What will it take for the U.S. men’s soccer team to be competitive at the next World Cup?

One of the lasting lessons from long stints covering international sports was imparted by a young speedskater named K.C. Boutiette. The Tacoma, Wash., native joined the U.S. national program from the punk-rock world of inline racing, bringing with him a silver tongue stud and a stubborn resolve that served him well amid the cold reality of his new challenge.

Boutiette was good enough to make the Olympic team four times, which afforded him the opportunity to see the world. But, alas, in terms of the competition, to also get a distant view of the hindquarters of a generation of Dutch speedskaters.

After one dismal outcome, asked pointedly about the relative merit of U.S. skaters in that era, and why they mostly seemed frozen in amber as also-rans, Boutiette replied testily.

“Look,” he said. “You can’t just show up every four years and tell us we suck.”

Boutiette had a point worth savoring, of course, which brings us quite naturally to the U.S. men’s soccer team and its recent dismissal from the World Cup, also pushed aside by the legs of those pesky Dutch.

Reaction to the U.S. performance in the tournament spanned the time-tested headline gamut of “Future bright for national team despite disappointment” to “U.S. exits world stage as bit players once again.” Ouch.

In fact, both are accurate, even if the former is too easy to swallow and the latter too harsh to stomach. The U.S. team has never been better or more talented. Leaving a mark on the biggest tournament in the sport, however, rather than merely scratching shallow cleat prints in the sand of Qatar, was still beyond its capabilities. Progress is always difficult to judge when the result remains largely the same, and that was the case at the 2022 World Cup.

The tournament, concluding Sunday with what promises to be a riveting final between Argentina and France, carried on quite merrily without the U.S., having practiced that for decades in the later rounds.

Since qualifying for the World Cup in 1990 for the first time in soccer’s modern era, the U.S. has been eliminated in the initial round of three group matches on three occasions, advanced to an additional ill-fated match in the round of 16 four times, and survived to the quarterfinals once (albeit 20 years ago). In 2018, the U.S. suffered the ignominy of not qualifying for the final tournament at all, neglecting to beat Trinidad and Tobago, a regional foe whose entire population is roughly that of New Hampshire.

The results in the last 32 years form a landscape in which the valleys are not always low, but the peaks are easily scalable. The 2022 showing, which ended with a 3-1 schooling from the Netherlands, fit right in. That isn’t to say the team doesn’t deserve credit for what it accomplished. Stout soccer nations like Germany, Belgium, and Uruguay didn’t escape group play in the tournament, and Spain, one of the favorites to win it, exited in the same round-of-16 as the U.S.

The difference among that group of similarly disappointed nations is that each is fully capable of returning in four years with better health or better tactics or better luck — Spain was done in by the cruel lottery of penalty kicks — and a more impressive outcome for each wouldn’t be a surprise. It’s hard to say the same for the U.S. team.

The key to unlocking an era of being truly competitive on the world stage has been hard to find, but not for lack of looking by the national federation.

The college game, which has fed the dominant women’s program since the advent of Title IX, isn’t where elite male players are generally found. (For one thing, according to collegescholarships.org, there are 4,480 full scholarships available for women in the NCAA’s Division I and 1,782 for men.) Increasingly, for-profit soccer academies, like a successful one run by the Philadelphia Union, are developing some players capable of playing professionally and taking part in the national team programs. It is slow business, however.

Comparatively, the 2022 World Cup roster was a sparkling jewel next to the dim bulbs of previous national teams, which were often composed of above-average domestic players, second-line international club players, and whatever hope could be dredged from issuing passports to sort-of-Americans not roster-worthy in their home countries.

On the 26-man U.S. roster, 14 play their club ball in one of the four best leagues in the world, and only one of coach Gregg Berhalter’s preferred starters plays domestically for an MLS team. Overall talent is a significant upgrade from the past, but it is mostly clustered at the midfielder, defender, and goalkeeper positions.

The U.S. can bring a sturdy, dependable four-wheel-drive pickup to the World Cup but then finds itself in a Formula One race.

Depth — not to mention skill — at the attacking positions is the issue, and the presence of that one dominating, world-class striker is still elusive. It should be noted this is also the most prized and rare commodity in a sport where just scoring a goal is a singularly arduous task.

Christian Pulisic, the phenom-cum-superstar from Hershey, who plays for Chelsea in England’s Premier League and excels as either a forward or attacking midfielder, might be the eventual answer, but while he will be just 28 at the next World Cup, there are four more seasons of grueling club ball between now and then, and no guarantee of completing them unscathed physically. Plus, he needs company.

In six hours of play at the 2022 Cup, the U.S. scored just three goals, and one, against the Dutch, was a preposterous fluke. Still, kick the thing around the goal enough and good things can happen. The U.S. does not have players who do that with adequate frequency.

The problem is that teaching young players to be brilliantly creative at the attacking end of the soccer field is like teaching them to have blue eyes. It certainly isn’t accomplished by dribbling endlessly around cones under the gaze of some hired hand in a windbreaker with a whistle lanyard around his neck.

In most soccer nations, the magic happens organically in pickup games played on schoolyards and in the streets, without a single coach around. Of course, in most soccer nations, the very best athletes all play soccer as well, another advantage the U.S. can’t claim.

Coaches can be changed. Tactics can be changed. Training and recruiting methods can be changed. But changing a national culture is not a task for the easily daunted.

The future isn’t hopeless. Ours is a big country and you really only have to find 11 guys.

Still, the future isn’t hopeless. Ours is a big country and you really only have to find 11 guys, give or take, of which the national team already has seven or eight of them. Those last pieces are what separates taking part from taking command, and locating them will require a good deal of luck that hasn’t arrived … yet.

It isn’t fair, as the gentleman from speedskating suggested, to only pay rapt attention every four years and decide the team and the program is a failure. The U.S. soccer team is far from that.

It also isn’t fair, however, to take halting baby steps every four years, fall into the same coffee table, and then declare you are running full speed into a bright future just across the living room.

Bob Ford was a reporter and columnist for The Inquirer from 1987 to 2020. He covered five Olympic Games and three World Cups.