Why Has The USA Failed to Produce World Class Footballers?

Football has been played in the USA for over 100 years, with participation numbers recently overtaking baseball, ice hockey, and even gridiron. New MLS teams are sprouting up in new cities every year, and more and more scholarships are being offered for football.

The question that needs to be asked is: Why has a country of over 300 million people not produced one world class footballer?

Great hopes were held up for Freddy Adu, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard, yet none of them have been able to become regular starters for top European teams.

In golf, MMA, and tennis, the USA has been able to take on the world and produce world class athletes—world champion males and females. Yet, in football, we have yet to see one such world class athlete.

Maybe population numbers play a role. India, China and the USA have football as their first or second choice participation sport, yet all three have never produced the world class athletes you would expect. Why?

Poverty could be an answer for the likes of India and China, but the USA is developed. Baseball and gridiron are basic sports that can be taken up a few years before turning pro, and little coaching is needed.

Whereas football requires academies and 10+ years of training, match play, and learning technique before anyone could even think of turning pro.

In the USA, football is mainly a white, middle class sport, and the best athletes the US has produced are poor african americans. These guys follow the money.

Even if a career in gridiron is unfullfilling as an athlete, it gets these guys a college scholarship and a good wage. There is no global competition, so standards are low, and thus easier to attain pro status.

Simple money matters means the top black athletes choose less demanding and less fulfilling careers in order to provide for their families. The boredom of "waiting to play sports" like baseball and gridiron is offset by the financial rewards.

I can't blame them in truth.

Until the white, middle classes can produce a world class athlete, the USA will keep being in the mediocre status of world football.

The hope for USA football rests on white, middle class shoulders. The problem is, I struggle to name one white, middle class world class athlete the USA has produced in the last 10 years.

Even the great tennis players have dried up.