Here’s an article on our U 15 team. It’s written by The Athletic’s Aston Villa correspondent, so not a Yank. Pretty positive from the writer. He was impressed. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7049569/2026/02/17/usa-soccer-youth-mls-usmnt/
Champions League level ballers like the guy that played with Vancouver Whitecaps then was sold to Bayern Munich and won the UCL. Those type of ballers.
I think we're gonna get way off topic here soon enough. But to try to bring it back to Tash's position that MLS is to blame in some way here, my question is: How are 30 MLS teams supposed to be able to monitor 2.2 million soccer playing boys?
From USMNT fan's perspective, they want MLS to play with few foreigners or possibly no foreigners at all in MLS. The more domestic players you have, the more opportunities they get. Also, MLS is suppose to sell at the first offer they get for any domestic and send them to Europe ASAP. Then move next man up in MLS. Wash, rinse and repeat for every single team. Only the best of the best of those 2 million+ will rise to the top and then USMNT will win a World Cup. Simple.
All these folks are simply trolls. It's a constantly moving target ... look at all the caveats they've got going now. Here's the issue: Tyler Adams isn't the son of a pro, or even a high level coach, and he didn't even start soccer early. His step-dad -- who didn't come into his life until he was in middle school, I think, was a mentor, but nothing like the rest. He went to an MLS academy and played in MLS and has scored in a Champions League Semifinal. I'm sure we'll find a reason he doesn't count. There's Alphonso Davies, of course. But he doesn't count because he's Canadian, although from am MLS perspective ... it's the same system. There's Weston McKennie, but despite being with FC Dallas for seven years, CLEARLY being in Germany from 6 to 9 was the developmental supercharger that he needed. Here's the issue with blaming MLS -- very few kids 9 and under actually go to an MLS academy; only a couple of teams have a U9 squad. I don't even know why Alex Freeman is excluded. Wait, we're excluding a player now because his genetics are good? Guess what -- there's probably not a player in the UCL that doesn't have pro athlete genes by defintion. What ********ing world are we in that we think other countries are taking Joe Schmos and making them elite players in the world? I mean, just look at the complaint about our players developed in other countries but play for the US -- clearly all subpar athletes that get by solely on skill ... wait, no, it's some of the best athletes on the team! Do we dock those countries because -- gasp -- Jedi Robinson and Sergiño Dest might be the two fastest guys on the team? Because Malik Tillman is a physical specimen? God, it's just the dumbest ********ing caveat ever. ----- We know the basic formula: it's population X investment X culture. Culture here represents the number of very young kids who start on soccer very young, because it represents for how many it's their favorite sport or the sport that is watched and discussion in their household or with their friends. It's the ability to play pickup and it's the level of status of being the star in your peer group, as well as the athlete you idolize growing up. Why does the US team have more guys from other countries, or sons of former soccer players or coach's sons (if indeed it does)? Likely because those advantages instill the advantages of culture in that household that others don't get. The 2.2M boys playing soccer has always been a red herring. Anyone who actually lives in this country and is allowed within 500 yards of children know that the actual percent of kids who are really into sports that play soccer is much lower than that. Soccer is the haven for a ton of kids whose parents want them to play a team sport but the kid themselves has little aptitude for sports (probably because of the household they grew up in). I know two kids who have great athletic genes (as in multiple parents were D1 athletes) but are on the smaller side and love sports. Work their asses off at them. But neither of their fathers played soccer or watched soccer or in any way pushed soccer. Those kids are obsessed with baseball and basketball and Shohei and LeBron and Steph. Both would have been much better soccer players because one will top out at 6' and the other at about 5'7" -- both can play baseball but basketball is not a realistic option even at a major college level. If either of their parents had been into soccer or their friends had been into soccer ... they'd likely be pretty good at soccer. Maybe even great. We will never know. That happens A LOT in the US compared to other countries where soccer is a dominant sport or maybe shares the spotlight with one other major sport. That's it. That's the difference. It's nothing to do with MLS or USSF Scouting or anything else. It is overwhelmingly culture. The % of kids who grow up in a household that plays or watches soccer with them needs to grow. The % of kids who grow up in a household where a parent can teach fundamentsal needs to grow. The % of kids overall who play seriously to provide competition, status, peer pressure, pickup games and fun needs to grow. The % of kids who view it as a potential career and dream needs to grow. And so on. The last thing I am worried about is that the level of instruction in MLS academies is somehow the key culprit. FFS, there's a Red Bull Academy, Man City runs one, Right to Dream, multiple ones have been developed and run by Brazilians and top European talent. The methodology wasn't created out of nothing -- every team in MLS has brought in experts from strong development teams and shared ideas and processes.
First thing, source please. Second, anyone that knows anything about Brazilian soccer wonders highly about how rigorous are the estimates for Brazil. Brazil did not increase their youth players twofold, they probably only made some structural changes to have them registered.
Whenever you see an interesting statistical claim about populations in the 2/3rds world, the answer is almost always "record-keeping errors".
I think you touch on some interesting stuff here, but are missing some bigger picture and context. First, that chart is a little silly. It's top 10 FIFA nations plus USA. The USA is an arbitrary addition here. Brazil is the only very large nation (let's say top 10 by population) with a good soccer team. Population size definitely correlates with number of soccer players, but not number of good soccer players. The USA has more youth soccer players than Uruguay has people and yet... Just having a lot of players is not sufficient. You need the soccer rich environment. Now, I do believe that comes in multiple different forms. For some kids, it's having a high level or extremely invested parent. For some kids, it's living in an area where the sport is practiced at a high level. Consider this article from 2016. Croydon, home to just 0.6% of the population of the UK (a football mad country, invented the sport, home to the greatest league in the world, etc etc etc) produced 5% of all English Premier League players. Hot spots like these create players at a much higher rate because it's a competitive sport and the water you swim in makes a difference. It's not an accident that most of our good players are dual nationals. Not only do the parents care more, they have an education in the sport that they start transmitting at a young age. It's not exclusive to dual nationals. Anyone can kick the ball around with their kids starting early. It just takes passion and culture. You have to care deeply about training your kid. Immigrants care. Ex-pros care. Johnny's mom who put him in Soccer Shots because it's better than sitting on the iPad may not care. The next stage of life is the early "competitive: period. This is not MLS, nor is it their academies. This is the grassroots level. The fact is that most parents don't care, nor do they have high expectations for their kids, so they mostly dink around with their fingers up their noses. It's not like this everywhere. Kids are ready to compete with each other at 4 or 5. They're ready to learn. Teaching and preparing them for high level competition just isn't the primary goal of leagues where parent volunteers coach. It's just about getting kids out of the house and active. It's a fine goal but it's not going to produce a Messi. At this stage parents are still heavily supplementing at home. Now, the question that remains is where MLS comes in. The reality is that no matter the professional league, their sphere of influence is limited. They aren't paying grassroots coaches, and they don't often have kids in the program until 12 or 13. At that point the talent levels are broadly set (of course there are late bloomers) and it's about managing a transition to the professional game and the lifestyle change that requires. Is MLS maximizing the talent pool that comes to them? It's debatable, but we're doing a lot better of a job than (for example) Mexico. We're seeing more pro players get opportunities and move on despite the American player being relatively expensive in a global sense. There's a lot more work to be done but MLS academies on a global standard are extremely professional, have a heavy emphasis on quality coaching, and some of the best facilities in the world. They are maximizing what they can do with what they have. The bottom line: Environments create players. Pro academies don't, they work with the material they have. It's like speaking a language. Basically everybody in Europe can speak a couple languages. Americans broadly don't, except for immigrants. Why is that? Because it's part of the culture at home, you can't just not speak the language. Same is true for soccer. If you're from certain homes, you can't just not play. It's part of who you are.
The funny thing is that you can find Chinese making the same sort of complaints, why aren't we better, we have so many footballers.
There's a group of people who make the population argument because they are approaching it from a place of simplicity and (good natured) ignorance. You can tell those people because once the discussion gets going, they understand the folly. Then there's the people who come to this argument because they've decided already on what they want to criticize, and this simplistic argument allows them. There's no one who has been involved in this discussion for any period of time still in the first group. The argument is not sound, and they don't care. It's just a way to sling whatever preconceived assumption they've made. We've gotten now to that to succeed MLS needs to develop huge numbers of impact Champions League level players who have never played for any other organization and stay in MLS past 19-20, who don't have parents who are ex-pro soccer players or even AYSO coaches, or didn't have a next door neighbor or uncle that's the same, and also are not genetically gifted. Okay. There's a good discussion out there as to how to improve player development in the US. But these arguments are clearly dishonest and disingenuous and we should treat them as such.
MLS was 100% critical to USL's survival in the past decade plus. Their MLS2 teams both provided operating capital for the league and quality competition when USL couldn't field enough teams to reach any kind of critical mass. On a broader level, MLS' viability presented a blueprint for success that translated both to a re-structuring of USL and more success in securing capital and loans. USL now has 182 men's teams and 101 women's teams across 4 (and soon to be 5) divisions. There are literally hundreds more teams in the US than there were when MLS started. USL has been booming and continues to grow despite your claim that MLS is killing them off. NASL did die, but they died because they sucked at business. If you want a pattern: leagues that embrace an some version of an MLS style of model succeed. Leagues that pursue a decentralized model that has no central strategy and no standard for ownership fail miserably. That's what has happened in the US. Yes, MLS and USL compete. But no, we're nowhere near a monopoly.
One thing that's missing in this conversation is how much harder it is to move up the scale, the law of diminishing returns. Put some resources in and it's pretty easy to go from bottom quartile to mid then 3rd quartile. Even harder to go from 75 to 80 and on and on. Soccer is the most competitive sport in the world and breaking into the top 15 or 10 means removing someone who is already there. That is incredibly hard to do. Putting more work in isn't the answer. It's putting in more work than the other 20 teams racing us as well as putting in the work needed to dislodge those already ahead of us. That is nearly impossible once you get to the upper echelons of anything.
I think the other reality is that the levers you can pull are insignificant compared to larger trends and culture, which is nearly impossible to move to any real degree in any specific direction. USSF can nudge. Pro teams can improve their own pathways and foster bigger fanbases, etc. All of them can improve on scouting and development, etc. But no one can materially shift a nation of 330 million to suddenly love soccer and prioritize it. They can foster it and it will grow -- as it is doing -- but it takes time. It is also a real challenge that we tried to do this in the modern media era. As much as the ability to see European and other football and FIFA games have accelerated acceptance and fandom, they have siphoned fandom and support from local professional teams Fans of MLS and USL teams are the ones who fund free to play academies in the US. That's where most of the money comes from -- yes, some is anticipation of future transfer fees but no one is building an academy based on erratic cash flows. If all those US-based EPL-only fans supported their local club -- ironically, the "culture" they claim to profess -- there would be a LOT more financially viable clubs in the US and therefore a lot more professional, free development, a lot more soccer fandom concentrated locally, and more clear path to soccer professionalism. I'm a fan owner of a USLC team and the financials are freaking dire. If all the people in the area who watch Euro soccer came to games, we'd kill it. I get it. The level of play isn't great. But none of those teams are funding clinics or an academy in my area.
Yup, the top 10 of the worldcup each 4 years are basically the same 8 nations, with the odd passer by.
very interesting .....i learned a lot reading this. thanks. its not silly to include the USA at all. 1, we are talking about USA soccer here and comparing it to the best in the world is the obvious goal....to become in that league. furthermore, the usa isnt that far off those teams anyway....how many other countries have gotten out of the WC group as many times as the usmnt this century? not many can top the usmnt in that stat...US is a solid tier 2 team that has every logical expectation to move into tier 1 soon. but have to say....its funny you say I lack context and big picture....when that is precisely where I want to be critical of MLS/SUM/Us soccer the most - what are they doing on that level? as with almost every single aspect of american culture, profit motive drives everything, implications and side-effects be-damned. MLS has systematically tried and mostly successfully has created a monopoloy over the sport in the USA. wanna play for a us youth team? better be in MLS academy! college soccer has been undermined and eviscerated. a ton of lower level clubs and leagues have gone by the wayside so MLS could create its own version of a soccer pyramid (that is mostly symbolic and not a real pyramid) MLS is controlling the structure of american soccer to suit its business interests and its version of doing so IS NOT DEVELOPING talent optimally. it wants to develop players but only on its terms. and you can say well....it costs money so they are the ones investing, they get to decide.....but the problem is they are controlling a closed system that they created.....which doesnt lead to organic growth of the sport. it prevents it, actually and thats why MLS really hasnt grown much over the decades, really. IF MLS wasnt trying to monopolize everything soccer-related in the USA, youd be right and we couldnt really point at MLS when discussing the big picture stuff....but they are, so we most certainly need to. even if it is the kind of stuff of parents just wanting their kids to be active and being clueless about how to create a messi (which is on point of you to mention) i hear you about just not having players is sufficient - they have to be high quality - I live in spain and the average person here is just very athletic. its noticable. almost everyone is basically fit and athletic. the baseline for success in sports is there. thats why they are killing it in soccer, tennis, basketball etc etc so yes I agree with you in some sense. but i dont think that everything that happens up until 12 or 13 is decisive and the real problem in the USA. for one, look at recent usynt performances and games.....they are almost always the more skilled team now and have the more skilled players at u17 and u20 in their games etc now. cavan sullivan was BY FAR the most skilled player in every single game the usa just played in the u17 world cup. by far. and its not just him. its the whole team. the raw material is there! its just being wasted yan diomande trialled with multiple MLS teams and WAS NOT SIGNED! https://www.si.com/soccer/how-chelsea-missed-out-100-million-arsenal-liverpool-targe ‘Stopped Everything’—How Chelsea Missed Out on €100 Million Arsenal, Liverpool Target this article should also include MLS missing out as well! he was playing in the us in 2024 and went to high school here! look at agyemangs story, being forced to start off college soccer in d3!...scouting and talent ID in US soccer from college to MLS is woefully poor. its really mindboggling to imagine how much talent is being wasted and slipping through the cracks....there must be scores of agyemangs and diomandes out there who remained anonymous for the entire lives. im convinced. MLS itself wastes so much talent. imagine being an american player right now on LAFC who plays Son;s position....doesnt matter who he is, he will NOT SUCCEED. and what can he do about it? cant even pick his MLS team to sign for. i truly beleive that if MLS simply took a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach to growing the game in the usa theyd be much better off .....instead they are the harbor police controlling every aspect on the water and issuing exclusive licenses to be on the water etc.....etc.....and not letting anyone who doesnt use their approved brand of boats do anything basically. theyd rather control everything and grow at a snails pace than grow rapidly but not control what happens totally. and thats the issue I take with the league i.e. player development and overally soccer development in the usa. i mean....ive been a fan of the usmnt since 94 when the world cup was here. its a LONG TIME to be watching this sluggish "progress".....recent fans arent going to see much wrong with whats going on but my perspective is informed by over 30 years of closely following whats been going on......
This is something I truly donot understand from a pov as a football fan. When you love the game, the first thing you support is your local team, because it's your team and you can physically support it, not just on tv, because an mls-team is about 500 km away or even worse an UEFA - team is on the other side of the ocean.
There's a variety of reasons why this exists. For one, when some of these folks were picking a team, there wasn't really a local option or it is such a low level that it's uninteresting or even somewhat of a different sport. Much like a lot of UK football fans have their local team and then a big EPL team. For two, for some people, they got into soccer because it was counter-culture. A lot of US soccer fans are the opposite of sports fans -- they like the social aspect but never fit in with the hoi polloi that supports American football. The act of supporting a European team is core to why they support soccer at all. It is a counter-culture move. If you are a soccer fan to be different ... what's more different than hoo-rah Americanism than liking something European. See also Formula One love versus NASCAR. It's ironic -- MLS and USL fans are more like the California Cuisine/Farm to Table revolution in the US, which started when Alice Waters and others took the the principles of French Cooking -- cook what is local -- instead of the exact recipes. Whereas EPL fans are the snooty folks who only like the actual foreign cuisine. And lastly, Americans tend to expect and like the best. For most of our sports, the best players in the World play here. MLS is not the best players in the World, except a couple of aging guys. But for fanbases used to the best coming to US, we gravitate to Champions League or the EPL because ... best. Personally, I watch Champions League for that reason. But I've never been able to become a fan of a European team because without the local aspect, I just can't give a shit.
A lot of soccer fans in the U.S. are drawn to the sport as a romanticized fantasy and domestic soccer will never bring that aspect, except for the belief we have loads of world class talent going unrecognized.
Huh??? Besides FC Cincy who are the wealthy USL owners who've made the leap to MLS?St Louis and San Diego are completely different ownership groups. Orlando City had to recruit an owner to get into MLS.
First, recruiting additional owners is part of the process and expected. Deep-pockets for USL is certainly nothing close to MLS deep pockets. Second, yes, there is always a danger of external groups with big money rushing in and taking a market. That's business. It's certainly no secret that a fair number of USL teams talk about and are seeking eventual MLS inclusion. I would say it's the number one motivator but feel free to disagree. What's inarguable is that it's certainly a motivator and that it has happened previously.
That's a negotiating ploy. USLHQ is driving a push for infrastructure and real estate development. They'd like to avoid situations like they've had in Indianapolis. Mentioning "an eventual goal of making it to The MLS" is way to sway public officials who are uninformed about the professional sports landscape in North America, let alone professional soccer. More professional soccer in the US is a good thing. Our country is far too big geographically for one league to cover. More professional pathways is a good thing. There are a host of USL projects that are proceeding a realistic and thoughtful way. That still doesn't change the Simpsons Monorail vibes emanating from USL HQ on their overall project.
Owners want to be part of that single entity organization raking in the money. Where do people think the 500 million paid by San Diego to join the league goes? You go from being living day-to-day in the USL financially (which most clubs do), to being part of a really stable organization. What's more interesting to me in the discussion is these 2nd/3rd tier organizations joining MLSNP. In 2027 MLS Next Pro is adding clubs in Jacksonville, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Long Island. Being added to existing ones like Chattanooga, Connecticut, Carolina Core, etc. We'll see more and more. There was talk of rapid expansion post-World Cup. So when we talk about USL HQ competing with MLS..................let's not forget that MLS is coming for them too!!! That's a direct shot across the bow.
Yep. The way the “monopoly” people talk you’d think there hasn’t been any lower division soccer in the U.S. since the NASL shut down in 2017.
[/QUOTE] The only "monopoly" that MLS has is on the best soccer the US (and Canada) has to offer. Which is why the bulk of the USYNT players come from MLS academies. But @adam tash wouldn't ever think of that being the reason that if you "wanna play for a us youth team? better be in MLS academy!" And here's another thing: guys under 18 generally can't sign contracts in Yurp, so the U-15s and U-17s are mostly from academies in the US--of which, the best tend to be MLS ones since, ya know, that's the top level of play here. Once you get to the U-20s and U-23s there is more variation, which is also no surprise because--what do you know!--players at that age can legally sign contracts in Yurp. Each of those blue things are direct links, by the way, in case anyone (AHEM: @adam tash) wants to actually have a look at who is on each team and what club they're connected to.