USA Soccer and MLS are responsible for our losses.

Metalhead, Liberal, Hispanic, Gamer, Bills/Sabres/BlueJackets/Newcastle/Guardians/Cavaliers. Nazis, Fascists, and all adjacent entities can fuck off forever.

[Frank Michael Smith @frankmikesmith]

The USMNT will be stuck at the World Cup until it adopts Germany's blueprint

In 2000 Germany finished last at the Euros and decided it was time overhaul the system. They built 390 regional training bases to make sure one was within 25 km of every kid in country. They hired 1,200 full-time coaches, invested €48 million per year and mandated that every pro club build a certified youth academy or lose its license

The cost to families was $0 and 14 years later, 21 of the 23 players who won the World Cup came directly from the system

[Mike Harrington @ByMHarrington]

This is a disgrace. The Hurricanes’ owner has put the names of his wife and kids on the Stanley Cup, above all the team officials, coaches and players.

Rich people doing whatever they want is a massive problem in this society. How could the NHL let this happen?

[Bordeaux @bordeauxyoutube]

IDGAF about a partnership. Make a stand against micro transactions in Dynasty and RTG. Take them out and bring XP sliders back @EASPORTSCollege #CFBPlayDontPay

[USA Soccer and MLS are responsible for our losses. @laceratedsky]

@AlexiLalas This is just a disingenuous argument from someone who DEFINITELY knows better. How come every single other country that plays this sport has this whole situation figured out, and yet we can’t change because that would make the people who make the money angry. Just shut up.

[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.

[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.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Last year, Microsoft made $101 billion in profits, got a $12.5 billion tax break from Trump & paid its CEO $96 million.

This year, it’s raising the price of an Xbox by $150 & eliminating 3,200 jobs.

Please don’t tell me corporate tax breaks create jobs. It never trickles down.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump, shown on camera during the national anthem, is booed loudly at MSG

[I love Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen @IloveUPL1]

happy pride 💗

[Rep. Shontel Brown @RepShontelBrown]

Cleveland did not send me to Congress to be interrupted, talked over, and lied to.

Especially not by Trump officials who are punishing people with SNAP cuts and higher food prices every day.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

Our internal data shows Claude is accelerating AI development—a possible path to recursive self-improvement, or AI autonomously building a more capable successor.

It’s happening faster than we thought, and the implications deserve greater attention. https://t.co/OVVPJO7VQx

[Sneaky Joe @SneakyJoeSports]

This is about as bad as it gets, but nothing ever tops Damar Hamlin not winning Comeback Player of the Year.

Nothing ever compares to that. Ever.

[David Leavitt 🎲🎮🧙‍♂️🌈 @DavidLeavitt]

Moving Dungeons and Dragons completely away from physical books to a monthly online subscription fee with additional micro transactions is fucking terrible for players, especially to teenagers and people in lower economic situations.

[Sneaky Joe @SneakyJoeSports]

The beautiful game.

[Labatt Blue Light @LabattUSA]

These announcers are trash.

[Labatt Blue Light @LabattUSA]

We owe the kid his first beer.

[moose 🐦‍🔥 @usermooseontwt]

two unskippable ads

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

No vote in Tennessee (+1 GOP)
No vote in Florida (+4 GOP)
No vote in Missouri (+1 GOP)
No vote in North Carolina (+2 GOP)
No vote in Texas (+5 GOP)

Virginia’s voter-approved maps thrown out.

MAGA has rigged the system.

[Buffalo Sabres @BuffaloSabres]

Buffalo vs everybody. 😤

#LetsGoBuffalo | @keybank