The World Cup showed the limits of managed soccer

The United States’ World Cup run gave American soccer the moment it had been waiting for. The crowds were enormous, the country was engaged, and for a few weeks it felt as if the United States had finally become a soccer nation.

Then came Belgium.

The 4–1 loss was not merely disappointing. It was revealing. The Americans defended poorly, made repeated mistakes, and were punished by a superior European side. Once again, the US men exited in the Round of 16.

Belgium beat the United States on the field. But the deeper problem began long before kickoff.

America has everything a world soccer power should need: more than 340 million people, world-class athletes, major universities, immigrant soccer communities, a growing professional league, and a massive sports market. The World Cup hype proved the demand is real.

So why does the United States still struggle to produce elite men’s soccer talent at the scale its resources should allow?

The problem is not that Americans cannot play soccer. It is that American soccer has spent decades prioritizing stability over competition, and federal intervention helped put that structure in place.

US Soccer is not a federal agency. Congress did not design Major League Soccer’s single-entity structure or ban promotion and relegation. But Congress did create the framework that allows one national governing body to sit atop each Olympic sport in 1978. That structure gave US Soccer a privileged role as the recognized governing body connected to the Olympic system, FIFA, national teams, league sanctioning, and the official pathways of the sport.

The question is not whether Congress ordered American soccer to become closed, expensive, and hierarchical. It did not. The better question is why the federal government needed to create a privileged governing structure for sports in the first place, and what happened once that structure gave US Soccer the authority to define the game’s legitimate channels.

That changed the market. Independent teams can still play, but the serious path runs through the sanctioned system. American soccer did not grow like an open marketplace. It grew like a controlled system, in which clubs need permission to enter and then largely stay put.

That hierarchy shaped Major League Soccer. US Soccer did not force MLS to adopt a closed, single-entity model. MLS made that choice itself, haunted by the collapse of the old North American Soccer League. Its founders wanted a league that would survive, so they adopted a centrally controlled model, with no promotion or relegation. This model produced stability, but not dynamism.

The original sin of American soccer was not irrational. It was defensive.

But temporary survival mechanisms can become permanent barriers to competition. Once US Soccer blessed MLS as the official top division, it was no longer just one private league competing in an open market. It became the sanctioned top tier of a protected soccer order.

In most of the world, clubs rise or fall based on performance. Promotion and relegation are imperfect and cannot be casually grafted onto the American system overnight. But they create market discipline: Successful clubs rise into higher-revenue leagues, failing clubs fall, lower-level teams have a pathway upward, and investment follows merit rather than permission.

That is how the sport works in many of the countries Americans are trying to catch. England, Germany, and Argentina do not have perfect systems, but their clubs still operate in leagues where on-field results can change a club’s future. That gives lower-level teams a stronger reason to find and develop players.

American soccer mostly went the other way. Teams do not move into higher-revenue leagues because they win enough games. They get there through expansion fees, ownership approval, league rules, and federation sanctioning. Young players run into their own version of the same problem. The path is expensive, club-heavy, travel-heavy, and hard to navigate without the right connections or resources. That may keep the system stable. But it is not open competition. And for many families, it is not really a pathway at all. It is a wall.

I see the promise and the problem up close as a middle school girls’ soccer coach and as the parent of a daughter who plays travel soccer.

That is not merely unfair. It is competitively foolish. A serious soccer nation should search relentlessly for the best players wherever they are. The American model too often finds the best players whose parents can afford the pathway.

Baseball and basketball prove that a closed league is not automatically a dead end. Major League Baseball has the draft, college baseball, the minor leagues, and scouts constantly looking for overlooked players. The NBA has college basketball, the G League, two-way contracts, international scouting, and other routes into the sport. The teams are closed franchises, but the player pipeline is not completely closed.

That is where American soccer gets into trouble. MLS is closed at the top, and the youth system below it is expensive, fragmented, and hard to navigate. A talented player can be priced out early, missed by the right club or coach, or simply never find the next step. A closed league can work if players still have many ways to be discovered and developed. American soccer too often restricts both: the path for clubs and the path for players.

That is a governance failure.

Defenders of the current system can point to real progress. MLS is stable. Stadiums have been built. Attendance has grown. Youth participation is high. American soccer has cultural momentum.

But the United States has built a soccer industry, not a soccer meritocracy.

The Belgium loss exposed the gap between American soccer’s popularity and its productivity. The U.S. does not lack fans, facilities, money, or enthusiasm. It lacks a system that reliably turns those advantages into elite talent.

A legal victory does not settle that question. U.S. Soccer and MLS may have defeated the defunct NASL’s antitrust claim, but a court verdict is not proof that the current structure maximizes competition or opportunity.

None of this means U.S. Soccer should be abolished. International soccer needs a national federation. But that federation should not act like a moat around the current system. It should be easier for successful lower-level clubs to move up, and youth soccer should do a much better job finding talented players whose families cannot afford the expensive travel-club ladder.

The World Cup showed the American market is ready for soccer. The Belgium loss showed the system is not ready to maximize it.

America does not need more managed soccer. It needs a more competitive game, built less like a protected hierarchy and more like an open market.

“The World Cup showed the limits of managed soccer” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.