The true Captain America has spoken.
Alex Morgan, iconic Cal alumna and United States women's national soccer team legend, recently chimed in on the state of The Beautiful Game in America, criticizing the Stars and Stripes’ footy issues rooted at the youth level.
Morgan’s comments — made on the New Heights podcast, hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce, alongside fellow USWNT great Kelley O’Hara — weigh even heavier and truer after the hosting U.S.’s men’s national team flamed out of the 2026 World Cup in a deflating 4-1 Round-of-16 loss to Belgium on Monday in Seattle.
“We don’t want to kick Paraguay’s ass,” Morgan said, referencing the USMNT’s 4-1 World Cup-opening win. “We want to kick Spain and France and Germany. I think it’s all about the youth system, because soccer is a sport that you really do start training as a young kid. And I think it’s been, in a lot of ways, made as a business.
“And I really want the youth system — that is really fractured right now — to be repaired and really harness kids growing up and giving them opportunities — more opportunities than exist right now.”
Morgan’s point is currently at the forefront of discourse surrounding American soccer.
Many, including classic USMNT alumni such as Landon Donovan, are joining Morgan in arguing that American soccer is too expensive at the youth level, and, as a result, sign-ups and registrations often take precedence over development and opportunities for all.
Of course, there are several other reasons why the U.S.’s men’s national team is always steps behind the rest of the world; for one, football, baseball and basketball purely dominate.
But there’s no denying Morgan’s point that American soccer is pricey and oftentimes inaccessible. After all, she would know.
Morgan had a 30-plus-year career in American soccer, competing from the youth level in question to Diamond Bar High School to Berkeley — where she met her husband and fellow Cal soccer star Servando Carrasco, and as a senior, was called up to the USWNT’s 2011 World Cup squad as the youngest player on the roster — to the game’s biggest stages before ultimately retiring at 35 with a Costco receipt’s worth of accolades.
She has been outspoken about the issues with youth soccer for years now, too.
“Unfortunately, the pay-to-play model, I believe, is getting worse in soccer than when I played competitive soccer (growing up),” Morgan said in 2019 as a panelist at a DICK’S Sporting Goods event.
“It’s a very inexpensive sport, and the fact that we’ve made youth soccer in the U.S. more of a business than a grassroots sport is, I think, detrimental to the growth of the sport in the U.S.”
Morgan has given much of her life to soccer.
And like a true Berkeley political economy graduate, Morgan continues to be a diplomat of the sport — and athletics in general — through several organizations, including her own.
The Golden Bear simply wants to see the youth soccer landscape change for the better.
