Sunil Gulati’s successor will be elected this weekend in Orlando and ideas to secure a permanent place in the world’s elite are flying back and forth

The US Soccer Federation has nearly $150m in the bank, up from roughly $6.6m at the turn of the century. The federation is not hoarding – spending has roughly tripled over that same time span – and it has legions of youth players: somewhere between 3.5 million and 4 million registered and millions more unregistered, even in the gloomy surveys showing kids turning away from sports.

What it does not have is a berth at the 2018 World Cup finals. Nor does it have youth teams that qualify for tournaments as consistently as they used to. Even the mighty US women’s team isn’t as mighty as it once was, following up its first failure to medal in a major international event (the 2016 Olympics) with a bunch of losses.

So what will it take to get US Soccer to take a permanent place in the world’s elite? The basic problem isn’t that no one has the answer. The problem is that everyone thinks they have the answer.

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On Saturday in Orlando, the various constituencies of US Soccer – state youth associations, state adult amateur associations, pro leagues, current and recently retired athletes and an assortment of interest groups – will pick a new president from a swollen field of eight candidates, whose presence turned the annual United Soccer Coaches gathering last month in Philadelphia into a political convention. The festivities even drew a protest – a mysterious truck, somehow allowed to sit outside the convention center without a demonstration permit – taking aim at “establishment” candidates Kathy Carter and Carlos Cordeiro.

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The eight candidates aren’t the only ones who have all the answers. Incumbent Sunil Gulati, stepping aside after 12 years of massive growth and myriad complaints, held his own session at the Philadelphia convention and pointedly warned the candidates that the volunteer post isn’t as easy as they think. The campaign – the first of its kind in the normally insular and sleepy federation in which Gulati won three terms unopposed – has revealed all sorts of people demanding fealty from the would-be president.

Each candidate has pledged heartfelt support for each of these factions, along with the apparently neglected beach soccer, futsal and Paralympic national teams. Most are shy on detail, not really noticing that the seven-a-side Paralympic game the USA plays has been cut from the 2020 Games or that the USA has not fielded a team in five-a-side soccer for visually impaired athletes. Conversations about futsal inevitably end up as vague platitudes of its importance in youth development, which addresses neither the state of the futsal national team nor the efforts to launch pro futsal.

Not that the campaign has offered much of a chance for discussion of any issues at all. Most assertions – Eric Wynalda’s unexplained complaint that US Soccer is violating a whole host of Fifa bylaws and statutes, Hope Solo’s inaccurate statement that US coaching education isn’t geared toward specific age groups – fly about in the ether along with Kyle Martino’s obsessively detailed “Progress Plan” and Mike Winograd’s idea to have “guest” clubs in the top pro division to ease into promotion and relegation.

Indeed, most candidates agree on some basics. Reduce costs in youth soccer to make sure everyone can play and talent can be identified. Get serious about diversity in the wake of two embarrassing incidents – Jonathan Gonzalez’s decision to switch his nationality to Mexico, and the revelation that a Diversity Task Force quietly dissolved. Lower costs for coaching education. Make sure women have no complaints about their pay or treatment. And be transparent.

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And what vitriol exists has been put forth mostly by proxy. Wynalda generally doesn’t participate when his populist followers – whose ideological purity tests would startle even the most dogmatic Bernie Sanders supporter – launch Twitter attacks against Carter, Cordeiro and any journalist who questions the wisdom of Wynalda’s words.

But Wynalda did release an open letter to Carter and Cordeiro implying they are not “soccer people”. Solo took it a step further, saying Carter and Cordeiro should step aside because they have been positions to make the change they’re talking about now but have failed to do so.

The focus on Carter and Cordeiro is understandable. Carter is the longtime president of Soccer United Marketing, which is either the primary reason US Soccer is in good financial shape or a sinister cabal that represses everything outside of the immediate interests of its Major League Soccer. Or both. She has made a persuasive defense of SUM’s effectiveness, but she did little to tear down her image as a bean-counter when she proposed an independent commission led not by fellow “soccer people” but by mega-agent Casey Wasserman.

Cordeiro won a three-way race to become the federation’s vice president just two years ago. But he’s awkwardly positioned as half-insider (touting his Fifa experience as a means to help the USA land the 2026 and 2027 World Cups) and half-reformer. He also steers clear of the press, something the public face of the federation can’t do.

Wynalda is the best public speaker of the bunch, and his reformist stance is popular among many of the loudest social media voices, particularly those who believe many US problems can be solved by forcing the pro leagues into a promotion/relegation pyramid. He’s gracious in his speeches, insisting upon a round of applause for Gulati’s service in Philadelphia, but some voters may hold his rabid followers against him. He also has withheld release of a comprehensive plan until after the convention, and the first part he has released includes a curious idea to turn the federation into a bank that lends money to constituents.

The split between those three candidates could leave the door open for a compromise candidate. Martino speaks easily with small and large crowds, drawing on his experience as a TV analyst. Steve Gans is a lawyer who works with players and clubs, and he got a head start as the first candidate to start campaigning. Winograd is another option. Solo and fellow national team veteran Paul Caligiuri will have a hard time standing out with similar candidates looking more comfortable on stage.

No candidate is expected to get the necessary majority vote on the first ballot, so some deal-making is sure to occur. Whoever wins will be beholden not to one constituency but many constituencies, and that person will need to engage in some bridge-building in a fractious federation.



And so in some respects, the challenge for the next president will simply be a more visceral representation of the challenge US Soccer has always faced: harnessing diversity – of people, of soccer ideas, of business practices – into a relatively coherent plan to move forward.

Ultimately, that will be the task of the people voting for the president – the association and organization leaders who work at the game’s grassroots. The president has limited powers and will have limited political capital after this election. But a new path will be chosen in Orlando. Where will it lead?