Back in 2016, Mallory Pugh raised some eyebrows when she turned down an athletic scholarship to UCLA in order to ply her trade as a professional soccer player, singing with the Washington Spirit. At the time, she was 18.
In the last few years, however, some signings by National Women’s Soccer League have pushed the envelope when it comes to youth signings with pro teams. Two years ago, Olivia Moultrie signed with the Portland Thorns. In the last couple of weeks, the Washington Spirit signed 15-year-old Chloe Ricketts and the San Diego Wave has signed 15-year-old Melanie Barcenas to a three-year professional contract.
Now, we’ve seen teenage males sign professional contracts before; Lionel Messi left Argentina for Barcelona at the age of 13, but it took him four years to work his way up to the first team. John O’Brien was in the Ajax youth academy at the age of 12, working his way up over several years to the level of senior football.
But for this group of teens in the NWSL, there’s no developmental network, no U-18 division for the league. The player has to be good enough and fit enough to make the senior team, and that’s what the owners of these teams are counting on.
And yet, the NWSL is coming off a period of scandal in which coaches with questionable pasts and disturbing behavior almost brought down the league. Numerous published reports have painted a portrait of permissiveness and a lack of due diligence as well as a lack of adherence to what would have been normal practice in other professional sporting environments.
As one Twitter user put it so clearly:
Can we stop signing children into this league until maybe we can have at least one year that doesn’t have some sort of abuse scandal?
@Jalisa6661 on Twitter
It is a pertinent question.
