Stateline, NV -- Taylor Twellman doesn't believe Team USA men's soccer has an adequate talent pipeline. Twellman thinks that's why the USMNT fell short in the World Cup's round of 16 to Belgium, losing 4-1 in an embarrassing blowout this past Monday.
Ahead of the 2026 American Century Championship, I got the chance to ask Twellman a question at a Wednesday presser in the Edgewood Tahoe Resort's media room. Twellman is one of 90 celebrities participating in NBC's celebrity golf tournament. The American Century Championship airs on NBC, the NBC Sports Network, and Peacock from Friday to Sunday (July 10-12).
Twellman had talked about the coveted 17-21 demographic in answering a previous question. He feels that the 17-21 age group is the difference between talent factories overseas like France, Spain, England, and Argentina, and America. In the absence of producing top-tier talents like France's Kylian Mbappé or Argentina's Lionel Messi, Twellman believes Team USA needs to be two to three deep on the depth chart to compete in international play.
As Twellman noted, Team USA doesn't and can't have three versions of Christian Pulisic, Folarin Balogun, and Weston McKennie on a roster with the way things currently are in youth sports. Soccer, like other sports, has become a business. Unfortunately, that business is restricting access to talent that lacks resources when they're young. That, Twellman says, is making the difference on a world scale.
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I asked Twellman what the SEC, which has two programs (Kentucky, South Carolina) that play in the Sun Belt Conference because there aren't any other active SEC programs, the Big Ten, and the ACC could do to improve the situation before the 2034 World Cup. Realistically, 2030 is not an option for the culture to have been changed by. Those conferences, along with the Big 12, which also has two teams in the SBC (UCF, West Virginia), make up the bulk of NIL spend across college athletics. They could take a page out of college basketball's book and attract international talent at the right price, though that'd take competing financially with international clubs accustomed to bidding wars.
Twellman shared a thoughtful response, blaming the powers that be from those conferences, and Title IX, for the state of men's soccer at the collegiate level -- which, in turn, has a snowball effect on Team USA.
"The NCAA has to treat it with the right respect"
"First off, Title IX, the men's side, we don't have teams in the SEC. So we don't have teams in the big one. The college landscape, I don't care what anyone says...I know this to be a real league. There's still a real value to having that. Now, first off, the NCAA has treated soccer barbarically...for you to play 20-some odd games in three months. Meanwhile, they changed the basketball schedule, the baseball schedule, football, we all know it's its own entity and everything. Every other sport's been treated with respect for its evolution and how it's played. My father played the same schedule I had 20 years before me in college. It makes no sense," Twellman said.
"Now, college has addressed it. They're gonna change it. We just need more games. To answer your question in a different way, every scout around the world, where they text me and call me, and everyone that's watching the United States' landscape, they don't bring up anything up to the age of 16. I still think we can be more inclusive, less expensive, not spending time, four hours in the car, all that. That's a different kind of conversation.
"But they all say, 17 to 21, we're still behind. Around the world, those players are getting meaningful minutes. We need a huge pool of players who are getting meaningful minutes. Jamie Vardy would have been kicked out of the United States soccer landscape in the blink of an eye. We found him later on in his career with Leicester City and all of that. So that's where college can help, but they've got to change the landscape, and they should be allowed to play more games.
"It should be more cost-effective, so they don't need to hide behind the Title IX cost, and football and all of that, and allow them to play as many games as possible. You get your education, all of that. There's a huge value in college. The NCAA has to treat it with the right respect, like the way they treat all the other sports, in that they've changed their rules."
It's an uphill climb for men's soccer collegiately in this country. The hierarchy ahead of it includes football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, softball, and women's soccer, for the most part.
If there is not a meaningful change in how much investment the sport gets from the conferences and university presidents and ADs, or changes from the bottom up in youth soccer, we'll be complaining about the USMNT in 2030, 2034, and beyond the same way we are now.
That's the takeaway I got from Twellman's response, anyway.
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