Three decades later, Major League Soccer has established foundation for USMNT (and others) at World Cup

The 30^th season of Major League Soccer passed one year ago, and so that’s when the league held the requisite anniversary celebration even though the league launched in 1996. It was remarkable enough for the league to have lasted so long and grown so tremendously, so why delay the party?

And besides, the people at MLS had a fair idea their league would represent a substantial part of soccer’s biggest festival in the summer of 2026.

MLS has been all over this year’s World Cup.

With the United States men’s national team excelling in group play, nearly all of the players involved spent at least some of their development or careers in MLS. The player who scored Canada’s game-winning goal in their nation’s first-ever victory in a World Cup knockout game is a midfielder with LAFC. The player whose goal against Turkiye was the key to advancing Paraguay to the Round of 32 is on loan to Atlanta United. Oh, the leading goal scorer in the entire tournament plays for Inter Miami.

You’ve probably heard his name.

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Wednesday evening at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, the USMNT will face Bosnia and Herzegovina in a World Cup round of 32 battle in which the Americans are solid favorites. They earned that position by prevailing over Paraguay, Australia and Turkey to finish first in Group D. The Americans have scored eight goals so far this tournament, two of them own-goals that resulted from their offensive aggression. Four of the other six came from players – Auston Trusty, Sebastian Berhalter, Alex Freeman and Gio Reyna – with MLS ties.

The continued advance of MLS serves as an enduring tribute to the effort to bring the World Cup to the United States three decades ago, when this nation had no major professional league and the sport only was beginning to grow at the youth, high school and college level. FIFA, the world soccer governing body, granted the tournament to the U.S. on the condition the federation find a way to launch a Division 1 league. Where would the USMNT be without the follow-through on that promise?

“I don’t think we get to this point, we don’t get to where we are right now,” former national team goalkeeper Tony Meola told The Sporting News. “How many guys have come through the system? How many guys have helped these guys on a daily basis develop every day at their clubs? Now you’ve got training facilities – the best in the world. Everyone that comes here says the same thing. I feel like if you can’t get better in this day and age, with what they have here, you’re never going to get better. It’s things that we just dreamed about years ago.

“I feel like I was at the beginning of this era of the game in the U.S. So I’ve seen the yellow school bus picking you up at the airport to what you have now. We could only hope it could get to this point.”

MLS hasn’t just been the foundation of this national team. It’s also been an important builder for a variety of teams participating – or succeeding – at this World Cup.

In 2026, there are 45 current MLS players from 17 different countries involved in the World Cup. That’s up from 21 representing six countries at the first tournament when the league was in existence, in 1998.

MLS at the World Cup

This year’s collection begins, of course, with Argentina superstar Lionel Messi. He captained his side to the 2022 World Cup title in Qatar, when he was on his way to MLS. Those who contend playing in that league and not against the best clubs that compete in the UEFA Champions League now have to explain how he’s leading the race to this year’s Golden Boot. And one of Messi’s teammates, midfielder Thiago Almada, was the first active MLS player to win the World Cup as a deep reserve four years ago and has started two of the three games in this tournament.

The dramatic extra-time goal that placed Canada in the Round of 16 for the first time came from Stephen Eustaquio, who moved to LAFC after four seasons and 95 appearances with FC Porto, one of the powers of Portugal’s top league. He is one of 21 players on the 26-player Canada roster who played in the league or developed in an MLS academy, including superstar left back Alphonso Davies, who fits both categories.

Matias Galarza is in his first season with Atlanta United. He scored the only goal of Paraguay’s essential victory against Turkey and then was so incredibly active in his team’s defense against Germany during the Round of 32 that Fox Sports game analyst Danny Higginbotham said he started checking to see if there might be more than one No. 23 on the field.

Now 30 years after the league’s introduction, nearly every player on the USMNT World Cup roster has been involved in MLS in some way, at some point in his career. There are seven active MLS players on the 26-man roster, led by starting goalkeeper Matt Freese of New York City FC.

Midfielder Tyler Adams is one of 15 players who got his start in an MLS academy, with the New York Red Bulls. He’s one of 15 who’ve played in the league at some point, in his case making 59 appearances from 2016-2019 with the Red Bulls, helping the team to win the Supporters Shield for most points in the regular season in 2018.

Reyna spent time in the NYCFC academy, while his father, Claudio, was an executive with the team. Freeman is one of the fastest-rising players in recent USMNT history. He started as a defender at the World Cup less than a year after his national team debut. Berhalter plays currently for the Vancouver Whitecaps. Trusty began with the Philadelphia Union academy when he was 13 and played for their MLS team and the Colorado Rapids.

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Only five players on the entire roster don’t fit into either category – and four of those grew up in Europe and were part of the club system there. The only American-born player who never became involved with MLS is star forward Christian Pulisic, who spent part of his teen years in the now-abandoned U.S. Soccer residency program before leaving for Borussia Dortmund in Germany at age 16.

“Look where all these guys started: Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, and we can keep going,” Hall of Fame defender Marcelo Balboa told SN. “In ’94, our goal was to make sure we got out of the group – and nobody gave us a chance – because we knew they were going to start a league. And with that league, it was based initially to make sure we got a lot of the young Americans, promote them and give them a place to play, make them professionals and move them.

“So we’ve done that. Now you look at a league where you’ve got brand-new, state-of-the-art facilities. If you go around the world, I think we’re right up there.”

One obstacle MLS has faced that other nations rarely do is resistance from fans at home. Not just sports fans who continue to reject soccer; the league will take any willing to convert, but the more important target is the soccer fan who neglects or derides MLS because it is not the world’s best league.

MORE: World Cup a chance for American holdouts to fall in love with the game

The league’s games are well attended; MLS ranks high among global leagues in terms of total spectators, at more than 11.2 million for the 2025 season. Its average attendance is in the top 10, although that number is suppressed by competing in smaller stadiums. In the first three months of the current season, viewership of games on the league’s Apple TV+ package is reported at 7.9 million watching per week, a 62 percent increase in audience since subscriptions were abandoned in favor of free distribution. Obviously, there remains room for growth.

“I think we still have a ways to go,” said Meola, who co-costs the Counter Attack program on the SiriusXM FC channel and the “Call It What You Want” podcast. “There’s still some things to improve on. I think everybody would agree that’s the case. But look what we have here. You guys that were around in ’94, did you ever think it was going to look like this? There’s no way in hell.”

Although there are occasional, needlessly grandiose predictions from league officials about MLS eventually competing on the same level as the Premier League in England and La Liga in Spain, no one is claiming that is the case now. Because American soccer fans have ready access to those leagues through American television or streaming channels, some dismiss MLS as being unworthy of their time.

Among them are many USMNT fans who either are unaware or purposefully ignorant of the contribution of MLS to their squad in this World Cup. As mentioned, more than 80 percent of the roster was developed or improved through the league’s system. It’s a roster that won its group, that put four goals past a Paraguay that’s allowed just one more in two full games and another that went to extra time, that is playing for a chance to reach the Round of 16 at the fourth consecutive World Cup in which they appeared.

And Balboa, who does TV analyst work for MLS’s Apple TV+ package, sees possibly more for the league beyond its growing aptitude for developing talent. Legendary striker Robert Lewandowski of Poland’s national team just completed his fourth season at FC Barcelona with 14 goals in 31 games for the La Liga champions. He’s now joining the Chicago Fire. Balboa believes more international pros who experienced the World Cup in the U.S. and Canada might choose to follow him to the league.

“You look at how far MLS has come, look at the players we have drawn in: Thierry Henry, Messi, (Rodrigo) De Paul – guys that have won World Cups playing in this country,” Balboa told SN. “Now you’re looking at this league, they’re going to come here, they’re going to train at our facilities, they’re going to play some practice games at our stadiums, and now they’re going to think to themselves: Why not come here?

“This is going to open up a huge door for a lot of European players to come and look at what we have: our facilities, the way we’re playing, the lifestyle they can have. And it may change their minds … What we’re hoping for is to open people’s eyes for what we’ve created.

“We’re 30 years, 31 years in, and look what we’ve done. Think about how much we can do in the next 10 years. People just have to give us a chance without comparing us to other leagues.”