АНУ-ын хөлбөмбөгийн холбоо хүүхэд, өсвөр үеийнхний системийг шинэчлэх цогц төлөвлөгөөг боловсруулжээ

The U.S. Soccer Federation’s plan to reform youth soccer across America began to take shape well before the 2026 World Cup reminded everyone that reform is necessary.

It has been in motion, albeit in early stages, for months — before the U.S. men’s national team flopped against Belgium, before the “pay-to-play” system became a subject of furious debate, before Mauricio Pochettino returned to the USMNT with “youth soccer” as part of his supplementary mandate.

Dan Helfrich, U.S. Soccer’s chief operating officer, followed the post-World Cup discourse, and he acknowledges: “We will not be shy in agreeing with what appears to be a widespread consensus that our sport is not as affordable as it needs to be to maximize access to the sport.”

Making it more affordable, though, and curing the ills that have plagued soccer here in the U.S., are devilishly complicated.

“Youth soccer (comprises) many distinct but interrelated dimensions,” Helfrich told The Athletic. “And to create a plan to challenge the current system and build a new one, you need to understand all of those dimensions. … And then you piece together solutions that attack them.”

Cost, he explained, is one of four “dimensions” that U.S. Soccer is trying to “attack.” The others they’ve identified are “alignment,” “coaching,” and “space” or “infrastructure.”

Helfrich, speaking from a New York hotel on the eve of last month’s World Cup final, then outlined each dimension and some proposed solutions. He also clarified: “U.S. Soccer, the organization, cannot be the only party coming up with the solutions for the future of the sport in America. We need to be the instigator of conversations that include a very wide variety of stakeholders that have a very wide variety of opinions.”

Those differing opinions and incentives are part of why youth soccer reform has proven so difficult for decades. The apparent impossibility of consensus has led to inertia. And without interventions, the so-called “soccer wars” — ruthless competition for market share among youth leagues (and their affiliate clubs) — have arguably worsened. Costs have spiraled out of control.

U.S. Soccer, though, is not shying away from those competing perspectives; it has tried to bring them all into the same room and conversation. “I view that as essential to problem-solving,” Helfrich said. “Debate and disagreement amongst interested people is an asset, as opposed to a liability, when you’re trying to rebuild systems.”

And that, to be clear, is what they are trying to do — rebuild.

“We are not seeking to make the current system more affordable,” Helfrich said at a mid-July roundtable with reporters. “We’re trying to create a new system that then we make highly affordable.”

He told The Athletic that he sees the effort “as the most important, legacy-defining project that we’re undertaking.”

And then he detailed how they’re undertaking it.

What could a new U.S. youth soccer system look like?

Alignment, or a lack thereof, is the structural flaw that underpins so many of American youth soccer’s barriers and inefficiencies. The landscape is littered with leagues and sanctioning organizations that compete for kids and prestige. They preach different philosophies. Their registration systems, as Helfrich says, are “disconnected.”

The fragmentation, as many call it, often forces clubs and their kids to travel across county and state lines for games, because they can’t or don’t play local clubs who belong to a competing league.

“The lack of alignment,” Helfrich said, “means problems in talent identification, it means increases in cost, and it means confusion for parents and families. So, alignment is the first variable you have to attack.”

To attack it, U.S. Soccer has led what Helfrich calls “a bunch of well-designed, thoughtful multilateral conversations.” During the USMNT’s pre-World Cup camp, for example, the federation hosted representatives from youth soccer state associations, professional leagues and other organizations for a two-day summit at its new national training center in Georgia. All of those stakeholders, Helfrich said, “actually were in the same room talking about the issues we need to tackle together.”

U.S. Soccer leaders have also worked with FIFA’s technical development group. And they “are in the process of building a future youth soccer vision and structure document that is a byproduct of those conversations,” Helfrich said. They’ll circulate a draft for feedback, then finalize “a blueprint for a set of changes that need to take place going forward.” Helfrich, who left a decades-long career at Deloitte to join U.S. Soccer at the start of 2026, expects all of that to happen “in the next few months.”

For now, there is still disagreement on details. Specifics of a proposed solution must be hashed out among youth soccer administrators who’ve historically been unable to hash out anything sweeping and impactful.

“But we have vast majority on board with the direction of travel,” Helfrich said.

So, where are they heading? Helfrich outlined a reconfigured landscape where “the structure of competitive soccer between the ages of 11 and 15 has a different, more joined-up, more local and regional organization to it.”

That, and less national competition, “then significantly reduces what you recently called ‘soccer tourism,’” Helfrich explained. “It should significantly reduce the volume of travel required to grow and develop,” which would cut down costs, because travel has been the primary driver of skyrocketing costs for families in pre-teen and early-teenage years.

He also envisioned building “a framework” for high-potential players at those ages to “get together and get coaching on a recurring basis” for free — “regardless of what league they play for, or regardless of whether they’re in an MLS academy or an ECNL club or an unaffiliated club.”

How, exactly, would that regular training be free? After all, coaches, equipment, field space and administration all cost money. As U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson said last month, “ultimately, ‘free’ is paid by someone.”

But there are more “someones” eager to and able to pay than ever before. The system that Helfrich described could be funded by U.S. Soccer, whose annual revenue has soared past $300 million; it also could be funded by sponsors, donors or others.

“Governments need to step up,” Batson said of the plan to fund reform generally. “Professional clubs will continue to scale their investment. Of course, our corporate partners and media partners will need to step up in ways that allow us to do this. And then, of course, we as U.S. Soccer, in working with FIFA, need to set the right standards so that the money is being spent most effectively.”

The upshot is that a newly-aligned system, subsidized by some of this money, would make the pathway to elite soccer clearer and more accessible.

It would also help scouts. There could be “a nationally connected Talent ID system, where one player has one ID that follows them no matter what league, geography or competition they’re competing in,” Helfrich said. “Then I can have video, and scouting, and perspective on those players that all the right people can see, including those that have the responsibility to build youth national teams.”

It is far from a silver bullet, and, to be clear, far from fruition. But it’s what Helfrich means when he talks about “challenging dimensions of the system that create economic benefit to some of the participants but don’t create soccer benefits to the whole”; and when he envisions building “a profoundly different system.”

Attacking the accessibility, coaching issues

Those pre-teen years are when costs typically jump from hundreds of dollars to thousands; it’s competitive travel soccer, specifically — the bridge between recreational play and MLS academies, which are free — that is the least accessible.

But the earlier years are equally important, if not more so, developmentally. “In football, you need to start very young,” Arsene Wenger, the longtime Arsenal coach who now serves as FIFA’s chief of global football development, said at the July roundtable alongside Batson and Helfrich. “Because feet demand to be educated at 5, 6, 7 years old.”

For kids at those ages, Helfrich noted, “there are already places in every community that are free or highly affordable.” Those places: schools, as well as parks and recreation departments.

The problem, he and U.S. Soccer know, is that “in those places, soccer is inconsistently programmed.” So, they are doing what they can to change that.

Earlier this year, in partnership with Bank of America, the federation launched its long-awaited Soccer in Schools initiative, a multi-faceted campaign “to make soccer accessible to every school across the country by 2030.”

That, Helfrich said, is “the first way you attack cost (problems).” The idea “is to actually integrate the sport into environments that are already set up to create access to sport.”

He and Batson have mentioned how basketball, a sport much more ingrained in American culture, is more accessible at public schools. “That’s taxpayer money making basketball accessible,” Batson said.

They want more of that money to fund the introduction of soccer to millions of kids. How?

“You’re gonna get mayors and school superintendents and corporate partners to believe that soccer’s a force for good, and you’re gonna convince them to change the programming,” Helfrich said. “And when you do that, you have a better chance of reaching players who don’t get introduced to the sport in their community. And as a result, you’ve increased the pool of potential superstars to emerge 15 years later. So, I would not underestimate the value of the start of the journey as an important part.”

Two children, one in an Inter Miami kit, the other in a USMNT one, play in the street during a World Cup watch party in Burbank, Calif. (Blake Fagan / AFP / Getty Images)

They will also need to build a bridge between schools and competitive clubs. Currently, those two systems are almost entirely disconnected. For many kids from underprivileged or immigrant backgrounds, the current path is also blocked by non-financial barriers — such as a parent’s time or culture — and it’s unclear how much U.S. Soccer’s plan would address those oft-overlooked obstacles.

There is also a coaching shortage. “We are well short of quality and volume of coaches required to shepherd the development of our players at all ages,” Helfrich acknowledged. The best ones migrate to older ages, where they can make more money, leaving those crucial younger age groups without educated instructors.

That’s why coaching is another one of the four “dimensions” to “attack.” The plan?

“Look, we have lots of things that we’re pursuing,” Helfrich said. To illustrate one example, he mentioned that of the tens of thousands of college soccer players across the U.S., “very few” go into coaching. So, he asked: “Can you create, in concert with college programs, easy access to licensing? To job placement?” He mentioned learning from Teach For America or the Peace Corps, and creating a program that serves as “a bridge from college to the professional workforce to get motivated, talented young coaches into communities they otherwise wouldn’t get to.”

Many of the ideas, for coaching and the other dimensions, are still in development. The fruits, from a USMNT perspective, are years if not decades away — if they ever materialize at all.

This is not the first time that soccer executives have drawn up grand plans for reform. Many previous plans have proven unfeasible.

“The difference is that the plan that we have is clearer, more comprehensive, and has more people at the table,” Helfrich argued. “And therefore what we want to be judged for is how well we execute the plan going forward.”

Felipe Cardenas contributed reporting to this story.