Brad Rothenberg

Sometimes it just takes that kind of luck.

We are the undisputed best national team soccer program in the world.

Brazil, Argentina, Italy has nothing on us because we have the best women's national team.

We've won more World Cups and Olympic gold medals than any other country because of our women.

Our men trail on the field.

And that's largely because we're not able to just really pursue merit.

And that's this part of what I love about like the NFL and the NBA is there are fewer barriers to entry because it's a more commercially viable program.

And if you're scouting for Texas A&M, you're competing with all the other big Texas schools and you're going to every high school game to find that kid to play the position you need to get over the top.

And that's not the way it's done in soccer.

Most of the good coaches, the college level, are able to use the club's system to find the kids to go to a couple of tournaments.

They don't have to dig deep into the urban centers to find this untapped potential.

We'll see if it changes one day.

You remember Sonny Vaccaro?

This system where we're paying coaches to find kids in the inner cities and bring them into the program and rewarding them as those kids succeed, that's commercialism at its best.

That's one method by which we can find kids and get those communities in the inner cities supporting the national team program.

I'm not a cynical person, but I've been in the sport for 30-something years, and the pay-to-play system is not going anywhere.

Major League Soccer has done a really good job of changing it to the extent they can, but they're trying to run a league.

They do offer free academy slots for talented players.

U.S.

soccer at the top, they have the desire and they've created some programs to do this, create a merit-based program.