Former U. S.
men's national soccer team player Taylor Twellman criticized major collegiate athletic conferences on Wednesday for failing to properly develop young American players following the national team's recent World Cup elimination.
Speaking at a press conference at the Edgewood Tahoe Resort ahead of the American Century Championship, Twellman linked the national team's 4-1 round-of-16 defeat against Belgium on Monday to structural flaws within the domestic player pipeline for athletes aged 17 to 21.
According to Twellman, prominent athletic organizations like the SEC, Big Ten, and ACC restrict the growth of men's soccer due to resource limitations, scheduling constraints, and compliance with Title IX regulations.
He emphasized that the collegiate system must reform its approach to match the developmental environment provided by international clubs.
The current landscape leaves major conferences with minimal soccer presence, forcing programs like Kentucky and South Carolina to compete in the Sun Belt Conference due to a lack of active SEC rivals.
Twellman expressed deep frustration with how collegiate authorities govern the sport.
"The NCAA has to treat it with the right respect," said Twellman.
He noted that the traditional three-month collegiate schedule packs more than 20 games into a brief window, an arrangement unchanged for generations while other sports received modern operational adjustments.
"First off, Title IX, the men's side, we don't have teams in the SEC. So we don't have teams in the big one.
The college landscape, I don't care what anyone says... I know this to be a real league.
There's still a real value to having that. Now, first off, the NCAA has treated soccer barbarically...
for you to play 20-some odd games in three months.
Meanwhile, they changed the basketball schedule, the baseball schedule, football, we all know it's its own entity and everything.
Every other sport's been treated with respect for its evolution and how it's played. My father played the same schedule I had 20 years before me in college.
It makes no sense," Twellman said.
Twellman concluded that while international scouts view American talent favorably up to age 16, the United States falls behind globally in the critical subsequent years because young players lack access to continuous, competitive game minutes.
"Now, college has addressed it. They're gonna change it.
We just need more games.
To answer your question in a different way, every scout around the world, where they text me and call me, and everyone that's watching the United States' landscape, they don't bring up anything up to the age of 16.
I still think we can be more inclusive, less expensive, not spending time, four hours in the car, all that.
That's a different kind of conversation. But they all say, 17 to 21, we're still behind.
Around the world, those players are getting meaningful minutes. We need a huge pool of players who are getting meaningful minutes.
Jamie Vardy would have been kicked out of the United States soccer landscape in the blink of an eye.
We found him later on in his career with Leicester City and all of that.
So that's where college can help, but they've got to change the landscape, and they should be allowed to play more games.
It should be more cost-effective, so they don't need to hide behind the Title IX cost, and football and all of that, and allow them to play as many games as possible.
You get your education, all of that. There's a huge value in college.
The NCAA has to treat it with the right respect, like the way they treat all the other sports, in that they've changed their rules," Twellman said.
