When Matt Crocker took over as U.S. Soccer’s sporting director in 2023, he inherited a full agenda: hiring coaches for the men’s and women’s national teams and coordinating 27 national squads. Yet he soon realized the real challenge went far beyond that: the country is producing fewer and fewer players among the world’s elite.
A Fragmented System
The diagnosis is clear: around 95% of player development happens in youth clubs—an enormous, private, and highly disjointed ecosystem. Unlike England—where Crocker helped create the England DNA project in a centralized structure—in the U.S., every club, league, and university pursues its own interests. Coordinating all of this, he has said, “feels like trying to get all of UEFA on the same page.”
The U.S. Way
His plan, called “The U.S. Way,” aims for something that seems simple but is revolutionary in context: putting the needs of the player above the obsession with winning. The idea is to improve coach education, foster individualized development plans, and create fun, safe environments from the earliest ages.
Instead of imposing rules, Crocker wants to persuade and influence. It’s no longer about “using the stick,” as happened with the now-defunct Development Academy, but about working alongside clubs and leagues to generate lasting change.
Coaching Education: The Key Lever
For Crocker, the cornerstone is professionalizing and expanding coach education. While in England any child can reach an elite program within minutes, in the U.S. many coaches still turn to YouTube to build sessions. His dream: to have dedicated coaching education centers in all 50 states.
Obstacles and Progress
The plan faces huge obstacles: lack of resources, diversity of leagues, and the difficulty of aligning thousands of independent actors. But some concrete steps are already underway: U.S. Soccer is promoting a unified youth calendar, developing new digital platforms, and engaging more directly with its members.
An Astronomical Task
Crocker himself admits that transforming youth development across a country-continent is “an astronomical task.” Yet he remains excited: it’s precisely this type of monumental project that led him to take the challenge in the first place.
📖 Read the full article by Henry Bushnell in The Athletic:
U.S. Soccer has a new vision for youth development. Implementing it is ‘an astronomical ask’