How exactly does the US Soccer “Pyramid” even work?

2 Dec, 2014 Chris Kessell Comments Off

Some people in the United States think of the soccer pyramid in the United States working exactly like how it works in countries around the rest of the world. Unfortunately it does not.

Actually many casual fans in the United States don’t even know what the “Soccer Pyramid” is >>>

The Premier League is the pinnacle of world football. Nearly 15 percent of the men who played in the 2014 World Cup play professionally in the Premier League, easily more than any other league in the world. Four English teams — Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City — have World Cup players numbering in the double digits.
But the EPL is just the tip of the English football iceberg. It’s the most visible element of an intricate hierarchy of some 7,000 football teams, playing under the auspices of the Football Association (the FA) — let’s call it the Great Football Pyramid of England. In terms of the number of teams, the Premier League represents about one-quarter of 1 percent of it. (This and much of the empirics here rely on information from football stats site ThePyramid.info, which in turn assembled data from the FA’s league administration website, and individual clubs’ and leagues’ sites.)
The pyramid has more than 20 levels and hundreds of leagues. This is what it looks like:

This article on FiveThirtyEight.com >>> CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE <<< does a great job explaining the basics of how the entire system works.

And if you would like to dive more deeply in to lower levels of the soccer pyramid in England >>> CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE PYRAMID <<< and you can see truly how regional and local the smaller clubs are.

Now on to our own “pyramid” in the United States…

and to quote >>>

The pyramid is used to show how the structure strengthens as it rises, with the MLS and US National Teams at the apex, as most of the world does it. In the USA though, that pyramid is just for illustrative purposes only.

The good news: there are tons of players so the cream, mostly, does rise to the top.
The bad news: there are too many governing bodies, too many leagues, too many tournaments, too many good players in weak clubs, too many camps, too much cost to families, too many bad coaches, too many clubs and too many rules. Many of these bodies do the same thing, in the same cities … some with the same kids!

It’s certainly confusing to wrap your head around. No doubt the confusion will turn to frustration when compounded with one of the following paraphrased statements from the people who run one of the fiefdoms of American soccer:
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If you would like to read more about the >>> The Upside Down, Disjointed or Disfigured Pyramids of the US <<< you can find a great basic description of whats going on in our own “pyramid” and its many problems.