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A ‘broken’ system, nascent culture: Why the U.S. has never had a world-class men’s soccer star

By Henry Bushnell

June 9, 2026 Updated<br>Share article

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Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app.<br>Walk through the halls of American soccer’s largest convention, weaving through tracksuited coaches and egos, and you’ll hear buzzword after buzzword, opinion after opinion on why the United States has never produced a world-class men’s soccer player.<br>Advertisement

You’ll hear about philosophies and methodologies, about human and player development, about pathways and pyramids. You’ll hear about the cost of playing soccer in America, and dozens of other ills that do contribute to the dearth of U.S. stars among the world’s top 50.<br>But the answer, many believe, to the question that will burn as the 2026 World Cup begins — why has the U.S., the planet’s richest and most successful sporting nation, never had a male soccer superstar? — boils down to one word.<br>Culture.<br>“This is a sport that is driven by culture,” says Tom Byer, a youth development guru who helped transform Japanese soccer.<br>“Until we, as a nation, adopt a more consistent soccer culture,” says John Hackworth, who’s coached for decades at various levels in the U.S., “we will always be faced with more challenges than our counterparts around the world.”<br>Some believe the adoption is happening, slowly. But America’s belated embrace of soccer, decades after it became the dominant sport in Europe and Latin America, created handicaps that no amount of money, facilities or coaching education can fully unwind.<br>And in the absence of culture, capitalism took hold. The American youth soccer system sprouted around economic opportunity and competition rather than around the needs or wants of kids who, someday, could become the first true superstar.

Youth soccer remains popular in the U.S. Harnessing the youth development system, however, remains a daunting task (Adam Hagy / ISI Photos / USSF / Getty Images)

“Irrespective of who I’ve spoken to, at whatever level of the game,” then-U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker told The Athletic earlier this year, “everybody agrees that the system is broken.”<br>Those are the prevailing reasons that the U.S. men’s national team, according to its own head coach and just about any other objective index, does not even have a top-100 player in global soccer in 2026. Some would argue luck and random chance also play a role; but randomness does not explain why around 80 percent of those top 100 players come from only 10 countries: the eight who’ve won the men’s World Cup in its century of existence, plus the Netherlands and Portugal.<br>Cultures and systems explain that.<br>Advertisement

They are the common threads that run through nearly every male superstar in soccer’s modern era. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal were all born with supreme talent, of course. They were also born into cultures where soccer was everywhere. They developed addictions to the ball. They played with it whenever and wherever they could. They then progressed to clubs that didn’t make them pay exorbitant fees, where they could learn from erudite coaches. They trained with and played against similarly obsessed peers, who pushed them to maximize their natural abilities. They ascended, sharpening themselves against grown men as teens, in Spain, Portugal then England and France.<br>In other words, they had innate gifts; they also had circumstances that rarely exist in the U.S.

An early mastery<br>Messi grew up in Rosario, Argentina, and Mbappé in Bondy, a dense suburb of Paris, two cities where soccer courses through daily life. “Football is just different for us,” Mbappé once wrote. “It is essential. It is every day. It is like bread and water.”<br>Both were introduced to it at age 2 or 3. Messi remembers having a ball at his feet from the time he started walking, and playing with friends or family “all the time” at age 4. Mbappé, at 2, would toddle with a ball through the hallways of the amateur club where his dad coached. At 3, he got a toy truck for his birthday, but “I always left the car in a corner to go play football,” he recalled. “I just wanted the ball. To me, the ball was everything.”<br>That, of course, is far from the sole reason Mbappé became a world champion and $200 million forward as a teen. But the point is that there are millions of ball-addicted kids like him across France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, England, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, dozens of African countries, and so on.<br>Advertisement

Christian Pulisic, meanwhile, grew up in Hershey, Pa., “about as...