How MLS sparked North America’s invasion of European football

If any evidence was needed to prove European clubs are increasingly looking to Major League Soccer for talent, it came in the January transfer window. No fewer than 33 players left North American soccer’s top flight to head across the Atlantic with two of those players (Daryl Dike and Ricardo Pepi) entering the list for the top five most expensive transfers in MLS history.

Bundesliga club Augsburg made Pepi their club-record signing while Dike joined West Brom. Teenager Kevin Paredes left DC United for Wolfsburg, James Sands signed for Rangers on loan from New York City FC and George Bello joined Arminia Bielefeld, having made his breakthrough at Atlanta United. Even after the January transfer window closed, Arsenal completed a deal that will see US men’s national team goalkeeper Matt Turner move to London this summer.

Each will hope to follow the precedent set by the likes of Alphonso Davies, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, who all used MLS as a springboard to top European clubs.

All this business marks a fundamental shift in MLS. Once derided as a ‘retirement league’ due to the number of ageing stars lured to Canada and the United States by the promise of one last bumper pay cheque, the competition is now more concerned with producing, or at least harnessing, stars of the future. Far from being a retirement league, MLS is now a development league.

This hasn’t happened by accident. A greater emphasis has been placed on youth development in the post-David Beckham era. The reliance on the college game for homegrown talent has been systematically eased. MLS has brought youth development in-house with a new youth-focused division, MLS Next, set to start play this year. The idea is that a more holistic network of more than