There are an endless number of issues with the premise, perhaps most significant being the assumption that success on one field translates to another. There isn't evidence of this being true even within the confines of a single sport - great NBA players don't always remain great NBA players when they switch teams, so why would we assume this holds up across sports? The concept also dismisses the possibility that some of our best athletes are already playing soccer - take Michael Bradley, for example, who led the 2014 World Cup after the group stage in distance covered. Which athlete from America's so-called major sports - all of which allow for endless timeouts and substitutions - would have managed a near-marathon while passing, dribbling, and defending in three World cup games? My last point for now (but certainly not my final objection) is how the premise narrows 'athletic' down to a short list of qualities prized by the macho-man perspective of the traditional American sports fan - size, power, sprinting speed, and so on, qualities that certainly benefit soccer players yet don't lead to the same advantage on the pitch as it does for those playing American sports.
But of course, the problem here is that I'm going against the spirit of the exercise. At some level this is all hypothetical, so maybe for once instead of complaining I should accept the baseline assumptions, think about what might happen, and write down my conclusions. So today, reader, is a historic day, because I'm finally going along as a willing participant in this alternate reality experiment, and pretending that players such as LeBron James, Patrick Mahomes, and Mookie Betts have played soccer all their lives and might be among the options for the team. In this scenario, what would my 2022 World Cup squad look like?
There are an endless number of stars in the American sports, so let's begin by narrowing down the list. My first filter is body size. I respect the athletic feats of highly skilled NBA stars like the 6'10" Anthony Davis, but since it's so unusual to see anyone taller than 6'4" become an elite soccer player, I'm going to eliminate anyone above that height. This makes sense if you look at it from a foreign perspective, where soccer is already the sport most athletes play by default. If Americans above 6'4" could be World Cup players, why do international stars at 6'4" or taller tend to be NBA players instead of soccer stars? My guess is that after reaching a certain height it just becomes too hard to become a top-level soccer player, and you either plateau at a lower level or switch sports. If the argument of 'best athletes playing soccer' applied to our tallest NBA stars, surely the Gasol brothers would have been Spanish soccer legends instead of becoming very good NBA players.
I have a similar concern about including athletes who mostly leverage short bursts of athleticism across individual battles, which I think is a common situation for NFL stars like Khalil Mack. It's hard to say his success as a defensive end and outside linebacker suggests he is ready for the constant running and teamwork of a soccer game. Athletes like him also rarely handle the ball - why do we assume these stars are capable of learning how to pass, dribble, or shoot at the level required in a World Cup game? Again, nothing personal against anyone, my point is simply that there is no evidence, no way to know for sure based on stardom in a different sport. This logic applies not just to most helmet football and baseball players, it also works for individual sports - gymnasts, runners, boxers, swimmers, even tennis champions. Some of these athletes might become great soccer players, but there just isn't enough evidence beyond the fact of their current stardom; it strikes me as more likely that some run of the mill athlete from this group would reach his full potential if he had played soccer given all that is different about the skill requirements across these sports. I don't think it's worth trying to guess who would emerge from such a group, so I'm just going to eliminate them all from consideration, and concede that maybe some currently unknown athlete or two from these groups probably could have been a top soccer player had he made different decisions in childhood.
This leaves us with a much more manageable initial list - essentially stars who handle the ball in either the NBA or the NFL, with 6'4" being the height cutoff; we are basically talking about guards in basketball and the skill positions in helmet football. At this point, if I had to make my best guess I would study each player more closely, looking for indicators like passing ability, defensive skills, and footwork that might suggest future soccer success (the latter in particular seems critical). I'll stop there, however, because there are probably still far too many good candidates to consider for this hypothetical, which is fit only for amusing, casual speculation; I'll share that players such as Michael Thomas, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, Chris Paul, Marcus Smart, and Christian McCaffery jumped out at me, and I'll leave it at that.
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Of course, we can't forget to include one more group of players - the current US team. How many of these players would keep their place if they were competing with current NBA or NFL stars? I think there is a strong argument that there would be some roster turnover, mostly because the US team isn't very good. A logical comparison point is the Spanish basketball team, which almost beat Team USA in a couple of recent Olympic finals; our soccer team is nowhere near as good as Spain's basketball team, and never has been. Until we start regularly making the semifinals of a World Cup, we should accept the premise that US soccer is missing out on top players because young athletes are choosing other sports.
But even if we agree on the fact of turnover, the question of how much is crucial. This is also the most difficult part of the question because it gets into a critical aspect of the hypothetical - what happens as a result of our best athletes playing soccer? In other words, what is the second-order effect, the "then what?", in a world where future NBA stars had instead turned to soccer? The question implies that the only cost of having other major sports is that Steph Curry becomes a point guard instead of an attacking midfielder; we forget that current US soccer players would be better if they had played against stronger competition during their youth years. So if we consider the effect of someone like Russell Westbrook playing soccer instead of basketball, it's not just a question of how good Westbrook would be at soccer, it's also a question of how good Jozy Altidore would have been if he had spent his formative years competing against athletes of Russell Westbrook's caliber.
This bring me to another second-order effect, culture, and its effect on these stars from America's sports - how would culture affect the trajectory of their soccer careers, and would it result in a different level of stardom? The culture question is almost always overlooked in any hypothetical analysis, particularly those dreamed up by us sports fans, because we don't grasp the extent to which culture dictates so many observed results in life; it's very unusual for someone to point out the problems caused by sports culture, unless of course you are one of the handful of geniuses spoiled by TOA. The assumption that NBA stars would become soccer stars sounds dubious to me when I consider the impact of culture in a young athlete's development. What's interesting when you read stories about guys like Clint Dempsey is that they grew up in these little bubbles within America - the people in his life were soccer-mad like they are in Mexico, South America, or Europe. Clint's pickup games were on fields, not courts; the 'big game' likely involved Club America rather than America's team. If a young athlete doesn't have that kind of immersive cultural environment which nurtures his skills - the default for American athletes in the major sports - then the path to the world-class level is all the more difficult; just as growing up in Maine instead of Texas might have been enough to stop Dempsey, the effect of playing soccer instead of a culturally relevant major sport might have been enough to stop our current NBA or NFL stars.
There will always be exceptions - Kobe Bryant is a notable example. From the ages of six to thirteen he lived in Italy, a country that does not produce many NBA players, but his family kept him immersed in the sport; he even went back to America for summer leagues. The story has some general similarities to that of Christian Pulisic, the twenty-two year old American on the brink of becoming a world-class player, whose father started a futsal league in Detroit just so young Christian had a place to improve his skills; the family supported him in countless ways - including trips abroad to train with well-known clubs - until he signed as a teenager to play in a German club's youth academy. Both players made themselves into the players they became (or will become) but there is little doubt that their paths are not open to young players without the same resources or connections as the families of Bryant or Pulisic. Compare this to the origins of Kyler Murray, whose home stadium in high school had a capacity of 18,000 (huge even by the standards of high school football in Texas); sports culture is not just what you see on the front page of the newspaper, it's also what the public will invest in the game, which means young players in these sports have fewer socioeconomic obstacles to overcome than their counterparts in less culturally relevant sports. Again, we can only speculate, but my hunch is a lot of our star athletes from the major sports - through no fault of their own - would find themselves tripped up by the obstacles to stardom that are almost unique to the challenge of becoming an elite soccer player in America.
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There are many diagnoses provided for US soccer's inability to become a global force but I've noticed that the various verdicts tend to revolve around one theme - pay-to-play. Whether the specific complaint is the lack of high-quality coaching, the nature of scouting, or the inconsistent integration of youth clubs with professional teams, the complaints can all fit under the umbrella of pay-to-play. This term means young players - which really means their parents or guardians - have to foot annual bills of thousands of dollars to maintain access to the sport's best development resources. I'm not aware of any top country having this system in place, which limits access to coaching, progression, and visibility based on factors like your household income; the extent to which it exists in our major American sports is greatly diminished thanks to the many options available to young players who need financial support. US soccer is essentially running an experiment in youth development that hasn't worked, and it might be wise to simply follow the existing blueprints used by our successful competitors, from either at home or abroad.
The reason I suggest an overhaul rather than a gradual change is because the current system is designed to generate money - this article notes US soccer pulls in around $4 billion annually. The argument to expand access by subsidizing or waiving fees that might support the increased cost associated with having more players will surely be a difficult sell for those in charge. It reminds me in some ways of how change is hard to come by in Corporate America. The types of people they need to lead change from within aren't hard to find - in most cases they are already there, perhaps passing the time by questioning authority, demanding better explanations than "we've always done it that way", or coming up with creative solutions to both current and long-term problems; almost every organization I know of speaks with pride about how they recruited such people to join their teams. The problem is that corporations are designed to generate the status quo, which means the employees with the characteristics to lead change tend to be the ones most vulnerable to daily corporate life. They will be labeled disruptive, confrontational, or difficult, these assessments accumulating over a series of informal evaluations and performance reviews. One day, the organization discovers all the rebels it needs have started a new life somewhere else; everyone who remains scored highly in obedience and building alliances, which makes them overqualified for maintaining the status quo, but they know nothing about leading change. What do you think happens next? There will be some token changes, perhaps even one or two important adjustments, but for the most part they fall far short of an outsider's standard for meaningful change; think about how long corporations have struggled to pay men and women equally, or all those firms that slowly withered away while it continued to produce an obsolete product. Some stale organizations have seemingly done nothing new in decades, yet I suspect many on the inside think of themselves as transformative innovators; when you understand how the status quo filter works, you realize that any rebels in the organization are long gone, and took the definition of change with them.
The corporation, in other words, struggles to change because its system reinforces the status quo by systemically filtering out the sort of employee who is interested and capable of defining and leading change. The problem for US soccer is similar because its system reinforces the status quo via the mechanism of pay-to-play, which means it systemically filters out players who cannot pay even if they had the potential for stardom. And again, this is only speculation, but I think the problem isn't so much the player who starts in the system and then quits - the problem is the player who never starts because another sport offers easier, realistic, and consistent access. The system is left with players who can pay, which means over time it gradually evolves to cater to those who can pay. I fear I'm drifting too far into guesswork, so I'll cite a statistic - 11% of boys and girls registered to clubs come from households earning under $25K per year, compared to over a third that come from households earning six figures. I'll concede that others will be far more familiar with the details, but when I see a proportion like that I find it hard to stomach the suggestion that soccer is equally accessible to all of America's youth.
Of course, simply stating the problem doesn't lead to solutions, and merely removing culpable parties doesn't mean those who replace them will necessarily change the system; the root of the pay-to-play issue goes all the way back to American culture than it does anything specific to US soccer. The examples of pay-to-play in other aspects of American life are too many to list - higher education, health insurance, home ownership, politics, even big chains putting moms-and-pops out of business - all of these and more are significantly influenced by underlying pay-to-play influences; pay-to-play is American life, is the American way, at least in terms of reinforcing the inequality of opportunity. You could think of pay-to-play as a soccer problem but in my mind its more like soccer's version of America's problem. Many think of soccer as a non-American sport, but the way I see it the sport's youth system is almost a perfect representation of the country.
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The story of Pulisic is inspiring on the surface because it suggests a possible blueprint for aspiring young players around the country. But when you dig into the details, the reality about the sport in this country becomes quickly apparent - if his family had not invested so many resources into his development, it's possible he would have turned his attention to another more easily accessible sport. It's not too hard to envision another player in that Detroit futsal league, perhaps headed on a similar trajectory as Christian, whose father didn't have connections at FC Barcelona, as Christian's did, that enabled those invaluable training "vacations" abroad. The questions I have for those who believe the US World Cup team would look so different if our NBA and NFL stars played soccer are simple ones - why would those players succeed in soccer when so many others like them failed, not because they lacked the skills, athleticism, or drive, but simply because they never had a fair chance? What about this hypothetical ensures these NBA or NFL stars would have access to soccer in ways that other similar youth players likely did not?
My insistence - glee, some would say - at devising increasingly complex ways to dismiss the "what if everyone played soccer" hypothetical doesn't mean I find no value in this exercise. After all, there is a particularly important complaint underlying the hypothetical - why isn't the US an elite soccer country? And it's not like we are close - despite having massive advantages in both national resources and sporting culture, we've been eliminated in our last two World Cup appearances by Ghana and Belgium; we infamously failed to qualify in 2018. But I should note that this complaint is only partially true, for it's a sexist one - those who agree that we are substandard conveniently forget that when the women take the field, the US is the gold standard. The reason why the US women are so good is a complex one with many distinct factors, but I'm more than happy to generalize those as "systemically increasing access" - in this article, the author notes that the year before Title IX passed, there were only three international women's soccer teams. This support gave the US a decisive early edge in terms of helping the future stars of the women's team play soccer, and it has maintained this lead over the next five decades. But as star striker Alex Morgan noted last year, the pay-to-play model is a problem that does not apply exclusively to the men's side; it seems likely that if the women lose their dominant position in the sport, many pundits will point at pay-to-play as the explanation, citing its offsetting effect on the increased access created by measures such as Title IX.
But sexism is only part of the answer because it's merely one issue within a larger culture that does not value accomplishments outside the mainstream. If you have a society such as America that is crippling itself with its commitment to inequality in terms of income, gender, and opportunity, you'll have the kinds of problems we see in the context of US soccer. Again, you will have triple the number of registered youth players coming from the middle-class rather than from households earning less than $25K per year. You will have people routinely dismiss the US as a soccer country, which requires downplaying or dismissing the accomplishments of women. You will have careless assumptions that the men's team fails because of athleticism - which has never been called into question by their opponents - rather than because of a system that offers opportunities only to those who can afford them, which makes it highly unlikely we are identifying every American youth with World Cup potential.
I suspect the answer to the question of why the US men's team isn't an elite international force - which I suppose is the real question when we dream of having NBA players flopping during corner kicks rather than corner kickouts - is the same answer for any field where America is inexplicably trailing our international peers. Despite having the resources, the characteristics, and the personal freedoms that form something of a unique American secret sauce - a flavor so enticing that many millions risk their lives every year just to come here and have a taste - the resulting system at the moment is one that excludes so many people who are already here from the promise and potential of American opportunity. The average soccer fan has a certain proximity to this, and he or she can ask obvious questions that grow from an intuition that the country is performing below its potential, but like any insider their imaginations fall shy of implicating the system, preferring instead to lay the blame on soccer-specific people, actions, and variations within the cultural infrastructure. This means every four years we return to the same old American tradition - what if we kept everything the same, but just tried it with different people? What if we found someone who succeeded in another field, assuming he would be good in a new area? What if we dismissed anyone with a different perspective, opting instead for another safe pair of hands who would ensure the same people continued to get their money? Every four years, it's the same story, a bunch of people running like fools who look a lot like the fools that ran last time; the only certainty is that America will lose again.
