Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮

Our actions may be impeded... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions.

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

WE ARE ALL WITNESSES
#StriveForGreatness

[Olivia Charlotte @OliviaChar30912]

Did he just really train his dog to use a rubber band? 😱😱

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

If this game goes above 3-4min of stoppage time then you know the fix was always in. Great game so far

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

@CJ8K_ LOL you hate African federations to the core huh

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

Oh they want to play play??? This should be fun 🤩

[Underdog @Underdog]

BREAKING: Pedri has been benched in favor of Fabián Ruiz vs. France on Tuesday.

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

Lmao at this point you can’t make ts up for Argentina 🤣🤣🤣

[JIGGAVEL 🇬🇩🇯🇲 @BoofDaddi]

Because we are watching the games

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

LOL this is sad. I rarely indulge or try to give credence to the notion of FIFA deliberately cheating for Argentina but this is damning.

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

IT IS THIS SIMPLE, HARD TRUTH👇🏾

For the talented but underprivileged kid, the path is even more challenging. They face the daunting prospect of running out of sponsors to cover club membership fees, and their single mother can’t afford it either.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[Boppa 🧟‍♂️ @ihatebbls]

Kadarius Toney coulda been a legend for USA soccer ain’t like he was using his hands in the league

[Brett Kollmann @BrettKollmann]

It’s not about all our 6’4” freak athletes choosing to play linebacker in the SEC.

It’s about all of our 5’10” left-footed magicians choosing to play slot receiver in the Big 12.

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital.

I played soccer for 20+ years.

Grassroots.
Academy.
D1 college.
Pursued professionally after.

And I’ll say the quiet part out loud:

The US soccer infrastructure is broken.

In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement.

For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal:

Get recruited.
Get a scholarship.
Play college soccer.

But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path.

From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival.

Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France.

That player has likely been in a professional environment for years.

Training daily.
Playing meaningful matches year-round.
Competing against grown professionals.
Getting thousands more touches.
Learning how to solve the game under pressure.

The gap is massive.

And it shows.

American players are usually athletic.
They are usually fit.
They usually compete hard.

But at the highest levels, that is not enough.

The biggest difference is technical comfort.

We do not move the ball like Spain.
We do not combine like Argentina.
We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood.

That comes down to volume.

Volume of touches.
Volume of street soccer.
Volume of futsal.
Volume of unstructured play.
Volume of high-level training environments.
Volume of meaningful games.

In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23.

Parents spend thousands.
Clubs charge thousands.
Travel teams fly all over the country.
Showcases become the product.
Recruiting becomes the scoreboard.

But the return on invested capital is poor.

We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment.

That is a broken operating model.

And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer.

You inspect the system.

The US has talent.
The US has athletes.
The US has money.
The US has facilities.

But the foundation is wrong.

We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system.

Those are not the same thing.

Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources.

I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer.

I’m saying it because I lived it.

And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

[sam ⛷️ @sambrazy]

The issue is if Haaland was born in America he’d be a division 2 basketball player

[… @CJ8K_]

They’re on tv blaming poch like we don’t have eyes foh

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

@jasonwhitlock WOW you’re an absolute disgrace. I pray God has mercy on you.

[TC @totalcristiano]

And I would chose you again and again.

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

Because Trump’s ego couldn’t keep his mouth shut and wanted to score political points and take credit, he may inadvertently cause the USMNT to be disqualified. Obviously FIFA wouldn’t have the backbone to do such so the best course would be to advise the team to withhold Florin from this game.

[Bosnian Football @BosniaNTBall]

Whether it is or isn’t a red to Balogun is now irrelevant. Government interference is a violation of FIFA Article 2 & 15, and the punishment is disqualification and suspension. #FIFAWorldCup

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

Lmaooo he couldn’t help himself taking credit and scoring political points

[Sky Sports News @SkySportsNews]

"I asked for a review because I didn't think it was a foul" 🗣️

US President Donald Trump has admitted that he asked FIFA to review Folarin Balogun's red card suspension for the Round of 16 match against Belgium ⚽️

[Real is God 🇱🇷🇨🇮 @KingTyse]

I’ve seen a lot of “put this in NFL terms” throughout the tournament, so here’s my best analogy.

Imagine it’s the playoffs. A player like Patrick Surtain gets ejected for unnecessary roughness, which by rule also carries a one-game suspension.

After the game, everyone debates whether the ejection was deserved, but the NFL says nothing. Then, less than 24 hours before the Divisional Round, after outside pressure, the league suddenly suspends the suspension until next season — unless he commits the same offense again in the playoffs.

At that point, the debate isn’t about whether the original call was right or wrong. It’s about the process. If the league believed the suspension warranted review, it should’ve happened immediately after the game, within 24-48 hours, or they should’ve announced it was under review.

Waiting until the eve of the biggest match creates the perception that outside influence affected the outcome, and that’s terrible for the competitive integrity of the tournament.

[Sharelle Rosado @SharelleRosado_]

Every day I give God all the praise 🙏🏽💪🏽