First Division Soccer

Even though my kids are already way better than your poorly coached, under-funded unfortunates, I’m still always on the lookout for that little extra edge which can help keep my little darlings ahead of your riff-raff. So I was intrigued to hear about some of the ethnic soccer being played on the edges of our dysfunctional community. For example I was told that the Hispanic leagues feature either skillful soccer beyond what any mere American kid could do, or blatant flopping in box with matching outrageous histrionics. My investigations into that little question reveals that the answer depends on whose prejudices you choose to adopt. So anyway, I decided to look around the other exclusive leagues to see what I could pick up.

The Catholic Confessional League has some pretty good players who are all obliged to admit to their fouls when they are red carded. The problem seems to be that all the teams are nick-named The Cardinals. Worse than that, all the girls are called Mary and all the boys are either Peter or Paul – well except for the star striker at Mercy Mercy Me Highschool whose name is Ishmael Goldstein (but I heard the booster that recruited him to the school was let go for not being diligent enough in his background checks).

Michigan Dyslexics Academy (DAM) plays in the 8v8 league alongside the 4 kids who make up the full roster on the famed Schizophrenics United team.

The Boston based Iranian expatriots league have been refused entry to the larger soccer community until they allow the authorities full and unfettered access to their player enrichment program. The league itself has been split into two factions known as the New England Pre Revolution and the New England Post Revolution. I think they have some fundamental differences but like most Americans I have no clue what they are.

At the moment I’m still trying to understand how things operate over in England. It seems that soccer over there is arranged into four “divisions”. I’m trying to get my contact to explain to me why their 3rd tier is called the First Division. In return I’ll try to explain to him how in America, soccer “Divisions” means something entirely different.