After decades trying to win the World Cup, shouldn’t the USA be better at football by now? | OneFootball

Before the 1994 World Cup, the American columnist Tom Weir wrote a withering assessment of the sport his country was about to host. “Hating soccer,” he said in USA Today, “is more American than mom’s apple pie, driving a pick-up or spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control.”

Not everyone shared Weir’s disdain, given record attendances at USA ‘94. But even today there remains a lingering perspective, mainly among conservative men of a certain age, that soccer is a sport for girls and sissy boys who dive to the floor on first contact, whereas real American sports involve tough guys running, jumping or, in Nascar’s case, driving into one another.

It is a tired old trope that you don’t tend to find around the rest of the world, and it begins to explain America’s challenge in building a men’s team to match their women and win the World Cup.

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Christian Pulisic in training this week before the USA's opening game (Getty)

Broadly, there are two stages of a young person’s journey to becoming a footballer. The first is the raw talent developed at a young age, and often the greatest players begin on the streets. Lionel Messi learnt to dribble on a dirt pitch behind his house in Rosario. Cristiano Ronaldo played in bare feet on the steep road outside his home. Wayne Rooney was smashing balls against the garage door long before he joined a football club.

Then there is the second part: the scouting and coaching, the academy facilities and support, the infrastructure that takes talent and allows it to grow and unfold in good time.

The US Soccer Federation has been taking steps to improve the latter. The American youth system has long relied on an array of small clubs who often charge hefty fees to play, making soccer a largely middle-class game. This is a country where nothing comes for free, even the grass. US Soccer is attempting to implement structural changes based on the decades-old European model, creating clear pathways from grassroots clubs to funded places at Major League Soccer academies.

America has the financial muscle to build any gleaming youth infrastructure it wants, based on any model it fancies. But it is the first part, the raw spark, a love of the game which is stitched into the social fabric almost everywhere else in the world, which is the real gold dust. That is the part that cannot be bought.

“It can’t be reduced to investment,” US head coach Mauricio Pochettino told The Guardian this week, when asked why America still does not have comparable talent with football’s heartlands. “What takes time is that emotional relationship, for that kid not to wait until they’re 12 to touch a ball with their feet. You build a soccer school: ‘Now, shoot!’ But football’s not that.

“The relationship is built through freedom. I get a ball and my brother, cousin, the friend who’s older, takes it off me. How do I get it back? That’s the game: not roboticised, automated. When that relationship starts, talent appears. Over time, that creates footballing nations: there’s something deeper.”

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Mauricio Pochettino is charged with delivering success for USA this summer (Getty)

The USA developed a thriving soccer scene during the 1920s, built among the immigrant communities of Italy, Germany, Sweden and other European arrivals. But a split among the early governing bodies followed by the devastating impact of the Great Depression brought the American game to its knees.

The USA’s best World Cup remains the first in 1930 when they finished third of 13 nations (there should have been 14 but Egypt missed their connecting boat due to a storm in the Mediterranean Sea). America famously shocked England 1-0 in 1950, but the fact that is still considered the height of USA’s post-war achievement at the World Cup is an indictment on their progress.

The US didn’t qualify at all between 1954 and 1986, and only entered 1990 somewhat suspiciously, seemingly so Fifa could give them some tournament experience before hosting in 1994. US interest might have been boosted by hosting the World Cup eight years earlier in 1986, after Colombia were stripped of the tournament, but the Americans lost out to Mexico and Diego Maradona’s crowning moment came in Mexico City, not New York or Los Angeles.

Momentum ramped up through the 2010s with a string of star names drawn to the league, sparked by David Beckham. With Messi now at Beckham’s Inter Miami, the quality of MLS is arguably as good as it’s ever been.

At the heart of USA’s struggle to produce great players is whether to focus energy on building MLS into a competition of high quality and financial power to rival the European leagues, helping to retain the best American talent, or to breed young stars and farm them out to elite environments around the world.

And despite the growth of MLS, the latter has been the blueprint. The USA’s mini golden generation featuring Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams were picked up and taken to Europe early in their careers. They have developed into good players – probably better ones than had they stayed in the States – although Pulisic in particular hasn’t kicked on to the heights US fans might have hoped.

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Antonee Robinson, right, could have played for England but chose America (Getty)

The USA’s other strategy has been a deliberate policy of persuading players of dual heritage to commit to the US team. American striker Florian Balogun was born in Brooklyn and grew up in London. Right-back Serginio Dest went the other way, born in the Netherlands before moving to Brooklyn as a child. Left-back Antonee Robinson was born in Milton Keynes, and midfielder Gio Reyna was born in Sunderland. They all had options and chose to represent America.

The current squad plays all over the world and it is good enough to trouble some illustrious opponents this summer. The wing-backs, Robinson and Dest, are very capable. But 24 years after America’s best modern World Cup run, reaching the quarter-finals in 2002, is this generation any stronger than the era of Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley?

Ultimately, mastery of football, that wholly unnatural piece of foot-eye coordination, is a technical skill that takes time and obsession, beginning before a young person arrives at an academy for high-grade coaching. Siblings and peers push each other to greater heights in gardens and parks and on the streets. US boys are joining clubs at seven or eight years old, by which point kids in Europe and South America are already ahead. One irony is that the drive and passion the USA are looking for is most likely found in immigrant communties from south and central America, communities increasingly made to feel unwelcome by Donald Trump’s administration.

That passion for football must go beyond playing. Turkey star Arda Guler, who at 21 is probably better than any American player that’s ever lived, is essentially a footballer because his dad is a fanatic Fenerbahce supporter. Guler was made to kick balloons as soon as he could walk. Aged nine, when he finally stepped inside the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium, and climbed up the steps to see Fenerbahce’s pitch beneath him, Guler was overwhelmed and inspired.

So perhaps, above all, that is the role of this 2026 team. The US have a chance to capture a country’s imagination, from soccer lovers to sceptics, with some on-field success this summer. For all the investment and energy that has gone into US soccer, nothing is more effective than cultivating a deep love of the game. And there is little like a home World Cup for inspiration.