This debating being had tangentially in a thousand different places is getting very old, so how about summing it up.

I’m a writer by trade so I apologize for the length but evidence is important, it’s a multi-layered problem, and also people shouldn’t be afraid to read. I hope I got it all in one place.

Here’s a couple basic premises I would consider relevant context:

• Anyone who frames this as a discussion about the US “dominating” should stop. This discussion is about the US being competitive. That’s it. Please stop framing it incorrectly; it does everyone involved a disservice.

• Overwhelmingly, professional athletes began playing the sport in which they currently play when they were children. There are rare actual exceptions to this, along with “exceptions” of people who switched sports at a certain age. Those people still played sports their entire life. This whole narrative that any sport is uniquely statistically dissimilar to this is a fallacy.

• The “soccer is on an ethereal level of difficulty separate from all other sports” is a (completely delusional and wholly self-serving) argument only made by people from countries where they are shit at most other sports (or, occasionally by some soccer-centric Americans talking out of their asses). It’s such an inane argument that it’s almost a tell.

Basic fact: soccer requires ZERO hand co-ordination. None. Complete void. Nearly any other major sport requires both. In Football, you train your feet arguably as much if not more than your hands. Same with basketball. In boxing, footwork is a nearly religious experience. Hockey? L-O-fucking-L; that’s both on such a ridiculous level (plus violence) and on ice. Please.

Every-time I bring these disparities up I get downvoted to hell, but no one says anything (which is also a tell).

• Soccer is the most popular sport in most any country involved in the World Cup. By a lot. In the US , it is the 4th (FOUR. Not in the top 3. Arguably 5th). This alone should be enough to explain re athletes. But this is actually less of a contributing factor (miraculously) than other detail that most non-Americans know nothing about.

Football is the biggest sport in the US. By fucking far. The NFL is the biggest league. Again, by far.

Here’s where it gets so very important: soccer and football are in the same season. You never play both; it’s one or the other, overwhelmingly.

(I loathe anecdotal evidence but I’m including this because I think the disparity is funny so) I know more people who LIED to their parents in order to go to football practice than people who continued to play soccer once they had the choice.

I don’t think I once thought about playing in the WC in my childhood; conversely, I probably pretended I was playing in the Super Bowl 5 times a week, as a kid in the backyard. I don’t think I am all that unique in this.

• The US (obviously more but let’s just say) just as many elite athletes than any other country (primarily because of the basic numbers) based on math.

There are four major sports leagues filled with elite athletes, many American.

In addition, the Olympics are also a valid metric on athletes versus other countries.

We have 3500+ total medals. The next (non-communist) country that has over 1000? ZERO.

• We have 1000+ gold medals. The next country (non-communist) to have over 300? Hint: ZERO.

Those are ENORMOUS fucking margins. Over 3x is what we call “statistically significant.”

In Track & Field alone it’s something like 5 or 6x (which is what we call “statistically holy shit”) over the next country. And our athletes are coming through in an imperfect and chronically underfunded non-revenue athletics system.

It’s also not unreasonable to argue that these aren’t even definitely Tier 1 athletes. It is extraordinarily common for football and basketball (two biggest sports by far) recruits to compete at the same level of future olympian medalists coming out of high school at several different disciplines. They choose to continue (NOT START, as Euros loves to falsely claim; we play these sports since we are children) basketball and football because non-revenue. The way that you train your body in those sports versus track & field is completely different. Same with soccer.

In summation: it’s not just a numbers thing. Probably just as many people play soccer (compared to say any country in Europe) in the US currently. The numbers don’t matter at all when they aren’t your top athletes. Or even top-3. It’s a numbers AND a culture thing; it’s both. Until soccer gets to NBA levels, we won’t be competitive with the elites; it is that simple. We need at least tier 2 athletes; that’s the bar.

Another reference point: this country is littered with elite athletes who played (one example) college football but whose bodies couldn’t manage the violence. MANY of this profile have body styles applicable to soccer (DB, WR, RB, LB, etc.), especially if they didn’t spend their teens/early 20’s adding enough bulk to try to survive football. Guess what sport these kids would probably have been pretty good at? Soccer.

That is wasted potential, but it won’t change until it does. The thing is, it may never change.

Obviously there’s the pay-for-play stuff that is well known but I’d argue overly discussed. It’s a bad system but it already doesn’t have our tier 1 or 2 athletes in it, so it’s borderline irrelevant. Obviously it needs to change. But even if it changed tomorrow it would still be missing the pieces it needs.

The only way to speed this up is for the proper MLS teams to build and fund pipelines/youth programs AT THEIR EXPENSE. Or for someone like Mr Citadel to fund them. Otherwise, it’ll need to be organic, while will take some time, decades probably.

THE CHERRY ON THE TOP? We don’t have a star player. A guy who can take over a game. This is a big fucking deal. But it’s also an imperfect science (and these players will be randomly born and will need to pick soccer and develop fully etc etc) so I’m not going to pretend to know when that will work itself out. We don’t have a hand in that other than building a functional feeder system.