Episode – 2198 : Why Can’t The US Do Better In the World Cup?
Podcast Transcript
In the summer of 2026, the United States caught World Cup fever, just as we do every four years.
And just like we do every time, we were eliminated by a much smaller country.
The United States is a large, rich country. We win a disproportionate share of Olympic medals and Nobel Prizes. Yet, when it comes to the world’s most popular sport, we don’t do very well. At least the men’s team.
Learn more about the structural challenges standing in the way of American soccer success on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The closest the US Men’s National Soccer Team came to winning the World Cup was a third-place finish at the inaugural tournament in 1930. Third place sounds great; a top-three finish in a modern World Cup is a remarkable achievement.
But in 1930, most European countries boycotted the tournament, believing it should have been held in Europe, meaning Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain did not attend. England was not a member of football’s governing body, FIFA, so England, Scotland, and Wales did not attend either.
A tournament without that roster of powerhouse countries makes for a very different tournament, which helps explain why the United States did so well. That being said, doing well meant winning only two games and then losing to Argentina, 6-1.
Since then, it hasn’t been great for US soccer. The United States has participated in 13 World Cups but has failed to qualify 11 times, including nine straight tournaments between 1954 and 1986.
It’s reasonable to ask why the United States has not been more successful on soccer’s global stage. The United States is the third-largest country in the world by population, has had the world’s largest economy for almost 150 years, and has a tradition of athletic success across multiple sports and the Olympics.
However, there isn’t a simple formula for World Cup success.
Take England. They invented the sport; the English Premier League is unquestionably one of the strongest leagues in the world, and it is very well funded. England has produced multiple legendary players, yet they have won only a single World Cup, in 1966.
Italy has won the World Cup four times, guided by a legendary defensive system and world-class players. To the dismay of everyone in Italy, they failed to qualify for two consecutive tournaments. Germany has won four World Cups and produced some of the sport’s most brilliant players, but since winning in 2014, it has fallen short of national expectations. Brazil is the most decorated program in the world, yet its last title was in 2002.
There are 211 FIFA-recognized national teams chasing the same title, yet only eight nations have won it, all from Europe or South America. Those countries possess structural advantages that are difficult to replicate, even for a nation like the United States.
The strength of a nation’s top professional league is usually a strong indicator of national-team success. All the countries that have won a World Cup boast powerful, historically successful leagues.
Consider England’s Premier League, the successor to the First Division, which dates to the nineteenth century. Historic clubs grew in industrial cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds. Deep local loyalty gave those clubs enormous fan bases, historic stadiums, and staggering financial value.
These clubs do not consist only of their senior teams. They operate youth programs for children living near the club, and those programs are a vital part of the club’s long-term success.
Arsenal, for example, operates soccer programs for very young children and competitive teams beginning at early ages. Coaches are professionally certified and are not simply parents of players. They watch for children with coordination, speed, passion, and technical skill, then funnel the strongest prospects into increasingly advanced academies.
The best young players in England do not continue paying thousands of dollars a year to participate. Beginning around age nine, players can sign academy registrations that transfer the financial burden to the professional club. Coaching, equipment, travel, sports science, and training facilities are covered because the club views youth development as scouting and investment.
As players get older, they move through the club system toward professional contracts. Many elite players star for the same organizations that trained them as children, while others are transferred between clubs in lucrative deals.
This approach is mirrored across Europe and South America. The result is a professional club that develops talent in its region at its own expense, builds a devoted local fan base, and creates a direct pipeline to its senior team.
This is extremely different from the American model.
The United States has millions of children playing organized soccer, making it one of the country’s most widely played youth sports. Yet in the American system, the cost of development usually falls on players and their families.
As children move from recreation leagues into competitive clubs, expenses multiply. Club dues, uniforms, tournament fees, travel, hotels, private coaching, and training can cost several thousand dollars per year. This prices many talented athletes out of the system, especially in working-class and urban communities.
Landon Donovan, one of America’s leading World Cup scorers, has noted that modern youth soccer has become primarily a middle- and upper-middle-class sport. He has said that his own family could not have afforded today’s system when he was growing up.
This is a stark contrast with European and South American clubs. Major League Soccer organizations offer academies and camps, and MLS Next is an attempt to build a stronger development structure, but the system is young and small compared with century-old overseas networks.
Player acquisition in MLS and other North American leagues has traditionally relied heavily on drafts. Drafts reward the weakest teams with the highest picks. That structure reduces the incentive for one local club to absorb the cost of developing a player who may ultimately be assigned to another organization.
Coaching is another difference. Competitive American clubs may employ trained coaches, but lower-level teams are commonly run by volunteer parents. Those parents perform valuable work, but many do not possess advanced knowledge of tactics, technique, or player development. Europe’s academy system relies far more heavily on certified professional coaches from the youngest ages.
American children also divide their athletic attention among basketball, baseball, American football, hockey, track, and other sports. In many soccer powers, the best athletes are exposed to soccer constantly and are culturally encouraged to specialize in it. A gifted American athlete is more likely to be directed toward a sport with better local coaching, stronger school programs, and clearer professional pathways.
Another structural difference is promotion and relegation. In most major soccer countries, the worst teams in a league are dropped into a lower division, while the best lower-division teams move up.
Relegation can be financially devastating. A relegated club loses television revenue, sponsorship value, attendance, and prestige. It may be forced to sell top players and reduce payroll. Because failure carries such severe consequences, clubs have powerful incentives to invest in scouting, coaching, youth development, and player acquisition.
North American professional leagues are closed systems. Even the weakest team remains in the league and continues receiving shared revenue. A poor season may improve the team’s draft position rather than threaten its existence. The system creates financial stability, but it does not create the same pressure to develop local talent.
Perhaps the most important factor is history. Clubs around the world have accumulated more than a century of institutional knowledge about coaching, tactics, scouting, and development. The United States does not yet have the same depth of soccer tradition.
None of this applies in quite the same way to women’s soccer. The United States built an early legacy in the women’s game, winning four of the first nine Women’s World Cups.
Because international women’s soccer developed later, the United States gained a major head start through Title IX. Passed in 1972, the law required American educational institutions to provide substantially equal athletic opportunities for women. Colleges across the country added women’s soccer teams, scholarships, facilities, and coaching at a time when opportunities elsewhere were limited.
European clubs have since applied their academy model to women’s teams, and the competitive gap has narrowed as the rest of the world has improved.
Winning a World Cup is not easy. Building a championship team is a decades-long process involving culture, coaching, facilities, professional incentives, scouting, and youth development.
The US men’s national team has improved, but there is still a long way to go before it consistently joins the elite countries in the sport. It would probably require a major overhaul of youth soccer, lower financial barriers, deeper professional academies, and a broader cultural shift toward the game.
Over the next decade or two, realistic progress may be measured by regularly reaching the quarterfinals rather than expecting to win the tournament outright.
This episode can be found at: https://everything-everywhere.com/why-cant-the-us-do-better-in-the-world-cup/