Can This Man Save U.S. Soccer?

An expert teacher’s efforts to rescue the sport from mediocrity, by starting with its coaches.

- Amanda Ripley

AMERICANS PERFORM about as unimpressively in soccer as they do in education. In both cases, the United States has suffered from a lack of focus and rigor, despite significant investments. More than 4 million kids are now registered in American youth-soccer leagues—more than in any other country— and yet the U.S. has never produced a Lionel Messi or a Cristiano Ronaldo. The men’s national team still struggles to compete internationally. The women’s team just won the World Cup, a shining accomplishment, but its players owe their success more to speed and athleticism than to technique; with powerhouses like Germany and France finally getting serious about girls’ sports, the American women will likely face stiff er competition in the years ahead.

American soccer officials are therefore humble in a way that other sports executives are not. “We need to improve, or in a few years, all those people we’ve gotten to pay attention [to soccer] will drift away,” says Neil Buethe, the head of communications for the U.S. Soccer Federation, the sport’s governing body in the United States. “A win only happens if our players get better, and our players only get better if the coaches get better.”

This thinking has led U.S. Soccer officials to an unconventional idea: that a teaching expert they first read about in The New York Times Magazine—a man with no professional soccer expertise— might help them advance the sport.