Major Youth Soccer Controversy – Parents Say 3-Year Old Son Had Police Called on Him For Being TOO GOOD at Soccer

I wasn't sure if I wanted to blog this story for multiple reasons. For starters, the main character is a 3-year-old kid. I already blogged about a youth sports parent earlier today. This dad turned his small football-playing child into a projectile during a parents vs. kids Oklahoma drill. 

Secondly, there's a whole racial component to this story that's just never worth getting into for me. I wasn't at the game. I can't tell you the motivations of any of the people involved. As of now, everything we know has come from the 3-year-old's parents. But at this point, the story is all over the internet. If anything, Barstool Sports is late to it.

To make a short story long, there's a 3-year-old kid in Nevada who's really good at soccer. His parents post his highlights all over social media. It's not quite a Baby Gronk situation, but his parents clearly know they have an exciting athlete on their hands and are trying to make their little soccer star go viral. 

This kid is also very much not Baby Gronk, because Baby Gronk dominated a contact sport by being bigger and stronger than everyone else. This 3-year-old soccer prodigy is one of the smallest kids out there. He dominates by legitimately being way more skilled than his competition.

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To be honest, I feel like I got a pretty decent handle on what's happening here. Again, I obviously don't know all the details, but I've officiated enough youth sports in my day to recognize some things.

First off, this is not some "high-level" travel soccer league. I don't even think those exist for 3-year-olds. This is a rec league. It's as rec league as rec leagues get. Note how some of these children barely know what team they're on. They might not even know what sport they're playing. If you've ever been around a league like that in any sport, especially with kids that young, you know it's not a particularly competitive environment. At that age, the goal is simply to get the players pointed in the right direction (literally and figuratively). You're only trying to teach them the game. Nobody cares who wins. I would be shocked if anybody other than the star player's dad is keeping score.

From this video right here (along with the caption), you can see the disconnect between what this dad thinks the game should be about and what the rest of the parents/coaches think.

His kid is really, REALLY good at soccer compared to everyone else on the field. It's not close. By no means should he be denied the chance to play, and by no means should anybody have called the police. That is certifiably insane behavior. However, this dad has to understand why they sometimes take his kid out of the game, right? When his kid is on the field, it's his show. He's on the ball the entire time. He's so good that it would be hard to even get on him for not passing, because his own teammates can't begin to keep up. They wouldn't even know where to be on the field to receive a pass. Because again… they are 5.

So… in a 30-minute game, his son is seeing more action in 15 minutes than most kids see all season. The dad can't believe they're taking his son out of the game. How could they bench a kid who scores so many goals? Well, in a rec soccer league, that's kind of the point. They want to teach the game of soccer to EVERY kid out there. They want kids to fall in love with the game. Sure, there's a lesson to be learned in facing (or playing with) a player who's WAY better than you. But doesn't 15 minutes of pure domination and 15 minutes of letting the other kids knock the ball around seem like a pretty fair compromise for a 5-and-under soccer league?

I only point that out to highlight the clear disconnect between the family and the rest of the league. On top of that, the family is out there filming everything, live-streaming the games on TikTok, loudly cheering on their son as he dribbles circles around kids who are only there for the postgame juice boxes. As much as I'm sure it hurts to see their kid pulled from the game when he wants to be out there, it also hurts for the parents of the other kids to see their sons and daughters look so defeated when all they want to do is run around and kick the ball a few times. 

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I'd love to hear this story from the league's perspective. At any point, did a coach or league official pull the family aside and explain to them exactly what I just laid out? Did anybody attempt to kindly tell them, "Some of the parents feel like you're rubbing it in a bit. Could we maybe dial back the cheering just a tad? If you could, it will really help us out."

Or did they stand by and do nothing until the situation blew up to the point that one asshole snapped and called the cops? And now their league has made national news with headlines that say, "3-Year-Old Kid Has Cops Called on Him For Being Too Good at Soccer." Which is a true headline. If the kid was less good at soccer, surely none of this would have occurred. However, other things definitely happened (or didn't happen) that led them to this point.

The real tragedy of the situation is that a group of adults, for whatever reason (no matter who's more at fault), were unable to have a fucking conversation and reach an agreement without calling the police. Someone let their emotions get the best of them. Instead of talking to the league, or, god forbid, having a human conversation with the family to try and help them understand their perspective, they called the cops. All because people couldn't recognize a bad situation as it unfolded. They opted to involve the police and have a kid kicked out of the league rather than work together to correct it. That's really sad. 

But again, we don't know all the details. Maybe those conversations with the family were had multiple times. Maybe the league feels they tried everything they could and calling the cops was a last resort. We don't know, because they won't speak up. Either way, the league is now dealing with the family of a 3-year-old kid who's been told he's too good to play soccer. The family feels discriminated against. The whole thing has turned into a race issue.

That sucks. Whoever resorted to calling the cops is pathetic. How much of it was race-related, and how much was other parents simply being sick and tired of watching their kids get dominated by a 3-year-old (while his Dad did high steps about it all over Instagram)… I have no idea.

Regardless, to the family of this kid… just wait a couple years. Soon enough, your son will be old enough to join a league where all the parents are equally competitive. Teams will be fighting over the chance to play him ALL of the minutes. But right now, he's 3 years old. He's impossibly good at soccer for his age. This is only a problem because they don't make soccer leagues for kids that good at that age here in the United States. No matter what race, or where they're from, or how loudly their parents cheer.

That being said, the kid's Instagram account now has nearly 400k followers. So this kid (and his family) will probably come out of this thing with a whole mess of new opportunities. I have a feeling he's going to end up ok. That's one good thing about sports – talent is an equalizer. Just maybe not at the age of 3.