Ever since the demise of the North American Soccer League, many of us have been patiently waiting for the resurgence of soccer in the United States. However, such a resurgence would require a great deal of winning on the part of the national team, particularly at the World Cup, a feat that continues to elude them despite the strides made in the last 15 years. Dylan Hernandez of the San Jose Mercury News says you shouldn’t plan on U.S. soccer arriving in 2010, 2014, 2018 or even 2030. What’s with the pessimism, you ask? “If the American team is to transform into a global power over the next decade, as some believe it will, its 15- to 17-year-old players would have to be among the best in the world,” Hernandez says. “Results at the youth level offer evidence to the contrary, and there is no reason to believe that the next crop of players will be significantly better.” Why? The player development system simply isn’t there, he says, and the chief obstacle is money. The club soccer system in the U.S. is such that only the richest kids can afford to play. Club coaches command high salaries that lead them very nice lives paid for by rich parents, which means there’s no in-road for the kid who can’t afford to pay. Even so, colleges and MLS teams, with their limited recruiting budgets, don’t get to do thorough recruiting because they don’t have full-time scouts. MLS is saying it wants all of its teams to have youth systems in place by next year. Sounds great, but adopting such a system will cost the near-bankrupt league more money. Coaches and scouts cost money. So do top athletes. Hernandez says that MLS won’t be generating good revenue “until all of its teams control their own stadiums and its games become watchable to soccer fans.” That’s a chicken-and-egg problem. You can’t grow a league with stagnant interest. You can’t get money without interest either. Until that happens, he says, expect more of the same from the U.S.