Can America realistically challenge for the World Cup in Qatar 2022?

The answer is simply, hell no.

I am not trying to kill the dreams of Pulisic, Tim Weah, McKennie or Sargent, they are good players and they may take the team to a decent level where they can actually make some noise but… let’s be honest, soccer still isn’t competitive enough in America and to depend on European leagues isn’t the best scenario.

I keep remaining people that we have about 100 million Latinos in this country, a community that breaths soccer, the problem isn’t “pay to play” anymore, it’s deeper than this. Every soccer Powerhouse in the world has 3 or 4 very competitive leagues, leagues where you find 16 years old studs playing competitive soccer all year round… it happens in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain…

In America our lower divisions are nothing but amateur leagues of 3 or 4 months each, players make very little money, this is not how you compete versus elite soccer nations, our only legit option is to send our best talents abroad, this is where the Hispanic players debate comes in, they do not have the money or the connections to make these options into reality. The Latino community which is HUGE in soccer is being limited to staying in amateur 3 months leagues such as NPSL or PDL, summer leagues with low level of competition, they are the feeders for USL, our “official” second division. Basically young local prospects have very limited options other than being in affordable elite academies (very few in this country).

In Qatar 2022 we will have Elite talents such as Pulisic, Weah and a few other good players next to bunch of scrubs… that is not how you challenge for the world cup, that is not how you have realistic expectations of winning a world cup, hire Zidane, hire Mourinho as a coach and we still wont have a chance, our lower divisions are a joke and I m not sure we are doing enough to change this problem, I am not sure we are taking this problem as serious as it is…

Promotion and relegation may help to better our lower divisions? Probably, that is a debate for another occasion but we do know our lower divisions are too weak, too amateurish, too unorganized and we will definitely not win Qatar 2022, heck we will be lucky to make it out of the first round, just being honest.

My advice? 

Players such as Pulisic, Weah and Sargent need to start pressuring the Soccer Federation into investing time and money in our lower divisions, MLS has to start considering Promotion and Relegation as a real option for the future. Former players such as Eric Wynalda, Landon Donovan, Alexis Lalas, Marcelo Balboa, Kyle Martino, Hercules Gomez, Taylor Twellman and Cobi Jones need to get angry and serious about these changes, they need to get serious about paving the way for the World Cup after Qatar, yes we won’t win that one, we probably won’t even challenge for it but the real target should be the next USA-Mex-Can 2026… by then we need to fix this mess of the amateur and weak lower divisions. We need to have 3 or 4 strong lower divisions playing all year round, if promotion and relegation is truly needed so be it, I am sure a few billionaires wont be happy about this one but it is for the better of our game.