The AP explores one important facet of why US soccer, even with an eager and enormous population at its disposal, struggles to produce world beaters.
In Argentina, one of the greatest honors for a local soccer club might be to produce a player who moves to an even bigger club, then maybe becomes part of the country’s storied national team. In the United States, if a player like that walked into a local soccer program, it would surprise nobody if that program tried to eke every penny out of the player’s parents before showing him or her off to the world.
Therein lies one of the crucial differences between a nation of 46 million that plays Spain on Sunday for a fourth World Cup title and another with more than seven times the population that has never sniffed that kind of success.