USMNT: Importance of playing the numbers with youth development

The USMNT are developing more prospective starters than ever before. They are playing the numbers game with youth development, and that is vital.

On Monday, mlssoccer.com’s Matt Doyle unleashed a massive piece on the best prospects and players from the many youth U.S. Men’s National Teams, stretching all the way back to 1995 and Tim Howard.

The piece is an excellent read, charting the ebbs and flows, highs and lows, moments of promise and pain of the USYNT throughout the years, but there is one common theme that is increasingly noticeable in the more recent years: the importance of playing the numbers.

Doyle himself highlights this in the conclusion of his piece:

More from MLS Multiplex

• Javier Milei Elected in Argentina: Potential Impacts on MLS and Signings of Argentine Players
• Orlando City and New York City FC in the Battle for Matías Arezo; Grêmio Enters Negotiations! Who Will Come Out on Top?
• USA, Honduras, Panama, and Canada Close in on a Spot in the 2024 Copa America
• De Gea Turns Down Al-Nassr’s Lucrative Offer: Speculation Points to Possible Reunion with Messi at Inter Miami
• Messi’s Magnetic Impact in the United States

"“Talent production, even for the best teams in the world, ebbs and flows. You need luck for it to hit, and a run of bad luck – injuries and bad club situations being the most obvious – can destroy what at first looked like a golden generation, or turn an average generation into a Lost Generation.”"

The overall point is this: predicting the future trajectory of young players is difficult. There are some players who look set to be the greatest of their generation and never deliver on their potential. There are others that never quite look like the dominant senior player they would later turn into.

Freddy Adu is the perhaps the most famous example of those that have failed to live up to expectations, but as the piece highlights, there have been plenty of others throughout the years. Investing in and developing young prospects is no easy, smooth, predictable task. You tend to be wrong more than you are right.

As a nation and overarching process, which the USMNT obviously are, the right approach to take is one that makes the most of the numbers. Rather than throwing all your eggs into a basket filled with holes, develop as many young players as possible and play the probability game.

It is a very similar strategy to the draft. As professional teams are increasingly understanding, trading down in the draft to amass more picks is the smart play. The reason is simple: no one is very good at scouting talent, so you should trade down to take more players, thus spreading your bets a little.

This is a very similar situation: develop as many talented prospects who have the potential to make a dent in senior football and see which ones make it and which one don’t. And this is precisely what is happening with the USMNT right now.

While Christian Pulisic is the obvious name leading a ‘golden generation’, what is more encouraging for the future of the national team is the breadth of the players coming through, not just one or two. There are several teenagers playing regularly in MLS. Young Americans are making regular starts in the Bundesliga. The price tags these players command are only growing. And despite the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, the most recent edition of the USMNT is improving as a result.

The U.S. are developing better players than ever before. More importantly, they are developing more high-level players than ever before. And in youth development, playing the numbers is crucial.