There are 32 different nationalities represented in the Guardian’s list of the Top 100 Best Male Footballers in the World for 2023. The top spot is claimed by a player from Norway – a country of just 5 million inhabitants – who is also another player in the Top has. 20. The Top 100 includes a Georgian, a Guinean and even a Canadian. However, there is no American anywhere to be seen.
In a way, that’s not surprising. Plenty of American footballers have made a name for themselves at a high level, and continue to do so, but the country has famously – or infamously – never produced a true superstar of the sport. The US is still waiting for its billboard icon. For now, Lionel Messi is the country’s biggest football star. But why? Isn’t it reasonable to expect only one American to appear on a list of the 100 best players in the world?
After all, this was meant to be a golden generation of American football talent. If the U.S. Men’s National Team’s inability to qualify for the 2018 World Cup was a low point in the sport’s modern era in the country, this current cycle should have been a glorious revival, led by some of the best American players in the history.
It was Christian Pulisic’s intention the An. And while the 25-year-old is certainly playing at a high level for AC Milan, one of Italy’s biggest clubs, his career hasn’t quite gone as expected when he joined Chelsea for €64 million, making Pulisic by some distance the most expensive American footballer in history. Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia described the 20-year-old as “one of Europe’s most sought-after young players.” That was not an exaggeration.
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Pulisic was ranked 77th in the Guardian’s list of the Top 100 Male Players of 2017. In 2018, he dropped to 246th, with only three of the 2018 judges placing him in their Top 40. At this point, Pulisic hasn’t cracked the Top 100 in five years.
However, injuries hampered Pulisic at Chelsea, as did the club’s uncertain management situation and the specific appointment of Thomas Tuchel, who used a system that had no natural place for the American winger in his team. Talent has never been an issue, but Stamford Bridge wasn’t the right environment for that to shine through. Chelsea have never used Pulisic properly.
It was a similar story for Sergiño Dest, the Dutch-born American international who joined Barcelona from Ajax in 2020 as one of the best young right-backs in the world. Signed at the request of Ronald Koeman, Dest played under three different managers in his first year at Camp Nou and was unable to adapt to the demands of Xavi Hernández, who quickly banished him from the first team. Now on loan to PSV, Dest is rebuilding his career in the Netherlands, where he has become a mainstay for the Dutch league leaders.
Gio Reyna was another American youngster widely seen as destined for the top, but injuries have prevented him from securing a real starting spot at Borussia Dortmund. Reyna is still only 21 and could appear in the Guardian’s Top 100 at some point in the future, but his career trajectory to date mirrors that of so many Americans who never quite fulfilled their potential at the elite level.
Some blame the foundation of American soccer for this. The country’s ‘pay to play’ youth system too often prioritizes profits over player development and has opened the door to outsiders who may not have the best interests of the sport in the US at heart – see how Barcelona and Juventus play American youth academies that imagine they are more money-making schemes than real attempts to produce talent.
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Others point to the relative immaturity of American soccer culture to explain the situation. Major League Soccer has only been around for 27 years. Before 1990, the USMNT did not play in a World Cup for forty years. Football as a whole is still not seen through the mainstream prism the way other American sports are. Culturally, other countries – even much smaller ones – are decades ahead of the US.
And yet the US has more registered youth soccer players than any other country in the world. Studies consistently show that interest in football is at an all-time high: According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 31% of Americans call themselves football fans. The USMNT is also ranked as the 11th best in the world by FIFA – well ahead of Norway, Georgia, Guinea and Canada. And the U.S. women’s national team features several world-class stars (11 of the Guardian’s Top 100 female soccer players in 2022 were American).
Stars for the USMNT play in Europe’s biggest leagues and receive the best training practices from some of the game’s best coaches – a contrast to the insular position of the top stars for the USWNT. The women’s team continues to produce world-class talent despite calls for players to move to the biggest clubs in Europe to get the national team back on track.
It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly why the US has struggled to produce a male player among the best in the world, often leading to lazy takes, such as the oft-repeated but still incorrect view that America beware the world stage will be able to compete if the best athletes play football and not other sports such as basketball and football. If physicality were the deciding factor, Adama Traoré would have more Ballon d’Ors than Messi.
The next few years will be a crucial period for football in America, with Messi now leading the domestic league and the 2026 World Cup approaching. The US will also host the Copa América this summer, the expanded 2025 Club World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics. If the US wants to one day become a true superpower in sports, now is the time to do it. However, it will take a generation or two for a lasting legacy to emerge, especially in the area of talent production.
Perhaps the lack of a Top 100 player in the US is simply due to bad luck and unfortunate timing. Would Pulisic participate if he had chosen Liverpool over Chelsea and remained injury-free? Probably. Is there a chance that Folarin Balogun will continue on his current trajectory in the coming years? Possibly. But ultimately, America may have to wait a while for Messi or Erling Haaland to call his own.