Brad Fridal, former US and Premier League goalkeeper, knows better than most what it takes for an American player to succeed at football’s highest level.
Friedel helped the United States reach the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals and spent nearly two decades in English football, including a then-record run of 310 consecutive Premier League appearances.
Now, after another World Cup ended, with the US falling short of the last eight, Friedel believes the US’s failings aren’t within its funding or infrastructure.
Instead, he believes the country must build a deeper football culture and warns that his own route to the Premier League might not even be possible for a young player today.
While the infrastructure surrounding the sport has dramatically improved, he argues that the culture required to consistently produce elite players has struggled to keep pace.
“From 1994 to today, on a scale of one to ten, I think our infrastructure was probably a 0.5 in 1994,” Friedel said. “It’s probably a seven, eight or nine today, depending on what state you go to.”
The former Blackburn Rovers, Aston Villa and Tottenham goalkeeper points to the boom of soccer-specific stadiums, professional training facilities and improved coaching education as evidence of the sport’s progress.
Embed from Getty Images“If you go into Seattle, for instance, it’s brilliant,” he said. “Really, really good. And a lot of people know about the game. That growth from ’94 to today is unrecognisable, in a good way.”
But when it comes to football culture and player development, Friedel gives a far less generous assessment.
“We were probably a three to four out of ten back in ’94, and we’re still probably a four or five out of ten now,” he said.
For Friedel, the problem goes beyond coaching. Unlike in many European and South American countries, football is still competing with an array of established American sports for the country’s best young athletes.
In parts of the US, he said, soccer remains primarily a participation sport rather than an obvious route towards becoming a professional athlete. At the same time, the expense associated with some youth academies can limit access.
“A lot of it doesn’t have to do with the coaching,” Friedel said. “It has to do with the generational turn on people in the United States — kids in inner cities having access to soccer, kids being born and, when they want to start playing a sport, saying, ‘Hey, I want to be a professional soccer player.’”
The financial disparity between soccer and America’s biggest leagues also remains significant. Friedel pointed to the enormous contracts available in sports such as baseball, basketball and American football as another influence on which sports young athletes choose to pursue.
“We’re still fighting NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball,” he said. “Kids are waking up and reading stories of eight-year contracts of $200 million in the other sports.”
That does not mean American soccer has failed to grow, Friedel stressed. Rather, he believes overtaking sports with generations of cultural and financial dominance was always going to take time.
“There’s not a lot we can do about it other than keep growing the game and try to make the culture about soccer,” he said.
MLS television deal could provide the next test
One of the clearest measures of that growth, Friedel believes, will be the value broadcasters place on Major League Soccer.
He sees the league’s next media-rights negotiations as an important indication of whether interest generated around the 2026 World Cup translates into a larger and more sustainable domestic audience.
“See what happens with the next MLS contract,” he said. “That’ll tell you how the viewing figures are going. If TV companies are willing to pour a lot more money into it, that means it’s growing. If they’re not, it means it’s stagnant, or else they would pay it.”
Friedel said he understood the current Apple TV agreement to have encountered difficulties and believes the period following the World Cup will be particularly revealing.
“If we see multiple television companies bidding for contracts in 2028/29, then I think we’re moving somewhere,” he said.
If that growth does not materialise, Friedel believes the US will remain reliant on sending its best players abroad to develop in stronger football environments.
“We will still need to get our better players over to Europe to try to develop, to be able to compete, to try to get into that quarter-final situation with the other teams — and maybe beyond,” he said.
“But it’s going to take a lot longer than I think a lot of people want to think it will take.”
The US population alone, he added, is no guarantee of international success.
“I hear the arguments: ‘Yeah, with 350 million people, we should be better.’ Well, if it was based on population, then India and China and Pakistan would be winning all the World Cups. That’s not how it is.
“You have to have the culture equipped on top of it. So that’s why a nation the size of Switzerland can still compete, because the majority of the kids that are growing there would have to play soccer.”
‘A lot of similarities’ between 2002 and 2026
Friedel was part of the US side which reached the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup before narrowly losing to Germany.
Despite the 2026 side exiting against Belgium in the round of 16, he does not believe there is a significant gulf in ability between the two generations.
“There were a lot of similarities with the team, to be honest with you,” he said.
He argued the 2026 team’s performance against Paraguay was stronger than he would have expected from the 2002 squad.
“I think we probably beat Paraguay, but I don’t think we beat them like this 2026 team beat them,” he said. “They killed them.
“We would have been more of a solid, grind-them-out kind of 1–0 or 2–0 or 2–1 kind of victory. That was one of the best performances I’ve seen from a US national team in a long time, especially the first half.”
Friedel sees similarities even when comparing individual players. He still regards former teammate Eddie Pope as the best defender the national team has produced, but believes Chris Richards is developing in a similar mould.
He described Antonee Robinson as “the best left-back we’ve ever had”, while comparing striker Folarin Balogun favourably with Brian McBride.
The 2002 team possessed an especially strong midfield featuring Claudio Reyna and John O’Brien, Friedel said, but he also praised the current generation of Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and Malik Tillman.
“I don’t think that team in 2002 would have done much different,” he said. “Maybe we could have beaten Belgium, but that’s a big maybe because Belgium is a very good team.”
Friedel did, however, argue that off-field events complicated the US campaign. Discussing the controversy surrounding Balogun during the tournament, he said the episode changed international sentiment towards the team.
“When politics got involved in the Balogun situation, everything turned against the US,” he said.
Friedel believes politics should generally remain separate from sport.
“They don’t mix,” he said. “Politics is grey-area stuff. You’re trying to convince people to follow you. And sports is more black-and-white laws of the game. The ball’s either over the line or it’s not over the line.”
He said politics inevitably plays a role in major tournaments during processes such as bidding for hosting rights, but argued that once a competition begins, the outcome should be determined on the pitch.
“Once the games are awarded, politics has to take a step aside and let the game win on the field,” he said.
Friedel: My own route might be impossible today
Despite the professionalisation of American soccer since Friedel emerged in the early 1990s, he believes the development system has also become more restrictive in some respects.
Asked whether a young Brad Friedel would find reaching the Premier League easier today, his answer was emphatic.
“More difficult. Much more difficult,” he said.
Friedel grew up in Cleveland playing several sports and initially considered pursuing basketball rather than soccer. UCLA was effectively the only university to seriously recruit him for football, and it was there, under coach Sigi Schmid, that he received his first US youth international call-up.
He had never represented the US at under-17 or under-20 level. His first opportunity arrived with the under-23 Olympic team when he was 19.
“I played every other sport under the sun growing up,” he said.
Under the increasingly specialised academy system, Friedel believes that freedom may no longer exist.
“In today’s world, if I were to play basketball, I wouldn’t have been allowed to play it in the MLS academy,” he said.
Geography would have presented another obstacle. Growing up without a professional soccer club in Cleveland, Friedel believes he might have been required to relocate in order to enter a modern academy.
“The likelihood is I would have played another sport,” he said.
“My path is not the pathway of today, but my pathway would have been blocked. There’s no way I would have been able to become a professional unless I would have moved away. It would have been hard.”
It is an irony at the centre of Friedel’s assessment of modern American soccer. The US now has vastly better facilities, academies and professional opportunities than the country in which he developed.
But producing the next generation capable of consistently challenging the world’s strongest footballing nations, he argues, will require more than infrastructure.
It will require making soccer an ordinary part of American sporting life, accessible to children regardless of geography or wealth, and capable of competing with the sports that have occupied that position for generations.
Friedel was speaking to NWL in partnership with BetWrightFootball
Featured Image Credits: myprofittutor on Unsplash
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