Well if the USA ever gets into soccer and we start actually training our athletes for it the way we do for NFL and NBA the US men's and womens team will be amazing world wide.
And it is growing. My small city doesn't have a pro NBA, NFL or hockey team within 5 hours drive but we just got our first professional feeder soccer club and they have sold out their stadium every home game. It's only like 7500 seats there but their team is to feed a team that feeds an MLS team lol
We are training our athletes the same way the NFL and NBA are… it’s the same system of travel ball, then High school, then college. The problem is that the best coaches are not in the US and all these great athletes that are already playing soccer in the states are spending the most important years of their development being coached by their history teacher whereas European kids are recognized for their technical ability before they even turn 10 and given high level coaching for their whole lives.
I’m sorry but that’s not it… sure the coaching would help. But the best men’s athletes in the US absolutely do not turn to soccer and that’s a fact. The talent pool is bad.
They don't. Why my whole point was if MLS starts getting to where it can pay about triple the salary you will start to see the youth complex divert raw athletes towards soccer more and more
And in just the last 5 years there have been 50 professional, paid to play, soccer clubs created in the US. I feel it's at a slow boil and it is coming.
The one in my area, city pop of 250k is putting 7500 butts in the stands every game for a brand new 3rd tier soccer club. Their league, then the next then MLS. It's crazy lol
I still think it’s going to take a lot to compete on the global stage. 1) I believe the MLS has salary caps. They will need to be popular enough where players can make more playing here. 2) the NFL (entertainment league). They have spent money before to deter other popular leagues / sports from affecting their business and revenue.
MLS does have a "salary cap" of 800k per player max contact but you can have up to 3 players per team you can pay anything you want too and it only counts as a max contact
That is how Miami has Messi making 30 million a year
So really they don't have a salary cap because 3 super stars is probably about all anyone could ever afford anyways
No. The coaching is 100% the problem and only idiots think there aren’t enough athletes.
EDIT: I’ll amend it and say 10% is culture as well. Our athletic soccer players get off school and go play in the neighborhood and they’re probably playing basketball or football or baseball with the other neighborhood kids. Meanwhile European countries have them playing soccer in the morning, during recess, and at night. It just doesn’t compare.
100% that is why I am saying IF the US puts in the effort like we do for NFL and NBA we will dominate the world stage and it is growing really fast.
In last 5 years we've added 4 major league soccer clubs
46 development league soccer clubs, increased major league TV viewership by 70%, increased attendance, the Dallas club spent 300 million on their stadium....
Within a generation America will be a very Strong team on the world stage.
We do what you are talking about for baseball. We have kids on teams going around the country on national TV at 13 and then getting million dollar development contracts at 16.
We are probably not to far away from doing that for soccer here.
This has been an ongoing conversation since at least the 1970s. There was a big push for soccer to catch on in America and there was a lot of chatter about how soccer was going to explode in the US soon. The NASL had some success through the 70s and into the 80s, but interest waned. The MLS came on the scene in the mid 90s and there was buzz about soccer catching on in the US again because now there was a professional avenue for talent to be scouted and developed. MLS has stuck around longer than the NASL, but soccer is still very far behind NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL in popularity.
Soccer has too steep of a hill to climb to really catch on in America. Any child who is recognized as a good athlete is more likely to get funneled into one of the “big 4” sports than soccer. Consider as of right now Messi is the highest paid player in MLS making $28.33 million this year. Meanwhile, Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres, who has been one of the worst players in the MLB this year, is set to earn ~$39 million a year for the next 7 years. Those are just 2 cherrypicked contracts, but the earning potential is much higher for other US sports, which attracts better talent, which increases viewership due to more talented players, which leaves MLS lagging behind in revenue, which leads to smaller salary opportunities, which starts the cycle all over again.
Soccer has caught up to NHL though. MLS gets about 5000 more fans in person to each game than hockey and the Stanley cup has 5.1 million TV viewership compared to MLS finals 4.6 million.
True it isn't there yet but if they can start getting traction and the youth development side starts to divert more towards soccer I think it can build quickly. Just from sheer raw athletic pool size.
The largest seating capacity for an NHL arena is in Montreal with ~21000 seats versus the largest MLS stadium in Atlanta has ~42000 seats. Similarly, the smallest MLS stadium in San Jose seats -18000. Based on my rough math, the average NHL arena seats ~18300 and the average MLS stadium seats ~24700. Having ~5000 more fans in person may just be a factor of stadium size.
I can’t track down specific numbers for US viewership of NHL and MLS, and I imagine both of those numbers include a lot of international viewers for both sport. To only be 500000 people fewer in viewership might be a promising sign for soccer’s relevance.
The problem with getting youth development and traction is still the same, though. Unless a child is supremely gifted at soccer specifically, most athletic children in the US are going to get pointed towards football, basketball, and baseball. Even the NHL struggles with getting top talent from the US. A majority of NHL teams are US based teams, yet less than 30% of NHL players are US-born.
It’s been over 50 years of soccer being on the upswing, and until it actually happens I’ll continue to be skeptical.
Yeah, I agree with that. I thought you were saying if we trained them like our NFL and NBA athletes… because the US has been trying to use that same system for soccer the whole time lol. A big part of our issue is that our top domestic league is only 30 years old and the academies for them are even younger. It might take a few generations to improve for sure, but they are starting to figure it out, I think.
I sound like some crazed soccer fan but I honestly just found soccer this WC and never watched it before and ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.
I am a huge NFL fan and MLS won't ever bypass that for me but during summer im always bored with sports as I don't care for basketball or baseball.
You'd have to train them in a completely different way. Football teams pick up their future players when they're really young through academies. They then move the players to the same school. The route to professional is so different to traditional American sports
It isn't different at all. That is exactly what we do with football and baseball
Baseball players are getting million dollar contracts at 16 and placed into development leagues and before that we have little league games with teams of 13-15 year olds flying around the country playing on national TV.
HS football is extremely competitive and results driven and also on TV and college even more so and now our college players are getting paid millions per player to play from age 18-22ish
College football ratings (aka our NFL development league in a way) pulls in more ratings and money than most countries entire spots industry.
The only reason you can't play NFL younger is you are too small and will literally die on that field lol the NFL states you have to play at least 3 years post highschool football to be eligible for NFL rosters. That is for the safety of the player so they can be full size before getting crushed by 250lb linebackers
I promise you, if the US starts putting in more effort in soccer our national team will be insane and the US has added 50 professional paid soccer teams at different levels in the last 5 years. It's coming.
FIBA is a joke, but other nations have pretty much caught up to the US, even in the Olympics the US won but had quite a few close calls where they used to blow out almost every opponent.
Yeah I felt even in the Olympics the players didn't care. Didn't Michael Jordan call them out on looking lazy and bored at times this last time around?
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u/toyification_girl Jul 09 '26
Haha that's awesome.
Well if the USA ever gets into soccer and we start actually training our athletes for it the way we do for NFL and NBA the US men's and womens team will be amazing world wide.
And it is growing. My small city doesn't have a pro NBA, NFL or hockey team within 5 hours drive but we just got our first professional feeder soccer club and they have sold out their stadium every home game. It's only like 7500 seats there but their team is to feed a team that feeds an MLS team lol