Children play soccer at the launch of Australia’s National Football Development Plan in 2007 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
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Set your calendars for sometime in late June 2030.
That’s when the U.S. men will lose in the 2030 World Cup and we’ll have the same conversation we have every four years …
“END PAY-TO-PLAY! MAKE YOUTH SOCCER FREE LIKE IT IS ELSEWHERE!”
Noticeably absent — any recognition that countries with well-established free academies and much stronger soccer histories than the United States, especially Germany and Italy, have fared worse in recent World Cups than the U.S. men. But more perplexingly absent — any ideas about how to make that happen.
Also, the people who wax nostalgic about “free soccer” in other countries tend to be players who joined professional academies at a young age and don’t remember that the vast majority of players do indeed pay. They’re just typically paying what U.S. families pay for “recreational” soccer, not the fees demanded in the USA’s unique “travel soccer” setup, with professional coaches and expensive tournaments.
None of which should imply that a youth soccer system that extracts thousands of dollars from beleaguered parents each year — or excludes those who can’t pay or can’t arrange transportation for their kids — is the ideal. No one is against the notion of making youth soccer affordable and accessible for all.
Where To Cut, Where To Spend
The closest anyone has come to “defending” the pay-to-play system is Alexi Lalas, the Fox commentator who has morphed over 32 years in the public eye from a guitar-strumming Zen everyman to a human lightning rod. Once a heroic figure in U.S. soccer circles for his roles in the 1994 World Cup, the 1995 Copa America semifinal run and a trailblazing move to Italy’s Serie A, he is now a provocateur who delights in unhorsing crusaders for any pet cause in soccer or politics.
“I’d love if soccer was free to all,” Lalas wrote on X in a post that has more than 8.5 million views. “But who is going to pay for all this free soccer?”
Lalas has been vilified for asking. But it’s not an easy question to answer. Getting at least partway to “free soccer” depends on a few factors.
1. Have More Professional Academies
In the “rest of the world” (which, in soccer discussions, usually means “Western Europe”), professional clubs run free academies for those who make the cut. These clubs make money not just through gate receipts and television rights but also by developing and selling players. Major League Soccer does that as well, but having 27 MLS clubs in a country the size of the United States (and three clubs in Canada) doesn’t have the same impact as having more than 90 professional clubs and some semi-professional clubs with academies in a country the size of England.
A handful of clubs in the USL have free academies, and as that league continues to grow, the footprint of free academies may grow along with it. On the women’s side, the NWSL has not yet made a major push with academies but may soon be strong enough to do so.
But even in England, the pro academies aren’t paying everyone’s bills. The largest pro clubs generally field only one team per age group and have roughly 180 players, while smaller academies have less than that.
So the number of kids getting “free soccer” in England is a little over 12,000. That’s minuscule compared with the overall demand for youth soccer. A network of The Football Association’s handy club finder lists more than 100 clubs within 10 miles of Wembley Stadium, the national team’s home ground. Farther out in England’s less urbanized areas, the Cornwall Youth Football League alone boasts 72 clubs and 7,151 players in a county with less than 600,000 people. These clubs may benefit from national programs to build facilities and help with general development, but families typically pay around $300 per year — roughly the same as a recreational program in the United States.
Supplement With U.S. Soccer Federation Programs
As part of Germany’s heralded “Das Reboot,” an overhaul of German soccer after a few unacceptable results, the German federation established hundreds of training centers so that no one was more than 25 kilometers away from an opportunity to be identified and developed. The USA is too vast to match that, but grants for a few dozen youth clubs would go a long way.
The federation could also try to revitalize the Olympic Development Program (ODP), which can be a second option for players who aren’t near a pro academy.
Cut The Travel
Youth soccer has long been plagued by in-fighting between an alphabet soup of leagues and organizations. The result is that two comparably skilled teams that are 10 miles apart may never face each other in league play, opting instead to travel 200 miles to play in their leagues of choice. Add to that an emphasis on playing in endless tournaments, and players spend far too much time and money traveling. No one becomes a better soccer player in a car or a plane.
The youth soccer community has made progress here with a merger of sorts between US Club Soccer’s National Premier Leagues and US Youth Soccer’s National League. The emphasis on tournaments, though, may be difficult to pull back.
Scout And Respect High School Soccer
A popular complaint in U.S. soccer circles is that a lot of players fall through the cracks of the club system for economic reasons. High school soccer, though, is usually free.
Unfortunately, college coaches and other scouts rarely pay any attention, even though a couple of very successful players have emerged outside the top levels of club soccer. Sofia Huerta grew up in Boise, Idaho, and didn’t have an elite club nearby, but she has been a professional for many years and has made 32 appearances for the U.S. women’s team. Andy Najar moved to the USA from Honduras as a teen and made an impression in high school — fortunately for him, not far away from D.C. United and its academy program.
How many Huertas and Najars are being overlooked because coaches don’t scout high schools like their peers in football and basketball?
Pay The National Teams Less
Lost in the discussion of “equal pay” between the men’s and women’s national teams was the fact that the teams get a far greater share of World Cup prize money than their peers.
The collective bargaining agreements that brought an end to the women’s team’s pay dispute call for prize money to be split between the men’s and women’s teams no matter which teams earned it. The bonus split is a clever way of dealing with the fact that FIFA awards much more money to men’s World Cup teams than they do to women’s teams. This year, the U.S. men earned $16 million for reaching the round of 16. U.S. Soccer takes 20%, and the national teams get the other 80%, or $6.4 million per team.
Other federations take a far greater share. Players on the French national team typically get 30% of their country’s prize money, with the rest going to the federation, and that’s actually a higher percentage than many other teams’ players get.
In other words — while U.S. Soccer takes its prize money and pays the current players (most of whom are paid very well by their professional clubs) a handsome sum, other federations put that money back into their development programs so they can come back and beat everyone again.
The federation typically runs a modest surplus. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, the forecast presented at the winter general meeting showed a deficit on operating expenses that was barely canceled out by investment income. Thanks to the World Cup, the projection for fiscal year 2027 shows revenues jumping from $306 million to $397 million, but expenses are also soaring, and the federation expects another small deficit.
U.S. Soccer has stepped up with a few million dollars each year for grant programs. But taking another couple of million from World Cup prize money would help.
Have More Volunteers And Fewer Paid Coaches
If you spend some time combing through 990 forms for youth soccer clubs, you’ll find that the typical medium-to-big club spends roughly half of their money on coaches and staff. That’s not surprising. “Recreational” programs that charge a couple hundred dollars a year have many of the same expenses as “travel” teams — fields, referees, equipment, etc. Travel teams may get more experienced and more expensive referees, and they tend to spend a bit more on snazzy uniforms, but personnel costs account for a lot of the difference.
Will These Changes Bring Free Soccer To The USA?
Not quite.
Let’s say we use volunteer coaches and staff. We play fewer tournaments. We trim league fees. Maybe we can get each player’s annual cost down to $500.
Now let’s say U.S. Soccer carves out $15 million a year, which would be a massive strain on the budget, to pay players’ costs.
Divide 15 million by 500, and that’s 30,000 players who can be fully funded each year. That’s maybe 1% of youth soccer players. And again — this is after we’ve jettisoned thousands of paid coaches and trimmed costs.
But the notion that “the rest of the world” has free soccer is a false narrative in the first place. The goal isn’t “free.” The goal is “affordable.”
It’s attainable. But it will require some sacrifices that people may not be willing to make.
Will These Changes Bring Us A World Cup To The USA?
No. Not a men’s World Cup, anyway.
Other countries have more than a century of a thriving professional game. Soccer is their primary sport.
Population doesn’t determine everything. Large countries that focus on other sports, like China and India, are far less successful than the USA has been.
But shining a light on the cost barriers in youth soccer surely can only help.