[Bushnell] A ‘broken’ system, nascent culture: Why the U.S. has never had a world-class men’s soccer

There is nothing stopping someone from making a pro sports team. You just don't have some massive base of support and money that's sitting there, waiting to be served by a local team. America has plenty of money and wealthy people.

It honestly has nothing to do with MLS. USL is what you think we need, there are very few barriers to entry there, and everyone loses a bunch of money. For the forseeable future, they will keep losing unless they gain control over their stadiums or discover massive support and money coming in.

Having a local club does not translate into growing support over time. It needs to be competitive and run well. I live in the Bay Area, trust me, it's necessary.

 

I'm not talking about WCQs, I'm talking about random friendlies and even Gold Cup/NL (Mexico games notwithstanding)

 

Good article on some of the pay to play issues

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7435754/2026/07/10/pay-to-play-us-youth-soccer-usmnt-world-cup/

 

Indeed, a couple USL teams decided to DROP DOWN a level before this season started. USL Premier, USL Championship, USL League 1, USL League 2, they are effectively interchangeable. Nobody cares.

So, getting promoted, but now you have to travel more and you're going to lose more... sounds like a really bad deal, rather than a good one, IMO. You're not going to see an attendance bump because you're Oakland playing Sacramento rather than Monterey Bay. They're both over an hour away, and there's no history of rivalry to make people care.

 

This is the most reasoned piece that I've read on the topic. It's a genuine look at the current ecosystem, although I think it ignores a multitude of grassroots projects that are also going on all around the country. I find it notable that Bushnell and the Aspen Institute stop short of offering solutions to an imperfect but functioning model.

 

But I'm saying the potential is there for that but you can fuggedabout competing with the top 10 at the World cup barring some sort of bizarre anomaly.

 

We have been climbing without a doubt. In another 5-8 years, we will have hit another level or two.

We could definitely become top ten by then.

 

I don't think so. I heard what you just said in 1994, 1998, 2002, etc. but it never happened. Landon Donovan is the greatest American player ever & we should've made a deeper run when he was around. And 32 years is a VERY long time from World cup 1994 to this World cup.

The U.S. should concentrate on dominating North America & then South America.

 

I agree soccer is getting more popular but it will never have the passion of college football, the NFL, or March madness. Baseball doesn't need that much passion because there's not that many great baseball playing nations.

I remember Brazilian Ronaldo said in the 2000s that America doesn't have the passion for soccer that the top countries do. I don't see that changing because soccer is a European sport while Americans are more passionate for our sports.

 

Expecting the US to be in the top 10 after 1994 or 2002 would have been pipe dream. There was basically zero infrastructure in place at either of those times. There was little to no track record of consistent player development. The culture was basically irrelevant.

We are in a completely different place in 2026.

 

To me its like a golfer who went from shooting 120 to 90, then broke 80 and is in the high 70s. (Or a weight loss journey where someone went from 350 to 250, then down to 220, and is now slowly shipping away at 200)

The gap between shooting a 4 under 72 and a 77 is only 5 strokes, but the gap is greater than the gap between 85 and 100.

 

So the Soccer Monroe Doctrine

 

Yet with a worse result than 2002 & really no significant progress in over 2 DECADES! Don't forget that the rest of the world is getting better too.

 

I think what’s happened in the last 20 years is we’ve raised the floor significantly but the not ceiling necessarily.

And still lots of work to be done and I think it will happen over time, but the hard thing is there’s nothing we can developmentally now that will impact our chances for 2030. That die is already cast for better or worse. Even if we start doing everything perfectly starting today it takes awhile for that to be impact the senior team.

Also frustrating is you’ve had two sporting directors who have been trying to solve some of the hard problems and neither stuck around to try and see any of it through.

 

There's no ceiling nor a floor.
There's a pond and that pond is getting fuller and with getting fuller the chance for more players getting above mediocre pond level grows as does the chance for good to very good ones.

 

Yes, which makes people's need to see linear "progress" every year based on the vagaries of World Cup performances very stupid.

The addition of another knockout round merely opens up more room for Chaos. Germany isn't garbage, but they also didn't make it out of the R32. Is "progress" for Germany a knockout win for the first time in 4 WCs, or must it be a World Cup Championship?

If you follow any nation just on WC performance, none will be linear improvement over a long enough timescale.

 

Realistic or not, every one of my German friends will tell you that nothing but winning the World Cup is acceptable. They are at that level.

 

If Senegal doesn't choke against Belgium and we beat them are we having these same discussions about stagnation? 2002 was a combination of South Korea upsetting Portugal to save our asses in the group stage and Mexico getting a result against Italy so we got to play them instead of The Italians.

The short comings of our soccer infrastructure are what they are and worth talking about but it's just hard to overreact to flukey tournaments.

I'm a fan of a mid major basketball team, when we're good we're a ranked team, when we're bad we're not even making The NIT. I never say though, "man when are we finally gonna be better than Duke?". I love The NCAA Tournament, it's obviously the big prize but it's flukey, the best team we've had in my lifetime got a 3 seed and were stunned by Harvard in the first game because shit just happens sometimes.

I just enjoy it when the team is good, beating their rivals, and competing for league titles. Obviously I want the good seasons to translate to NCAA Tournament success, but I'm not gonna stake everything on that.

 

Judging the program based on how far it goes in the World Cup every four years is a severely flawed method. After holding on to beat Portugal in 2002, we tied Korea and lost 1-3 to Poland. We only advanced because of help we got in the other game. In '98, we were terrible for all three games, and in 2006, we had a tough draw and could only get one point from the group stage.

There was a lot of hope after 2002, and the player pool was promising, but it just wasn't sustainable at that point in time.

 

I said "definitely could," which is a whole lot different than saying that we will definitely be a top 10 team in 5-8 years.

Honestly? We've improved tremendously over the last 20 years. It is true that the rest of the world is improving, too, but not many countries have made the investments and progress in infrastructure and culture that we have.

If our best players are playing in Europe, the only thing that we need MLS to be great at is developing young players. It's not great yet, but it's good, and there is no question that it's improving in this department.

 

Nobody knew who Freeman was two years ago. Luna was thought to be a marginal professional player two years ago. Four years ago, Tillman had just switched to the US, and it took another three years for even a small percentage of the fanbase to start believing in him. Balogun wasn't a US player four years ago. Ream and Reyna had been buried well before this summer. Few thought McKennie could develop to become as good as he is. Etc., etc.

A lot is going to change over the next 2-4 years, and 5-8 is an eternity. The pool will only get stronger between now and 2030. That doesn't guarantee that the team is better, but it's a good indicator.