MLS Founder Kevin Payne: “We haven’t been doing things right”

MLS has been spearheading the growth soccer in the United States, yet one of MLS’s founders, Kevin Payne, is less than thrilled with the progress.

The United States has seen a massive growth in soccer’s popularity over the past two decades, and no one man has had a bigger impact on its growth than one of the founding members of MLS and CEO of US Club Soccer, Kevin Payne.

Payne is using US Club soccer to further develop and promote the growth of United States soccer from within, but that is not an easy job when there are numerous internal obstacles involved, and the US soccer mogul took some time to speak with MLS Multiplex about US Club Soccer, it’s competing organizations, how they impact one another and one particularly exciting development with Payne’s organization and La Liga.

US Club Soccer is one of many youth affiliated organization within the United States Soccer Federation, and as none of them have any affiliation with one another other than the overlying and highly political federation, Payne noted that there was more of a competition than a camaraderie amongst these various entities.

“It can me messy sometimes but it creates dynamism. We have had some antagonism between federation and youth levels.” However, despite all of that, it’s not all bad news. “Competition makes people do a better job.”

He went on to note that, while there are numerous competing voices, they aim to speak with one unified voice from the youth perspective. Part of that comes from the youth level being full of ‘football people’ and not politicians.

More from MLS Multiplex

With this new partnership between US Club Soccer and La Liga, Payne said that one of the main objectives is to create a sharing system of information, which the Spanish footballing powerhouse is helping scale. That way information is more accessible to youth development around the nation. But the partnership goes much deeper than that.

“La Liga came to us, as they were interested in expanding their brand. They are trying to introduce themselves to other areas by providing a service.” He went on to explain that La Liga have a soccer knowledge that has proven to be successful and they are sharing that knowledge with China and the Middle East, and they have now taken an interest in the United States, which, Payne noted, is more than any league has done, particularly the Premier League, who have shown no interest in the United States whatsoever.

“They came to the United States wanting to help. We wanted help creating an additional tool to improve coaching at the player development level. They are the best at that, of any league.” He summed it up by saying that the goal of the partnership is to “train trainers how to train”, which he likened to what Iceland has been doing with their growth and emergence into the world soccer spectrum.

Payne was critical of soccer in the United States as it is, declining to call what we have seen with United States soccer as ‘growth’. “We haven’t been doing things right,” he said. “We must recognize our own shortcomings.”

He highlighted how the United States inability to produce, not necessarily world class talents, but viable international talents is inexcusable when the nation’s resources are so plain to see. With the population that the United States has, there is a wealth of young talent, equal to that of almost all of Europe combined, and yet it is the US that is always coming out inadequate.

Another major part of the problem with the prospect of American athletes playing soccer is that they don’t see a comfortable living inside of what MLS or domestic leagues can offer, which is where most United States soccer players end up. There is a gross lopsidedness between those foreign stars, a-la Frank Lampard, who make more than entire MLS teams, and the average foot soldier on the pitch. Nothing depicts that clearer than at NYCFC, where Frank Lampard makes $6 million a year and Tommy McNamara is making $73,000. Yet it is the homegrown McNamara that has had a far bigger impact in his two years at the club than Lampard.