D.C. United and Minnesota United are the only pay-to-play academies in MLS, AFAIK. TC/SP and dropped homegrown territorial restrictions helps, however will it be the antidote for all of pay-to-play problems?
Football isnt the only major team sport where people care about international competition? The Rugby world cup is very big internationally, so is cricket, they both get MASSIVE worldwide TV audiences.
Pay to play is about college scholarships. The main problems the US and Canada have are geography and lack of qualified coaches. The latter is being addressed to some extent by USSF but it can't do a lot about the former. A billion people on the Indian subcontinent alone are said to have watched India play Pakistan in the cricket World Cup.
You can lump cricket and rugby in there. Soccer is the only team sport that's semi-popular in the US where the athletes actually give a crap about international competition.
For the men's team, no, because it's U-23, and they've only qualified three times in the MLS era (including once as hosts). For the women's team, it's their second-most important competition and it's a big deal for their fans, but the mainstream attention is much smaller than for the World Cup.
Basketball (and similarly, baseball) is pretty much considered our game. I kind of feel like the prevailing sentiment is that international is beneath us in those sports. Obviously the USA does well in the Olympics, generally, but I don't think we generally consider most of the popular Olympics sport to be an American invention like baseball, basketball, or football. Women's soccer is the interesting case, I think. Like basketball, it's a sport we've always dominated internationally, but I guess the distinction is that, as a nation, we mostly have an inferiority complex about the sport.
We're talking about American reactions to international competition, aren't we? Edit: meant competition, not specifically tournaments
Let's put it this way: soccer is the only international sport where US national teams have any real importance at all. Baseball is similar to basketball: even with MLB actively involved in creating and promoting the World Baseball Classic, most of the best American players are declining to play in it. The national ice hockey team gets more top players than the basketball and baseball teams, but still, a substantial number are not interested in playing for the US. Rugby and cricket are barely a blip on the sports radar in the US. The all-time record attendance for a club rugby match in the US is 6,000. (The rugby union national team has exceeded 10,000 only 15 times in its history, and the rugby league national team has never exceeded 5,000.) The national cricket team didn't play a single match at home until 2010, and its record attendance is around 2,000.
So no ticker-tape parade for the US Rugby World Cup team then. Even Tonga tonked them in the current WC - which has been great btw, especially the host nation's games.
I've really enjoyed watching all the rugby available on NBCSN. I don't have their subscription package, so I've only seen (most of) the games available with a basic Hulu package. I've yet to see a single match, however, that was decided by a single possession. A lot of blowouts. Still fun to watch.
Just saw that. So much for depending on the millionaire real estate developers and minor league baseball team owners, I guess.
The world hockey championships happening at the same time as the NHL Playoffs doesn't help, but my impression is they definitely care about the olympics and have been trying to catch that "miracle on ice" lightning in a bottle again ever since '80.
She grew up in the LA suburbs of the 1980s following the Trojans and Dodgers, so besides the 84 Olympics, international sports were a bit of a mystery. There was a Team America, f**k yeah! (Btw, the USMNT played 1 game in 1983, in Haiti).
It gets better - the owner trademarked a team name for Grand Rapids, wanted a USL_C team but was told to start with Lansing. The "2" team folded before they could even feed the parent and take a shot at killing Grand Rapids FC Well done USL, take a bow....
The PLS are supposed to stop this sort of thing from happening. Promoting Grand Rapids FC would be a more sensible idea if the fans who own the team are open to taking on board an investor. They've had several attendances over 4,000 and a couple over 6,800.
GRFC seems to have been taken over by another organization: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandRapidsFC/comments/d6xlpd/next_season/ But the future was already in doubt: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandRapidsFC/comments/czqc91/rip_grfc/
It appears that India will be introducing pro/rel by 2024/25: https://www.the-afc.com/media/india-clubs-agree-to-work-together-on-league-roadmap