This August, Catalan cleats will officially aerate American soil. Set to open in Lauderhill, Florida, a middle distance between Boca Raton and Miami, the colonial FCBEscola model will finally bring “Barcelona’s development model” to these shores.

Barcelona’s American academy – its first and only – is the club’s 14th worldwide. It would’ve been its 15th, but earlier this week the Danish FA rejected FCB’s request to open one of its schools near Copenhagen. Citing a desire to “safeguard the development of talent in Danish football,” the country clearly felt some unease about opening its borders to talent raiding parties from global clubs. It isn’t that Denmark doesn’t want its U7 players developed. It’s that it doesn’t want its U7 players developed by them.

If you set aside the inherent xenophobia, Denmark is right to be skeptical. Foreign clubs installed in foreign lands are almost always cash grabs disguised as legitimate development vehicles for the senior team. If the Danish FA had ever visited a major club tournament in the U.S., they’d undoubtedly understand what this looks like without regulation or top-down oversight.

I implore you, some day soon, to visit one of these tournaments. Stroll amongst the camping chairs and over-enthusiastic coaches, between fields toppling onto one another crowded by parents with camcorders and stoic college coaches clad in school gear hunched over their notes. Whatever there is to be said about MLS and how it stacks up in the world, this is the current humming core of American soccer’s future. The Arkenstone. It isn’t on some obscure side street in the inner city or in a lower division or in endless pro/rel debates on Twitter or even on The 91st Minute. It’s here. In the heat of an Indiana summer or the soft humidity of a Florida December.

There’s plenty you’ll notice. Whether it’s a tournament sanctioned by US Club Soccer, US Youth Soccer or U.S. Soccer’s Development Academy, one of the most glaring observations are the jerseys. There are so many foreign professional jerseys. PSG, Chelsea (which actually leeched its name onto Dallas’ talent-rich Solar academy), Everton, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Freiburg, Manchester City, Juventus, Tottenham, Roma. There are many more. Bayern Munich and Boca Juniors both recently announced intentions to enter the American market, and in Boca’s case they’ve already begun implementing their academy system on Long Island. Bayern’s Paul Breitner demurred when I spoke with him about the club’s desire to start up its own U.S.-based club at some point, but that seems like an inevitability. At the very least, the club will explore its options.

There’s a common thread here. The cachet that goes along with having your academy subsidized by a PSG or a Chelsea is obvious, and the mere idea trapped more than a few parents’ checkbooks who see the name and pull the trigger. Never mind that the club’s professional association is more shammy business model than legitimate conduit.

Let me first separate the club coach from the club. Most coaches at these academies are doing fine work. And for many families, there’s an understanding that the club is merely a way station between the player and a college scholarship. If the academy is how you’re recruited, and a global-name franchise is willing to slap its name on your academy to up exposure, then it’s hard not to see the benefit. If that’s how you’re using the system, then you’re using it well.

But the nefarious undertones here for those with straight-to-professional aspirations, the ones Denmark’s soccer officials picked up on when Barcelona knocked, are present. From a foreign policy standpoint, these clubs are leeches disguised as agents of pure development. They’re using their global brand and scheming through a very present pay-to-play model to stack coin. On the FCBEscola USA website, the club answers the question of financial assistance by simply offering the ability to pay your fee in six installments. This isn’t even a residential academy. It’s a day camp.

The wider point of development is matriculation, and in that instance Barcelona and clubs like it can’t even offer the weak veil of pretense. Unless one of these youth players has an EU passport – which isn’t easily obtained – they can’t officially join the club until they’re 18. Far too long of an incubation period to simply keep a player warm at a day camp academy overseas. Barcelona, like any other club in the world, wants integration. It may send coaches to the Philippines and Morocco and India, but it can’t truly guide their development on an elite level until they actually live and train in Barcelona. Messi wouldn’t have been Messi if he didn’t leave Argentina as a pre-teen. And Messi had family in Catalonia.

Every player in the Florida academy (and every other one worldwide) will ostensibly be weighed against what’s currently in the Catalan academy. And what’s currently in the Catalan academy is… pretty good. The odds of making it in the latter group are microscopic enough. Right now, your odds of using an elite satellite academy like Barcelona’s to actually stay with Barcelona is very literally zero. One of these partnerships has literally never led an American to sign with a foreign team. If it ever happens, you’ll have some shocked onlookers.

And anyway, Barcelona’s over-stated commitment to La Masia is only as strong as its ability to purchase Luis Suarez and Ivan Rakitic and Javier Mascherano. The eye of the needle is thin enough without deluding foreign populations into thinking they’re actually in Barcelona’s system in any tangible way.

So what exactly does Barcelona want with America if not to up the vitality of its global brand? It doesn’t care about the general welfare of American soccer. It will not produce a senior team player in America. It will not produce a La Masia regular in America. And it will probably not even find a La Masia regular in America, at least not by restricting its academy to those who can pay $2,200 for every nine months of instruction in one hyper-local area of a vast nation. And that cost, it should be said, only includes three days of training per week. That’s its top-tier model.

While there are some shades of gray here worth discussion, its hard to avoid the glaring truth. What Barcelona ultimately wants with America is only good for Barcelona’s bottom line.