re: The cost of $100 million

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Not the Bundesliga

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Which is run by the DFB. Which is the FA in Germany.

This guy and you don't seem to know a thing about youth development.

In 1988, France reorganized its youth structure. Instead of the German model, where the clubs were incentivized, it circumvented the clubs entirely and created 13 centers of excellence around the country. The best one, Clairefontaine, is among the best youth academies in the world, and its graduates made up the back bone of France's golden generation.

This author's idea for a team to operate outside the league structure is utterly idiotic in terms of youth development. You don't even need a professional team to develop youth. The IMG academy in Florida is the most successful American soccer academy, and it doesn't have a corresponding professional team. The key is to get kids in early by identifying talent and paying for coaches.

Regardless, we would need many orders of magnitude more money in this country to make it work. At the minimum we would need 100 m a year for the next decade. I don't see that type of money in US soccer.