Brad Rothenberg

So even just recently, we got our first girl into Stanford.

And while we paid for her to go to tryouts, we paid for her family to stay in hotels and go to the Stanford showcase.

She still wasn't on top of the radar until Lindsay called and said, you should take another look at this girl.

We have kids playing now, Stanford, our third boys at Harvard.

We've got kids in Texas, our third kid at Berkeley, kids at UCLA.

And these kids all deserve to be there.

And I emphasize that because their GPAs warrant it and their on-field performance warrants it, but they didn't have the means to go to all the scouting tournaments.

We're not changing the elite system for the national team, but we're changing the opportunities that these kids have earned and deserved by getting them into college and giving them scholarships to play.

It doesn't make sense if you want to win.

You want to win a World Cup?

Our system is a barrier.

And that's just the fact.

FIFA says that there's 25 million people playing soccer regularly in this country.

The overwhelming majority are under 18.

But U.S.

soccer has fewer than 3 million players registered.

That means there's 20-something million people playing soccer outside of a system where we can identify them as talented players and develop them.

And as I said, Major League Soccer now has an academy program.

They have MLS Next, which is also based on merit.

But it's still not deep enough into the community to find kids who could be elite-level players if they just were developed younger.