U.S. Soccer makes long-term play toward fixing USMNT's big problem

The United States men's national team program is in crisis. That last word gets overused, especially in the soccer press, but it's nonetheless accurate in the present day. The senior team is a shambles and the under-23 team likely won't reach the Olympics.

Currently, these are not controversial things to say.

And there are many at who fingers can be pointed. National team head coach and United States Soccer Federation technical director Jurgen Klinsmann has made a mess of things at the senior level, and he may or may not be equipped to clean it up. The players have hardly covered themselves in glory, even if they haven't exactly been enabled to succeed, either. And U.S. Soccer perhaps made a mistake to entrust Klinsmann with so much responsibility and freedom and invest as many resources in him and his hazy plan as it did.

But there is a line of causality that burrows much deeper into the layered structure of American soccer. Plainly, for a country of its size and wealth and abundant athletic prowess, the U.S. still isn't developing the players required to conquer the world. The simple and obvious truth is that Klinsmann's job would be a good deal easier if he had better players.

Yes, better prospects are emerging and finding their way into the youth setup of major European clubs at ever younger ages. But there still aren't enough of them. Player development is a numbers game. You start with 100 promising 12-year-olds and hope that by the time they turn 16, half of them are still prospects. By the time they reach 18 and push into the professional ranks – because let's be honest, college soccer isn't the trajectory the national team should want its best young players on anymore – you're fortunate to have two dozen left. And of those, perhaps a handful will break out and eventually form the core of your senior national team.

That's how it works. The wider the base of the pyramid, the larger the tip of it. But in the U.S., the talent pool is still very shallow and narrow, meaning the top of the game is a fine point, rather than a blunt battering ram that can be deployed to smash into the international elite.

U.S. Soccer, for its part, has made meaningful efforts to bring some kind of structure to the wild west of the youth game, which has historically been a grab bag of loosely structured leagues and development teams and costly travel teams that barnstorm the country. The whole scattered thing has enriched a few enterprising individuals and frozen out a great many prospects without the means to participate.

The federation has ramped up scouting in underprivileged areas and, in 2007, started the Development Academy, a system of youth leagues with strict entry requirements, making clubs adhere to a set of nationally uniform best practices – such as the ratio of practice to games and a coaching curriculum.

On Friday, U.S. Soccer announced that it would be adding an under-12 division to the Development Academy in the fall of 2016. The under-14 age group, meanwhile, would be split up with an under-13 category added as well. Along with the under-16 and under-18 divisions, that brings the number of regionally syndicated levels to five.

And this, while not necessarily making for the sexiest news, could prove hugely significant down the line – perhaps a decade from now when the products of this new division might first emerge in the national team. It's worth noting here that 14 Development Academy alumni have already appeared for the senior U.S. national team, while a total of 116 are currently on the roster of one of the 20 Major League Soccer teams.

The further expansion of elite youth soccer – creating the best leagues, rather than the most expensive ones – will improve the environment at a younger age, which had been somewhat neglected.

"We wanted to spread the same philosophy we have at the under-14 level – the value of that has been clear – and we wanted to introduce it to an earlier age group," explained U.S. Soccer Director of Scouting Tony Lepore. "Because it is a peak learning age."

Expanding into ever younger age groups is also an attempt to correct a harmful quirk of the American soccer structure. In most major soccer countries, the strongest coaches – not the managers or head coaches, but those who actually teach the game – work at the youngest levels. In America, that's upside down, with a lot of them winding up at the college level, which is surely the least effective place to develop future professionals yet the one that tends to pay highly qualified coaches the best.

"We know that the Academy environment, structure, quality assurance and the minimum standards isn't just positive for developing players," Lepore said. "We've seen over the last eight years is that it's also a place for coaches to develop. So we think that will help us continue to develop youth experts, where we would say we're behind the top soccer nations."

But most of all, adding another layer to the system that should eventually funnel into the national teams expands the base. America has a vast soccer landscape, with as many youth players as just about any other country in the world. Getting kids playing and excited about soccer, getting the numbers through the door, that has never been the issue. Pushing them on to the next level as fully formed players is far more problematic.

The Development Academy's purpose, ultimately, is as much to develop prospects as it is to set an example.

"Looking at it from a more macro standpoint, this philosophy that the academy has set and that we've seen have some success is probably the standard that we'd like to spread to as many people as possible," Lepore said. "So by just simply adding younger age groups, that does expand the influence and grows the number of players that's in the academy. But our hope is that through the player development initiative and through the standard and exemplary model set by the academy clubs, the other clubs in the country might adopt that model."

They are hoping, essentially, that their methods go viral.

Certainly, these sorts of initiatives aren't silver bullets. They don't, for instance, directly address the ruinous pay-for-play climate, which immeasurably lengthens the odds of a poor but talented young player making it. Most academies run by Major League Soccer teams are now free, or close to it, but elite youth soccer remains expensive for most.

But it helps to change the culture. For one, it changes the measure of success. The under-12 level will be played on smaller fields, in 9-on-9 games, staged in as close a proximity to each other as possible. Because it's more beneficial to players that age to get their all-important touches on the ball and to actually spend time on the field rather than in the car in pursuit of some faraway cup.

There will be no standings and no trophies for the under-12s. The successful maturation of a player will be the prize, eroding the harmful fixation on winning that underpins the travel team racket. The focus will be on the growth of the individual, as it should be in the long game of player development.

And perhaps, a long time from now, all of that will help to produce wins and accomplished teams at the senior level.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.