Domestic or Abroad: It Shouldn’t Matter

Try to imagine yourself as a young, American soccer player who is slowly growing in prominence. Your dream is to play for your country and you have already been given a few call-ups but nothing consistent and you need to find a way to break into the first team. Playing for your club in MLS has resulted in a lot of play time as well as the chance to be a top player at your club. You are very happy to be playing in your native country but you feel as if you need to move on to Europe if you are to get a place under Jürgen Klinsmann. What do you do?

The roster for the most recent tournament, Copa America, included 10 players from MLS and 13 from abroad at the time of its creation. Of the 10 players currently in MLS, 3 have spent large parts of their careers playing overseas. If you weigh that into the ratio, it becomes 16:7 in favor of those who leave the United States to play.

It is unfair for the players who have made names for themselves on our soil to be shunned from the national spotlight simply because a player makes his money in a league with more international notoriety. If an overseas player is performing at a high level that’s one thing, but overlooking someone in our own country who could help the team is just shameful.

The responsibilities of players representing the States are to play well and be cohesive with their compatriots on the field. Neither of those requires having played in a certain part of the world. When evaluating countries and how they go about picking their squads, we need to look past players on paper and through to the soccer being played on the pitch.