Not enough kids have access to the game. Language barriers, cultural differences, and financial paywalls are leaving significant numbers of kids on the sidelines. How big is the problem and what can we do about it? What's the Problem with Limited Access to the Game?The obvious answer is we have fewer kids playing and a shallower pool of players to draw from for the professional leagues. Fewer kids also mean fewer teams and less revenue for local clubs. While this is all logically true, these arguments leave out some important stuff that matters. In a study done in 2013 by Kaplan University, Duke University, and the University of California, San Diego titled Heterogeneity and Group Performance: Evaluating the Effect of Cultural Diversity in the World's Top Soccer League, the study revealed that "more diverse teams outperform less diverse ones." They put numbers to this and found that a one-standard-deviation increase in the average team's linguistic distance is associated with a .33 rise in per-game goal differential. In laymen's terms, this means that this study showed mathematically that diversity leads to more goals. The opposite must also be true: less diversity leads to fewer goals. We could argue all day, I'm sure, about why this is is true, but an article in the New York Times publish June 2nd, 2014 titled "Diversity is good for team performance in soccer" suggests that at least some of it has to do with the "benefits of (bringing together) diverse talents, perspectives, and experiences..." Whether you are in the camp that we need more talent, more teams for our kids to play against, more revenue to support the game, or stronger teams as a result of a wider range of problem-solving approaches, there don't seem to be any downsides to improving access to the game.  The Discussion Today Around Access to the GameI'm not aware of all of the discussions going on around the country or around the world regarding access to the game, but I can share what's going on in a small corner of the world. The State of Maryland's Youth Sports Association invited me to participate in a road show they organized for Clubs around the State. I'm pretty sure their main agenda was to connect clubs around the state and to facilitate dialog around sharing best practices and talking through problems we all are facing. Any time groups of like-minded people come together to solve problems, interesting and often powerful things happen. Parent education was a big topic, and will likely be the focus of a future episode. Access to the game was up there at the top of the list too. I listened as Clubs described challenges with getting marketing materials put together that will reach their community. I listened as I heard clubs lament about how cost was keeping good players from turning out. I listened as clubs talked about challenges associated with giving special needs kids access to the game, reaching and communicating with kids who speak more than one language, and finding ways to pay for kids to play without charging mom and dad a fortune. The good news is: leaders in the industry are talking. Getting this conversation going is not easy and it's filled with land mines today. I often wish we could just wave a magic wand and make the problem go away, but it seems we still have some work to do. The Cause(s) of the ProblemAs with most things, I doubt that there is any single cause to this problem. If this were simple, we'd have the access problem solved. We need more brains combining horsepower and contributing to the solution. Which, by the way, is something you can do on our Website at TheSocc...