What's the youth path to the USMNT? How U.S. Soccer wants to widen it - USA Today

USA TODAY Sports spoke with the U.S. Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer about the state of the American youth game and the pipeline to the top following last summer’s World Cup. Since its Round of 16 finish, the USMNT has gone 4-0 in fall friendlies and plays next in the Concacaf Nations Leaguetwo-legged November quarterfinal series against Haiti. The USA has beenboosted by an influx of youth.

We explore how to create opportunities for every young soccer player so they can find their personal path.

Part II: How does the path to the USMNT work, and how can we widen it?

There are childhood moments to which we can point that define our sports careers.

For Ali Curtis, now president of MLS NEXT Pro, one of them came when he was about 9.

He was a top player at his age, and he tried out for a local team full of kids two years older than him.

He remembers being told he wasn’t going to make the team, as he was too small or too young.

“In your own mind, you're always probably a better player than you think you are,” he says, “but I thought I was one of the top players at the tryouts."

Before Curtis left the soccer complex, someone directed him toward another team in Livonia, Michigan, which was about 40 minutes away from where he lived. He joined the team, which connected him back to his age group but had a competitive environment.

“That was probably the most difficult moment that I had in my career or my soccer journey at the time,” he says. “But it happened to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I went and played for that team and was off to the races after that in terms of everything that happened in my youth soccer career and journey.”

When he made a regional team at around 14, Curtis was required to go on an international trip. But his mother said they couldn’t afford it.

Curtis, now 47, remembers his coaches finding a way to fund the trip, which cleared his pathway to a national team, and eventually, Major League Soccer, the league that began in 1996.

As U.S. Soccer seeks to widen its pool of potential players, would Curtis emerge on the national radar today?

His story covers at least two issues that are still rampant in youth soccer: high costs that limit access, and coaches' distorted eye toward players who may not be considered top-level on their teams but blossom later.

U.S. Soccer is working with its state associations to create a more unified system that will lower costs, provide more meaningful experiences and grow participation. Its officials say it’s only at the beginning of this process.

“There are many more people who can legitimately aspire to play professional men’s or women's soccer in the country than could even 15 years ago, a great asset for the growth of sport,” says Dan Helfrich, chief operating officer of the U.S. Soccer Federation. “And the existence of so many national and regional leagues and competitions that are different in the way they approach the game (and) the way they schedule makes navigating the sport for aspiring players and their parents harder and ultimately more expensive than it was previously and that it should be going forward.”

Curtis went on to play for a U17 national team, to which he said the primary avenue in the pre-Major League Soccer (MLS) era was pay-to-play, even within the Olympic Development Program (ODP).

ODP opportunities are offered today, but U.S. Soccer officials say there isn’t one distinct pathway that feeds up to either a men’s or women’s youth or senior national teams.

U.S. Soccer's formal talent identification processes begin at U14, Helfrich says, and Team USA fields teams that participate in informal and formal international competition beginning at under 15.

Players can enter Olympic Development Programs sooner held in their various states. Then there is an opportunity to be funneled into regional ODP teams that then can connect to national team scouts or college recruiters. 

USA TODAY Sports spoke to officials who run the ODP programs in two robust soccer states. In Arizona, players who go through a tryout process and a number of pool trainings over 3 to 4 months go to an event that has 21 state teams attend it. Georgia played against ODP teams from 10 states as well as MLS boys and girls academies last year.

Still, both states’ ODP programs reset each year and don’t ask players their club affiliations. While they take recommendations from coaches within their networks to help sort players, they also have open invites.

“One of the things that gets in the way is that the youth level is highly fragmented,” says Kostas Hatzikoutelis, Georgia’s technical director.  “There are clubs that are within 3 miles of each other that will not play each other. Because, if you win, you get to recruit my player. If I win, I get to recruit your player. Winning 10-0 when we're only chasing results doesn't really materialize in developing players.

“I think the soccer business is more of a primary driver of how to measure success, and I think that leads to results at all costs, wins no matter what, animosity instead of collaboration between clubs. The competition is unhealthy and toxic.”

About 2,000 boys and girls go through the process with approximately 800 selected to represent Georgia’s ODP. In Arizona, Jonathan Berzins, CEO of the Arizona Soccer Association, says about 1,000 players try out and 550-600 are placed in pools to compete for roster spots.

Both directors spoke of communicating the message of U.S. Soccer to cast a wider net on kids’ exposure and experience.

 “We know that players develop at very different paces both in their soccer development and in their physical development,” says Helfrich, the U.S. Soccer COO. “And we all have seen many of the best players at age 13 or 14 be far from the best players at 17 or 18, and we've seen examples of those who, at 13 or 14, look like you'd never see them on a college soccer field, and by 18 or 19, they're making a decision as to whether to take a Division I scholarship or turn professional.”

Hatzikoutelis puts it this way: “We don't care where you play. We don't care if you play in a rec program. So that's where I think the benefit of having this pathway, this talent ID pathway that is now gonna start opening doors. I think we're going to find kids that we've never even considered years ago.”

Players don’t try out for the national teams in the traditional sense. According to U.S. Soccer, they’ll get called into a specific national team camp by a coaching staff, but this is done in conjunction with their full-time clubs or college teams. 

At younger ages, U.S. Soccer’s has a Youth National Teams Under-14 Talent Identification Program.

Helfrich says U.S. Soccer has expanded its talent identifications significantly through video and technology analysis. The federation also has a talent reporting program that allows coaches to apply for and identify potential players, who could be invited to talent ID centers.

According to U.S. Soccer, talent reporters are a large avenue for initially scouting players.

Still, 11 of the 13 uncapped players on the most recent USMNT roster played in an MLS academy during their development. Helfrich says U.S. Soccer officials speak with MLS NEXT, Major League Soccer's youth platform, regularly to talk about players, environments and standards, but he leaves the door open, too, for national and state league associations to get involved.

“The player can be found regardless of opportunity,” says Berzins, Arizona Soccer’s CEO. “It doesn't matter, really, which organization they choose as long as it's right for them and the player feels like they're developing, they're growing as an individual, they still have a good shot of being identified because there's so many of those chances out there. Just continue to review what's best for your family. Look at all your options.

“There's so many organizations out there that do a wonderful job. Make sure you are reviewing and doing what's best for your family and asking those right questions that align with your family's values and what you're looking for your player.”

For example, most players enter one of the MLS academies, according to the league, around 12. They are fully funded, but they are intense.

“You're exposed to this professional environment where players of all ages exist, and then also there's a couple pro teams that also are there, so many of the talented players, they're exposed to a professional environment at a very early age,” says Curtis, who bridges the league’s youth programming to MLS first teams.

U.S. Soccer, though, needs to account for late developers, too.

“Just because you were in the program last year, it doesn't mean you would be in the program this year,” Georgia’s Hatzikoutelis says. “We have a better sense of who you are, of course, but we would like to see some growth and development. We want to see how the player matures.

“Right now I think we have a gap in identifying our number 9 (or striker). You put the biggest, fastest kid out front, and get the ball over the top, they beat everybody and they score. We’re  not developing that player to be next level. Because in a few years, everybody's going to start maturing and reach him athletically or her athletically.”

U.S. Soccer believes giving as many kids access to soccer as possible extends the national team’s talent base. In Arizona, where there were 56,000 registered players last year in the state association, Berzins says 82% of the association’s competitive population is concentrated in Phoenix Metro.

But he says he’s always trying to locate strong players in rural areas through his network.

“Is it recreational players that potentially can't afford to play in those competitive leagues?” says Berzins, who was an ODP coach more than two decades ago. “I think we do a good job now but there's always opportunities to continue to find that player, that diamond in the rough that potentially hasn't been located in the past. …

“Now a lot of those players could be identified via MLS or ECNL or GA (Girls Academy). But I think that gives opportunity to further players. You talk about that outlying player, if we can identify them, that's potentially a chance they wouldn't have gotten in 2004.”

Hatzikoutelis references the book “Outliers,” in which author Malcom Gladwell argues that people we view as extremely talented have also been given exceptional pathways to succeed. 

Youth hockey players in Canada, for example, have been traditionally sorted early and early developers who are bigger and stronger (and born six months or more earlier than other kids) have benefitted from better training.

“So many of us really want to focus on the top 1%, the players that go on,” he says. “And then you look at the other aspect of it: What about the rest of the game? … Be cognizant of the fact that there's this individual path these players are on. It's OK to be different. How do we not miss those players?”

In his program, Hatzikoutelis splits up kids who are born between January and June and July and December. In young players especially, he looks most at technical ability and sound decision making.

“We are fantastic here in the U.S. at developing robots,” he says. “We put these players in the box, we provide the situation where they have to have to perform a certain way. The reality is proper development of creative players has to allow them to be autonomous and make decisions on the field. We are very much scripted like the American football game: Call in plays, the coach screams things, and that’s what you do. Well, the top players in the world, they march to their own beat. They have their own music sheet.

“And the ability to be creative and make decisions has to be provided in an environment that we can create. That's why I like the player development path that I own and also the coach development because I think they're connected. We have to work with our coaches to allow that to happen.”

He says his program runs in $400 range for the whole year as the training fee. Its similarly low cost in Arizona, Berzins says, compared to the clubs where players often come from.

There is a similar ideal behind a reimagined U.S. Soccer system where organizations like U.S. Club Soccer and U.S. Youth Soccer and ODP can work together to create better training and access that ultimately lifts up the national teams.

“I would say our vision for the future includes more frequent opportunities in connection with local club teams, local colleges, local professional teams, to bring high potential players, together more often,” says Helfrich, U.S. Soccer’s CEO. “The more that we can put high potential players in environments where they can be seen, the better. The more accessible and affordable those opportunities are, the better. And the less it's about trying out for a team, and more about opportunities to drop in and be seen, the lower the pressure is gonna be, and the more players we're gonna see.”

Part 3 coming in November: How does the women’s path forward differ from the men’s?

Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He played baseball in high school, rowed in college and spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents to a college and high school baseball player. For his past columns, click here.

Order his "Youth Sports Survival Guide" for athletes and parents here.

Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@usatoday.com.

We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. Our editorial recommendations are made independently of that compensation.