Can ‘slow progress’ lead the United States to produce a top-20 player in the world?

The US men’s national team roster for the 2026 World Cup will be unveiled on Tuesday, and according to head coach Mauricio Pochettino, the team is suffering from a talent deficit.

“We are USA,” he said after a 2-0 loss to Portugal in March, which followed a 5-2 loss to Belgium three days earlier. “And we are competing against Belgium, Portugal. I think for sure Belgium and Portugal have in the top 100 players, few or some players playing in that top 100. I think we don’t have [that].”

Some could argue that there are a few US players that could crack that list, but it definitely doesn’t feature a critical mass, or any near the top of it. The Guardian spoke to several current as well as former coaches, academy directors and executives about why.

We can start from a point of agreement: the pool is getting better.

“I think we’re getting close to being a league or a country that produces a top-50 player,” said Pablo Mastroeni, Real Salt Lake manager and former USMNT midfielder.

“I think there’s no question that every year there’s more and more good players. Are there more exceptional players? That’s what everybody’s looking for,” said former USMNT midfielder Tab Ramos, who served as U-20 national team head coach, an assistant on Jürgen Klinsmann’s USMNT staff and US Soccer youth technical director.

“[The ’94 World Cup squad] was nice … but those players were nowhere near the top,” said San Jose Earthquakes academy director and the club’s former manager Luchi Gonzalez, who led the academy then first team of FC Dallas and served as an assistant on Gregg Berhalter’s USMNT staff. “And now we’ve got players in the top 200 maybe, or top 300, so we’ve made progress but it’s slow progress. We got to be realistic that it’s going to continue to be slow progress.”

The challenge, then, is how slow progress plays in a global scene where, unlike the US women’s national team, the American men are chasing the standard rather than setting it, aiming for a constantly moving target.

“It’s not a time trial, and to show improvement, you’ve got to be accelerating faster than other players around the world,” said Sunil Gulati, the former president of US Soccer.

“Certainly, in a lot of ways, we’ve made strides,” said former USMNT manager Bob Bradley. Bradley coached in college soccer, MLS and abroad, where he became the first American to lead a Premier League team. “But when you’re stacking up players against the best players in the world, the best clubs in the world, what happens from a young age in so many of the traditional soccer countries, we’re still playing catch up.”

Indeed, the US has only had a functional men’s league for the last 30 years of its modern history. And that league, MLS, has only recently started to truly prioritize player development. US Soccer initially led that effort through its Development Academy system, which began in 2007 and folded in 2020. MLS took control of the boys pipeline later that year by launching MLS Next, which now has more than 260 clubs. In 2022 MLS launched Next Pro, its own lower division, separating its reserve teams from the United Soccer League ecosystem.

“In the top level countries around the world, it is the domestic leagues that play a big role in player development. MLS, when it started, wasn’t really in a position to do that other than the players who were playing in first-team games,” Gulati said. “That’s changed dramatically.”

As MLS’s first-ever signing, Ramos has seen the league grow from 10 teams playing in American football stadiums to a 30-team competition in which every team operates and funds their own academy structure, with many playing in their own facilities.

“We couldn’t necessarily ask any more of MLS, and where MLS has come to and what they’ve done over the last 30 years,” Ramos said. “So at the top level, I think we’ve accomplished a lot more than likely we thought we could.”

When he was 11 years old, Ramos and his family immigrated to the US from Uruguay, one of only eight countries to win the men’s World Cup. The head start – the sheer, uninterrupted history – top-flight soccer had there goes hand-in-hand with another obvious ingredient fuelling their advantage.

“We just don’t have a soccer culture in this country,” Ramos said. “And in the last 30 years, that hasn’t really improved that much.”

He highlighted how the attention and resources of a community can revolve around their high school football games, and not just under Friday night lights in Texas at a stadium that could cost more than $50m, but even where he lives in southern New Jersey. His daughter attends the games with her dance team, which draws him there too. He’s not sure he witnessed the home team score a touchdown all season, but culturally, by default, the town still turned out to support them better than the men’s soccer team who won their conference.

In addition to allocation of resources, the clear consequence of the crowded American sports landscape is soccer losing its top athletes altogether or for too long during the precious window for development.

Mastroeni said he has marveled at the athleticism of the French national team, most of whom he felt could’ve been college football players. Gonzalez believes if there wasn’t the competition with other sports and all male youth athletes were funneled towards soccer the result would be at least 10 players in the top 50. But he also cautioned that it’s about more than participation numbers, which actually compare favorably to the countries the US is chasing.

“It’s the culture of the game. It’s not there, living the game, it’s not the majority [of people] here,” Gonzalez said. “Even good talent and good players, they’re not in survival [mode], it’s not their dream to play in a Champions League. Some kids, it is, and it will be a reality, like Christian [Pulisic]. With time, you’re going to see more of them.”

Acknowledging soccer may not ever be “our game” but just one among others, he’s still optimistic the US will produce multiple top-20 players in his lifetime. Bullish about the prospects born in 2008 and 2009 now breaking through at the professional level – including Red Bull homegrowns Adri Mehmeti and Julian Hall, Philadelphia Union and Manchester City-bound Cavan Sullivan and Borussia Dortmund’s Mathis Albert – Red Bull New York academy director Sean McCafferty has “no doubt” an American player will be regarded as top-50 soon. Ramos thinks a top 20-30 player developed in the US “could come anytime” but because of their passion, upbringing and environment rather than some new initiative.

“[Argentina’s way is] the players playing on their own, is the players playing everywhere,” Ramos said. “It’s happened organically.”

To Bradley, the most important stage of youth development starts before a child has even joined a team.

“How many kids grow up in a house where the ball is there – or a small ball, or a tennis ball – and where, in some ways, they are introduced to all parts or some parts of the game when they’re little? To develop a passion, to make sure that the foundation for being good with the ball is all there,” he said.

Indeed, perhaps the three best prospects so far of the academy era in the US – Pulisic, Giovanni Reyna and now Sullivan – were all raised by parents who both played soccer at a collegiate level or higher. While an increasing percentage of American parents understand the sport, Gonzalez points to Denmark, where publicly funded or professional academies provide grassroots programming.