture in general. In turn that shapes who succeeds as a soccer playing athlete.

▲

scythe 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is an interesting theory. But do Mexican soccer players do much better at home games?

	▲	brudgers an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not clear what you are asking, but at the international level Azteca is notoriously advantageous…of course top European sides never visit so there’s no general empirical data. And you won’t get much more from the world cup because the only ceded European side favored to play at Azteca is England in the round of 8.

▲

Symbiote 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cricket is even more accessible: you need a bat (which could be a piece of wood), but you don't need space. You can compress the game to play in a 1.5m wide alleyway between two buildings.

I think this is why it became so popular in India etc.

▲

airstrike 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Soccer is still more accessible. You don't even need a ball. As a kid, you'll find yourself kicking around a crushed coke can with friends and trying to score.

▲

brudgers 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cricket also does not require a lot of running and because the defense controls the ball, it fills a lot of time at a slow pace.

Like Baseball, a Sunday afternoon game has a low risk of an injury that prevents work on Monday.

	▲	brigandish an hour ago \| parent [-]
		My mate broke someone's arm bowling at him. Cricket always has an element of danger, for both the fielders and the batters.

▲

zem 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

there is also a ton of grass-roots football in India, with kids kicking a ball around wherever there is a space for it. that doesn't translate to having good national teams simply because there is not much funding to develop the game, unlike with cricket.

▲

WhyNotHugo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Yeah, this difference occurred to me while traveling in rural Mexico. To play soccer all you need is a ball. So you can go into the poorest villages that have little in the way in infrastructure and all the kids are playing soccer in the dirt road or a random field, etc.

The same is true in Argentina. And in school kids play almost every recess too.

A lot of very prominent player from Argentina had this kind of humble beginning too.

	▲	Spooky23 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It’s also “the sport”. Americans don’t really do casual sports anymore and there is a ton of competition in the various leagues. In many parts of the US, soccer is a fall sport that competes with football in school leagues. Football teams require a small army of players and tend to suck out the oxygen. It doesn’t help that there’s no little league equivalent for soccer, so there’s a ton of pay to play BS to a much greater degree than football or baseball. In my area, you need to commit to a full year travel soccer team that’s often owned by the school coach to get any playtime in high school.

▲

WalterBright an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I played soccer during recess at school. I was inept at it. I was terrible at football, too. I really stunk at basketball. Berry berry bad at baseball. Sank at swimming.

▲

mcmoor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I thought the concrete ground is much more important for basketball, otherwise the ball would bounce all over the place. In comparison, muddy ground for soccer is part of the fun.