I concur with others who say that most top-end American athletes choose football or other sports instead of soccer. That will gradually change over time, but for now, it's an undeniable truth.

The fact that the United States population greatly exceeds the population of other nations in our region doesn't really matter. The fact is that other nations' top athletes play soccer from the time they are a child until they reach the age of world competition. Our top athletes very quickly become Michael Vick or Deion Sanders or Sanquan Barkley or some other top-end athlete who is 6'4" or less and they gravitate to football or basketball or baseball at an early age and are kept there by coaches who resist the notion of kids playing multiple sports.

There is a dearth of good coaches out there for America's youth. If you're lucky, your kid can be trained by some young guy from England or the Caribbean who plays for the very good small college program in your town and needs a little cash on the side. Most coaches have never played, or played at a time when American soccer was at a less sophisticated state of development. (When I was at Tech in the 1980s, soccer was essentially a non-scholarship club sport and the team would routinely lose to ODAC schools.)

To develop skills, a young soccer player needs good coaching and the opportunity to compete at a high level. But cost dilutes those opportunities. In West Virginia, where I live, there aren't a lot of competitive teams so our kids (who played on probably the best high school program in the state) had to regularly travel to surrounding or distant states to face good tournament competition. There were some good athletes and some good skill on my kids' teams, but mostly there were kids whose parents could afford to spend several thousand dollars a year shacking up in a Hampton Inn for the weekend in Columbus, Ohio. My kids' teams won high school state championships because our school had more parents willing to spend money on the soccer experience, and thus, the team had greater numbers and therefore a greater opportunity to have a better combination of athleticism and skill than most of the schools it competes against.

In larger population areas, the cost factor is different but effectively the same. My niece is in middle school in northern Virginia, and there is plenty of competition there.My niece is a good athlete with ability and potential, but her dad can't afford the cost of having her compete on the better youth teams because the fee for doing so is just too much. How many really good players are shut out because they can't afford to play at a level that will help them develop?

Soccer is becoming more mainstream and opportunities and success will improve with time. But the fact of the matter is that soccer in the United States is just a half click above golf and tennis and other niche sports that cater to those who can afford to participate. There's a reason Serena Williams has kicked butt and taken names in women's tennis for so many years - she's a much better athlete than nearly all of her competitors and she was fortunate to have access to good training and good competition at an early age. Same might be said of Tiger Woods.