On Oct. 3 in Glendale, Arizona, the U.S. men’s soccer team beat Mexico 3-0, and two teenagers scored the goals people will remember.
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Cavan Sullivan, 17, became the youngest player ever to score for the national team. Julian Hall, 18, scored in his third straight game since his debut. Both came up through free academies run by Major League Soccer clubs: Hall joined the New York Red Bulls academy at 12), and Sullivan grew up in the Philadelphia Union’s. Their families did not have to buy their way in.
That detail explains American soccer better than any World Cup scoreline.
This summer, America hosted the biggest World Cup in history. More than 6.8 million fans filled stadiums that ran 99.7 percent full, and the that President Trump created deserves credit for a tournament that worked. Then, on July 6, Belgium beat the U.S. 4-1 in Seattle, the fourth time in five World Cups that the Americans went out in the round of 16.
The easy conclusion is that Americans are just not good at soccer. Sullivan and Hall say otherwise. We have the talent. What we lack is a system that finds it.
The Aspen Institute found that the average family spent $1,016 on a child’s main sport in 2024, up 46 percent since 2019. Soccer’s road to the national team costs far more. Pro-club academies like the ones that trained Sullivan and Hall charge nothing, but there are only about 30 of them among the roughly 270 clubs in MLS Next, the top boys’ league. Independent clubs charge dues starting around $3,000 before travel, and the all-in cost runs $8,000 to $15,000 a year.
Picture a fast, smart twelve-year-old who lives three hours from the nearest MLS club. If his parents cannot write that check, he plays in the park, and nobody with a clipboard ever sees him. In a country of 340 million, that is a lot of talent nobody gets to count.
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Washington has noticed. Sens. Chris Murphy and Cory Booker and several House Democrats have filed the Let Kids Play Act, which would brand private equity firms in youth sports “vulture investors,” force them to sell, and threaten jail for false filings. They have the symptoms right. Fees keep climbing, and “stay-to-play” rules make families book the tournament’s hotels. But banning one kind of owner does not lower dues. It only changes who collects them.
The better fix is competition and sunlight, and the money is already on the table. FIFA expects more than $15 billion in revenue this cycle, most of it from matches played here, and on October 15 its Council weighs paying each of its 211 member federations at least $10 million. FIFA President Gianni Infantino says any payout should come with “transparent and auditable arrangements.” America should take him at his word and go first.
Three steps would do it. First, open the 11 American World Cup stadiums for free summer tryouts that feed one national player database, so a scout in Ohio can find a kid in New Mexico. Second, copy Belgium and Germany, which hired an outside firm, Double Pass, to grade their youth academies; Germany even ties federation money to the grades. America should publish its grades and add one number Europe never needed: what each club charges. Third, spend the first $10 million of any FIFA payout on kids. At $3,000 in dues, that buys more than 3,300 player-seasons. None of it requires a new federal program.
As a former R&D executive, I know what a broken process looks like: good material goes in and a poor product comes out. You fix the process, not the material. Belgium needed 14 years after its own home-soil flop at Euro 2000 to reach a World Cup quarterfinal. On Oct. 3, two teenagers showed what the American process produces when price is not the gatekeeper. The question is how many more like them are playing in parks where nobody is watching.
Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D., is the Director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former R&D executive holding 30 U.S. patents, he specializes in interdisciplinary research and public policy analysis. His writing has appeared in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (PNAS), RealClear platforms, Washington Examiner, The Fulcrum, The Humanist, AFRO American, and South Asia Monitor, where he serves on the editorial board. He also hosts the interview show “SAM Dialogues with Dr. M. P. Reddy.” Website: mpreddyinsights.com | Contact: [email protected], https://lnkd.in/gn2zQJbs
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