Youth Soccer

She’s here — the savior of American paleontology. A seven-year-old fossil hoarder of rare vision, technique and digging skills. Will the United States Women’s Paleontology National Team (USWPNT) win the 2032 Fossil-Finding World Cup? If Naomi Vaughan keeps up her recent form over the next 15 years, definitely.

Sorry, as a soccer website, it’s our responsibility to hype these sorts of things to an ungodly degree. 

Since the horrific tragedy of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14, we’ve come to learn that two students — 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff and 15-year-old Anthony Borges — shared a deep love for the sport of soccer. 

“Hey, I got a hockey record. I took my skate off and tried to stab somebody. I’m the only guy who ever did that.” - Happy Gilmore

A Copa Libertadores U-20 semifinal match between Uruguay’s Club Atletico River Plate and Ecuador’s Independiente del Valle did not pass without incident yesterday. No, it did not.

The U.S. women keep accomplishing what the U.S. men cannot. On Friday in Ato Bodon Stadium, the exact same location of the USMNT’s capitulation to Trinidad and Tobago to miss out on the 2018 World Cup three months ago, the U-20 USWNT booked its trip to the 2018 U-20 Women’s World Cup with a win over Haiti. 

The South American Under-20 Women’s Football Championship (which serves as CONMEBOL’s qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup) is underway in Ecuador with Brazil looking to secure their eighth-straight championship in the tournament’s eighth edition. 

The junior Seleção are exceedingly dominant in this competition, and the 2018 staging of the contest has been carried out in much the same vein. Brazil topped Group B play with four wins from four matches, scoring 13 goals while conceding zero.

Ballou Tabla is making history as the first academy player from the Montreal Impact to make a move to Europe. The 18-year-old attacking midfielder completed a transfer to Barcelona on Thursday. He’ll join Barcelona B.

Amidst an influx of impressive young talent coming to Major League Soccer from South America, the Bundesliga is raiding the U.S. for young players. So while American teenagers may not be having any luck breaking into lineups at home, they’re finding more opportunities in the league of the world champions. To steal a line from Taylor Twellman, what are we doing?

The fallout from Jonathan Gonzalez’s switch from the United States national team to Mexico has been expectedly fierce, especially so when coupled with the current state of U.S. Soccer. Here was a California native who’d progressed through the U.S. youth system, including run-outs at the U-17, U-18 and U-20 levels, who joined Mexican club side C.F. Monterrey in 2014 “bleeding red, white and blue.”

17-year-old Missouri native Josh Sargent made his Werder Bremen debut on Tuesday while appearing for the club’s U-23 team in a friendly versus Dynamo Dresden. Sargent officially joined the club on Jan. 1 and won’t be able to sign a professional contract until turning 18 on February 20, but the eagle has landed.

When FC Barcelona signed 12-year-old prospect Cristobal Munoz from a youth side affiliated with Malaga last March, the deal was heralded by Barcelona-based daily Sport as the capture of “the hottest young prospect in Spanish football.”