Youth Soccer

Everton Uses Adorably Haunting Children’s Drawings For Matchday Graphics

Everton took a different approach to the tired method of simply showing your players’ individual photos for in-match graphics, team announcements and substitutions on Tuesday night. 

The club allowed students from Linacre Primary School to visit Finch Farm for a drawing session that resulted in the images used across Goodison Park, the match day program and the club’s official website and social media accounts during Tuesday’s Premier League match against Newcastle United.

The resulting images are equal parts adorable and haunting. Jordan Pickford is an absolute unit.

Flashiest Penalty Kick Of 2020 Pays Off

It is a new decade and soccer players are wasting no time getting their highlights. We are just two weeks in and we may already have our flashiest PK of the year.

The 5 Worst Calls The18 Has Ever Seen In Youth Soccer

Everyone’s got at least one — one memory from playing soccer they just can’t get out of their head, one moment in time they regularly ruminate over years after the fact. 

There are bad calls in every match and then there are the incidents that do not fade from memory. Everyone who has played the game for any length of time has at least one moment of madness from a ref they’ll never forget.

So we at The18 have compiled a list of the worst officiating decisions we’ve ever seen, to let you know you are not alone in your constant chewing over that one call so many years ago. 

Rare Footage Of Famous Footballers Playing When They Were Kids And Teenagers

There’s no more compelling story than when a player like Jamie Vardy goes from being released by his club at the age of 16 to suddenly tearing up the Premier League at the age of 28, but the Leicester City striker’s path is a fit-for-Hollywood tale rather than the norm. The truth is that football is now a mega-industry and the reach of its tentacles knows no bounds — in the search for the world’s next great talent, no rock is left unturned and no YouTube highlight video is left unproduced.

The Five Most Annoying Things About Being A Youth Soccer Coach

The idea of helping youths develop and hone their skills in soccer is appealing to a large number of coaches. In the U.S. alone there are coaches teaching millions of young players how to play the sport.

Coaching, like most things in life, doesn’t come without drawbacks. Whether it’s a player forgetting to bring their shin guards or Karen the Super Soccer Mom complaining about her child not getting enough playing time, the task of coaching can be strenuous. Here is a short list of shortcomings for youth soccer coaches.

7-Year-Old Becomes First Girl To Play For Uruguay’s Nacional. Now She Captains Her Team

Mahia Macías is a 7-year-old girl from Montevideo, Uruguay, who just wants to play football, but where she comes from, there aren’t nearly as many teams for girls. However, since she’s still young enough to play on the boys side, she’s become the first girl to play in the youth league of Club Nacional de Football, Uruguay’s most successful team apart from Peñarol.  

How Do We Fix Youth Soccer In America? We Found One Club That Has Figured It Out

How do you fix youth soccer in the U.S.? Where do you even begin?

It’s too expensive, too exclusive, too unwilling to change. The underprivileged are unable to join in, minorities too often forgotten.

It Starts With The Shoes — How One Group Is Fighting The Cost Of Soccer In America

When Jim Frank first started volunteering as a Withrow High School soccer coach in Cincinnati, he and head coach Tyler Barrott had to base their substitution pattern on the players’ shoe size.

The soccer program had 40 players, almost all international students and most of them refugees, but only 23 pairs of cleats. 

“The disdain or pity on our opponents’ faces as we had to take the time to remove shoes and shin guards during substitutions was the emotional ‘aha’ moment that told me that I needed to do more than just coach these players,” Frank said. 

Zlatan Blasts Biggest Problem With Soccer In America: Pay To Play

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is just saying what we’re all thinking, and, often, talking, writing and complaining about. Soccer in America is broken because of one key aspect: pay to play.

Ibrahimovic has left the United States, trading Beverly Hills for Milan after one-and-a-half years with the LA Galaxy. But his time in America left a mark on the Swedish striker.

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