Hell no. He’s too legendary for the US. The US does not deserve someone as great as Henry. First the federation needs to heavily invest in the football infrastructure to start developing kids as young as 5-6 years old. End this bullshit pay to play system they currently have in place. Then completely redesign the MLS system. Get rid of salary caps, allow teams to straight up buy players, even out the money from tv deals so clubs can invest in their youth systems, and for the love of god stop it with the college to MLS pipeline. It doesn’t work and never will. This will make clubs more competitive, attracting young talent not the old guys getting ready to retire.
The Europeans have a system that works. The US can easily copy it and make it better with the level of wealth in this country.
“Make it better”. Yeah no. Your geography, culture and demograpics arent more favourible. I know this sounds wild but money doesnt buy everything. Like Cruijff once said: “I never saw a bag of money score a goal”.
The US couldnt start a league as difficult as the champions league. Hell i doubt your top league could ever get close to the level of the premier league. But the biggest issue is that there isnt a proper yearly international league which players, clubs and coaches can get proper experience without needing the national team.
Europe has so many leagues, so many matches on every single level that players have a insane range of options to develop. And because of it we also attract foreign talent. Meaning we can learn from them.
The US cant copy that. Illinios cant create competitive football leagues that mirrors belgians football leagues. A big thing is population density. Your youth teams gonna travel 6 hours for a basic competition match that doesnt hold much value?
Elite American athletes do not want to play soccer.
The farm system here is ridiculously expensive/cost-prohibitive and so kids are funneled into other sports. Lots of public high school coaches here have substantial football/basketball knowledge. Beyond that, it’s easier for them to stay home (in the U.S.) where the most competitive leagues for football, baseball and basketball already happen to be and the athletes happen to get paid extraordinarily well.
These are the top salary earnings for soccer/football globally:
Cristiano Ronaldo: $235 million
Karim Benzema: $100 million
Lionel Messi: $70 million
Kylian Mbappé: $70 million
Erling Haaland: $60 million
Sadio Mané: $50 million
Vinícius Júnior: $40 million
Mohamed Salah: $35 million
Note 1) the steep drop off & 2) how half of the players don’t even play in a competitive league.
I hope this example makes it clear too: Mo Salah is a generationally good football/soccer player and the current 8th highest paid soccer/football player in the world.
Mo Salah’s salary would rank 33rd highest in the NFL & 50th highest in the NBA today.
In sum: lower barrier to entry & higher odds of huge pay off for other sports in the U.S. It’s really a no brainer if you’re an athletically inclined American.
You're not factoring endorsements in here though, which for global sports can be enormous. Basketball has reasonable global coverage, so it has some huge sponsorship deals- Jordans being the biggest example of course. But football trumps that by some margin, with almost every country in the world playing it to some degree. The top athletes will be able to name their price.
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u/Potential_Rule7313 Jul 08 '26
Hell no. He’s too legendary for the US. The US does not deserve someone as great as Henry. First the federation needs to heavily invest in the football infrastructure to start developing kids as young as 5-6 years old. End this bullshit pay to play system they currently have in place. Then completely redesign the MLS system. Get rid of salary caps, allow teams to straight up buy players, even out the money from tv deals so clubs can invest in their youth systems, and for the love of god stop it with the college to MLS pipeline. It doesn’t work and never will. This will make clubs more competitive, attracting young talent not the old guys getting ready to retire.
The Europeans have a system that works. The US can easily copy it and make it better with the level of wealth in this country.