Being a fan of soccer in the US has not always been fun. For starters, if you want to watch good club soccer, you need to look outside the US. That’s because the American League, the MLS, is subpar to say the least. Most of the players in the league are mediocre and the few good players who do come along, only do so once they are long past their best. I quite often find myself waking up at 4:30 AM so I can watch my favorite team, Chelsea, play in the British Premier League. The men’s national team is not much better than the MLS. Though there have been some good players, such as Landon Donovan and Tim Howard, there has never been a true international star, nor has there ever been a very good team. In fact, the US men failed to even qualify for the last World Cup in embarrassing fashion, by losing to Trinidad and Tobago, a country less than 0.5% the size of the US. To put their failure in perspective, in my entire lifetime, the US men’s national team has not won a single knockout round game in the World Cup.
This failure is surprising as the US is economically powerful, has a high population, and dominates many Olympic sports. So why are other countries so much more successful when it comes to men’s soccer? As it turns out, the economic status of a country does not correlate strongly with its success in soccer, as evidenced by the strength of Brazil, the most successful team in World Cup history. Neither does population, considering that both China and India, the two most populated countries in the world, have perennially weak soccer teams, whereas other, smaller countries like Portugal are successful. There is however, one factor that does correlate strongly to success in soccer: culture. To put it simply, the US men don’t succeed in soccer because the US population doesn’t much care for the sport. Soccer is the fourth most popular sport for boys in the United States, behind football, basketball, and baseball. In the soccer powerhouses of the world, soccer is the most popular sport, and it’s not even close.
While the US men’s national team is constantly underperforming, the exact opposite is true of the US women's team. They are by far the best national team in women's soccer history, having won four of the eight Women's World Cups that have happened, including the most recent one in 2019. They are utterly dominant and for the same reason why the men are unsuccessful–culture. In 1972, Title IX, which requires that women and men receive equal opportunity in school sports, was signed into law. Since then, soccer has become increasingly popular among US female youth, on track to possibly become the most popular sport in upcoming years. Around the same time, European and South American countries, such as England, Brazil, Spain, and Germany, were only just lifting restrictions on women playing organized soccer. So while they were just permitting women to play soccer, we were actively encouraging it. No country has a well-developed professional league for women’s soccer, but the US has the collegiate athletic system, in which female soccer players outnumber male. The US has a far more developed infrastructure for women’s soccer than any other country in the world, and as a result, the US women dominate.
Youth soccer culture has a huge influence on a country’s success in international competition. The Dutch soccer club Ajax illustrates the difference between youth soccer training for boys in Europe and the United States. Ajax, and many other clubs in Europe, will scout kids as young as five-years-old, kids who are still in daycare. They are scouted by professional soccer clubs not long after they learn to tie their shoes. If Ajax likes a young player, they’ll invite them to join their academy. Players’ skills are developed meticulously by some of the best coaches in the world. The environment of the academy is grueling and intense. Every year, some players are disinvited because their skills haven’t developed sufficiently. Parents don’t have to pay for their kids to participate in Ajax academy. Ajax makes its money by developing players from a young age then selling them to other clubs, sometimes for ridiculous sums. For example, Frenkie De Jong and Matiis De Ligt both joined Ajax before they had even turned ten and were slowly developed until 2018, when Ajax sold them for a combined 170 million dollars. That income alone can sustain the club for years.
Less developed countries, such as Brazil and many in Africa, have less formal but still effective ways of developing young talent. There aren’t necessarily tons of opportunities to play soccer at school in or in a nice structured environment. Instead, kids play on any surface they can–concrete, mud, an open field–and with anything that will serve as a ball. Groups of kids of different ages, sizes, and skill levels all play together. This sort of unstructured, chaotic environment can work very well for producing talent. Kids who are used to playing against older boys learn how to trick and dribble around physically stronger players. Players also learn toughness in the rough-and-tumble, chaotic environment. The professional soccer clubs hold mass try-outs that kids can participate in once they reach a certain age. Young people want to be noticed by the big soccer clubs who can possibly lift them out of poverty. Through all these factors, players with skill, toughness, and motivation arise.
As a young soccer player in the US, I have personally experienced the difference in how players are formed here. Throughout the entirety of elementary and middle school, I only had one or two friends who were even semi-interested in soccer, so there wasn’t much opportunity for pick-up play. I’ve played plenty of pick-up basketball games, but I don’t think I’ve had even a single opportunity to play a game of pick-up soccer, even though soccer is my favorite sport. When I did start playing soccer on a club team at the age of five, my parents immediately had to pay. It didn’t start off too expensive, but as I got older, participation in the club teams started to get pretty pricey. This isn’t just my experience, though, the average cost of a club team in America is $2,000 - $5,000 per year. This changes the incentive structure of a youth soccer club. A European club like Ajax is only focused on developing young talent because they make their money by selling players once they get older. Clubs in the United States care more about winning games at the youth level. In my soccer club, we would often play a game both days of the weekend, or even two in one day, which took away from time we could have spent developing our skills. A club like Ajax would be much more focused on developing just one excellent player than on winning youth soccer games. The American focus on winning games at the youth level leads to defeat for the national team down the road.
A recent incident of trash-talking may point to some hope for American men’s soccer. The US and Mexico have long been soccer rivals, and Mexico has historically come out on top most of the time. Before a World Cup Qualifying game between the two teams on November 11th, 2021, the Mexican goalie Guillermo Ochoa said to a reporter, “Mexico has been that mirror in which [the United States] want to see themselves and reflect, what they want to copy.” During the qualifying match that followed this comment, Christian Pulisic, the United States’s young star, scored a decisive goal late in the game. He pulled up his jersey to reveal an undershirt bearing the message “I am the man in the mirror.” Pulisic’s taunt may say something about the trajectory of US men’s soccer. The team has beaten Mexico in three out of their last four meetings and drawn the fourth. Pulisic plays professionally for Chelsea, and the US’s other star, Weston McKennie, plays for Juventus Turin, the largest club in Italy. They may not be stars in league play, but they are both important players on top European teams. At the same time, interest in soccer is growing among boys at the youth level. The number of high school boys playing soccer has been growing steadily since the early 2000’s and is on track to surpass baseball in the next few years. A positive feedback loop may be taking effect, in which young boys look up to American stars and are consequently inspired to become stars themselves. Over time, this process could breathe new life into American soccer culture. Maybe one day I’ll be able to watch top tier soccer in the MLS and not have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning for the European leagues.
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