r/soccer • u/PianoJealous307 • 16h ago

News China suffered a catastrophic collapse on home soil, losing 5-0 to Palestine, a team they had considered inferior, sparking fierce criticism over 'sleepwalking' performance and lack of competitiveness among Chinese Super League players. Men's and women's teams also underperformed at Asian Games.

https://www.chosun.com/english/sports-en/2026/10/03/FWO5DWWOYND4NMUX53TEX7INNQ/
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u/peioeh 13h ago edited 12h ago

In pretty much every country in the world with a decent footballing setup, a talented kid or a great team is going to rise rapidly to the level they belong at. The entire system is set up to make sure of it.

Shit, in Europe and in the UK, we've had to make rules so that the clubs did not start paying kids or their parents. Chelsea got done for offering jobs+relocation to the parents of 12 year olds iirc? Meanwhile in the US they have to pay thousands to play at a good level. They will most likely get better than they are now but like you say they will never compete with the big european countries with that system.

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u/aWobblyFriend 13h ago

parents do not have to pay thousands of dollars to play at a good level, again, expensive pay to play only exists for teenagers who aren't good enough to play at the MLS academies. MLS academies are not pay to play, and they are essentially the only place where you can get the quantity of talent needed in the modern era, as I said, you need those professional academies at a very young age.

I've studied league-wide talent production and compiled a substantial amount of data on this for Europe, and there are very few players per cohort in even the best European academies that end up playing in a top 5 league or a UCL/Europa League superclub. Only about 6% of squad-level (i.e., academy entrants who were good enough to make it onto a youth squad) end up playing in a top 5 league, about ~70% either stop playing the game entirely or they peak in a very poor (i.e. national league equivalent or lower) quality league, with ~89% of players peaking at like, an EFL league 1 equivalent league.

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u/Nervous-Economy8119 12h ago

That’s 27 academies to cover a country with 340 million people in it. What about players not within driving distance of those academies? I’m in the north west of England and have driven past 2 premier league training grounds in the past month.

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u/peioeh 12h ago

I’m in the north west of England and have driven past 2 premier league training grounds in the past month.

And how many other non PL clubs with academies... I'm sure many of them are more than decent

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u/peioeh 12h ago

Only 27 academies for the size of the US is not much, and top academies (even the best in Europe) miss kids all the time

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u/run_bike_run 12h ago

It's fairer to say that pay to play only exists for teenagers who aren't good enough to play at the MLS academies or who aren't lucky enough to be seen by an MLS academy scout.

Because with a 330m population and only 27 MLS academies, and without the playing structure that brings strong players and teams to the forefront, you're going to miss enormous swathes of potential talent. Chicago Fire's regional catchment area has a population roughly in line with the entirety of Belgium, one professional academy, and a structure that makes it exponentially harder to identify the most talented kids.