USMNT: Export the key to success

The USMNT are looking to develop players that can build a team that is capable of challenging on the world stage. To do that, exporting their talent is key.

The U.S. Men’s National Team have some catching up to do. While football has been played extensively throughout the world for more than a century, the sport is relatively new in America. As such, the players that play — and the overall standard of competition, by extension — do not compare to those in other countries, especially in South American and European countries.

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However, as the sport has exploded in growth in recent years, so has the standard of play. And the competitiveness of the national team has improved in turn, with the current crop of young players as impressive and globally competitive as any crop before it.

At present, the U.S. have a player worth more than $70 million, three emerging stars in the Bundesliga, each of them playing regularly, as well as several young stars breaking into starting XIs across Major League Soccer. It is a crop more impressive than ever before.

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But how can they make the step up and form a national team that is capable of consistently challenging at World Cups? How they can come together and compete with Mexico in the Gold Cup, to give the elite national teams a run for their money, and not just through defending for their lives and relying on a miraculous goalkeeping performance?

Well, it all starts with the quality of player and the domestic standard at which they are competing at. Take Brazil and Argentina as prime examples: these are nations with limited domestic games that do not rival the European leagues and yet have had untold success on the international stage in spite of that. This is the type of set-up that the USMNT will be hoping to one day emulate. The key to their success is the clubs that their players play for: they are not in Brazil or Argentina.

Per CIES, in 2019, no country had more exports in world football Brazil. 1600 Brazilians played in non-Brazilian leagues. The second-most exporting country in world football is France, the current world champions. And third is Argentina with 972.

In the 2018 World Cup, the 23-man Brazil squad featured only three players who played in Brazil, and two of those did not play a single minute in the entire tournament. Argentina, equally, only had two players from Argentinian clubs, Cristian Pavon and third-choice goalkeeper, Franco Armani. Even France, who boast far higher-level domestic league, only had nine of 23 players from Ligue 1.

If the USMNT want to compete with the best national teams in the world, they must embrace the exporting players across the globe. Placing their players in the highest-performing leagues in the world is how they will improve on an individual basis and subsequently aid the national team. Good news, then, that the USMNT exported 170 footballers in 2019 per the same study. That is fifth-most in the Americas behind Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay — you will notice that those four teams have been extremely successful over the past decade.

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For America to field a team that can compete internationally, they need to export players to the highest-performing clubs in world football. Christian Pulisic is the start. Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Josh Sargent are others. But much more must be done. Get that right, however, and you will see the standard of the USMNT improve drastically.

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