What if our ‘best athletes’ never choose soccer? How NIL money could shape the USMNT’s future

It’s the timeless hypothetical hovering over American men’s soccer.

What if our best athletes played the sport?

U.S. men’s national team and Crystal Palace center back Chris Richards isn’t offended by it. “I understand it. I truly do,” he said. “I just think it’s very unrealistic.”

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Salivating for the shortcut to a dominant USMNT, the mainstream sporting public often wonders aloud if NBA or NFL superstars could have conquered soccer instead, and if their next-generation clones are the answer. But that’s missing the point.

“I think the argument gets lost pretty quickly when it’s about, like, ‘If LeBron James was our center midfielder … ’ It’s not really about that,” said former MLS and USMNT midfielder Kyle Martino, who noted that Lionel Messi is 5-foot-7.

Indeed, peel off the literal layer of the question, and there’s the socioeconomic connotation that Richards and Martino both address.

“I just think because of how accessible basketball and football are, our best athletes don’t really choose soccer over any other sport,” Richards said.

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In addition to the inner city accessibility of basketball, Martino highlighted its economic appeal. “It’s upward mobility, it’s a life-changing possibility, and it’s the stakes of if it doesn’t happen, what? What happens in your life?”

The life-changing potential of a career in football or basketball has dramatically expanded in the era of college athletes being paid. Name, Image and Likeness compensation plus schools directly sharing revenue with athletes — funneled overwhelmingly to football and basketball players — has reinforced the stature and draw of those sports.

Could that ultimately limit the ceiling of the U.S. men’s national team, preserving that hypothetical as no more than a fantasy?

In Hoover, Alabama, where Richards is from, football is a religion.

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“Every Friday night we were going to high school football games, that was like the fun thing to do. That’s why I was kind of devastated that I wasn’t allowed to play football growing up because of how big Hoover was when it came to that,” he recalled.

His father, Ken, played basketball at Birmingham-Southern College and then four years overseas. Chris was hooping from third grade until the end of his sophomore year in high school. He was about 5-foot-6 and, having fallen in love with soccer on an Olympic Development Program trip to Argentina, exclusively focused on it that summer entering junior year.

Richards has always been a Crimson Tide football fan but he also loved the University of North Carolina basketball team — he remembered touring their facilities during an official visit — and that was partially why he committed to the school for soccer. He ultimately never suited up for the Tar Heels, signing with FC Dallas instead.

Fellow USMNT defender Alex Freeman also opted not to follow his former professional athlete father’s footsteps when soccer became his focus at 14. Alex “played a little bit of everything” growing up, consumed a lot of college football and hoops, and there was “a little bit of pressure” from Green Bay Packers legend Antonio Freeman toward football. But in the end it was up to Alex, and it was an easy decision.

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“Soccer was always my love,” he said.

Richards, 25, and Freeman, 21, have taken different professional paths to the national team. Although Richards signed a homegrown contract with FC Dallas in 2018 he never appeared for their first team, heading to Bayern Munich on a loan that led to a transfer when he was 18.

Instead of being a freshman at UNC, Richards was beginning his professional career with one of the biggest clubs in the world. He remembered accidentally opening mail from his youth soccer club indicating that his family — among the many hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis — was behind in payments to the club, and telling himself then: “I need to make it. Whatever I do, I need to make it.”

With Bayern, before NIL burst the dam of dollars flowing to college athletes, Richards was in a unique financial position compared to his friends in the States.

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“I remember coming home I guess the first Christmas and like I had friends who were playing college sports, whether it was football, soccer, basketball, they were like, ‘Oh, yoooo, can you lend me a few dollars?’” he said with a chuckle. “I feel like a big man, you know.

“I didn’t even think about it until now. But like, yeah, I guess it makes sense. I was legally allowed to make money playing professional sports when they were still going to college.”

Freeman, on the other hand, has remained in MLS for the first chapter of his professional journey, enjoying a breakout 2025 with Orlando City and attracting serious European interest. The timing of a possible transfer is uncertain — Freeman should be in the mix for the World Cup squad even if he stays in MLS until next summer — but the move seems inevitable. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him eventually land where Richards is today: starting in the Premier League, by far the richest league in global soccer. Freeman isn’t bothered by the money he may have missed out on in college football or basketball, which can now easily eclipse the earnings of homegrown players in MLS and most American players in general.

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Per the MLSPA website, his 2025 base salary is $104,000. While there’s a lack of transparency around exactly how much college athletes are earning, that figure is below the estimated range for Power 4 conference football starters at essentially every position in 2025. And Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger prior to the approval of the House settlement — which ushered in direct revenue sharing and was supposed to better regulate payments from boosters via collectives — that there were some high school athletes being paid more than $20,000 a month to stay committed to their school.

But Freeman keeps the disparity between soccer and other domestic sports in perspective, eyeing a future abroad.

“There’s more money in Europe. But obviously as a young player myself, signing as a homegrown, I feel like you’re signing for the process, being able to eventually make that step,” he said. “People can get attracted to the money, but it’s obviously about making that process, to be able to go to the best teams in Europe and everywhere.”

He acknowledges that college is now a more appealing avenue for elite athletes in this new era of compensation and that “some sports get paid more than others,” but he doesn’t think he would have made a different decision about which one he chose.

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Richards admits the new landscape of college sports could’ve made it a tougher call today.

“Potentially. I did love basketball to a point, but I just didn’t really know what avenue I could go through. I remember hearing about my dad playing overseas, but I never thought about myself playing overseas for basketball,” he said. “I feel like in America, you’re thinking NBA, you’re thinking NFL and things like that. And if I knew that I could have been making a few million, I would have went crazy in basketball, or even being a kicker for the football team. Those guys are definitely making money as well.

“It would have been a lot tougher to quit basketball if I knew that two years later, I’d be a freshman in college making more than some of my favorite athletes are making overseas.”

Martino was also a hooper until early in high school. He idolized Allen Iverson and at one point dreamed of being in the NBA just as much as being a No. 10 for Boca Juniors.

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Outside of his TV analyst role for Turner Sports, he’s stayed involved in soccer as an entrepreneur. After an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Soccer presidency in 2018, Martino has remained dedicated to raising the level of accessibility and participation in soccer through the proliferation of spaces for unstructured play, normalizing soccer on concrete. This was already a challenge — Martino emphasized that soccer lacks “an offering that is commensurate with or competitive with basketball” — and it’s now being compounded.

“There’s two problems that are happening that I think is going to exacerbate this issue of us not casting the widest net for potential in these communities where maybe American football or basketball becomes the draw,” he said. “One is, yeah, the carrot being bigger earlier, right? So now all of a sudden, if the NBA is where the commitment pays off financially, it starts happening at a younger and younger age, of course that’s going to turn heads towards that lifestyle, that possibility.”

Richards believes the impact college athletes being paid will have on participation is “huge.”

“Why wouldn’t you go to college? Why wouldn’t you play that sport? I think it’s insane [money],” he said. “Props to the kids, but I think definitely parents are going to be pushing their kids in general into playing certain sports, because you can make money before even becoming a professional.”

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And that pressure to pick even earlier is what concerns Martino. “The bigger problem is the hyper specialization of having to make that choice at a younger and younger age,” he said.

“The money is now reinforcement for a 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old who’s talented at multiple sports and chooses basketball. But the problem is before that even becomes something that’s a conscious decision, these kids are being forced to pick a sport because that’s what the privatization and the professionalization of the youth sports industry is driving home to parents.”

Culturally, according to Martino, it’s not a mutually exclusive dynamic. His mission is a co-existence with basketball on the blacktop, taking advantage of the existing infrastructure to surge participation.

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“The day that you are seeing soccer look like basketball, show up next to basketball and be as pervasive and prolific in urban areas as basketball is the day our men will win a World Cup,” he said.

That’s not the expectation next summer, but a deep run definitely is. It’s supposed to inspire America’s youth and remind them that the USMNT on the World Cup stage is an unparalleled sporting opportunity.

“We’re not playing for the Boston Celtics, or we’re not playing for the Green Bay Packers. We’re playing for the country,” Richards said.

“It’s amazing to know that you can represent your country at such a young age,” Freeman said.

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But will that patriotism and chance for global exposure resonate enough to overcome the newfound financial pull of the hardwood and the gridiron for a consequential amount of elite athletes? Don’t discount the power of what will be the biggest sporting event in history, but Martino maintains that to capitalize on that excitement and ensure participation trends sustainably in the right direction, it is investment in the grassroots infrastructure that will be key.