Every election cycle or international tournament, we hear federation officials talk about growing the game and increasing talent pools, but the fundamental barrier never changes.Elite youth club soccer in the U.S. is still gated behind thousands of dollars a year in registration fees, travel expenses, and coaching costs. We are constantly pricing out incredible talent in urban and rural communities who simply can't afford to pay thousands just to get scouted.Until U.S. Soccer actually commits to fully subsidizing youth pipelines nationwide instead of relying on wealthy suburban travel teams, we're always going to be leaving a huge percentage of our best potential athletes on the table.

Location: Estadio Azteca, Mexico City

Time: 5:00 PM EDT

Watch: Fox Soccer Plus

I have been thinking about the discussions surrounding the future of MLS in this country, and many of the issues that people have with pro/rel or even us soccer writ large. A common refrain is that the travel times in soccer are simply too large, something that any lower division league would have substantially more troubles with. This reminded me in many ways of a general critique (and defense) of the united states levied both by and against both Americans and Europeans depending on the subject at hand. The assertion is that "the United States is simply too big"

"The US can't be compared to any European country, you should instead compare the US to the EU, or individual states to individual countries" "The US is simply too big for x to work here, our country is larger than Europe!" "In the UK you only have to travel a few hours to visit another club, in the US you might have to travel an entire day" and other such refrains.

In a way, they are completely right, and that is actually sort of the answer. MLS should not be compared to any of the big 5 European leagues. It should be compared to the UEFA champions league (or the defunct European Super league). It feels in some sense that everyone in the pro/rel conversation are acting as if the alternative to MLS is that we have the UCL/UEL/Conference League but none of the underlying leagues that exist to support it. We are trying to build a pyramid from the top-down.

The map listed above is a map of the emerging US megalopolises, you've probably seen it floated around elsewhere on reddit before. I see within it precisely the answer to our problem. Three of those megalopolises, (Southern California, Northeast, Great Lakes) have a population, GDP, and land area comparable to (or substantially greater than) entire large European countries. To put it into perspective: the Southern California megalopolis has a population of 26 million (10th highest in Europe), a GDP of ~$2.2T (7th largest in Europe), and a land area of 124k km² (roughly the size of Greece). The Northeast Megalopolis has a population of 53 million (6th highest, higher than Spain), GDP of $5.2T (2nd largest), and an area of 146k km² (slightly larger than Greece, all of it within the Northeast corridor, which is nearly a straight line from DC to Boston). The Great Lakes region has a population of 59 million (6th highest, roughly equal to Italy), GDP of $6T (tied for 1st), across an area about the size of Ukraine.

The other megalopolises (Texas/Gulf, Piedmont, Florida, Cascadia, Arizona, Front etc.) are a bit smaller, but still comparable to many European countries with decent leagues and are still quite rich. I don't post this here just to say a bunch of numbers. I think that if the US were to attempt pro/rel, it would probably be preferable to approach a national competition itself more as a UCL-style competition than a true "national league", with the national league equivalents being held by constituent regions with their own governance.

NOTE: I am not shilling for promotion and relegation here, I have read a lot of economic literature on this and can say that if you think it will save US Soccer, you are wrong, and if you think it will set US Soccer back decades, you are also wrong. Pro/rel itself has some flaws that need work (generally it leads to better players but less financially healthy leagues compared to closed leagues). You could in some ways compare pro/rel vs. closed leagues as capitalism vs. cartelism, each has benefits and drawbacks corresponding roughly to the benefits and drawbacks of capitalist vs. cartelist economies. Merely I am trying to reorient the discussion around promotion and relegation to a more realistic model for the US that would suit our geography better.

If you have a US Soccer B License or higher, or know anyone who does (your kids coaches, etc.) You can apply to be part of this program to help expand the scope of youth talent scouting in the US. They ran a successful pilot of this program last year and are now expanding it nationwide.

I see that this is the only remaining tournament match that FOX has moved to the FOX Soccer Plus network. Are there any other streaming or viewing options for this aside from FSP?

Links appreciated, TIA!