'Crisis' in youth sports comes into focus after early US World Cup exit

ATLANTA/NEW YORK, July 16 : Another early World Cup exit underscores a fractured youth sports culture in the United States, as the nation hopes to catch up with footballing powerhouses that have no clogs in their talent pipeline.

The Americans have not reached the quarter-finals of the global showpiece since 2002 and their last-16 exit this year rekindled a longstanding debate: Why is the world's richest country - and one of the largest - unable to compete with the best?

"We need to fundamentally restructure the youth side of the sport in our country," U.S. Soccer's Chief Operating Officer Dan Helfrich told Reuters.

"That means everything from lowering costs and lowering barriers to participate. It means increasing access in all parts of our country, this vast country, where right now it's inconsistent the level of participation that happens."

The national governing body for the sport opened its first centralised training facility in Fayetteville this year, decades after many of the European titans have, marking the first time "U.S. soccer has ever owned a blade of grass," the centre's general manager Tom Norton told Reuters.

Helfrich said the facility, which came about through a $50 million investment from NFL team owner Arthur Blank, would announce plans in the coming months to host elite youth academies and all national youth teams.

"The fragmentation that exists in the youth leagues in the country needs to be joined together. We have an active plan that we've been building and will roll out in the months to come to tackle costs, to tackle access, to tackle alignment," said Helfrich.

MORE COSTS, LESS PARTICIPATION

Those costs are at the heart of a heated debate over American soccer's "pay-to-play" model that spilled over into