The U.S., Canada, and Mexico have all reached the knockout rounds, on home soil, for the first men's World Cup on this soil since 1994. If you have a kid who plays, you already know what that does to a house. The TV is on. The ball is out in the yard by halftime. Somebody is wearing a jersey to dinner.
That energy is a gift. Protect it. But this is also the exact stretch of the calendar when families make their worst decisions, and I want to say something about that before the emotion of a good match talks you into one.
Here is the pattern I see every four years, and every summer to a smaller degree. A kid watches greatness. A parent watches their kid watch greatness. And within about a week, the family is looking at a club switch, a private trainer, a $600 showcase three states away, or a call to "someone who knows an agent." The tournament did not create a plan. It created adrenaline. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing to feel and a terrible thing to decide from.
The World Cup is the top of a pyramid most people never see the base of. What is on your screen is a sliver of a sliver of the players who started exactly where your kid is starting. That is not a reason to quit. It is a reason to be honest about what the picture actually is. It is a highlight reel, not a road map. Nobody is filming the ten thousand quiet decisions that got each of those players there, and those decisions are the whole game.
So here is what I would actually do with the moment, depending on where your kid is.
If your kid is roughly 7 to 11: do less, not more. The correct response to a child who is lit up by the World Cup is more joy, not more structure. Play in the yard. Go to a watch party. Let them fall in love with it. This is the stage where the only job is to keep the game fun, because the kids who stay are almost always the kids who still enjoy it at 14. Turning your nine-year-old's favorite thing into a job this month is the fastest way to lose them by high school. I mean that literally.
If your kid is a serious teenager: the useful question is not "could they go pro." Almost no honest person can answer that, and the ones who answer it fast are usually selling something. The useful question is "what is the next real decision in front of us, and are we making it on evidence or on emotion." Before you change anything this summer, run it through three filters:
Would this decision still make sense if the World Cup were not on right now?
What does it actually cost, in money, in the kid's time, and in their relationship with the sport?
Who benefits from us saying yes, and are they the same person telling us to say yes?
None of that is anti-ambition. I am about as pro-ambition as they come. It is anti-regret. The families who look back happy are not the ones who moved fastest. They are the ones who moved on purpose.
If you take one thing from this first issue, take this. Watch a game with your kid this week and do not coach. Do not point out what the striker should have done. Just watch it with them and let them love it. The decisions can wait a few days. The love is the thing you are actually protecting.
That is the whole idea behind this newsletter. Talent gets you seen. Decisions get you signed. I am going to spend these issues on the second half of that sentence, because it is the half almost nobody teaches, and the half I have spent my career on.
If there is a decision you are weighing right now, a club, an offer, an agent, a level, put it in the comments or send it my way. I read them, and the real ones become future issues.
See you next week.
Mario