Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
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Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
BTL Special Edition: Ideas to Improve American Soccer | Ep. 142
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It's a special edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL Podcast, as ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken, fresh of the ECNL Boys and ECNL Girls National Finals and the World Cup Final, sit down to discuss tangible, actionable ideas to improving American soccer at all levels.
Following the US' World Cup exit, much of the discussion has been centered around how US Soccer can break through to the next level of soccer success and make deep runs in the World Cup on the men's side, as we've seen it done on the women's side multiple times.
On this special edition episode, the Breaking the Line team examines how incentives can change at the professional, collegiate and amateur levels to promote development, what types of national investments can be made and where, how to build and maintain culture following a massive domestic World Cup following, and so much more.
If you have ideas to improve American soccer, submit them at https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, and as always, like and subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube and on your favorite podcast platforms, and follow the ECNL on all social channels.
World Cup Edition Kickoff
SpeakerI am Dean Linkey. This is Breaking the Line, the East CNL podcast with a special World Cup edition featuring the ECL president and CEO Christian Labors and the East CL Vice President and Chief of Staff, Doug Bracken. That's right. All things World Cup and all things that come off the World Cup. And we get started right away by turning it over to Mr. Christian Labers.
Speaker 1Thank you very much, Dean, for that introduction to this special first ever ECNL podcast. Special edition. Special edition, off calendar.
Speaker 3World Cup edition. So in theory, we would only ever have a special edition every four years, no?
Speaker 1No, we should probably do more than every four years, but we felt that at the conclusion of the 2026 World Cup here in America, Mexico, and Canada, that also tied very closely to the conclusion of the ECNL 25-26 season. It was an appropriate time to talk a little bit. One to wrap up the World Cup in the last couple of games, but then in more depth, Doug, for us to weigh in and talk about some of the chatter, whether it's social media or mainstream media or just generally in the soccer industry, about the World Cup and American soccer and where the future of American soccer goes and what youth soccer's role is and where it can improve, but also maybe where there's some other issues and areas
Spain’s Dominant Final Performance
Speaker 1for improvement.
Speaker 3Yeah, agreed. Agreed. You want to just put a bow on the World Cup? Talk about that a little bit first.
Speaker 1I saw probably about half of the final, believe it or not. There was a I had to coach during the World Cup final. There was a tournament game scheduled, which was a little bit uh disappointing, but warm-up was spent with the iPad on, so uh there wasn't really much of a warm-up, so everybody could watch watch the game.
Speaker 3That seems kind of short-sighted to have a game during the World Cup final.
Speaker 1Nobody was happy about it. Gosh, we saw the last 30 minutes. What an overwhelming performance in that game, and what a contrast to the fireworks of uh Saturday.
Speaker 3I thought that the final was stunning. I was stunning. I was shocked. I mean, I you know, Spain has been dominant throughout the World Cup, no question. The level of dominance in the final, I was stunned by it. The fact that Argentina didn't register a single shot. Not even a shot on goal, Christian. They did not have a single chance until added time.
Speaker 1By the way, they could have scored in added time, which is the crazy part of that.
Speaker 3I mean, it was like 20 to zero at one point. I thought, you know, and I watched the whole thing, I just thought it was stunning to to the level that Argentina is uh of a of a footballing nation and that and that team uh generally, that that was all that they could could muster out of that of out of that whole uh that situation. And that you know, speaks obviously very highly to Spain's ability to not only control the ball and have the ball for the majority of the time, but to recover the ball when they didn't, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, there's a lot made of Spain's ability to dominate the ball, which was on full display, but I think their the quality of their defending as a collective and even on an individual level is uh not spoken about enough.
Speaker 3Yeah. And you could see, you know, I guess the other thing I would say is just there is, and and you know, this is easy to armchair this stuff, but there is a level of emotional control that you have to have in a very highly emotionally charged moments, right? Because this could be your only ever, you know, time experiencing some something like that. And and to see that Argentina
Emotional Control Under Pressure
Speaker 3lost lost that, and uh, and a lot of times, you know, they they're kind of numb, you know. I think if you ever watch South American like if you watch the Copo Americo or any kind of South American competition, it it can be a little emotional and crazy. That's that's the nature of the of them. I thought Argentina, you know, didn't bring that emotional control. They went down a player. I think it was even more inevitable that they were not going to win the game.
Speaker 1Well, bitch, you know, it was crazy to me. I mean, much has been made about how England, you know, I I think England was pushed back into uh into defense and the back five was a reaction to what was already happening. But much, much has been made about England being pushed back and how that game went. It was crazy to me to see that after Spain scored down a man for the first time in the entire game, Argentina actually had the ball for an extended period of time and created chances. So even even the vaunted Spanish team ended up doing some desperate defending in extra time. And it it's it's a credit to, I think, you know, one Argentina fighting to the end, but it also just shows the emotion in the game and the natural ebbs and flows of going up and what that does to the other team. Because I I was watching that and I was like, for the first time in the entire game, down a man, they're creating chances, and and they didn't look like they could, to your point, they they would be within an acre of the goal for for most most of the time.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, no question. But it did does feel like the right, you know, I think everybody's kind of said that the right team won and the best team won. And kudos to Spain. And and
Tactics Fatigue And Added Time
Speaker 3then the third place game, obviously, was uh was a completely different kind of game.
Speaker 1Uh I mean it would remind me of an all-star game, you know, of when a little bit of the defensive discipline and focus uh uh and effort maybe drops, and you see the unbelievable quality of the attacking players. And it sort of felt like one obviously uh France was not quite uh on the same page in the first half, and then England got rattled in the second half, and then it it kind of felt like the last 20 minutes when it got to 4-3, it sort of settled in to saying, okay, now we're both here, there's 20 minutes left. Maybe we should uh maybe we really won't win this now.
Speaker 3It kind of reminds me, and you won't, May, you probably won't know this because you're I know you're not a fan of the NBA, but if you watch the NBA regular season, basically what happens, it seems to me, and I'm an NBA fan, but is the the teams pretty much sleepwalk through the first three quarters, you know, because they're playing 82 games in a year or whatever, and it's so you know, so long and they're you know, whatever, that they kind of sleepwalk and then all of a sudden, you know, they decide let's make a game of it for the last last quarter or whatever. But it was crazy. Did it make you say to yourself, why weren't England braver towards the end of the Argentina game?
Speaker 1It's hard to figure out causation on some of that stuff. I mean, when you think about the heat that they played in, the altitude that they played in, the emotional pressure of the moment. Like I said, I thought in that game, they got pinned back before they went to a back five. They were giving up crosses, they were not getting out. I think what happened there, whether that was a just physical toil that it was finally the well was dry, whether it was the emotional pressure, or whether there was, I mean, at least to some degree, there was a decision at some point. And I don't think it was the decision was the trigger, but at some point there was a decision, hey, we're gonna sit back on this and ride it out. And 19 minutes.
Speaker 3I mean, 19 minutes plus plus the added time.
Speaker 1Well, but that's where the game is different, right? With the hydration breaks, because now the game's not 90 minutes. I mean, I I would wonder what the average length of the games were in this World Cup, but it seems like you never saw less than seven minutes of stoppage time. And frequently in in in the knockout games, you saw 10 minutes or so of stoppage time. So making that decision in the 70th minute or whatever it was that they they did, it's still 30 minutes to play, right? And that that's you know, we haven't seen that before, where you just consistently count on almost double digits of stoppage time.
Speaker 3Yeah, and again, you're not there. So again, it's it's so easy to armchair quarterback it. And you know, you you've added a game to the equation with the new format. And to your point, the rest periods also got shorter as the as the tournament went on, right? So the days you had in between games were were less once you got out of the group. So fatigue, you know, certainly plays a part of that, both mental fatigue and and but but then I look and I say, well, Argentina had to come back and play extra time and all these different things and in all in a lot of their games. So they, you know, had in theory expended the same amount of emotion and all that as England had.
Speaker 1I don't think they played as many outdoor games or as many games in the heat with as much travel. And you know, how does that you get a physiologist to tell us all the all that sort of stuff? I I will say the combativeness and the the the work rate of the Argentinian team and the ability to put you know Messi into the spots that he needed to be, it was it was fun to watch for a lot of the tournament. It wasn't that fun in the final, but their ability and their and their and their pride. I mean, you sort of felt like some of those guys might die on the field if that's what it took.
Speaker 3No question. No question. You have to tip your cap to Argentina for making it to the final.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3Because they did a lot of it on not, I mean, they obviously have quality everywhere, but the way to your point they fought and
Favorite Matches And Lasting Memories
Speaker 3never gave in is I'd say an example to you know how you how you'd like to see your teams do it. Did one game in the World Cup, one or two games, uh stand out to you where you were like, man, that was that was awesome.
Speaker 1I think England, Mexico at the Azteca was was pretty amazing. Yeah, that was my favorite game.
Speaker 3Yeah, that was my favorite one.
Speaker 1You know, you you didn't believe they could do it, you know, especially in that environment. And to see that was uh was really cool. Obviously, you know, like we've talked about the opener, we went to the opener. And looking back, now it's weird that the tournament's over after five weeks or almost six weeks long. But looking back, you know, that that game looks like it'll be even bigger of a memory for my family and my kids, I think. You know, when you see what the six weeks of soccer every day does, and to go back and say, gosh, you remember that seems like an eternity ago that that game happened.
World Cup Boost To Soccer Culture
Speaker 1So, you know, and maybe this is time to transition to some of these bigger discussions of of the impact of the World Cup here in American soccer, the uh discussions it has provoked, some of them well informed, some of them not so well informed, but you know, I suppose welcome because people talking about soccer is a good thing to some degree. So I think overall, I give the World Cup here a phenomenal, phenomenal grade overall. I think it's inspired a lot of kids. I think you're gonna see that. You're gonna see that in growth. I think there's studies that have shown in in previous years the country hosting the World Cup typically sees a bump in in player participation through it. And so I think I think we'll in 15, 20 years, you'll hear stories of kids who decided soccer was for them during this World Cup and decided that they were gonna play.
Speaker 3And we'll we'll dig into this, I know, because this is part of this discussion, but here here is what happened it never happens here, and that is soccer was front and center. Yeah, soccer was front and center and captured the imagination of the country for for a long period of time, to your point. When you think about these other countries, soccer is always front and center because it's it's a such a huge part of their culture, right? And so, in a way, we have to rely on moments like these to inspire the next generation because it's so rarely front and center in our country that will get into the cultural kind of discussion that I know we'll have. But if if you think about Spain, and again, I'm not one of those people that says, well, Spain won it, so we should do everything that Spain does, because Spain is uniquely Spain, and that and and they're gonna do what they do, and and there's a lot of differences. But in Spain, soccer is front and center.
Speaker 1Well, it's it's yeah, it's the difference between something being cultural and something being event or or a moment in time, event driven or a moment in time. And so I I think your point is really good. This is where how the sport is viewed everywhere else in the world, 365 days a year. Of course, the World Cup is a special moment, right? And and uh and no matter what country you are, it's a special moment. But soccer is still number one in the culture, the other whatever, 45 weeks of the year, every year, soccer is number one. And here, America turned its attention for six weeks to a sport that it's never never looked at with that degree of bright light. And I suppose, you know, we will see the inevitable fading of the spotlight. The question is how much and how much of it can be retained with people who have decided, you know what, I'm gonna become a fan of this, or hey, I'm I'm I'm a kid and I'm gonna start to play this sport because that was really cool. And how much we see of that and how much of the fade of the light, I guess we'll see over the coming months here. It was really cool to see to see so many people inspired, so many people watching something that they hadn't watched before, talking about something they haven't talked about before. And I think for the kids that are already playing, it was even more special. And we saw that at our events with people talking about it, people watching it on the TVs that were on site in San Diego. And you know, I think just a special, special summer. And it's almost like you've probably had this conversation now. Everybody says, okay, well, now what do I do? Because the last six weeks, everybody kind of stayed around a TV for a long period of time because they wanted to watch games and highlights and all that stuff, and now it's sort of uh we're in the desert.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's great to get it front and center, and people will inevitably ask the question how do we ever compete to win a men's world cup? We've obviously won four on the women's side, and we can talk about that and how that happened or happens. The first thing I'll I want to say about that, and we said this I think at the end of the last podcast, is we finished in the top 16 in the world. You would uh define soccer in this country as a as fringe culture, not culture, not front and center culture.
Speaker 1Well, I don't know if I would say fringe, but I would say it's definitely not football, it's definitely not basketball, it's probably not baseball. Um, although you might make an argue about that um a little bit, but it's definitely not the first or second sport that America talks about.
Speaker 3Right. So to think about that and where it where it is in the you know, in the pecking order of our culture, our sports culture, you have to say, you you know, you do have to tip your hat to what these guys have done. It ended probably in a way that maybe leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
Speaker 1No, but to your point, countries like Germany and the Netherlands go out at the same point we do. That doesn't mean we we you you wash over it. And it doesn't mean that there's no questions of what can we do better and how do we make the sport uh improve. That that's it's those are not two binary choices. The point I think you're making is we were in the quarter of the round of 16, and we didn't have a great game in the round of 16, but we very much earned our spot there, and uh that puts us in top 16, 20 countries in the world in the sport. And that's not anything to to just ignore and to pretend it's especially the way we played in the games leading into that. You know, there's a lot of progress that's happened. And and again, we want to talk about now. I think what do we need to do as a country or what can be done by various organizations in the country to continue that progress. Should we start with some ideas?
Speaker 3Yeah, and these are our ideas, and I think these come through the lens of from two people that obviously look at look at it through the grassroots and have come up through the grassroots from a coaching perspective and then obviously running this league
Access Means More Places To Play
Speaker 3perspective. My first thing, because I wrote a list of things, would be we have to have access to create more of this culture that we're talking about. Now, what I mean by that is because a lot of people say, well, people don't have access to youth soccer. It it listen, in these other countries, the first experiences these kids are having are not has nothing to do with a youth soccer setup. They are playing in the streets, and you know, we said this before too. What like 92 players who played in the World Cup come from the suburbs of Paris and they play for different countries? And you heard Thierry Henri talk about what that was like, and it was not it was not organized at all. It's just them out there playing. And look, and I'll and I'll circle this back. When I was a kid, and I grew up in a neighborhood, and we had to be in when the street light came on, and all those kinds of things, we were left to our own devices. We went to the basketball court in in the neighborhood, and we all played basketball, and it was unorganized. But and so you're not surprised that the basketball, the culture of basketball in this country has led us to be the best country in the world at that sport. It's the access and the availability to do it in an unsupervised and unorganized kind of way, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1I agree that having more places to play, especially in in highly dense urban areas, I think is is one factor. I'll take a step back and say actually, a lot of the first experience to sport, I think, for people in no matter what country you are in the world, comes from watching it on TV. It comes from it being in your home because people are watching the professional league, because mom or dad or brother or whoever it is uh likes it, watches it, played it, whatever it may be. And that that to me, when you talk about something cultural, you're talking about actually stepping on a field and being able to play in an easy way where there's facilities and opportunity. And I'm saying get it in the brain and get it in the eyes of people because they say, What's everybody doing tonight? Why is everybody talking about this this thing on TV, this game on TV? What is this game on TV?
Speaker 3And I want to I mean, I will say this, and I'm not disagreeing with you, but I will tell you my first experiences in in basketball, because and I'm trying to make a comparison here, were not watching it, it was playing it and going out on the court with a bunch of other kids and figuring it out for power or for worse, right? I I and then that and then I and then I watched it more and I became a a huge fan of it, or whatever. So I think they do go hand in hand. I and so I agree with you, they do go hand in hand. But when we were in England last fall and we're riding around, what do you see everywhere? Little soccer pitches everywhere, right? Little caged in soccer fields.
Speaker 1Yeah, you have that in especially in the dense areas. I don't disagree with that. I think that I think that's an important thing, and that's that's something where you talk about urban planning. You talk about the ability to carve out spaces for athletics and take soccer even out of the picture, just the space for kids to go do things and play sports of any kind. I think that's that's an important thing.
Speaker 3I'm gonna I'm the I'm gonna bring some in my let me just say this to end this part. In my neighborhood, it it's sort of my neighborhood, it's it's a little a minute away or something. Um, our local professional team and in support of uh different communities, they're building these little caged-in soccer soccer pitches that are turf. And I think it's massive. I think it's massive.
Speaker 1No, I agree with you. I mean, if you want to turn you want to turn a community into a sport-driven community, you need to have facilities where kids can go play. And they generally, to your point, they need to be able to do that in a unorganized, impromptu. I got nothing else to do for 30 minutes or an hour. I'm gonna go over here and instead of watching TV, instead of playing video games, I'm gonna go and play this game with my friend. And by the way, the game they play there, sometimes it'll be soccer, sometimes it'll be a variation of soccer that they make up and it's fun.
Speaker 3Yeah, and and my my son, a bunch of my son's high school teammates called him the other day and they all went to this little caged in pitch and they just played.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I'm like so. I think that's that's fair.
Pro Clubs And The Pay To Play Reality
Speaker 1Um, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk now about the professional game. Um, and we'll get to to a lot of different ideas here, but uh some stats here, because you know, right now people talk about hey, uh, there's a lot of statements of pay to play is bad, pay to play is the problem, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is somebody is paying. And at least I think the dialogue has become a little more nuanced than that, that you need facilities, you need a coach who's getting paid, you need referees getting paid, all that sort of stuff. The question Is how do you provide better environments and lower cost environments and especially as kids rise up? Okay. Typically across the world, that is done, that is funded by the professional clubs. So the professional clubs across the world, and it's different in every country for sure, but generally they are not charging the players. They are paying for the development of the players because there's an economic incentive at the end. There's also incentives that I think are ignored here of uh if you do a really good job in developing players, not only is there, in theory, some economic incentives to selling them, but you also have club incentives of moving up in levels of competition, which is also often ignored in this discussion. That's a big incentive. Um, but if we take pro clubs as largely the people who are subsidizing the development of the top, top talents. Wherever you start, wherever you say you should start to select them, there are some people that say, and I would probably be in this group that say later is better in terms of selection. Some people start earlier. But here's some numbers. England, all right, I just picked uh I picked uh three three teams here from the uh from the semis. England has 92 professional clubs across its top four levels. So that's the premiership, the championship, league one, and league two.
Speaker 3Say that again.
Speaker 192 92 professional clubs. Those are these are fully professional clubs. And I've done a metric here of professional clubs per million people. Okay, so England, we've talked, we've joked. England's about the size of Alabama or the size of New York. 92 pro clubs with a population of 76 Englands would fit in the United States. So hold on, let me get to this. 57 million people, 96 pro 92 pro clubs. That is 1.6 pro clubs per million people. Okay, I want you to remember that number. 1.6 pro clubs per million people. And why does it why are we saying the pro club? Because if people want top talent in an environment where it's not paid, where they're not paying for it, that's generally what it takes. Argentina. Okay, Argentina, approximately 90 pro clubs, okay, 46 million people. That number of pro clubs per million people, 1.9. Spain, that number, pro clubs per million people, 0.8. Okay, so we're looking at 0.8 to 1.6. Now, obviously, England's the smallest of those countries, which is probably what it's the density helps in that a little bit. Now let's look at the US. If you're gonna assume that MLS is really the only organization that is funding this development, 32 clubs. The US has 341 million people. 32 clubs, if you're gonna go clubs per million people, that is 0.08. So if you look and say the pro clubs subsidizing youth development and providing access that is not pay-to-play and a great environment, 1.6, 1.9, 0.8 for England, Argentina, and Spain, and in the US, that number is 0.08. That is an order of magnitude and then some higher. And so when we talk about what we can do to help create better and better, hold on, better access and better environments and better players down the road. To me, number one is we need more pro clubs.
Speaker 3Yeah, because I was gonna my point I was gonna make was imagine if that was 60 and you double that, right?
Speaker 1And you're giving double of that, and we're still at point two.
Speaker 3Right, but you're giving twice the amount of right, ac you know, to to to that to that level of development. And so, yes, I think it is an incredibly I think it's kind of an unintelligent argument to say that you in the US pay for play for play.
Speaker 1It's not I mean, people who say that, I I'm like, you got it's more nuanced, and we're gonna talk about what you saw can do better. So that's number one to me is we need more pro clubs, and how that happens in the way the game is economically structured in the city. We need more pro clubs investing in correct, because to be fair, you say, okay, I think there's 12 USL clubs, uh Jacob, you are USL championship clubs. You know, there's a bigger number of League One, you throw some of those in, maybe, but I I'm not aware. Correct me you know, again if I'm wrong, most of them for sure are not paying for the youth. Uh, they're not subsidizing it.
Speaker 3So a lot of times they're probably using it to help subsidize correctering of the youth.
Speaker 1So that begs the question of if you want to start talking about uh uh of opportunity and and investment into the youth development space, you need more pro clubs investing in that. And then to do that, you need to look at the economic structure of the game. Obviously, MLS does not have promotion, relegation, single entity, 30, 32 teams, maybe it gets to 36, whatever the number is. USL trying to set up its own pyramid with generally less resources and less funding than MLS does. But everybody looking, you know, again at the bottom line, you know, the the dirty secret of all pro sports is very, very few of them actually make any money year over year. The value is in long-term valuation of the of the franchise. Those are really deep economic waters to get into, and I don't want to be get open the door on the pro rel argument, but that is also a big incentive to developing players and other places. It's not just selling them, it's the opportunity for your club to move up levels both competitively and economically. So that's number one. I'm gonna move down. So I'll give you, I'll give you number two. I think you'll agree with this. By the way, on my list was professional opportunities. So we're we didn't compare lists ahead of time. So let's stay. I'm gonna stay in the pro world for one second longer and just say in general, and uh, I'm sure there's statistics out here people can find that would be better than what we can pull off of uh
Young Americans Need Real Pro Minutes
Speaker 1Chat GPT or whatever. But the number of young American players getting meaningful professional minutes in American pro leagues and MLS has dropped over time. So I think there is, you have to look at how many young Americans are actually getting meaningful minutes in pro leagues because it's one thing to get on a roster, it's another thing to get minutes. And so a lot of countries in the world, we've talked about this in other podcasts, have minimum numbers of requirements or maximum numbers of internationals in order to incentivize giving minutes and time, or not even incentivize, mandate that there's a certain amount of time that is given to young talent, domestic talent. So I think that's a sort of part B to the probe piece.
Speaker 3And I'm not not to say that uh American players have not benefited from MLS, because I'm sure they have, but I will tell you that it is very obvious as well that other countries in CONCACAF have very greatly very greatly benefited because I think the level of teams in CONCACAF has definitely risen because of MLS, yes. Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1I think that that's a that's a fair fair point. And this is all of this discussion is being within the lens. If we're gonna look at the country and soccer and the sport generally, what are some areas that are meaningful? I'm gonna move down to number three.
College Soccer Roster Caps And Reform
Speaker 1I think you'll you'll agree with this one. College soccer. We're speaking specifically on the men's side for the purpose of this discussion. I mean, we'll reference the women's side here and there, but the number of American players in male college soccer has dramatically reduced. Internationals are about 50% of the division one roster pool. Why is that important? Again, one, it's opportunity to play and play longer, and somebody's gonna say college soccer is is not good for development.
Speaker 3Well, it's not maybe it isn't a pathway to the national team all the time or something like that, right?
Speaker 1Fair, right. But now, and the point is there's there can be changes in college soccer to make it better for development, like they're trying to do with a dual season that makes it better immediately. College soccer is a really strong motivating factor for players and families to play youth soccer, and that's not a bad thing. It can be made a bad thing if you sort of over overdo it. But the idea and desire to play as you move into college and to have that experience keeps a lot of people motivated and excited about the sport. And then the ability to play it longer continues to increase the football IQ, for lack of a better word, of the population. It gives more people a longer experience as players in the game. And so there's a huge, I think, participation and engagement effect of college soccer on the youth game. And there are not enough opportunities for the American male player. And so there needs to be number one, a cap on the number of international players that are allowed on a roster in college soccer. And I I would put that cap at four to six.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'd put it at less than that. I'd put it at three, but there you go. I so I would say, so I wrote on my list, and I I don't know if that you're the wordsmith who says a lot of words on this podcast that I don't understand that you tell me later, but it's almost that college soccer youth players are disenfranchised almost.
Speaker 1American youth players.
Speaker 3American youth players are disenfranchised because they look at the college game and they say, I don't know that I have access to that. Yeah. Or it seems like I don't have access to that. And when you look on college rosters and you see ex-professional players who are 27 years old and 26 years old, 24 years old, and you compare that, you know, I mean, I just think it's not it's not fair. It's not fair. No, it's not fair.
Speaker 1Especially if we if it's if we're gonna look at college soccer as the next step in a development environment for the American game.
Speaker 3And I think your point is really important. It doesn't mean that call that college soccer would be spitting out the future World Cup winners of the United States of America men's national team. But what it would do is it would keep youth players much more invested in the game as they come up in the game.
Speaker 1Correct. It keeps more players involved in the game and engaged as youth as they get older because they see opportunity that is in front of them. So there's a reason. Uh it keeps more people who are in college playing involved in the game. And to your point, there will be players that come up and bubble up late. And those numbers may not be significant, but they don't need to be significant. A couple more players that bubble up to high levels can change, change teams. And so I think the the second part to that I would say, similar to uh, you know, what we were talking about the program is there, you know, there we have to have the roster cap somewhere. And then college soccer does need to be restructured in a way that it's not a three-month or three and a half month season with a nine-month off season. It needs to be made more developmentally relevant and more competitively strong with a longer season, with uh a better training to game ratio throughout the seasons. Those things I think make it. On the men's and the women's side. On both sides. On the men's and the women's side. Absolutely on both sides. Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, the reason you need, and this for the same reason you need to cap internationals in college, it's the same argument at the pro leagues. Because left alone, people are gonna go try and get the best players and the most experienced players that they can. And given a choice to your example in college of get a 25-year-old who was just released from an academy in Europe, or to get a young 19-year-old American player, they're gonna go to the 25-year-old if they want to, if they want to win, especially if they want to win in the short term. And there's not an incentive for them to invest in the 19-year-old. So you have to change the incentives or the mandates in order to fix that.
Speaker 3Yeah. And I don't think they'll change the incentives. I can't, I can't imagine that they connect any kind of developmental incentives to college soccer. And so the incentive is gonna be to win. So you have to cat you have to mandate things to to probably to control it.
Speaker 1Okay. I'm gonna jump now. So I assume you had college soccer in there and you're in your list. I did.
Speaker 3I said it said disenfranchising youth players, college soccer, just stop stop disenfranchising youth players.
Speaker 1Yeah. Now I'm gonna jump all the way down into the youngest
Funding Great Coaches For U8-U12
Speaker 1ages.
Speaker 3Okay, so I'm gonna go in and this is your this is your soapbox.
Speaker 1Well, you know, listen, it's tough.
Speaker 3It's not wrong. I mean, I'm just saying, you're this is your this, you're you're now in the in the throes of experiencing.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I and I tell you the game, the game keeps you humble no matter who you are. And coaching, coaching eight and nine-year-olds keeps you humble, and I'm learning that I'm learning that every day. Working to be better. But if we go to zone one, so we're talking now eight to twelve, U8 to U12, typically young coaches, typically coaches without a lot of experience. A lot of times, coaches that are there for a very short time and then they move into older age groups because of their desire to be with older players. These are the ages where teaching is in many ways the most impactful, or where you can see the biggest gains. So we've talked for a long time about how do you improve that. And there's also a bunch of economic problems with those age groups because experienced coaches need to be paid for their experience. And you can't charge eight-year-olds to do so without also reducing the number of eight-year-olds. So at an age where you want more kids coming in, and ideally you want the lowest possible costs. I mean, you can say that throughout the system. Yeah, there has to be when they're there has to be value. Correct. I have a solution. It's easy to have a solution when you're spending other people's money.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Um, that's one of the problems with the government. But my solution would be national funding for experienced zone one directors assigned to, and I'm I got a proposal here, 80 to 150 clubs across the country where the salaries of those coaches is paid by the national funding source. So that burden is not put on the clubs, and so that you can put very experienced, very good coaches into little laboratories all over the country, working with the youngest players, mentoring the coaches of the youngest players, and implementing a improved methodology at 8 to 12 for these coaches. And I just ran a little bit of math.
Speaker 3Oh, how much?
Speaker 1How much is it? If you if let's just say I I I put a I put a salary, a total salary burden. So you talk about salary, unemployment compensation, you know, all the stuff that goes into it, right? Which most people know that benefits that usually goes through benefits and all that stuff lumps into what 25-30% of the of the salary cost. So I just put it to make math easy, $100,000 fully loaded. If you did that with 100 clubs, that's a $10 million annual cost. And with the numbers being talked about, that's not a huge cost.
Speaker 3It's not crazy.
Speaker 1And if if you said, okay, we're gonna do this and we're gonna put a hundred people across the country in a hundred clubs, you're talking about directly, and I made some very general assumptions. So you you take about a talk about a club that has at least two teams per gender per age from U8 to U12, you're talking about a direct impact. And that by the way, we have we have clubs that are the most clubs are way bigger than that, right? Yeah. But you're talking about even if those per even if those people just worked with a couple teams and then oversaw the coaches, you're talking about direct impact of almost 25,000 kids with indirect impact of tens, hundreds of thousands that see that as the example, and the coach that has a more direct mentor and a more experienced mentor, and a cost burden that is not put onto the club, which then ultimately goes down to the parent.
Speaker 3Thoughts on that? I love this because this is this is we talk about this a lot here, just about solutions. Everybody can talk about what the problem is, but coming up with solutions. And here's the other thing, and this is uh parallel to this uh based on on your list, is which is on my list, and that is the reality for club operators is the biggest challenge for people running clubs, of which you were one, I am one, whatever, is coaches. It is the absolute hardest part of it getting good coaches, and then you take your coaches and then you have to deploy them and and deploy them in the way that almost that the market demands because the incentives are backwards, and I'm sure we're gonna get into the incentives piece of this more, but because the incentives are backwards, the best coaches likely in your club are coaching the older kids. And so it's really hard to take a really, really good experienced coach and put them with younger players.
Speaker 1And by the way, if we took this proposal and you put these hundred experienced coaches into a hundred different clubs, they will learn as well. Yes, because they will see what is happening in the youth club, they will deal with the and talk with the American parent, they will see the environment, they will see how the environment is different from Southern California to Maine.
Speaker 3They will influence young coaches at those clubs, correct. So there's a trickle-down effect to that that I think, and I think we would all look back and go, man, we we don't have enough time to spend with our coaches at clubs, and we certainly aren't, you know, don't have enough time to spend with our younger coaches that are coaching in that zone zone one. And I I agree with you. I mean, it's a hugely underserved.
Speaker 1I'll give an example when I was in Portugal and speaking with people. One of the ways they get really good young coaches into the academies is they have university degrees in coaching, football, and the big clubs go and hire the best students out of the university degrees and put them in the academies. And so that's not that different than what I'm talking about. What I so that's in the pro world, right? Because the pro world can can pay for that, but the pro world's gonna impact even if I mean, listen, we just talked about it. There's so few in this country, but even if we expand that, it's still gonna only impact a certain number, right? We're talking about putting these people into the amateur world. And I think as as Jacob has pointed out here in the chat, you know, we're talking about direct impact of 24, 25,000 players and indirect impact of hundreds of thousands every year. Yeah. And every year there's a new cohort coming in. And I would I would say that there would be a chance that if you did that for four or five years, you might be able to stop doing it after that because you would have made a very big investment in a in a and at a moment and in a way that then the investment will have impacted the environment that the initial investment may not be needed anymore. No, I'm here for it. Got another one. Okay. You know, we talk about again when people say, well, how do we get more players into the highest levels? And that statement itself, again, it ex it ignores the whole process, right? This is this is a process of 10, 15 years of a player going from a youth player to a higher level 20
Scouting Beyond MLS Academies
Speaker 1years. But if we talk about, if we're gonna take that as sort of our our given starting point, how do we get more players of higher quality into the national teams? Then you back up and say, okay, the senior national team, well, that bleeds down into the U-20s, the U17s, the U-15s, and U14s. Um we've talked about this ad nauseum, and it's not it's not a secret. The the selection process for the youth national teams is overwhelmingly from the MLS academies. And that is not that is not a league issue. That is from those 32 academies. And I think that probably makes some sense at the older ages, especially looking at U-20s and U17s, because that national team, more and more, is going to be filled with pros. We should all be helping fun players to I think that is the case. But if we look down at U15 and U14, so we're talking about 13 and 14-year-old kids in a country of 341 million, overwhelmingly still at those age groups, almost all of the players selected are still coming from 32 academies. And now I'm not here just to cut to make that point because I have a suggestion. I'm gonna say very lazy scouting. To underline the point. In the last six under 15. Youth national team camps from October 25 to June 26. Four non-MLS clubs had a player selected. Four in the entire country. And why, why, in the last three U14 talent ID programs, nine non-MLS clubs had a player selected. Why am I saying that at those ages?
Speaker 3In a country, in a cut, so that's 13 players.
Speaker 1But no, no, it's more players. It's it's a small number of players. I'm just I'm just we had Jacob do this research. Just identify a club that is not an MLS Academy club. Yeah. And again, at 17 and 20, you're gonna pick pros. I get that. We all understand that. That makes sense. At 14, there's only 32 of these pro organizations in the country. So there's no way that all of the top players with potential, or 90 something percent of them are already in that environment. There's just no way mathematically that that is true. So I've proposed they have a concept called red teaming in the military. I think it's in software as well, which is to test, to test the defenses, test the validity. Um, I might be abusing that term a little bit, but I would suggest developing a secondary youth national team scouting and selection program that targets amateur clubs, only amateur clubs, at U-14 and U-15, and saying, if this scouting program is going to largely focus on the pro clubs, which is what it is doing, and we think there's more players out there, then let's have a secondary program that focuses on finding the absolute best of the amateur clubs and putting them in a similar environment. Because if there is more talent out there that is not being picked, that is being deselected at these ages, which we think there is.
Speaker 3Because they're not at an MLS club.
Speaker 1Because they're not at an MLS club. And by the way, uh that might be because the local MLS club is seven hours away. It may be because the family doesn't want to move. There may be a lot of different reasons. Sure. Sure. There's thousands of amateur youth clubs. And so I think a secondary national team program that focuses on those will actually, it'll actually prove the point of either no, at the young ages we're wrong and the players are being scooped up earlier than we think, which still begs the question about is that still too early to select? And because deselection has an impact on players, but it gives more players that opportunity. And in the long term, I would think that there are players that will be better when they get pulled into the full national team if they've had that experience.
Speaker 3And would you say, and their programming just kind of runs parallel to the side selection? Yeah, parallel to the same stuff.
Speaker 1You know, and maybe it's a different set of scouts, maybe it's a different set of coaches, maybe it's whatever. Um, you can you can play games with that a little bit. Um, the alternative to that, which I think is being talked about in the US way, is these regionalized national team programs at 14 and 15, right, leading into a one national team at 17. That's that is uh that will open the door for more players. Uh again, presuming that the scouting goes with it. But I think when we talk about, you know, we just talked about zone one and what can be done in zone one with the very, very big recreational base, you know, because no matter how good you think you are, you eight, you nine, you ten, you eleven, just it's recreational. Now we're talking about the initial selection of making sure that selection is not the scouting and the selection is not too focused on a small number of clubs and a small number of players. How can we uh uh expand that? I'm sold. Sold. All right. So we have we're spending, we're spending. I'm I'm guessing, you know, I I think I looked somewhere around there's a the US soccer national team, youth national team program, some in the 15 to 25 million dollars a year line. Could be wrong on that. But if we if we did if we did our first uh recommendation and we invested in zone one coaches, we're about $10 million in. You know, if we do a a whole amateur youth national team setup at $1415, let's put another $15 million in there. Yeah. So we're at $25 million, and we're building the base with a better foundation of methodology and coaching. We're expanding the selection to include more people from more backgrounds who are may not have already been found in the pro um space. And again, we're not arguing whether the best players go into the pro space. Eventually they should go into that environment, which is subsidized. And we're saying we need more pro clubs. And we're saying that we need more American players in college soccer. If if just those four things were done, and let's add your first idea, concept of adding more spaces to play in highly dense areas. If you do those five things, I think we may have to do that.
Incentives Solidarity Payments Player Tracking
Speaker 1Can I add one?
Speaker 3Can I add one more? Yes. And I know everybody talks about these uh solidarity payments and all that kind of stuff that doesn't happen here. Does not happen, yes. The incentive, the incentives, and I think this is something we have to talk about. The incentives here are to win. Yes. You are rewarded when you win, but then the best players come to play for your club and you win more. Yes. You are incentivized almost solely to win. Now, we both have talked about this and we recognize winning is very important, and learning how to win is very important. And we don't want to take that competitive spirit out of the game for the sake, because you can go the complete opposite way, which we've also seen in the past, haven't we, Christian, where it's like it's almost anti-winning. Like, don't, don't, you also have to incentivize the the clubs, amateur clubs, to want to both put resources into younger ages where the development happens and moving and helping develop those players to move them on. You know, we've said this stat before, but you know, when when Wayne Rooney got sold by Everton, which is a pro club, to Man United, the the transfer fee or or the money that came through there helped fund the Everton Academy for something like eight years or something. That is the incentives have to be altered here because right now the incentive is to win, and we have to find ways to incentivize amateur clubs to focus on the development of players. You are uh you have put some pretty concrete proposals together. I I think there's law involved in this, um and and things that I don't, you know, I I I don't want to oversimplify something that's not simple, but we have to figure out how to change the incentives. Because right now the incentives are when I agree with that statement.
Speaker 1The answer to it, and I'm not I'm not legally equipped to uh debate the nuances of collective bargaining and you know restraint of labor or restraint of trade that you know get thrown around when you talk about why it's not enforced, why training compensation is not enforced in the United States. Uh, but it does mean it goes back to our first comment. If there's not enough pro clubs, so that there's not enough free development, then the the development system is gotta be paid for by the user. And ultimately, if that uh if those clubs, that's the only source of revenue because there's never a reward for developing, then there's no alternative. So either somebody starts it and pays for it because they see their own alternative, and one, you can do that in a pro because and again, I I want to state again that there's the the incentive is is to is there's an economic incentive to sell players, but there's also an economic incentive that your own team gets better. And the the biggest economic incentive is moving up levels where the revenue is higher when we're talking about a pro uh pro organization. So it's it's more complicated even than even than that. But if uh if there was more incentive or reward for players that come, we'd have to figure out how to, you know, you'd have to do some work to make sure that you're not rewarding the aggregator of talent. Because that's what, to your point, that's what happens in a lot of of youth soccer, is that the club that wins first gets the next players who are uh successful and they want to win, and then you aggregate talent and aggregating talent. You can you can do a really good job of teaching kids, by the way, and aggregate talent. Um, that's generally what tends to happen in life, but you can also not do a very good job. But you can do a not a good job of teaching and still aggregate talent and be very successful. And so, whatever the incentives would be, we're gonna have to separate the development and the aggregation of talent somehow.
Speaker 3How do you tell the difference? How do you tell the difference?
Speaker 1Yeah, and maybe maybe that is as simple as it's laid out in the Solidarity, is that there's a payment based on where the kid was every year. To do that, you need a single source of truth. And what I mean by that is you need one player card so you know where the kid was. Because right now, as as we know all too well, with all sorts of different playing cards and sanctioning bodies, kids are playing all over the place. So if you try and say, well, where did that kid really play at that age group? There's not always easy to answer that question.
Speaker 3Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1Which also makes it hard to identify who who's actually played the biggest role in helping that kid.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's probably the the toughest, you know, challenge as I see it, is you know, how do you unwind that that it's already wound up pretty pretty tight. So, but I like your other solutions. I think those are obviously they take resources, but you could implement those. I'm not gonna say it's easy.
Speaker 1No, nothing's easy. But the the motivation of this discussion for us was obviously watching watching the World Cup, watching the performance of our national team, which was so positive for the majority of time, um, then listening to the discussions and seeing where those discussions have gone and saying, well, why don't we why don't we throw at least some ideas out that are a little more nuanced and more maybe a little more actionable than just saying, hey, let's just blame that group or blame.
Speaker 3Yeah, blame pay-for-play. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, because it's it's because by the, I mean, you as we said, we talked about some reforms or changes that can be done at a pro level, some changes that can be done at a collegiate level, some changes that can be done at an early national team level, some changes that can be done at a zone one basic level, some incentives that affect all age groups, you know, including probably most that U 12 to U18 is probably where those incentives are the uh are the most powerful.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah.
Do Kids Play Enough Games
Speaker 3Do you think my my last question on this is do you think um our young players play enough games?
Speaker 1No, as a general answer, I think there was a time when people played too many games and and three games in a day, four games in a day, these tournaments that you and I grew up playing, um, I think is an example of that. I think we over are we as a country overcorrected and went to this, and there was a discussion at one point of like mandating that kids couldn't play more than a certain number of games at U10, U11. I sat in a room where that was actually talked about, which you know that we went so far that, but at the end of the day, we made this comment before, I think, is kids don't sign up to play soccer to practice, they sign up to play games, number one. So it's an incredibly um motivational thing. It's the it's where the excitement is. Um, and two, you can't replicate what happens in a game in training. With that all of coaching, right? All of coaching is about transferability. How do you make sure that what you do in training transfers to the game as effectively as possible? And really good coaches in session design and and the way they coach can make things transfer and make a lot of things transfer, but you cannot replicate the game environment in a training. And I think kids need to play as much as possible. To your point, a lot of that doesn't have to be in real formal competition. So, you know, going and playing in the you know, the pickup leagues that exist around cities for kids, going and playing in the adult leagues that exist, the random tournaments. I mean, things like the TST, you know, now that's for older players, obviously. There's no development real impact to that event, but 3v3 type events, going and playing in those in a competitive environment, those are good for kids. And so I think in all of these things, the the answer is balance. Because kids tend to uh manage their own fatigue. You know, if you watch kids go play, they go run, and then when they're tired, they stop running. And then they, you know, come in, get a lollipop, and then they go run again. Creating environments for them to play both more formal games that doesn't, and and ideally that's not with a bunch of travel, but also more informal games where they can go out and there's a lot of, I think, learning for if you allow kids to play in a, you know, there's some some leagues around here that kids play in on Friday night, you know, where the kids can coach themselves. And it's a league, it's a referee and it's cop, but it's very, very informal. And it's, you know, where you can see a lot of experimentation, a lot of craziness. But you know, that that's some of the stuff that creates the special players down the road.
Speaker 3You know, as I look at what we do, I think probably it as you get to the older age groups, uh, we probably get it right game count-wise when you start talking about 16, 17, 18, 18.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, a good nuance. I think we're talking about younger.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think it's the younger kids that it's it's uh I I'm not sure that they they do play enough, right? All right, well, this is a great topic to talk about because I think we always have to look inside and say, you know, how can we make this better? How can we, you know, help our country and our national team finish in the final eight and not the final sixteen, or whatever it is, although there are a lot of factors that go into that that aren't all tied to to what we're talking about. But but then you just hear a lot of talk of and and I think it's really this is a lot of talk without a lot of solutions, and that's that's maddening.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3We live in this world and we're trying to create solutions, you know.
Speaker 1Uh well, and to your point at the very beginning about culture, the whatever, however, we would measure the culture of American soccer, it moved up over the last six weeks.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And you know, how much it moved up will depend on how uh, as I referenced earlier, how bright the light stays and how sh how much it dims, but it moved up at least a significant notch, maybe more. And kudos to the people that were involved in bringing that World Cup here, because as we know from uh all the drama of Qatar and Russia, that is not an easy process. Maybe it's better not to know that process sometimes. Yeah, right, probably. But just getting the World Cup here. Uh, it took 30-something years, 32 years to come back. There's already talk about 2038 uh based on how the bidding has changed. So it may be that it's here much, much sooner than that. But kudos to all the people that did that. I know that's an incredible amount of work to do so. Kudos to the people who put on the event, you know, U.S. Soccer and all the people uh outside of that that worked at all these venues and and all the media and all the stuff to do it, they've moved the notch forward. And I think ultimately, if you look back, the word we started with this word, and I think we finished with this word, it's it's culture. And you know, the the ideas that we have talked about here are about how do we improve the culture. You know, if we define culture of what we do and how we do it, how do we improve the culture of the game, specifically in a variety of different areas in our country? Um, but having big events like the World Cup is a piece of that as well. And so, you know, hopefully the Club World Cup is here again soon. Hopefully the World Cup, hopefully the Women's World Cup in 2031, uh being here. And hopefully those things will also move that notch forward.
Speaker 3Anytime something of that magnitude is front and center, it will have a lasting impact. I I think you we talked about this on the last podcast. You cannot say that the 99 Women's World Cup that was here that that the US won had did not have a lasting impact. It obviously and clearly did. Uh, you can't say, if you look at another sport, that the hockey success on the men's and women's side this past winter at the winter Olympics will not have an impact. It absolutely will.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3So anytime something that is is not normally front and center here becomes front and center, it will absolutely have an impact.
Speaker 1Well, and to Jacob's point, LA 28 uh in the Olympics will be here, six different cities um that will be hosting games. I I always feel like the Olympics feels like you know, sort of the other soccer program.
Speaker 3Yeah, you know, it seems like more on the women's side because I guess the senior women's national teams that participate in it, the men's side does kind of seem like an afterthought.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a U-23 competition on the men's side, largely with I think some overage players. But you know, may maybe uh maybe the buzz of the World
Final Takeaways Standouts And Questions
Speaker 1Cup will make that Olympic uh soccer competition uh bring it a little bit more mainstream than than uh in in the past, potentially. But that's another another opportunity. So all these things moving the needle. Um, I think I'll finish with there's a lot of people trying to do good work. There's a lot of conversations happening uh across various lines now of organizations, of people trying to find solutions, and none of it's easy, but I think the intentions are are good, and hopefully we can all keep moving together and knocking down some of these problems and and when we identify problems to your point, coming with solutions that are practical.
Speaker 3Yeah, agreed. It was a great World Cup, man. I'm glad I got to experience it. I went to a U.S. game as well with my kids, they had a great time, and so that those are things that definitely stick for you know you know what's funny right now.
Speaker 1I drive I drive to practice right now, and what my my kids ask for two songs on the way to practice. Number one is Country Roads.
Speaker 3They listen to Country Roads. So you have those kids who are at the age they're so impressionable.
Speaker 1It was so impressionable. But think about that for you know, think about what that says about culture, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Okay, one is country roads, and then the second one is God bless America. And there we roll in, we roll into soccer and they're yelling in the back and singing the saw, the words they remember. Um, but you talk about cultural impact is pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. All right, do we even do rock and brainbusters on a special edition? We've never done this.
Speaker 3We can. We can go. Uh, who was your standout player of the World Cup?
Speaker 1Elise.
Speaker 3Elise. I'm gonna go Jude Bellingham.
Speaker 1He stood up, didn't he?
Speaker 3Yeah, Jude Bellingham.
Speaker 1Stood up in the he stood up in the third place game, too. Excuse me while I come on and finish this off for everybody. That sixth goal was pretty pretty dirty, man.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'll go Jude Bellingham. We'll just call it a mini brack and brain buster to to uh wrap the World Cup. I feel like I've had so many like softball questions because the World Cup has just given me so much material. Now I'm really gonna have to get back into the lab and start working on my uh my brack and brainbrusters for the future.
Speaker 1All right. Well, kudos to uh to you, to uh the team behind the team here who has made this special edition of the podcast come to life because uh we felt that the timing was right and we didn't want to wait long after the World Cup to bring these topics up. And as always, we'll take feedback.
Speaker 3Absolutely.
SpeakerUntil next time, Doug. Ciao Bela. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast. And remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast, email us at info at the etnl.com.