re: Path to Success is Exclusive Academies not a Million Fields

That’s probably why the system needs to actually be ran by us soccer. In its current form the mls isn’t and won’t make money like that and they get the money from parents of these kids.

Also we for sure have enough athletes in this country that we can dominate soccer even if all tier A athletes stayed in football, basketball and baseball.

The B tier would work just fine, the problem is the tiers for our sports start to seperate late in the life cycle for a soccer player.

I think that is where the better community out reach comes into play with putting smaller fields in our cities and getting more soccer balls in.

It would also be helpful if we had kids playing football in the fall, basketball in winter/early spring and then soccer for spring/summer at a young age.

Then maybe us soccer could poach what would be undrafted free agent talent in the future over to it, you have us soccer with its like 10-15 boarding school academies that have a combination of the best pay to play kids and our poor kids as well.

We could also approach it as Germany and France, but just regionalize it with each section reporting up. The way we would cover our vast real estate difference could be two fold. 1. We focus on the prime areas for talent (we know we have large state out west that don’t have much talent) 2. We just have to have more of them than France and Germany due to our size.

SEC Men’s Soccer League

no scholarships, no problem

NIL funded

Use it recruit the best soccer players across the country don’t put it on at the same time as football

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I know that "we need more black kids to play soccer" is polarizing, but maybe the MLS academies could do a better job of outreach in the African-American parts of their cities and identifying kids for their academies. Host events in a park. Bring out some of the players. You don't even need a soccer goal. Grill some hot dogs. Give away some jersey tee shirts. Have all the kids line up and race. Take the 5 fastest kids and see how far they can kick a kickball. Proceed from there.

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the brazen condescension from the “right side of history” folks will always tickle me to death. you’re talking about humans like they’re zoo animals who need treats

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SEC Men’s Soccer League no scholarships, no problem NIL funded Use it recruit the best soccer players across the country don’t put it on at the same time as football

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The best soccer players in the country should be professional by 18-23. Otherwise they are still behind their more advanced peers from around the world.

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you’re talking about humans like they’re zoo animals who need treats

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AKA the Soviet Olympic strategy

You can have both.

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The best soccer players in the country should be professional by 18-23. Otherwise they are still behind their more advanced peers from around the world.

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I don’t think the purpose of having more visible college teams in the region would be to develop pros or national team players. The primary reason still has to be a benefit to the schools and conferences.

But I think it would have an indirect impact by going a long way to “normalizing” the sport, probably getting more kids involved and staying in it longer if they know playing in college locally is an option. Maybe some meathead parents would encourage it instead of worrying about their kid catching the ghey.

Maybe some high level players are identified and put on the right pro pathway that otherwise wouldn’t have given the game a chance.

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This seems a bit disingenous...there are other levels of pro leagues in the big 3 sports too. I think it would be less than 19/20 if they had a guaranteed shot at the Premier League or were getting 4 years at Barcelona's academy similar to college.

I don't think you'd have 19/20 guys signing up to play single-A baseball either

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It’s not disingenuous at all. Every top athlete in the US would choose football over soccer right now. Most of them would choose basketball over soccer. Some of them would choose baseball over soccer.

When you combine all 3, soccer does not have a chance at pulling the top athletes in this country. It’s just a reality.

There are enough people in this country that the top tier, A and A+ if you will, athletes aren’t needed. Even then though, most of those B and even C level athletes are choosing other sports.

The academies and US Soccer need to focus on getting those mid level athletes into the sport earlier. If they can do that the US would leapfrog into the top 10 very quickly.

The US needs to implement a mandatory soccer program at every elementary school. 1 hour a day the kids go out and play. It’s good exercise and we start finding the ones who can play before they get picked up for football, basketball ect. We probably have a dozen Messi’s and Ronaldo’s in Texas and Florida alone who are undersized future D3 football players.

I think our best bet is with immigrants and the like. That's where our current team is coming from any way. Folks like Chris Richard's and Freeman are the outliers. Even weston Mckennie comes from military family.