Sam Gregory
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Yeah, no, I think the salary cap structure needs to change.
And then the other part is you need to figure out a way to develop more top American players.
Because right now, we need the league to develop American players.
We need to give American players opportunities.
But right now, if you're a really, really strong academy player in MLS, you're going to get bought by a top team in Europe a year or two into your career, which is great.
Yeah, and we want those, Ricardo Pepe.
We want those players to get those opportunities to play, but you need to increase the depth so that when an American player leaves, you have another one who can easily step up into that spot, and that's the bigger ecosystem problem about how do we develop players, how do we keep more kids in soccer at a high level so we're not just pulling from this small pool of you have a โ we have 30 MLS teams.
They all have academies that have โ
18 to 20 players on their U18, U19 team, and that's the only pool.
We need that pool to be much bigger.
Yeah, well, and there's a reason it's the biggest sport in the world, right?
I mean, the average height there is, what, almost six feet, I think, right?
The average height of a man in the Netherlands, and they're one of the best soccer teams in the world.
an average height of my height, like 5'8".
So anyone can play in terms of you don't need one specific physical trait.
You need a bit of this, a bit of that, and there's different positional groups which require different body types.
So I do think any country can have a big pool.