"My mom made $34,000 a year as a single mom raising three kids. She couldn't pay $4,000 for me to play club soccer — are you kidding? She couldn't pay $400."
That's Landon Donovan — the United States Men's National Team's all-time leading scorer, three-time World Cup veteran, Hall of Famer — describing exactly why a player like him probably doesn't exist in today's American soccer system. Someone paid his club fees. Without that, he never gets to IMG Academy, never signs a seven-figure deal with Bayer Leverkusen at 16, never becomes the face of U.S. soccer for a generation.
He said it plainly on The Late Run podcast: "That's not a good system to create good players. How do you create good players by doing that? You can't."
The numbers behind the problem
He's not exaggerating. Youth sports costs in the U.S. have risen 46% between 2019 and 2025, according to a 2025 Aspen Institute report. Travel soccer alone can cost a family up to $15,000 a year once you factor in coaching, travel, and tournament fees. The biggest single expense? Getting kids to games in the first place.
Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute's Sports & Society program, put it bluntly: the U.S. system "is not a youth-centered or a talent-development system. It's primarily a system set up to use kids to make money for adults."
That's the structural problem. The Amateur Sports Act of 1978 bars federal funding for Olympic sports, so the clubs that emerged to fill the gap took root in wealthier areas — and they've stayed there. Private equity has made it worse. Swedish firm EQT bought IMG Academy in 2023 for $1.25 billion. The same academy that gave Donovan his start. Now it's a vehicle for investment returns.
What this means for U.S. soccer's future
The MLS has grown, the USMNT has improved, and the country is hosting the 2026 World Cup — but the talent pipeline has a leak in it that no amount of league expansion fixes. When club participation is gated behind five-figure annual costs, the player pool shrinks to whoever's parents can afford it. That's not scouting. That's sorting by income.
- Youth sports costs up 46% from 2019 to 2025
- Travel soccer can cost families up to $15,000 per year
- 55.4% of U.S. youths aged 6–17 still play sports, but participation doesn't equal access to elite development
- The Amateur Sports Act of 1978 prohibits government funding of Olympic sports, leaving clubs to self-fund — typically in high-income areas
Donovan made it because someone intervened. That shouldn't be the model. The odds of another Donovan emerging from a low-income background haven't improved since the 1990s — they've almost certainly gotten worse.
"Think about how many kids you're missing out on in this country because they can't afford to play the game," he said. "The clubs are winning, and the kids are losing."
