I think you just made my point.

Essentially we're talking about football and basketball. To some extent baseball, but that's becoming harder for kids these days too. But there are decades worth of minor league baseball that make it hard to compare with anything.

But with football and basketball kids are able to play competitively at their schools in middle school or before. AAU has learned to co-exist with high school basketball. Steph Curry, Kawhi, Lebron all played HS basketball. AAU picks off talent from HS, but they still play.

Schools don't care about soccer in the US. And the clubs generally don't want kids to play for their schools. And to be fair, it's because the experience will probably be what your kids had.

My point is that the school experience has to get better. If the structure was there where kids were playing soccer and the clubs were pulling the best talent from the schools, then USA soccer would improve dramatically. Instead, the club structure belongs to the kids that can afford to play it and the handful of kids found (usually in some hispanic community playing for free) by a club that they put on a scholarship.