From someone who has been closely involved with the USSF on a local & state level for over thirty five years, the organization is comprised of a large number of people from the local and national levels that are only concerned with lining their pockets. It all starts with the youth Club level that charges families large amounts of money to participate and routinely pays many Club coaches six figure salaries. And on the adult level, they often diverted our team fees to pay for National team administrator's inflated salaries & expense accounts.... Instead of recruiting and training youth players according to their abilities, players are advanced on the ability of their families to pay their way through the system. Therefore, the players reaching National team status are often not elite athletes, thus their losses over the years to poor small nations. I founded, coached, and played for an Adult Club organization that had five fielded adult teams at one point in time. I never made a cent, played for the spirit and love of the game. Most of my fellow Adult Club founders and coaches were of the same ilk. But the national,state, & local youth organization, which should be the feeder system for a National team, and the National USSF administrators, operate on the "let's make a good buck for ourselves" system. Until that is fixed, US soccer will never achieve the status they should.