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[quote=DCUdad]The short answer is "no." To my knowledge there isn't anything like that around here. Even the barely-semi-pro teams aren't connected to a large youth club/academy. There are a couple exceptions around the country. For example, FC United in suburban Chicago is a large youth club and has a team in USL 2 (the 4th tier of US soccer; played over the summer, mostly by college players). But it's not like kids are growing up fans of the FC United USL2 team. And for the most part, top youth players in FC United are looking to either: a) play d1 college soccer; or b) move to an MLS academy like Chicago Fire to have a shot at being a pro.

There are some MLS clubs that have very large local "clubs". LA Galaxy and FC Dallas come to mind. But in both cases, I believe, they have essentially licensed their name/brand to a large local youth soccer club. It's not really that connected to their actual academy and is pay-to-play -- not that different than a Bethesda Soccer or Arlington Soccer around here; just with the MLS club's name.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Among them: pro soccer is just a much newer sport here than in Europe; it is much "thinner," meaning we are a huge country, almost as large as all of the EU, with maybe a tenth of the professional soccer teams/opportunities; the lack of opportunity at the top means it is generally a bad investment to pay for an academy designed to build players to sell; so we are left overwhelmingly with pay-to-play (with some scholarships), with a relative handful of pro (MLS) academies investing in players more like European clubs.

It will take a long time, and a lot of growth of pro soccer in the US for us to look anything like Europe in this regard.[/quote]

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