I’ve been seeing a lot of people comparing and contrasting Japan’s ascension in soccer to the USA’s.. One thing they’ve done that we’ve failed to do is leverage existing systems, especially high school sports Their annual high school soccer tournament is the biggest amateur tournament in the country, and it keeps getting bigger, similar to high school football or basketball here in the USA. Go look at any Japanese national team player’s youth background. 90% of them mention their high school. Meanwhile, we degrade and are trying to discard playing soccer within school systems as a means of development. The reality is, schools have the best current infrastructure for all youth sports. USSF should be working more with high school sports state associations to raise the standard and widen the net. School sports are free, the infrastructure and fields are in place, it’s much cheaper than pay to play club soccer and is the most grassroots form of sports we have in this country. We should keep investing in professional academies, but better high school (and college) soccer is a big missed opportunity in the American soccer landscape. College soccer is just a national u23 league with hundreds of teams and an education offered simultaneously. With some changes to the schedule, it could be a real weapon for us. We obviously don’t want it to be our primary means of development, but making high school soccer more competitive is more realistic than 500 professional and free to play academies popping up overnight.