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- [00:01]
Jack Myers
What makes a leader worth following?
- [00:02]
Paul Tenorio
What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines?
- [00:10]
Jack Myers
I mean, should you quit your job
- [00:11]
Paul Tenorio
and start something on your own, what would that take? What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together? These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler. Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube. We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together.
- [00:35]
Jack Myers
Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of its national red tag sales event going on right now through Sunday, August 2nd. Stop by any of its participating communities and find select red tag homes at incredible pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton Difference at Dr. Horton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder, The Athletic fc.
- [01:15]
Adam Leventhal
Hi there and welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Adam Leventhal. So, as the World cup packs up and leaves town, what's the legacy? MLS have declared they'll take it from here. So after a six week festival of football on their doorstep, will they capitalise? Well for the final time here at Acar Studios in New York, The World cup has now left town. But what comes next for the domestic game in the U.S. the athletics senior writer and author of the Messi Effect, Paul Tenorio, is here. Yeah, it's all over. How do you feel?
- [01:54]
Paul Tenorio
Oh, I feel sad. I'm not ready to go back to the real world. You know, it's like the same way I felt after the group stage when we were done with four games a day and you have to kind of come to terms with the fact that you won't have those marathons anymore. And now we just don't get the World cup for another few years. Couple years for the women's and then four for the men's. So. Yeah, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna need a. A week or so to come down from it and then I'm gonna need another few weeks to recover from the fact that it's not back.
- [02:20]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is gonna feel like a big void. I, I do agree we're gonna be hearing some hearing from some very influential people in MLS soccer in the US Global football as well, including Arsene Wenger. But before we get to those people, MLS was obviously launched off the back of the 1994 World cup in the U.S. do you feel 30 years on that they're ready to take the next step now?
- [02:47]
Paul Tenorio
Well, I know that they're ready to. I know that the infrastructure has been built up, the investment has been there to be ready for this moment. The question is whether they'll seize the moment. And, and that, I think is still more up in the air than anyone I think around the league would like to admit. You know, they, they believe that they're ready for more, but how they get there, what that more looks like, is literally still up for debate in the boardrooms amongst the owners of Major League Soccer. So we've seen some changes already voted on. We know the biggest changes are yet to come. But I do think it's fair to say there's a question mark around what MLS is going to do to capitalize on this moment. And I can say, you know, clearly that they weren't ready to do it now, which they should have been.
- [03:37]
Garth Lagerway
Right?
- [03:37]
Paul Tenorio
They had an eight year Runway for this moment. The changes that they voted aren't going to come till next year. So everything in the league, the foundation is there. It's now acting upon it. And that's actually the hard part is getting 30 owners on board about the this is the way forward.
- [03:55]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah, you want to strike when the iron is hot, especially in the U.S. so the tagline from MLS is Thanks, world, we'll take it from here. Here is the MLS commissioner, Don Garber on the master plan.
- [04:08]
Don Garber
It's called MLS 3.0 for a reason, because it is a transformation of the way we're going to think about going about our business. But it is not a. Yeah, it's not a flipping of the switch. It's about acting on the step. We took back over the last couple of years to figure out what we're going to look like in the years to come. I wholeheartedly believe that without Major League Soccer, building the commercial market, creating a supporter culture, building the foundation for the sport, being at it every single day through rain and shine and thick and thin and making tough decisions and having some fun and getting a bit lucky, that the World cup would be what it is today. And to your point. And now we got to take it from here.
- [04:56]
Paul Tenorio
When you see how big this was, is there any regret that. That some of these sporting changes that are coming weren't ready for 2026?
- [05:06]
Don Garber
Absolutely not. And it's no different than some of the other views of various pundits that don't really understand that timing is everything. And when you're running a, A league, you got to think about the world in macro terms because you get too focused on the micro. You, you, you, you risk making a quick decision that could be wrong as opposed to making the right decision that could take a little time.
- [05:39]
Paul Tenorio
You've, you've.
- [05:40]
Don Garber
And you will never agree with that.
- [05:42]
Wells Fargo Ad Voice
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- [05:42]
Don Garber
That's why I love you.
- [05:43]
Paul Tenorio
I won't agree with it. But, but that's.
- [05:44]
Don Garber
Time is going to be the judge of that. Paul.
- [05:46]
Paul Tenorio
Sure.
- [05:46]
Don Garber
And I have had the benefit of looking at hundreds of decisions that we've made, and now 30, near 30 years later, I could look back on. Most of them have been right, not all of them. You know, anybody who thinks every decision they've made over a period of decades is right is naive or arrogant. Many of them were wrong. But the timing issues that we've had to manage through have been fundamental to our stability and to our growth.
- [06:16]
Paul Tenorio
What does MLS 3.0 look like by the end of MLS 3.0, whenever that is, let's say 10 years from now? What, what is going to the top
- [06:23]
Don Garber
leagues in the world, Paul? Our league will be way more popular. We'll have a media deal that will be aligned with, you know, the percentage of revenues that almost every other league in the world, whether it's soccer or not, has. And we will never have to answer again, what do we need to do to be more competitive? Nobody says to the Bundesliga, how do you become more like the Premier League? They accept that there are five leagues in the world that are separate from the other 200, and we want that to be six. And I remember when I came into this business and MLS was fledgling, we wanted to be one of the major leagues in the United States, that there weren't just four, there were five. And today, the vast majority of people in the business do look at the North American sports market as having five major leagues of team sports. And I am convinced that when we're done with this next level of development, they'll be looking at a broader group of the top soccer leagues in the world. Really like that.
- [07:30]
Adam Leventhal
It's a really interesting chat because obviously it's great to see you having that joust over your disagreement over the timing. They should have got the calendar sorted. For people who don't know about the calendar switch, just explain that. In short, first of all, yeah, so
- [07:44]
Paul Tenorio
for its entire history, MLS has played on the Kind of annual calendar. The season starts in late February and MLS comes in and runs in December, second week of December. And recently they voted to flip it to align better with the European League. So MLS season will now start in July and it will run the end of July and it will run through late May. And that's done so that it can be a bigger participant in the transfer market. You know, typically now the summer window, which is when most of the business gets done, happened in the middle of the Major League Soccer season. It was a deterrent to sell your best players because you wanted to be able to make a run for a trophy. And also you couldn't really participate in the market as actively to buy players because you don't want to make this enormous investment. You only get half a season out of that player at the beginning of the contract. So this was done to better align the league. And it's a massive decision because the weather, it's a continental league, right. So the weather is very difficult for the northern markets to, to play more games in November and in February and to lose the summer. But it was an important one for the, the sporting side of the league, which is where these decisions now have to start to focus.
- [08:52]
Adam Leventhal
But it's not happening yet.
- [08:53]
Paul Tenorio
That's right.
- [08:54]
Adam Leventhal
That's where we're not striking while the iron's hot.
- [08:56]
Paul Tenorio
That's right. It's not happening until 2027. And I mean you could hear, you know, when he talks about various pundits, the various pundit was the one sitting in front of him, as he eventually acknowledged. But you know, I, I do agree with what Don says later where he talks about the fact that the focus of the last eight years has been on building up infrastructure, stadiums and training facilities. That's really been the last two decades of Major League Soccer. And that's really important to create a level of permanence in the league and in the domestic marketplace. However, I do think that from the moment the World cup was, was awarded to the US in 2018, they did have an eight year Runway to say what do we want the sporting product to look like and what types of big decisions should we be making around that? And, and they didn't really do that. And there are numerous factors why Covid happened. They pushed the collective bargaining agreement back two years as part of COVID all these sort of political maneuverings, but it missed the, it missed the moment. And so now that it does take
- [09:54]
Adam Leventhal
time, doesn't it, to flip it around?
- [09:56]
Paul Tenorio
It does take, it takes time and it's not just. First of all, it took time to get owners on board. You had to convince the owner in Montreal, Toronto, Minnesota that this isn't going to fundamentally hurt their business. And then you have the logistical side of it where you have to actually change aspects of the stadium so that you can accommodate fans better in those November and February games. So there was. I just think that they waited too long. And in fact, a lot of what my book's about is these conversations started in July of 2023 when Messi arrived. It was Messi's arrival and the enormous commercial spike that happened that changed the conversation on the board level to say, what do we do to change the business to better take advantage of this? And so in, in, you know, in that context, getting this decision voted on and done and ready for 2027 was. Was quite fast, right from 23 to having it happen in 27. I just wish that those conversations had started in 2018 or coming out of COVID in 2021 into that season to say, okay, we've emerged, we've survived Covid. What do we need to do to be ready for 2026, which is our next big moment? And, and those years were costly. But again, you know, I think later on we talked to Brad Sims, the president and CEO of nycfc and he talked about the importance of building up the infrastructure. And New York is maybe in the best position of anyone because they're opening their new stadium in Queens in 2027. So they're going to be ready, more ready than anyone to have this big unveil of a new stadium, new calendar, and hopefully if MLS can get there, and we'll go into this later, new roster rules that allow the league to be more competitive. So let's listen to what Brad Sim says about the infrastructure buildup and being ready for the moment.
- [11:38]
Brad Sims
The timing for us, I mean, couldn't have worked out any better, really. I mean, you've got this, the biggest, not just the biggest soccer event ever, the biggest sports event ever. Maybe you could also just call it the biggest event ever in the, in world history. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but it's actually true, true. It's incredible. And so like that they're happening in our sport right as we're leading into this new, you know, kind of New York City FC 2.0 ERA and Eddie Ed park and we are referring to as the cathedral of soccer for, you know, a home for the world's game and the world city. So, like, the timing could not be better for us and what people, what we've seen is that, I mean, New York City is a soccer city. There's no doubt, like, you go any bar, any restaurant, anywhere in any of the five boroughs over the last six weeks, and the places are jammed with soccer fans. And it's not just for big games. It could be, you know, know, any, any, any matchup. And everyone, like TVs are all on soccer and everyone's watching soccer and everyone's into it. And so it's, you know, New York City is, is, is a soccer city. Has been for some, some time. We've, we've always felt like, hey, we, how do we play a role at New York City FC in the, in the really building New York City into one, you know, one of the, one of the soccer capitals of the world. And I think we're close and. But you can't do that unless you have, like a home for that for the game in the city, unless you have one of the best in what we believe will be the best facility for, for watching the sport.
- [13:13]
Adam Leventhal
Do you think that they're going to be able to join the dots with the, you know, the buzz that we've seen in this city with all the fans, obviously with the Argentina fans around, around before the final, the Spain fans after the final, but also the, the teams and the transition of fans throughout the tournament? Do you think they'll be able to, they'll be able to connect the dots and really go for it?
- [13:33]
Paul Tenorio
I think so. It's very difficult. And it's the code MLS hasn't cracked yet of how to resonate in the biggest markets in this country. The most successful MLS teams are in the small markets. Kansas City, Portland, you know, Seattle, Cincinnati, Columbus. But they've struggled in New York, in Chicago, in Boston, in Dallas. So this is a really important moment in time in that context for the league. You have a stadium opening in New York, which creates buzz itself. People want to come see the new building. They want to experience it. The same is going to happen in Chicago in 2028. A new building. They're working on a new building in Boston as well. It's critical to be able to do this now. The question is how. How do you attract the fans beyond coming to see the stadium when they, when they show up to see the new building? What's the product you're putting on the field? And that is the next point here. That is the most important part of the conversation around you. Can MLS crack the code? Can New York City FC resonate in a market that's got the Knicks and the Giants and the jets and we go down the Yankees and go on down the line of all the major sports and all these really important teams. Well, it's going to be about what kind of product you put on the field, and they've got a lot of issues to solve there. And actually, we talked to Brad Sims about his take on what the structure is now of the league, and I think it's important to hear what he says first and then I'll offer up my. My thoughts.
- [14:52]
Brad Sims
Generally speaking, I feel like MLS does a better job at, you know, at the commercial side of the business than. Than any league maybe in the world. I know. Maybe again, I'm. I'm going. I'm. I'm making a. Making a big claim here. But in terms of like, with, with what we've got and how. And how we are able to kind of commercialize it, the one hole is. Is broadcast, you know, and everywhere else around the world, it's the opposite. They got the broadcast and they can't. They got nothing on, you know, in the rest of the commercial areas. But to. To want to watch on broadcasts like you. It. That's really. You have two, two groups that really, I think broadcast audiences are made of. One is ultra hardcore fans that literally want to, like, they need to see every single game, you know, and then ultra casual fans that. That are really going to be driven by like a player. Like, really probably like a player. But if you have a Messi or you have a Levandowski or you have a, you know, a Griezmann or. Or like that also is like, oh, like, I'll tune in. I want to tune in to see what's going on with that guy. So I think that that is the path. That's probably the best and most most likely path to growing broadcast interest or, you know, is. Is those kind of players. And so how do we go from in our league having one or two or three of those players, having 15 or 20 or 25 or 30 of those players? You know, it's. It's. There's some chicken or egg on some of this. You know, I mean, it's like if you invest here, then you're going to get that. You can get that. It's like you can't. You can't wait for the broadcast revenue to get big and then invest in players. Right? You know, so that, that's where the tricky part comes, is you got to have the owners that are willing to kind of go out on a limb a bit and make an investment and then we'll see, you know, interest in that and that team grow both in venue and kind of general interest. Broadcast being a fangirl, Brad there kind
- [17:05]
Paul Tenorio
of casually throws out two ideas that are quite important to the future of the league. And the first is fundamentally MLS's problem is this. They've created a robust local business. They do quite well in their markets. Obviously, it depends on the market, but they sell out their stadiums, they. They sell the suites, they have the commercial deals locally. They do quite well. There's. But they need to go from being. They need to convert from being a local product, a strong local product, to a national product. And in order to do that, it's driven, as he, as he notes, by broadcast revenue. And MLS has a deal with Apple tv. It's been a mixed bag because they started behind a paywall, which was an awful idea, frankly, to grow audience. And they've since come out from that paywall and the numbers are doing better. But the problem is on display there, which is you can get Portland fans to watch Portland Timbers games, but you can't really get Portland fans to tune into New York against D.C. united. And then beyond that, you can't get the casual sports fan to turn on the TV and watch Portland against la, which is one of the better markets, better matchups. So how do you do that? And that's the big question. And he alludes to the idea of, we've learned now that in America, stars resonate. We've known that. We saw it in this World cup as well. And so for a long time, MLS kind of pushed away from the stars and said we don't want to have this retirement league moniker, even though it's only a handful of older star players coming, and they've been signing all these young players, it creates this narrative. They, they, they care less about that now, as they. As they should. Right? Because people do want to come out and watch those stars, but you have to improve the rest of the roster around those stars. And that is the critical issue for Major League Soccer going forward is what is the level of product that you need to have and what is the spend that corresponds with it that will actually resonate with an American audience, that they'll notice it and they'll want to watch it, and they'll be compelled to watch it.
- [19:08]
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- [20:42]
Paul Tenorio
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- [21:26]
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- [21:35]
Adam Leventhal
Obviously, as was being discussed by Don Garber as well, that this is almost like a phase, phase yellow approach, if that's a word that you need to change the calendar, that will then help be a more competitive league in terms of the transfer market which we've discussed in terms of like the, the designated player rule, the salary cap as well. How does that plug into some of the issues that maybe need to be massaged and changed? In a way, yeah.
- [22:03]
Paul Tenorio
I mean it is the most important part of the equation. You know, the the MLS 3.0 model is around changing the competition structure, which means they're going to actually change to divisions instead of conferences and they're going to change the playoffs. They're trying to create more games that matter, games of consequence. The second thing is that they're flipping the calendar. And the third piece, and the most important piece is changing the roster rules. Why? Well, it's great that you can be more active in the summer window, but you can't really if the rules stay as they are. Any player whose salary cap number is more than $2 million is a designated player. And think about the market, how many $2 million players there are just salary, and we're not even including the transfer fee that gets amortized in to a cap number in mls. So they can't actually participate in that market without changing the rules. And, and so now right now at the board level, the debate is what should those rules look like? And in my mind, it's quite a simple solution. But let's first, I talked to Garth Lagerway. He's a three time winning MLS cup winning general manager. He won MLS cup with Real Salt Lake, won multiple MLS Cups with the Seattle Sounders, became the first general manager to lead an MLS team to a CONCACAF Champions League title. Mexico has won 24 of the last 25 the league MX teams 24 of the last 25 CONCACAF Champions Leagues, which by the way, is a pretty good indicator that you probably need to change your, your system and your ways. If you want to be one of the best leagues in the world, you need to start by being the best league in your own region. But Garth knows better than anybody, he's worked in this forever, what the league needs to do. So we spoke with Garth Lagoay about his, his take on the roster rules and the changes that maybe need to come there.
- [23:42]
Garth Lagerway
Now in mls, you've always had this concept of, well, we want to sign the best players in the world. We want to sign David Beckham if he's available. We want to sign Lionel Messi if he's available. You know, and there's a number of guys, you know, high profile guys in the league right now. So, you know, I do think this concept of the dp, like if you have, you know, one per team and you need them to play really well, right, because the instant you bring back a big name and they don't play well, now, you know, that's, that doesn't work either. No one's tuning in to watch someone who's not playing well. And I think, you know, one of the great things about this World cup has been that Messi's been one of the best players. So anyone who says, well, MLS is, is not at the standard that I want to watch, well, the best player in the world's playing there all the time, and you can tune in to watch him. So you want to create more examples of that. You want to have more teams that, that people can follow, you know, but again, with, with within that umbrella of transparency and simplicity, if you can say, hey, you know, we will allow one person to exist outside that salary cap as a, as a marketing play, I think you want, keep as much as possible within the salary cap if you're going to go to that simple model. Right? I mean, right now MLS has the three DPs and they have the three young DPs, and now you have six exceptions to the cap. And all to say, like, if you can clean that up and you can simplify it, then what it allows is different teams to spend on different types of players. What people I think don't realize is the total spend for MLS teams is actually quite high. It is comparable in a lot of cases to Spain or France as examples. Now, to be clear, not saying psg, I'm not saying Barca or Athletico Madrid or Real Madrid or the teams that are in the Champions League year after year after year. Right? But what's the distinguishing factor then? It's, with the exception of those big, big clubs, it's not revenue, it's TV money. Right? And so if you can now create, you know, fewer obstacles to buying and selling players, because the other part of this, and I apologize for the long answer, but you know, there are caps right now that the league puts on player development, whether that's homegrown territories or that's a limit on the money that you can reinvest from player sales in your team if you freed up one or both. And again, you have to be mindful in all these solutions, you have to have a broadly acceptable solution, right? You have to get the, you know, the great majority of owners to buy into all these things. And so one of the things you want is in that simpler system to create optionality. So now an owner can spend at the level to which he's comfortable.
- [26:13]
Paul Tenorio
Yeah, I feel bad for Garth. I'm trying to get him to put all these problems into a relatively short answer. But the idea here is that MLS has created all of these restrictions that essentially are meant to keep costs down, and all of these restrictions are creating friction for the league to get better. You know, it's harder to Bring players in. It's harder to sell the players. It's hard to convert sale figures into money that you can use to go right back into the roster. It's harder to sign homegrown players, American players, than it should be. You can't sign homegrown players from outside of your own market unless you pay for them first. All of these things that exist in this current system don't work toward the simple idea of what do we need to do to put the best possible product on the field. And what Garth is talking about is simplify the system. Make a salary cap ceiling and a floor. No rules within that outside of. Yes. Leaving room for designated players like Messi to come, because that's still important. Otherwise, allow the money to just be spent. Because if you have teams spending $50 million, as MLS does right now, but that, but 45 of that 50 million is focused on two or three players. That's the problem. Wouldn't you rather have a team spending $50 million across its entire roster? We know that would be the better sporting decision. We don't have to look very far to see it. We can look at League mx, we can look at those results in CONCACAF Champions League, but they haven't done it yet. And so this is the ask right now is let, let's open this up. Let's create optionality. So one owner might say, I want Miami. I'm going to be a star driven team. I'm going to spend 40 of my $50 million on stars and 10 over the rest of the roster, the other 16, 20 players. Some teams are going to say, I want $2 million spent on 20 players and I'm going to spend my money that way. Give them the optionality to do that. Whereas right now, MLS says no, you must build in this very rigid system of this many designated players, this many young, all the way down the line. And so in the name of parity. But they're, they're loot. They might have that competitive balance within the league, but they're, they're operating in a global marketplace.
- [28:32]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah.
- [28:32]
Paul Tenorio
So they're losing the competitiveness to Mexico at the Club World cup and they need to change that.
- [28:39]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah. You can't compete if you've got your wings clipped all the time. And that needs to, that needs to change.
- [28:51]
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- [28:52]
Paul Tenorio
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- [28:54]
Brad Sims
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- [28:57]
Paul Tenorio
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Paul Tenorio
Yep, it's Keenan.
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- [29:09]
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Paul Tenorio
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Brad Sims
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Paul Tenorio
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- [29:20]
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- [30:27]
Adam Leventhal
We've discussed how the World cup can help mls. How can MLS in its sort of new guise, and I know it's not moving as fast as you would like, help the US MNT succeed and do better? Especially when there's issues around player development. And for people that aren't familiar, there's a big debate raging around the sort of pay to play model in the US Just give us a taste of that and why it's such a big issue.
- [30:53]
Paul Tenorio
Well, I think there's a few things here in terms of both pay to play and MLS's role in the infrastructure. The first is, you know, you have to find a way to unwind a multi billion dollar business that is youth sports in America. That's not going to be an easy problem to solve. It's something that U.S. soccer is leading the way on right now to try to change the model completely to to tear down what exists and rebuild it in a way that is more about player development than it is about making money. But that's not an easy task. I would say that MLS has been a leader in that. In mls, academies are free. They're one of the only places that players can go and play without any costs. And that's really important and I think we've seen that change the national team for the better when we look at this U.S. national team that played this summer. Weston McKenna came through the FC Dallas Academy and was sold to Schalke. Chris Richards came through FC Dallas and was sold to Bayern Munich. You know, Brendan Aronson came through Philadelphia Union and was sold on all of these players. Alex Freeman came through Orlando city system, played for a in a second division league that didn't exist four years ago before coming into the first team and being sold eventually and starting and scoring at a World Cup. So the impact and influence is is growing. I covered the start of the U.S. development Academy in 2007 at the beginning of my career. The fact that within my professional career I can have the entire history of academies in America shows you how young this still is and how much work still needs to be done. But on a more basic level, when we talk about MLS's role in the national team, the domestic league has to be the driver of talent into your national team pool. It has to be what takes players, grows them through those younger years, develops them in that critical age of 17 to 21 and has them ready for the national team in those moments. Right now in my, the way I think of it is MLS has set the ceiling here. So players hit that developmental ceiling in MLS and if they're not sold on by the right age, then that's where the growth stops. And that ceiling is set by the level of play on the field. The more you invest in your first team product, the better the product becomes. Well, the better the training environment is. The better players you're playing against, the better you're going to become. And I point to a player like there's this left back, actually two players, Noah Allen and Ian Frey, two homegrown kids from Miami who play at Inter Miami. There's no chance that they would be at the level they're at if they were playing for the Philadelphia Union. But because they came to work every day as teenagers and they trained against Messi and Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets and you go to Luis Suarez and you go down the line that the demands on them were so much higher, MLS needs to try to recreate that. And that to me is one of the most important roles in this is let US Soccer start working from the bottom up. And MLS needs to push that ceiling at the top of it and together, hopefully that starts to make some progress.
- [33:58]
Adam Leventhal
Well, it was interesting hearing from U.S. soccer at the end of the World cup and alongside representatives from U.S. soccer. The chief Operating officer, Dan Helfrick, was the former Arsenal manager who's now FIFA's head of global development, who was speaking about MLS's role in youth development. Let's hear from both of them.
- [34:20]
Dan Helfrick
MLS's place is essential. And MLS is an active and full participant in all discussions we're having about the future of the sport in the US And MLS is essential both for the role they do and will play in the development of players. But they're also essential as we try to, as a country, grow the sport, which means growing fans and it means growing families who care about the sport. And those are things that are important to MLS and they're important to U.S. soccer. But I would have answered the same way for the nwsl. I would have answered the same way for usl. Our belief is that we need to convene all the key stakeholders to get the alignment that I described. That's the only way we will create the conditions for the youth system to produce the experiences for the players and their families and the development that's required to succeed on the pitch at the highest level.
- [35:27]
Arsene Wenger
Yeah, MLS has a responsibility to produce elite football. You have grassroots. That means give every girl or boy a chance to play and then you have to produce elite. The professional clubs are part of that. So there is an obligation for them to participate to produce elite. And how do you produce elite is identify the best, develop them well through individual training program. And as well, what we forget many times is to play the best with the best. We know by experience that the countries who produce the best players regroup the best together because there's a stimulation that is absolutely vital to get the best out of the talent of people. And that is what the MLS can play a big part. They alone are not, not the solution. They're part of the whole program.
- [36:37]
Adam Leventhal
Just a quick follow up to what Arsene Wenger was, was saying there. You know, we need to give kids an opportunity to play. That is the issue though, isn't it? It costs so much money for kids to play, right?
- [36:47]
Paul Tenorio
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's about what are your entry points into the sport and is it accessible. And you know, there, there are so many different layers to that. And you know, part of it is just the kind of normal youth participation. But even that, you know, I have a five year old and a seven year old, so I just signed my five year old up for his first team and it cost for the full season, $400. Now I'm able to pay that, but not every family will be able to. And, you know, if you send them to a soccer camp and if you do all these different things once they get to the next level, you know, then you have to travel to play. That's one of the most interesting parts. You know, Henry Bushnell, my colleague, wrote about it. You know, it's not just the cost of the club itself and the uniforms and all of that. It's that you're required to go to these tournaments or these leagues are being created where a player growing up in Chicago is in a different league than a team that's in a suburb of Chicago. And so instead of going to play that team, they're driving to Michigan or Indiana to play teams and staying at hotels or paying all the gas money or doing all these different things. And that's shutting out people who can't afford to do that or don't have a car. And so those logistical issues need to change and we need to find more ways to create entry points, you know, and the players are there. You know, I'll bring up my, again, a personal anecdote. My two kids go to school in a public school in Chicago. It's 87% Latino. And every day I bring my kids to drop them off and pick them up. And there's a turf field out back, and it's all kids playing soccer. There's the fifth graders here, the third graders here, the first graders here. The kids are playing, they want to play. What are we doing to help them, to put them into places where they can kind of harness that love for the sport, be developed, grow into it. And yes, as Arson Vanger said, to eventually have the best players identified and nourished and brought into the right environments to become elite players.
- [38:41]
Adam Leventhal
So obviously, as we've highlighted, we've thrown a lot into the mix. There's a lot of work to be done. We don't know exactly when the World cup is going to be back in the U.S. donald Trump wants it back immediately. Sorry, Donald Trump. We can't just do it immediately. I'm sorry. There is some process that we need to go through here, but let's say in 10, 15 years time, are you optimistic that maybe the US men's national team, that ultimately this is what the aim is to improve and the league, MLS is going to be in a far healthier position than it, than it is now?
- [39:14]
Paul Tenorio
Yeah, I think the national team in soccer in America, I am optimistic that it will continue to grow and develop. I think the sheer amount of resources in this country, the desire to make change, the number of players who are being exposed to the game in a different way. And that's the critical thing here. People ask me all the time, will soccer make it in America? Soccer has made it in America. It's just bifurcated. You have people watching the Premier League, you have people watching League mx. You have people who watch just the national teams. You have people who watch Champions League or play FIFA or are just involved in youth soccer. The sport is here and it matters. Right? And we've even seen the pop culture crossovers with Ted Lasso and welcome to Wrexham. It exists. So that part of it, I have no doubt, will continue to be developed and grown. And I think the culture will continue to grow and develop, which is critical to start to close the gap with the rest of the world. Mls, I think, absolutely can get there. I may be more cautiously optimistic that they'll get there. I don't think they'll get there as quickly as I want them, but that doesn't mean that they won't get there in 10 to 15 years. The. The question's going to be, do they make these changes fast enough to hold off League mx, which is going to centralize its media rights and get a ton of revenue from that because millions of people watch. It's the most watched soccer league in America is League mx. So their media rights deal will be massive if they get their ducks in a row, which they haven't yet. The Premier League is the second most watched league in this country. You think that they're not going to continue to push their presence in America more and more when they see what happened in the World cup, how much more money there is to make what the prices were and the stadiums were still full. So can you act fast enough to stay in front of your competition or to not let the. The gap grow more between the fans that are now turning, tuning in to watch Arsenal, or the fans who just watched the World cup and said, oh, that Erling Holland character in the cowboy boots. I'm going to become a Manchester City fan instead of a New York City FC City football Group fan. You know, those decisions are happening now. So I hope that they can make these choices fast enough that they don't lose too many of these kind of new casual soccer fans. And look, not to plug it, but to plug my book. I mean, I spent 300 plus pages going into all of these issues because it's not easy, it's quite complicated. But it's also because this is the moment for the sport. And so US Soccer, mls, nwsl, usl, Liga, Mex, Premier League, Bundesliga, Champions League, all of these entities know it. They know this is the moment they have to act. And in my case the thing I report on is mls. Like if you are too slow, I promise you no one else is standing still.
- [42:01]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see what happens after such a big event here in the States. Paul, thanks so much for your insight for carrying out those interviews as well. Thank you very much for watching for listening as well. Don't forget you can download the podcast on all of your usual podcast platforms. Watch on YouTube as well. Hope you've enjoyed everything that we've had for you to offer from this World Cup. We're signing off from ACAST here in New York City. Don't forget to check out the Athletic for all the latest reporting and all the follow up stories from the World cup and the build up to the Premier League and obviously MLS coverage as well. We'll be back soon. Take care till then.
- [42:58]
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