We are currently waiting for FIFA to rule on whether Washington State youth club Crossfire Premier will receive solidarity payments from the Seattle Sounders’ sale of DeAndre Yedlin to Tottenham Hotspur. The case has dragged on for more than three years now, and the ruling could have a massive impact on American youth soccer. (Including, most recently, the question of whether PA Classics will receive some $700,000 as part of Christian Pulisic’s massive transfer to Chelsea.) But early in the dispute, in October 2015, just over three months after Crossfire initially petitioned FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber, Crossfire’s side believed that a resolution might be possible.



At the time, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) and Major League Soccer were basing their refusal to allow solidarity payments and training compensation on a 2002 ruling in a case called Fraser vs. MLS, which upheld MLS’s single-entity structure. According to Lance Reich, the...