U.S. Soccer Races to Fix Pay-to-Play Before 2026 World
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- Don Garber called the 2026 World Cup "Super Bowls every day for well over a month," telling reporters that U.S. soccer's momentum "has been running for 30 years and it's going to run for another 30," citing MLS, the women's game, and host-city infrastructure as evidence.
- Major League Soccer has shifted to a European schedule, while the United Soccer League is implementing promotion and relegation — structural changes Garber says will capitalize on stars like Lionel Messi and Son Heung-Min playing stateside.
- Algeria's national team, based in Lawrence, Kansas, opened its training to local children during a community session — part of the World Cup's spread beyond the 16 host cities, where teams like Spain also drew crowds in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
- Clint Dempsey briefly gave up youth soccer as a kid so his parents could redirect the money — a story U.S. Soccer's Melissa Radke cited when acknowledging that pay-to-play remains "a complex issue" requiring tailored, community-specific solutions rather than a national fix.
- U.S. Soccer's "Innovate to Grow" program, funded through FIFA Forward, supports around 27 domestic accessibility projects, with FIFA planning to invest $5 billion into the member-association program by the end of 2026.
- FIFA Forward funds have paid for security infrastructure in Haiti and facility upgrades in Cabo Verde and Curacao, both first-time World Cup qualifiers using the program to scale rapidly.
Why it matters: The 2026 World Cup gives U.S. Soccer a one-time platform to convert cultural momentum into structural reform, but the federation's own framing — Radke calling it a "complex issue" with no one-size-fits-all fix — signals that the 27 FIFA Forward-funded accessibility projects are a beginning, not a solution. With pay-to-play historically filtering talent by family income (Dempsey himself walked away as a child), whether this World Cup produces a deeper American player pool or just more viewers depends on follow-through after the final whistle.
