FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- Yurem Linares arrived with his father moments before soccer practice. He walked up a steep dirt path to the field, past an overflowing trash can and the bottles and cans that had come to rest around it. It was a warm evening in June, almost the end of the season. Linares had been waiting for this day. After practice, he'd learn if he was one of five players picked to spend a week in the youth program at the LaLiga club Villarreal, on Spain's east coast.
Yurem and a few hundred other players, some as young as 6 years old, were enrolled in Villarreal's Virginia academy, except it wasn't an academy at all.