Real Madrid, a European professional soccer team equivalent to the New York Yankees, recently signed a new player to its team. The soccer club, worth nearly $1 billion, on Monday signed Argentinian soccer phenom Leonel “Leo” Angel Coira to the team and he will begin training on Sept. 6. This Argentinian and new pro is a great soccer player by all accounts, but there is one problem: He’s only 7.

We feel Leo’s signing makes Real Madrid look foolish. After all, who signs a 7-year-old, pre-pubescent boy to play for a professional soccer team? That would be like the Boston Red Sox signing a 7-year-old Little League baseball player to its farm system. That just doesn’t happen in American baseball and it shouldn’t happen in other sports.

Unfortunately, it has happened. Real Madrid is making a mockery of its sport and making a mockery of athletics while exploiting a child. Leo might be a great soccer player. He might be the best player among children and teenagers, but he is still only a child. Children need to be allowed to blossom and grow into individuals and by signing him to play professional soccer when he isn’t mature enough to step on the field yet is taking a risk. Thankfully, the club has enough sense to understand that he can’t play with the team yet, only compete in drills.

The soccer team risks spending money on a player who might never develop into the player the team thinks he can become. His signing is based on pure speculation. This problem doesn’t just exist in soccer, and Real Madrid isn’t the only team to go after and sign young players.

In college basketball, coaches are beginning to recruit athletes as young as 12 and get them to commit to a verbal agreement to play for their school. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has thankfully not allowed coaches to sign these players to binding contracts, which allows the player or the school to nullify the verbal agreement if the athlete decides to go to another school or doesn’t develop as expected.

The National Basketball Association has spent most of the past 14 years drafting untested players directly from high school, most of whom never panned out in the NBA. It cost the team that drafted that player millions of dollars in investment money, and it also caused that player to miss out on a chance to at least go to college and develop his game before making the adult decision to play a professional sport. At the very least, those boys could have earned an education.

It is a ridiculous idea to recruit children and force them to make a decision that could affect them the rest of their lives. Adulthood is full of hard choices  ”“ childhood shouldn’t have to be the same.

Leo’s signing not only can hurt the soccer team in the future, but it could also be a detriment to him. Most 7-year-old children don’t think of a future in professional sports. They usually think of a future as being a cowboy or an astronaut while dreaming of imaginative possibilities. Children change their minds from wanting to be a professional athlete to becoming a doctor, a space explorer or a world-famous writer. When they become adults, their interests usually change and they then begin to realize what it is they want for a career.

We’re not saying that Leo doesn’t want to be a professional soccer player when he reaches adulthood. We are saying, however, that the adults in his life must allow him to first be a child before he makes that decision. The signing puts undue pressure on him, leaving him with an obligation to train under Real Madrid and try to become the soccer player in which the team has invested.

Even those 7-year-olds who are focusing on honing specific skills, from sports to beauty pageants, are left with the freedom to play with bugs, ride bikes with their friends, watch the latest cartoons and act as children. Leo no longer has that opportunity, as he is contractually obligated to put most of his efforts into playing soccer. It’s a shame, and a move that should never have been allowed.

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Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via e-mail at kristenm@journaltribune.com.