How the USMNT can win the 2046 World Cup in four easy steps
It’s all about politics
Christian Pulisic was tired. He had run too much. So he chose not to represent his country.
The US men’s national team subsequently lost friendlies to Turkey 2-1 and to Switzerland, the score better left unreported. These were tune-up games for the ongoing Gold Cup, the premier international competition for North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Captain America’s team turned out to be a lemon.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection also made it known last week that they’d be on watch at FIFA’s Club World Cup. The Trump administration’s travel ban had already imperiled Haiti’s participation in the Gold Cup. What the travel ban means for Iran, one of the first qualifiers for next summer’s World Cup, is anyone's guess, including the president’s, whose logic and coherence and eloquence make his predecessor look like Plato.
Such is the state of American soccer. On one hand, there’s a white, conventionally handsome man gaslighting the public to maintain his superstar status. “To question my commitment, especially to the national team, in my opinion that’s way out of line,” Pusilic said, days after he didn’t commit to the national team.
On the other, there’s institutions making pyrrhic tradeoffs in service to power. The USMNT will make a deep run in the World Cup without holding its best player to account, right? Tolerating racism and fascism isn’t going to ruin FIFA’s American dreams, right? In soccer in the US, there aren’t morals or values or goals. There are only transactions.
Greatness is rarely achieved without an organizing principle that is rooted in humanity. Sustained greatness is impossible without it. Even Jamie Dimon knows that. JPMorgan Chase’s stated purpose isn’t “to make more money than God.” It is to “make dreams possible,” and the values of service, heart, curiosity, courage, and excellence are meant to guide that purpose.
What is the purpose of US Soccer, the sport’s governing body here? What are its values? What is it trying to achieve on the men’s side? The USMNT want a strong showing in the North American-hosted 2026 World Cup. But what’s a “strong showing” to us Americans? A multinational finance corporation has more moral clarity than American soccer.
This is a shame for us non-rich people, for fandom isn’t transactional. Roger Angell put it best:
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.
Considering the enormous wealth, large population, and sports culture in the US, American men should be some of the best soccer players in the world and they should be supplying us sports fans with some of our greatest memories. They are not, and things aren’t looking promising for the World Cup. So I’ve written it off and am focused on winning the 2046 World Cup.
The next 21 years will turn over a generation of players. If we implement the four reforms discussed below, then today’s preschoolers will be our greatest generation. They’ll even live in a democracy if they’re lucky.
1. Open the borders
Accept all the asylum seekers. Establish pathways to citizenship for undocumented residents. Make legal immigration and earning citizenship easier. And quit with the military cosplay along the US-Mexico border.
The social, economic, and demographic benefits of immigration hardly need to be reiterated, but I’ll say that immigrants are basically the only reason why the US isn’t a shrinking and aging economic has-been. It’s a numbers game. A growing population will boost the economy, giving the US the resources needed to compete on the world stage, and the more immigrants we accept and naturalize, the more talent we imbue in our society.
When it comes to soccer, immigration is also strategic. Almost any country on earth cares about soccer more than we do, and by accepting more immigrants we become better at the game by osmosis. As young immigrants become citizens, they could then ascend to the highest rungs of the US soccer ladder. They’ll be the stars of the 2046 World Cup.
Pulisic was able to pull out of USMNT duty this summer, with the assurance he’d be in the squad for the World Cup, because there’s no competition for his spot. There is no one to challenge him for minutes, no one behind him forcing him to play. I’d compare Pulisic, the subject of a nine-part Paramount+ documentary, to 2005-06 Vince Young, a singular superstar carrying an otherwise solid Texas roster, except Vince Young actually, you know, showed up. There needs to be more competition in the elite ranks of US soccer and immigrants are an integral part of realizing that.
This is not to say the USMNT roster is not diverse right now. It is. The problem, though, is the quality at the highest level is comparatively low. The soccer system here isn’t developing enough elite talent (but more on that later). US Soccer simply needs as much input—talented youth entering the soccer system—to help with the ideal output: a competitive senior national team. The USMNT has won the Gold Cup only twice since 2013, and only twice in World Cup history, in the inaugural tournament in 1930 and in 2002, have the American men advanced past the round of sixteen. The USMNT has qualified for just eleven of the 21 World Cups played to date.
Former US soccer star Alexei Lalas recently blamed the USMNT’s struggles on diversity, and it is incredibly stupid.
The German men’s national team is diverse. They won the 2014 World Cup.
France’s is diverse. They won the 2018 World Cup and made the 2022 final and Kylian Mbappé, their best player—perhaps the best player in the world—is of Cameroonian and Algerian descent.
England’s is diverse. They went to the finals of the 2024 Euros, where they lost to Spain. Nico Williams, a child of Ghanaian refugees, scored for the winning side.
Immigration doesn’t guarantee success, of course, but it is the baseline for it. Pulling up the ladder behind us is accepting stagnation, even atrophy. An argument against immigration is an argument for mediocrity.
2. Invest in social programs
Provide socialized medical care for all. Build affordable housing and offer low-cost childcare for everyone who needs it. Improve and expand public transit. Etc, etc.
These investments are great for many reasons, including helping immigrants achieve stability in the US and providing a high standard of living for all residents, but basic needs being provided affordably (or for free) would chip away at the rotten foundation of American soccer: the youth pay-to-play system.
For San Diego Magazine, I wrote a puff piece about Surf Soccer, one of the premier youth soccer clubs in the country, but a better story would have been about the astounding cost of participating in youth club soccer and the demands it puts on young bodies.
To become a professional soccer player from America, a child must pay thousands of dollars per year for a place at a club. That money funds participation in showcases and tournaments, travel expenses not included, in which the kids play as many as four games over a weekend. The incentive for the clubs, then, isn’t to develop the player or even to protect the players’ health and safety. It’s to get as many kids to participate in as many games as possible. It’s the most American thing ever to have a youth soccer system in which the youth are besides the point.
In contrast, clubs outside of the US pay for the players' development. It’s considered an investment. If a club can sell a teenager to another club, then the costs of that player’s development are recouped—thanks for playing, have a great life. If they can sell a player for tens of millions, then they’ve paid for the club's expenses for years and get the prestige of developing an elite talent.
Take Jude Bellingham, one of the world’s great midfielders. Bellingham joined Birmingham City as a seven-year-old, then debuted for the senior team at just sixteen. His family didn’t pay Birmingham City for that privilege. That’d be ridiculous. But that investment by Birmingham City allowed the club to be the beneficiary of the £25 million transfer fee paid by Borussia Dortmund in 2020. Bellingham later went to Real Madrid, and in the 2024 Euros his stoppage-time bicycle kick changed my life.
We need to reform the pay-to-play system in the US, and that’s discussed below, but in the meantime we need to make life more affordable so that every interested and talented kid can get a chance to fulfill their soccer dreams. I’ve heard many times something to the effect of “If we could only get the kids playing [football/basketball/baseball] to play soccer…” Newsflash! No one has money to travel to a weekend-long club showcase in North Carolina or Arizona after paying for rent and healthcare and gas and car insurance and groceries and childcare.
Providing people opportunities in soccer is synonymous with providing people with their basic needs.
3. Implement (or impose) promotion and relegation
Banish pay-to-play youth soccer and break up MLS’s monopoly.
In my view, there are three distinct systems in American soccer: pay-to-pay youth soccer, the official professional pyramid sanctioned by US Soccer that includes the burgeoning USL, and MLS, such that a single league can be its own system. They are not linked through promotion and relegation and it is bad for soccer in the US.
I’ve written many times about how the closed league structure of MLS makes it permanently mediocre, boring, and pointless. The USL is fighting to compete with MLS, but the former is locked out of the largest soccer markets. And youth club teams can exploit young players because there is no movement among clubs in the US. They can’t make money besides raiding parents’ 401(k)s.
If Surf Soccer had a mechanism to ascend up the pyramid and in turn make money through attendance, television, sponsorships, and so on, then they’d be incentivized to invest in the youth, as clubs throughout the world are. We’d finally have a system that prioritizes development and competition, which are essential ingredients to winning the 2046 World Cup.
4. Demand excellence and rediscover ambition
Strive for greatness.
One of the great sociological mysteries is how the United States went so quickly from being the most innovative and ambitious society on earth to being a country full of small-minded complainers.
Exhibit A: As the Trump administration was disappearing dishwashers and pizza cooks in San Diego, homeowners were organizing in opposition to 450-square-foot backyard homes.
Exhibit B: When a friend recently asked what train he can take from San Diego to San Francisco, I laughed in his face. Us Americans wouldn’t know what a train was if a delayed, diesel-powered Amtrak hit us in the face.
Blaming everything on immigrants is pathetic. Protesting more homes for people is pathetic. Being wedded to car culture while the rest of the world is expanding high-speed rail and public transit is pathetic.
Similarly, the USMNT hoping for a good showing in the 2026 World Cup is embarrassing. The adults in charge of American soccer being afraid of competition is embarrassing. Pusilic, the greatest men’s American player ever, not wanting to play for his country because his ankles are sore is embarrassing.
American greatness was never based on pompousness and it was certainly not based on race. It was based on investment—in people, in infrastructure, in institutions, in rights and liberties. Investment in these is what made us proud, what made us American. We will win the 2046 World Cup if we remember that.
I very much like your idea for turning "travel-team" soccer into something that pays the families instead of vice-versa. I feel also that the Icelandic concept of providing actually good soccer education to kids is worth exploring also. If US kids' teams' coaches actually taught the sport in a way that made the players better, that would be a good start.
Hey, you’re not a sportswriter. You’re running for president—or you should! Cue the song, “At Last”—a vision forward.