10 minute read
US Soccer
The USA has transformed itself from a developing footballing nation into a
World Cup contender, from an old-boys’ league into a European-style talent factory. This is its five-year plan in the lead-up to hosting the tournament in 2026…
THE USA’S ROADMAP TO WORLD CUP VICTORY SOCCER INC
Words: Jürgen Schmieder
The USA men’s football team has a real chance of winning the 2026 World Cup.
Sure, it sounds crazy. Especially when you say that of a nation that – in stark contrast to the runaway success of its women’s female football team, which has won four Women’s World Cup titles and dominates the sport – has never got beyond the quarter-fnals stage of the men’s tournament. Embarrassingly, the team failed to even qualify for the 2018 World Cup, its under-23s team lost in Olympic qualifying to Honduras this year, and the USA’s top-level league competition, Major League Soccer (MLS), is still seen as second-rate in comparison to Europe’s elite divisions.
And yet, isn’t it the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world who end up being the ones who succeed? That’s what Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in his company’s famous 1997 ad. The slogan he presented was ‘Think Different’, and that’s exactly what the USA men’s national team is doing now, after decades of megalomaniacal bungling.
So, here’s a thought… What if we stopped thinking of US football as a federation; stopped thinking of MLS as a league; stopped thinking of clubs such as the New York Red Bulls as just clubs and thought of the whole thing as a huge start-up instead? And the World Cup in fve years’ time – which is being joint-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico – as its IPO? What prospectus would this football start-up produce for investors? “We’ve never had as many talented players before as we do now,” says USA men’s national team head coach, Gregg Berhalter. “The squad is extremely young. Many of them will be at the peak of their careers by the time their home World Cup comes around.”
Berhalter is talking about players such as 22-year-old Christian Pulisic, who plays in England for Chelsea; Gio Reyna (18, Borussia Dortmund); Weston McKennie (22, Juventus); Sergiño Dest (20, Barcelona); Yunus Musah (18, Valencia); Brenden Aaronson (20, Red Bull Salzburg); and, of course, Tyler Adams. The 22-year-old RB Leipzig midfelder is a shining example of how things are shaping up in this football start-up at this present time.
“I only really started focusing on soccer when I was accepted by the Red Bulls Academy at the age of 12,” Adams explains. This observation is more signifcant than it may at frst seem. The footballer hails from the village of Wappingers Falls, which is
Rising stars (and stripes): the USA men’s football team training in Bradenton, Florida
about an hour-and-a-half’s drive north of New York City. If he had been born 15 years earlier, Adams might today be a professional basketball player – it was his second favourite sport as a child, and soccer back then simply wouldn’t have discovered, or more crucially, encouraged someone like him. At that time, MLS flled its squads not with homegrown talent but with ageing stars from Europe.
The reason for this? Young sports stars in the USA are trained in a completely different way to their counterparts in Europe. Professional outfts such as the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team aren’t involved with youth talent; that role is taken care of by organisations such as the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and then schools and colleges. Clubs take their pick from the pool of talent at the annual draft. Late basketball legend Kobe Bryant, who grew up in Philadelphia, would have started his career with local team the Philadelphia 76ers if the NBA was run like the European system. Instead, the Lakers selected him and won fve championships.
“It was the perfect environment in which to become a professional soccer player,” says Adams of the Red Bulls Academy, which was founded in 2005, shortly before Red Bull took over the New York/New Jersey MetroStars and turned them into the New York Red Bulls. That these commitments only bear fruit years later fts well with the start-up analogy. The academy trains players from the age of 12; it doesn’t have to rely on the youth work of great European clubs.
“About 40,000 young people come into contact with our scheme each year,” says the academy’s director, Sean McCafferty. “We search high and low for talent, we support coaches, and I don’t think it can be a coincidence that we are now seeing professional American soccer players who are better trained in terms of tactics, too.” Like Adams, who can be played in a number of different positions.
Flag day: fans in the stands of MLS team San José Earthquakes’ stadium in California. Five years from now, they’ll see the World Cup played on their home turf
Football 1, College 0
In March 2015, at the age of 16, Adams had to make a very serious decision, one that most Americans are not confronted with. The Red Bulls offered him a professional contract. This state of affairs might be completely normal in Europe, but in the USA it was a problem, because teenagers who earn money through sport are no longer eligible for college scholarships. Four years at an elite college can cost $300,000 (£215,000) including fees, which the sports department will fully cover in the case of talented applicants. That is the goal a lot of young people in America strive for: to have their outrageously expensive studies fnanced through sport. Signing a professional contract was risky for Adams. “My mother really wanted me to go to college,” the footballer explains, “but she understood that this was the right path for me.”
That’s another consideration football clubs in the USA have now taken on: they must offer the talent they train some progression. For Adams, the Red Bulls’ USP was obvious: “My mentor [New York Red Bulls’ then head coach] Jesse Marsch showed me how things could work out for me in professional soccer.”
The plan was to play with reserve team New York Red Bulls II and train with the professionals. In other words, exactly what German star Thomas Müller did through Bayern Munich’s youth system. Adams didn’t have to move to Europe as a teenager, as Christian Pulisic did; he could allow himself the time, because he knew he could develop at the club. “I could grow here as a person,” Adams says. “I was able to graduate high school and still became a professional soccer player.”
Passport to Europe
Adams made his MLS debut with the Red Bulls in 2016, at the age of 17. Two years later, he won the league with them, and in January 2019 they offered him the cherry on the cake: a bridge to Europe thanks to their links with the Red Bull-owned teams in Salzburg and Leipzig. Adams followed his mentor, Jesse Marsch, who had become assistant manager at RB Leipzig, and joined the top-fight German Bundesliga. “We did well out of him, he did well out of us,” says McCafferty. “Now Leipzig and the USA squad can do well out of him, too. This is a huge success from our point of view.” Again, coming from the mouth of a European – McCafferty is Irish – this kind of statement sounds utterly normal, but it’s unheard of in the USA. It is unthinkable that someone from the Lakers might say of a player, “We looked after him for years, now he’s rocking another league and helping the dream team, and that’s a huge success from our point of view.” But the Americans have had to accept that MLS is still a training league for the very best talent.
“Perhaps in 20 years we could hang on to someone like Adams for a bit longer,” says McCafferty. “The reality now is different, but we are seeing the frst fruits of our labour. This is just the beginning.”
It is amazing how football has been reshaped in the USA, and arguably there is no better judge of that than Jesse Marsch. In playing terms, the Wisconsinborn 47-year-old has had a traditional American sports career: a college scholarship for Princeton University in New Jersey, then 14 years as a professional in MLS. He was a coach with the USA national team, followed by jobs on the bench at CF Montréal, New York Red Bulls, RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg.
“In the States, we always want to be the best straight away, without thinking
Jesse Marsch, now manager of Red Bull Salzburg; from next season, coach of RB Leipzig
Talent pool: players in one of the New York Red Bulls youth teams stoke up the winning spirit. Some of them could be playing in Europe’s top leagues five to 10 years from now
Massive attack: USA and Chelsea star Christian Pulisic, seen here in a friendly against Italy, is one of his nation’s brightest hopes
Sean McCafferty, director of the New York Red Bulls Academy
that this success is often dependent on a long, drawn-out process,” Marsch explains. “We are now seeing the frst products of a system we put in place more than 15 years ago.”
It should now be easier, thanks to role models such Tyler Adams, to convince football academy talent – and parents used to a different sporting system – that the domestic MLS isn’t an old boys’ league but in fact a wellspring of talent. “Young guys can now dream of becoming international stars,” says Marsch. “That’s new, but we mustn’t forget that we still have a long road ahead of us.”
For all the joy at their success, everyone knows that they have barely run the frst few miles of a marathon. “The next important step is qualifed youth coaches to teach the basics to elementary school children, not just skills, but how to enjoy the game, tactics and psychology, which is necessary at that age anyway,” says Marsch. “We can’t just help talent in the academies, we have to make sure they internalise this culture early, on the sports ground.” Or, to put it bluntly, ensure talent doesn’t switch to a different sport like basketball or baseball because the coach in the other sport is a former professional or much better at what he does.
Building a footballing culture
What is still lacking is adequate training beyond the MLS academies; structured leagues like those that have existed for years in Europe, perhaps with promotion and relegation every season; and semiby disrupting American youth sports. Like many a business just starting out, they have looked around the world, taken on a couple of important ideas and tied them into American culture. Professional clubs sift through the talent themselves and train them up. They accept that they are merely a springboard to Europe for the best players.
This sort of modesty and patience isn’t typically American. The aim is to create a football culture that can compete with more established American sports for talent. They no longer need to fy in David Beckham or Zlatan Ibrahimović. American kids now have posters of Tyler Adams on their bedroom walls. The Christian Pulisic jersey is the second best-selling in the country after Lionel Messi’s.
But you can only plan for actual success at a World Cup to a certain degree. The Germans, for example, in their hallowed memories of their 2014 triumph, like to forget that the team almost came unstuck against Algeria in the last 16. Americans know that in 2026 they might send their most talented-ever squad to a World Cup with a home advantage, only for it to be what 2006 was for the Germans – the foundation for subsequent success.
But fans of the USA men’s football team are no longer crazy to believe their boys can go the distance. They will bellow their battle cry of “I believe that we will win!” backed up by a healthy dose of self-confidence, rather than megalomania.
Tyler Adams, midfielder for RB Leipzig
professional teams in locations other than the cities, to make ongoing scouting easier. Also, the chance to sign a professional contract as a teenager and then, if things don’t work out, still be eligible for a scholarship to go to college. They have identifed all these problems, and Adams the professional player, Marsch the manager and McCafferty the academy director talk about them at every opportunity.
They have done to football in the USA what tech start-ups constantly do: put a whole sector in a spin, in this case
