Huh? They've been playing this tournament for almost 100 years and what, 8 teams have won it. No idea why you think we are cracking that group anytime soon. And Uruguay aint winning again anytime soon either, or England. So, it's either Argentina, Spain, or France.
The fix needs to happen at the grass roots level, with the youth. The pay-to-play model for young kids is a massive failure.
Oh, I see you're still in the stage of believing there's a single cause for the USMNT's woes. There are many variations of this view: it's all because of pay-to-play, or the lack of promotion and relegation, or bad youth coaching, or MLS's structure, or not having enough players in Europe, or some such other singular explanation. Of course, attributing all of our problems to one unitary cause is -- well -- naive. Anyway, if you'd like some coffee before you pull up a chair to join our despairing circle, please grab a cup in the back.
No cream or sugar, thanks. Ya know, I think it's "all of the above". I can't put my finger on it--and apparently USSF can't either--but there's some reason we're not developing the world-class talent here on home soil. Arguably our best players this cycle, Balogun, Tillman, maybe A.Robinson, all grew up and developed overseas. The only US-developed player who is a consistent starter on a top Big 5 league team is Chris Richards. (Edit: Maybe Adams, if he ever stayed healthy.) I was ashamed yesterday that we looked so... amateur, compared to the professional Belgians.
Hope you didn't take the earlier joke (changing your name) too seriously lol. I like throwing a little humor into these discussions. If I had to pick where real change starts, it'd be at the grassroots level. IMO building a stronger foundation for young players is probably the fastest way to get a more competitive national team in the long run. The hard part isn't really figuring out what needs fixing. It's getting enough people on board to actually make those changes happen. That's the part nobody seems to have an answer for.
1990 was the first WC I watched as well, as a kid. But I can relate to the trajectory and impressions of each cup since. Looking at the other countries at our level struggling with the same bar, it's hard to see why we should be any different than them. Honestly the main thing that gives me a little bit of hope is the way even the smaller countries are catching up and giving the big teams more of a fight. Also some of the big teams are slipping into malaise. Perhaps, slowly but surely, we can stop talking about the same 8 or so always being the only contenders forever more.
The pay for play model issue is a complaint people make who don't think they live in a capitalist society. It costs money to be in the boy scouts, youth orchestra, and 4H club too. Any parent can tell you that. In Europe, somebody is paying for everything. This isn't magic. They have professional clubs and other organizations making a profit that have the luxury of making soccer academies free. We can only get rid of pay for play with organizations that are profitable and have money to spend. That''s MLS clubs, and most of them dont have pay for play for their elite MLS Next teams. My team, Dallas, certainly isn't pay for play with the MLS Next teams. The thousands of kids in their other teams and affilaites have to pay. Cuz, ya know, nothing is free. You can't make it free for everybody. There are unaffiliated MLS Next teams Teams not affiliated with profit-making professional clubs. How is EVERYTHING supposed to be free for them? The fees typically range from 3k to 10k per year depending on the team. But where is the money supposed to come from to make the Dallas Texas free? Fall from the sky????? No, somebody has to pay for travel, uniforms, the salaries of the coaches, and other expenses. The money can't come from the USSF. The USSF isn't even paying the salary of its own men's national team coach. It's a not-for-profit in the eyes of the IRS anyway. Even the new USSF headquarters and training complex outside of Atlanta is being paid for by Arthur Blank, etc. How do we get rid of pay for play? PEOPLE HAVE TO SPEND MONEY with their local professional or semi-professional teams. Its part of culture. Soccer has to be big business in the United States for more and more and more of pay for play to be eliminated.
Wow, there are some names on that match report that I have never heard of...and yes, I go back to when the only soccer available to watch was both All Star Soccer and Soccer Made in Germany...it was indeed the dark ages. Would never have guessed back then that the 1994 WC would be on home soil and fund a new league and that virtually every match now would be available for public consumption. We've come a long ways!
I mean, this is just factually untrue. McKennie was probably our best player this tournament; he's a locked in starter for Juventus. Pulisic starts when healthy. Adams starts when healthy, and both of them were amongst our best players. The reason we don't develop world class players is culture. We simply don't have the density and scale of kids who start kicking a ball at 2 and a culture where this is THE sport everyone plays and everyone wants to be a star in. There's lots of things to improve, but it's simply not that hard to understand that in other cultures where most kids play from age 2, it's a completely different development dynamic. You learn ball skills when the brain is learning all other motions like walking. All your friends play. All your heros are players. Everyone knows the sport and talks it. If you're really good, you don't have to leave your town to play other really good players. There are tons of adults there who know the sport and can coach it. You are rewarded constantly for being good at it. That's the reason. You can't fake, your can't force it. You can do others to improve, but there's a million little ways culture helps players be better, and it's a force multiplier -- each of those things reinforces the other little ways culture helps.
My takeaway from this is that American Eurosnobs are a fifth column. "Oh, I'm a huge soccer fan, but the level of play here is just such crap, I just stick to watching the EPL/ La Liga only."
In at least parts of Europe, rec sports (at least youth rec sports) are subsidized by taxes. Parents still have to pay, but it’s not a huge amount. The elite kids get funneled into academies, which are capitalist, as you say. But part of the reason that there are enough kids for the funnel to work is (1) the subsidies mean most families can afford for their kids to play organized sports and (2) there are enough knowledgeable adults that even the ones coaching for free or for pocket money give a good grounding in the basics. Number 1 strikes me as a good use of taxpayer money—the more kids you have playing team sports, the healthier and more socially trained your kids are, which saves societies money on everything from insulin to drug treatment programs in the long run. Sadly, the second one requires that the necessary knowledge about a given sport be spread wide and deep. It will take the US a couple more generations for that, if we don’t have setbacks.
The fact that American sports culture tends to be very fickle doesn't help either. In this country, you win first, and then people will support you. Not the other way around. Unlike in other countries where support is basically a given, here it has to be earned.
Clint, I'd expect a guy like you to open your checkbook and fork up some cash from the tens/hundreds? of millions you've earned over decades from all them blockbuster movies. But seriously, you might have a point at the end of your post regarding how to tackle the issue in the US. My mind was really focusing on how the impoverished people from South American countries go about getting such a large swath of boys playing/participating in the sport.
Another issue in the US is how do you break the cycle of most boys' interest in playing only one of the big four sports: football (handegg), basketball, baseball, and hockey. How do you turn the boys attention to soccer. A lot of people believed that having a successful world cup campaign by the men's national team could cause a youth revival and desire to play the sport. Much like what happened with basketball in Spain when the dream team played there 30 years ago.
What year is this... Football Rough Estimate: 1.1 million to 1.3 million+ Basketball Rough Estimate: 1.0 million to 1.2 million+ Soccer Rough Estimate: 900,000 to 1.1 million Baseball Rough Estimate: 900,000 to 1.0 million Ice Hockey Rough Estimate: 320,000 to 350,000 Soccer Rough Estimate: 900,000 to 1.1 million The Breakdown: Soccer has massive grassroots and youth club numbers that taper slightly by the time players reach high school age. High School: ~485,000 boys. Youth/Club (US Youth Soccer, MLS NEXT, AYSO): Massive registration pools, making up roughly half a million additional players under the age of 14 who play in highly organized local and national club leagues. Any wrong info here take it up with the multi-trillion dollar company that runs Google Gemini
You can’t make people fall in love with soccer or the USMNT at the end of the day. I pretty much just accept that a round of 16 regular is pretty good for a country like ours with a niche/fractured soccer culture. If we ever luck into a true world class goal scorer that could probably get us a little further.
Tim Howard has a good term for where the USMNT is in 2026: footballing purgatory. That video should start at the correct time. But just in case, he talks about it starting at around 45:15. -- edit -- It's not starting at the right place. CLICK THIS LINK.
The problem isn't the numbers. It's what those kids are actually doing with that playing time. A large swath treat soccer as something they do a few times a week with their friends, and someone's dad, who doesn't know much about it, as a "coach". They may never even have watched a full match, and don't care. Now, in 2026, is that less prevalent than it was back in the 1980s when I played as a kid? Sure. That's why were progressing, a bit. Now kids follow their MLS teams, EPL or La Liga, actually buy a US jersey for the world cup, maybe commute an hour to play for an MLS academy or at least a larger club with better coaching if they have the skill and passion (and their parents have the resources). That's why we have a Richards, Adams or McKennie at all. But compare that to places in the world where just about every decent-size town has a professions or at least semi-pro club, where kids watch the game in person regularly, have coaches who may have played on that (semi)pro team and can feed talent up the ladder to the 3rd, then 2nd, then top tier. Kids who play nothing but soccer at recess. Kids who have that chance to really develop their skills if they want. You can call it "culture" if you want; it's a bit of "all of the above". Our lack of pro soccer for 64 years (right when pro sports were really coming to the fore), our lack of density in many areas so that few places have (semi)pro teams anywhere nearby, those pro teams not having academies until recently so youth clubs had to be pay-to-play to support coaching and infrastructure, etc. etc.... it all just compounds.
Culture drives business. The profit motive of business drives investment in paying for kids to play soccer, because someone is gonna make some money. Until the USA has a culture where soccer is more than a four year blip on the popular culture, we’re gonna have pay to play.
Another good coping mechanism is that it’s simply really hard to win the World Cup. Spain was the best team at the tournament and dominated the final but the end still got dicey for them and Argentina was close to leveling it despite everything against them. If the U.S. can grab another round of 16 win before too long that will be something to really appreciate.
Here's your doomy thought for the day: I've been supporting the USMNT since 1994. The team is vastly improved. And it keeps improving. So why does it still look like it's treading water as a Round of 16 team? Because the waters of global soccer are flowing faster and faster, and the USMNT has to be better and better just to tread water. What's the doomy thought? Those waters will be flowing even faster in four years.
Culture. If you're paying attention to the people who know, they are telling you over and over and over again that the differences between us and the teams who win the World Cup are culture and population density. (And with culture, we can probably fudge population density a bit.) The beautiful thing about having hosted this tournament is that is most likely nudged the culture in the right direction in ways which will not be completely known for years. 1994 definitely did, because the professional soccer landscape in 2026 is absolutely nothing at all like it was in 1994. Nor the fan culture. I remember TV announcers needing to explain the rules to the audience in the 90s, for real.
Culture fo sho. I think if the US pro leagues can entice more big names to join them, that will also help move the needle for young kids to pick up more soccer balls and fewer footballs.