MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER WILL NEVER BE AN ACTUAL MAJOR LEAGUE

America's Major League Soccer is steadily increasing in popularity. With foreign superstars such as David Beckham and Thierry Henry having graced the league in recent years and with the interest in the United States national team, there is cause for optimism. However, there are many barriers that will prevent American soccer from truly competing with the best leagues around the world.

D. Ray Morton, 29th April 2015

The United States of America made it to the second round of last summer's World Cup where they were eliminated by Belgium after a somewhat heroic performance typified by the exploits of goalkeeper Tim Howard. America's attention turned to soccer and there is now real hope that this can be built on. Major League Soccer (MLS) have done a deal with the United Kingdom's Sky Sports, further boosting the league's international outreach. Things look on the up and up for American soccer but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that this league will ever compete with top European championships despite its potential riches.

There are too many obstacles. First of all, there is no tangible football culture in the United States. We hear of soccer moms and record numbers of Varsity youth players but first and foremost, football is not a game of the people in America. There is no such thing as street football. Slipping on your cleats for a couple of hours of practice a week does not produce real footballers. Football is learned through repetition, endless hours of playing for the joy of the game. That culture simply does not exist for that sport in the US. Street basketball, for example, eventually produces those that become top NBA stars. How can US soccer hope to produce players that will compete with the world's best when they cannot match the amount of hours their top basketball players put in during their development? This is not a sport that can be picked up overnight. Just like the virtuoso musician, the virtuoso footballer does not learn his craft hastily. It is even said now that European academy players do not have that raw ability that world's top attacking talents from South America have. Too mollycoddled, too structured. It is about passing the ball off and staying in position. How does one produce a Luis Suárez in a European academy, let alone an American one?

The talent being the first obstacle, the second obstacle is that the MLS is not even the best league in its region. Liga MX, the Mexican league, is well funded, popular and features play of a much higher level than that found north of the border. Go further south into the Americas and you will find players of vastly superior talent despite the haphazard organisation of the South American leagues. You need talent and organisation. They may have the latter but they certainly do not have the former.

Robbie Keane, since moving to LA Galaxy in the twilight of his career, has absolutely ripped it up in the MLS. Look through a montage of his goals and you will see him score efforts he rarely managed in Europe, this well past his prime and in his mid-30s. The defending is so bad in the league that a top pro like Keane can torment defences with his eyes closed. Watching a typical MLS match, one can see defenders worse than you would find in the League of Ireland, never mind Europe's top leagues. With a limit on foreign players, how can a league improve if the standard of player is so incomprehensibly poor.

Robbie Keane's LA goalscoring odyssey can be described as something of a cakewalk

Of course the argument against this is that with funding, coaching and time, all things will improve. Maybe they will but how much time will this take. It could be a matter of many generations. When Cameroon reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup, many pundits predicted an African winner of the tournament within the next few editions. As the United States soccer team improved in the late '90s, the same predictions were made about them. This did not materialise. Many of this blog's readers happen to be based in America indicating that the interest is there. Realistically, you need more than interest to reach the very pinnacle of this enormous, complicated global game.