FIFA World Cup 2026 in North America has the potential to transform the trajectory of soccer in the U.S. forever. To capitalize on this incredible opportunity, we will be launching a legacy platform in 2024 designed in partnership with our Members and the entire soccer ecosystem. The new platform will unite and engage national, regional and local stakeholders to drive grassroots participation, engage and cultivate a new generation of fans and unlock new resources to ensure that we make the most of this unprecedented opportunity.
U.S. Soccer is committed to ensuring all soccer participants – at all levels – have a safe and respectful place to learn, grow and compete. Our new Safe Soccer Clearance Program will transform how we approach safety across the soccer ecosystem by creating a public participation database, ensuring a minimum standard of safeguarding education, and providing a mechanism for keeping bad actors out of the game. This program will redefine the processes and criteria used to determine participation eligibility, ultimately providing players with a safer, more enjoyable environment.
In the coming months, U.S. Soccer will initiate several new programs to grow the number of referees in our ecosystem. We will work in partnership with our existing referee community and Member base to reduce barriers to participation through digital access, address referee abuse, improve the referee experience and promote the value of referees in soccer to all our audiences.
To ensure that every participant in our sport has access to the best information to grow and develop, we will create an open-source learning and community-building platform. This will be a place to aggregate and curate the best content in the soccer community, from coaching to refereeing, to parent resources, to training videos for players of all ages. This information sharing will connect anyone participating in soccer to the best resources in real-time.
Successful National Teams inspire us all. To create a more structured approach to elite National Team player development, we are actively building new programmatic plans for the Men’s and Women’s senior National Teams, Youth National Teams and Extended National Teams. This refreshed approach will allow us to establish desired outcomes at each level, prioritize performance metrics and develop clear programming shaped for both individual player and team success. A new technology platform will enable tailored personalized training programs for players in coordination with clubs and National Team coaching staff. This will create new cohesiveness across all our programs, allowing us to operate and win as one team.
At U.S. Soccer, we recognize that it will take all of us working together to build soccer in America. U.S. Soccer is investing in our relationships with stakeholders, centered on principles of partnership building, proactive outreach, information sharing and customer service, all to help collectively drive the best outcomes possible for all our stakeholders. We will have a specific emphasis on sharing our members’ best practices with the broader ecosystem as we convene to solve our greatest challenges together.
We are excited about the building of our new headquarters and the nation’s first-ever National Training Center (NTC) in our new home city of Atlanta, Georgia. We are confident that the creation of this facility will support our overall Strategic Vision, including growing the game, fostering the best playing environments, developing winning teams, growing the soccer economy, and creating a world class organization. Learn more >