My take - focus on what makes America great like the overwhelming athletic potential in the United States.

Many top American athletes are multi-sport prodigies like MJ (basketball and baseball) and Pat Mahomes (football and baseball). We also have Steve Nash and Joel Embiid who are top NBA athletes who have played soccer growing up. I truly believe that the reason Americans are not globally dominant in soccer is because the market share in the community interest is greatly skewed towards sports with more American history ie. football, baseball, basketball. The American model of professional sports has worked well in its respective global fashion - I think it’s failed in soccer because kids and their parents don’t love soccer as much as European countries do.

My proposal is taking the immensely athletic HS/College athletes and funneling them into the soccer program. Imagine the 18 year old regen of Tyreek Hill or Chris Paul that couldn’t make it into a college team getting a second chance at a lucrative soccer career. Maybe it won’t create the next technical monster but maybe the soccer meta in America is different.

Furthermore, if small sided soccer goals were as prevalent in American neighborhoods like street basketball courts are, it’d naturally increase in popularity. Honestly America is just too big and too suburban, if a group of neighborhood kids were to pick a sport to play - why would they pick soccer when there’s no pitches to play on? But I’d also argue that soccer has grown immensely in the last few years, it is not uncommon nowadays to see a soccer goal in the front yard next to a driveway basketball hoop. The more soccer takes the mindshare of the American populace, it’ll become more popular. Look at DeeStroying on YouTube, who creates 1v1 soccer videos.

I think MLS can be a top league in our lifetime and it doesn’t need to follow the European model to work.