When the USMNT failed to qualify for the WC, one of the arguments raised is that kids should do more pickup games. Posting some info just to have it out there (not really enough for an article here), but here was our experience based on just having gotten back from spending time with guides, friends and relatives in Spain (particularly Cordoba, Sevilla and Olite) for 2 weeks and my son being in Italy for a week in spring. Not arguing whether pickup games would be a good or bad thing for kids. Our experience was also limited to southern Europe, so not passing on how things might be in the north.
Pickup games are hard. Much like us, southern European kids are a lot more organized (for example, English lessons after school) now and have competing demands for entertainment (like Playstations and phones). They do, however, allow kids 10 and older a lot more freedom than we do (in Spain over the summer, for example, there are lots of kids spending afternoon at the beach by themselves, but soccer pickups aren't necessarily high on the priority )...partially this is a function of the villages being small or public transportation being available.
The biggest problem is finding fields. Most of the good fields (even the small sided ones) are locked up to keep them pristine. There are very few in the city centers and those that they do have that are accessible to the general public (like tennis courts in California) are being torn up and converted into other things. It's actually easier to find a basketball court than even a small sided soccer court. The outer barrios and smaller pueblos have smaller futsal courts, but even those are relatively poor repair and given the distances are mostly limited to working class kids. My son was invited to play at the pitch in the small pueblo of Olite by his relatives, but it's completely grassless at this point and he didn't think diving on it (he's a keeper) would be very much fun. To the extent pickup games do happen, they generally happen at recess when school is in session usually on concrete futsal courts and yes they are more unstructured than our practices (much like a basketball pickup game might be at one of our school recesses). While touring Guernica, there were a couple of kids playing on the concrete futsal court at a school playing shoot on the keeper and he got a chance to jump in there for 5 minutes...but that was unusual since most of the school courts are locked up during the summer and after school. Playing football is illegal in most of the parks (that are more likely to have basketball courts than futsal courts), and whether pueblo, suburb, or big city they are lacking the numerous parks we have all over SoCal with pitches set up (they couldn't even imagine a scenario like Salt Lake City with its wealth of pitches).
While waiting for the train out of Sevilla there was a sports club across the street and they were doing a summer sports camp. There was a rail strike going on so our train was delayed 2 hours so we decided to walk over, introduce ourselves, and check out the camp. Given we're fluent and finding out my son is an American keeper and given how friendly of a country and city it is, they were more than gracious in letting us having a look. They don't have the summer soccer camps we do...sports camp is not about getting better at playing sports but rather it's about childcare. Their seasons run Fall-Spring and if you are an academy player you are on a mandated rest period or touring, and if you aren't then you are doing other things but not soccer camps (again, because of the pitch problem). Childcare has become a huge problem for people working in the summer with kids under 10, so these sports camps have begun to pop up, but after age 10 kids tend to do their own thing and it's generally not soccer. For those over 8 at the camp, one of the options was playing soccer and the session was a lot more unstructured than ours....the kids just basically got to play without interference from a counselor. While there was a group playing soccer, the older set seemed more interested in either playing basketball or learning about baseball in a counselor-led session introducing them to the sport and telling them the rules. During the school year, this sports club does have rec games (both for kids and adults) and group trainings that tend to be more organized, but kids don't just go there and organize pickup games for themselves and there is a fee to join which acts as a barrier.
My son did get 2 pickup experiences while in Spain (none in Italy). One with some kids in a beach resort we were playing at for 2 days. Another was with some Germans who were touring Segovia, and in a middle of a plaza under the aqueduct, started a round robin of headers and juggling (the Spaniards looked at them like they were some kind of aliens to be doing that in the heat).
So long and short my impression is that there isn't some great soccer pickup panacea that we are missing (at least in the south of Europe). To the extent they do get free play, it's largely at school recess and on the whole does tend to be less adult-organized than what we tend to do, but that's reflective of a culture that doesn't hover as much over what kids do period (whether school or free time). My relatives in particular were kind of shocked to find out we play in the California heat, but I was just as shocked to find out they regularly play in the winter snow outside. Our experience with our Latin American relatives, BTW, is much different since there is a much more robust pickup experience there, with our relatives sometimes just playing in the street like we would street hockey.
Pickup games are hard. Much like us, southern European kids are a lot more organized (for example, English lessons after school) now and have competing demands for entertainment (like Playstations and phones). They do, however, allow kids 10 and older a lot more freedom than we do (in Spain over the summer, for example, there are lots of kids spending afternoon at the beach by themselves, but soccer pickups aren't necessarily high on the priority )...partially this is a function of the villages being small or public transportation being available.
The biggest problem is finding fields. Most of the good fields (even the small sided ones) are locked up to keep them pristine. There are very few in the city centers and those that they do have that are accessible to the general public (like tennis courts in California) are being torn up and converted into other things. It's actually easier to find a basketball court than even a small sided soccer court. The outer barrios and smaller pueblos have smaller futsal courts, but even those are relatively poor repair and given the distances are mostly limited to working class kids. My son was invited to play at the pitch in the small pueblo of Olite by his relatives, but it's completely grassless at this point and he didn't think diving on it (he's a keeper) would be very much fun. To the extent pickup games do happen, they generally happen at recess when school is in session usually on concrete futsal courts and yes they are more unstructured than our practices (much like a basketball pickup game might be at one of our school recesses). While touring Guernica, there were a couple of kids playing on the concrete futsal court at a school playing shoot on the keeper and he got a chance to jump in there for 5 minutes...but that was unusual since most of the school courts are locked up during the summer and after school. Playing football is illegal in most of the parks (that are more likely to have basketball courts than futsal courts), and whether pueblo, suburb, or big city they are lacking the numerous parks we have all over SoCal with pitches set up (they couldn't even imagine a scenario like Salt Lake City with its wealth of pitches).
While waiting for the train out of Sevilla there was a sports club across the street and they were doing a summer sports camp. There was a rail strike going on so our train was delayed 2 hours so we decided to walk over, introduce ourselves, and check out the camp. Given we're fluent and finding out my son is an American keeper and given how friendly of a country and city it is, they were more than gracious in letting us having a look. They don't have the summer soccer camps we do...sports camp is not about getting better at playing sports but rather it's about childcare. Their seasons run Fall-Spring and if you are an academy player you are on a mandated rest period or touring, and if you aren't then you are doing other things but not soccer camps (again, because of the pitch problem). Childcare has become a huge problem for people working in the summer with kids under 10, so these sports camps have begun to pop up, but after age 10 kids tend to do their own thing and it's generally not soccer. For those over 8 at the camp, one of the options was playing soccer and the session was a lot more unstructured than ours....the kids just basically got to play without interference from a counselor. While there was a group playing soccer, the older set seemed more interested in either playing basketball or learning about baseball in a counselor-led session introducing them to the sport and telling them the rules. During the school year, this sports club does have rec games (both for kids and adults) and group trainings that tend to be more organized, but kids don't just go there and organize pickup games for themselves and there is a fee to join which acts as a barrier.
My son did get 2 pickup experiences while in Spain (none in Italy). One with some kids in a beach resort we were playing at for 2 days. Another was with some Germans who were touring Segovia, and in a middle of a plaza under the aqueduct, started a round robin of headers and juggling (the Spaniards looked at them like they were some kind of aliens to be doing that in the heat).
So long and short my impression is that there isn't some great soccer pickup panacea that we are missing (at least in the south of Europe). To the extent they do get free play, it's largely at school recess and on the whole does tend to be less adult-organized than what we tend to do, but that's reflective of a culture that doesn't hover as much over what kids do period (whether school or free time). My relatives in particular were kind of shocked to find out we play in the California heat, but I was just as shocked to find out they regularly play in the winter snow outside. Our experience with our Latin American relatives, BTW, is much different since there is a much more robust pickup experience there, with our relatives sometimes just playing in the street like we would street hockey.