From 1994 to 2026: How Player Development in the U.S. Has Evolved Leading Up to the FIFA Club World Cup

In less than two months, the world’s greatest players will converge on the United States and Philadelphia for the FIFA Club World Cup. Many at the top of the soccer landscape feel this start of a two-year push, which includes next summer’s World Cup, will springboard U.S. soccer forward into the European levels we’ve anticipated for the past 32 years.

Analyzing the period since 1994, it’s easy to recognize soccer’s growth. We went from a defunct professional outdoor league to a top professional league with 30 clubs, one of whom now includes the world’s best player (In comparison, NASL did have Pelé, Chinaglia, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, and Best in the same era), and a pyramid structure with hundreds more clubs. We also have a women’s league with 16 teams and expansion on the horizon. We’ve rebuilt youth
development from the ODP-University track to include the academy system for the best youth players, aligning with the rest of the world. And we also have our best players representing top clubs in Europe’s top leagues (Most of the players on US Men’s World Cup rosters from 1998 onward were in top leagues).

Though the game has progressed at a professional level, and arguably the American player is more technical, tactical, and Europe-ready than in the past, the U.S. Men’s National Team still ranks 16th in the latest FIFA world ranking (23rd prior to 1994 WC), slightly above neighbor Mexico. The Women’s National Team, coming off Olympic Gold in 2024, currently ranks 1st (1st in 2003) but has seen its grip as the world’s elite encounter more competition from Spain (19th), Germany (3rd), England (13th), and Japan (14th) since the FIFA rankings were adopted in 2003 for women.

Should we expect more out of the growth of the American player?

One leading figure believes so. “I’m a bit frustrated personally by the states,” Arsene Wenger said last week in an interview with select media that included Philadelphia Soccer Now, “because they have a fantastic potential, and I was always hoping they would be on the map of the world as one of the three or four best countries in football in the world.”

Wenger, FIFA’s Chief of Global Development since 2019, remains known for his abilities developing young players and producing attractive soccer while leading Arsenal for over 20 years. He amassed 17 trophies, including two EPL-Cup doubles, a historic Premier League title with The Invincibles, who went undefeated in the Premier League in 2004, and a UEFA Champions League Final appearance in 2006.

One of the drawbacks Wenger sees in the development of the American player comes from the financial discrepancies, what we often refer to as the Pay to Play model.

“The United States is a gold mine for our sport,” he said, “but it is not at the moment well exploited because the kids don’t get the chance to be educated by top level coaches, and especially what I think is access financially. This is the key because we do that with FIFA all over the world. We create academies free of access where we put the best with the best and with good coaches. And that’s the key. Is the best with the best? And that’s the problem when you have to pay to get into the academies. You have good players who are mixed with poor players and that stops the development.”

Another impediment of player development in the United States has been the lack of a clear vision or style of play. With players and coaches from various backgrounds and cultures, mirroring the country’s diversity, the soccer influences are vast and diverse. Wenger, who blended top-level players from England, Netherlands, France, multiple African nations, and other countries all around the world, doesn’t see the same differences affecting player growth anymore.

“20 years ago, there were more specificities in different countries than it is today,” he said, referring to the advances in viewership availability, social media, and overall promotion of the game. “The specificities are more diluted in a universal culture because all the coaches are informed about what’s going on everywhere. But there’s still differences that will be interesting to see [at the Club World Cup]. We have seen that at the last World Cup in Qatar between
Argentina and France. It was different styles, and I’m keen to see if that comes out as well in the clubs. But a club today, a top level club, is a selection of the best players in the world, and that’s where the problem of a manager is more to mix all these different cultures together and create its own culture.”

Former USMNT captain, Carlos Bocanegra, who was a teenager in 1994, has experienced the improvements in player development firsthand. “I think it’s grown leaps and bounds,” he told Philadelphia Soccer Now. “Growing up playing, I practiced twice a week, maybe, and we had a field space that was our local park. And the coaches, they did a great job, but they weren’t professionally trained by any stretch of the imagination.”

Bocanegra, a multi-sport athlete, played three seasons at UCLA before joining MLS with Jim Curtin and the Chicago Fire. The first player to win MLS Defender of the Year twice (2002,2003), he made the jump to Europe, making over 100 appearances for Fulham, even serving as captain, before playing several years with Rennes and Saint-Étienne, and two years with Rangers, eventually returning to MLS. Most recently, he served as Technical Director at Atlanta United, a position he held from 2015 until 2024.

“Fast forward now. We are about 20 years into the academy system here in the United States, where it’s actually formalized with the MLS teams, and we’ve been really able to make drastic improvements. We’ve always had good athletes here in America, and we’ve always had a good mentality. Now the coaches are getting better. There’s more intelligence around the game.”

Over the past two decades, U.S. has seen a rise in top teams traveling the country for preseason events. Organizations like the defunct ICC, the now growing FC Series, Soccer Champions Tour, and English Premier League Summer Series are examples of the opportunities for overseas clubs reaching fans all across the country. The Club World Cup will now bring competitive matches, and trainings, and both Wenger and Bocanegra agree the exposure will ultimately aid
in player development.

“I always say to young coaches,” Wenger said, “go and watch the top level, what it takes to be on top. You do not see that on television. You see that on the pitch.”

“I don’t think I saw my first soccer game until I was 17 or 18 years old,” Bocanegra said. “So it’s a really different environment and a really different culture, and it’s great to see now that the US has been putting players at the likes of AC Milan, Juventus, Chelsea, et cetera, so I think that is really indicative of where we were, where we’ve come now.”

When moving to Europe, Bocanegra found several areas in his game that needed to improve when compared to other players from outside the U.S. “It was more just being on the ball and my first touch,” he said, “your confidence to receive the ball under pressure, playing out of the back, little things that was specific more to my position.”

Despite his need to further develop technical skills, Bocangera also feels his past shaped other skills that allowed him to fulfill a successful and lengthy career. “I played multiple sports growing up, and I would never change that because I do think it helped me develop physicality.

Judging a pop fly, so to speak, was very helpful to me in my aerial game as a central defender. But it would have been great if I had more opportunities to be coached at a higher level, which is happening all across the board in the United States, which is great, and just the opportunities to play more.”

Colombia legend Juan Pablo Ángel agrees with Bocanegra about the U.S.’s improved development, going a step further to highlight the country’s utilization as a pathway to Europe.

“Looking at the ecosystem in the U.S.,” he told Philadelphia Soccer Now, “the development of players has grown dramatically in my time. Players from middle leagues in South America, meaning Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, we needed to go to Argentina or Brazil in order for us to jump to Europe. We don’t need that step anymore. It’s an important step still, but we can go to MLS and expect to jump from MLS to Europe.”

Ángel grew up in the Atlético Nacional club system before moving on to Argentina’s River Plate and England’s Aston Villa, where he became a club scoring leader, eventually coming to MLS and leading the New York Red Bulls to the MLS Cup Final in 2008. Recently, a number of MLS stars, among them Miguel Almirón, Taty Castellanos, Jhon Durán, even the Union’s Julian Carranza, have made successful transitions from South America to Europe.

“What I’ve seen from the youngsters, from the academies, from the infrastructure, and setup of not only the clubs, MLS clubs throughout the country, the way they develop players in the U.S. is as good as anybody in South America. And that’s why the appetite for players developing in MLS keeps growing on a rapid pace from top European leagues, and that is a testament to what is happening.”

On the women’s side, the U.S. National Team has been the strongest driver for the sport’s exponential growth. In recent years, their results in the World Cup and the Olympics have put soccer, and women’s sports overall, in the global spotlight. The growth of NWSL has kept many of the best U.S. players at home while attracting talented players from across Latin America, Europe, and Asia, creating stability for the women’s game to thrive. Now, some of the best youth players, Trinity Rodman, Alyssa and Gisele Thompson, to name a few, are making the jump from club to pro as teenagers.

Jill Ellis, former USWNT Coach and two-time World Cup winner, now serves as FIFA’s Chief Football Officer, a role that will help develop the organization’s global football strategy. She gives credit to the national team for developing young players in the past but sees a transitory shift toward the pro clubs.

“The national team is there, and it’s an event every four years for World Cups, but you need a regular training environment where the players play competitive games year in, year out. Even in this role, to understand that you need to strengthen the club landscape is critical.” Whereas on the men’s side, the conversations focus on the U.S. catching up with the rest of the world, on the women’s side, player development is more about staying on the forefront. “For both boys and girls, I will say that there isn’t a gap anymore. The U.S. is still very competitive, but we can see there’s even more competition.”

Ellis, born in England, played college soccer at William and Mary and remained in the college system for many years as a coach before emerging as a leader in the U.S. Soccer system for over twenty years, so she’s been responsible for the growth of the game and understands what continues to holds it back.

“What’s hard about the U.S. landscape at times, and what’s good about it, it’s very competitive,” she said, “so that a natural DNA of being a competitor exists between clubs and local clubs in terms of rivals when you’re kids, but it also divides it in terms of philosophy and mentality.”

Currently, youth soccer is riddled competing leagues and championships, all claiming indirectly to be the best pathway toward soccer scholarships and professional opportunities. The competition continues into the professional ranks. Even the latest failed antitrust lawsuit by the NASL against MLS and U.S. Soccer serves as evidence towards the divisiveness in the best way to develop players and grow the game. Aligning philosophies is an arduous task for any one
individual or organization, but a necessary one according to Ellis.

“I think U.S. Soccer is looking at how we align the ecosystem. So that club development, and I mean they were talking about how universities fit the ecosystem in terms of development, for how club development, youth development, and the pro clubs, how they all coalesce together. You need to build a plan that everybody’s bought into.”

Similar to this summer’s Club World Cup boosting the game’s growth, Ellis and FIFA also recently announced a new Club World Cup format for the women’s game, which will make its debut in 2028. With a host yet to be announced, Philly could once again be called upon if the event is held in the U.S.

“We’ve played in Philly with the national team. Fans show up,” Ellis added. “You want to bring this event into an environment where you know it’s going to be welcome. People are going to show, there’s going to be fans, there’s going to be atmosphere, there’s going to be this welcome environment. But you also want to grow the footprint.”

NWSL has a stronghold in the Pacific Northwest and California as well as in major markets throughout the Midwest and South. But with the women’s game rooted in New York and Washington D.C., and many Philly fans traveling back and forth to those games, some may wonder if the city is stuck between its neighbors’ thriving success in the women’s game.

When asked if tournaments like the CWC could lead to Philly building a women’s club, Ellis said,

“Philly would be a great home for a women’s professional team. Right now, there’s only 16 NWSL teams, and obviously there’s USL teams. I think less about which city has a professional team and more about the city and how it gets around sports and support.”

Regardless of Philadelphia’s hosting future, many feel it won’t be long before we see a NWSL team and perhaps a USL team within our area. The positive outlook is that the sport continues to grow throughout the region and the country, and the next two years will be viewed as instrumental in bringing the world’s best closer to American fans and Philadelphia fans in particular.

As U.S. Soccer continues to tweak successful models for player development, coaches, administrators, and players are all in agreement that we continue to trend in the right direction. Hosting the FIFA Club World Cup and World Cup should have an enormous impact on the local game, and who knows how long before a U.S. club wins its first CWC or the national team hoists the World Cup trophy? The succession of major soccer events over the next two years will hopefully inspire the future Christian Pulisic and Carli Lloyd watching from the seats of Lincoln Financial Field.