“For us to win World Cups, we know a lot of things have to be true. We have to have great coaches, we have to have great youth pathways, we have to have great clubs. We have to have great youth national teams, to create world class experiences for those players so your first time trying to win a trophy isn’t a senior World Cup and they believe that all those things need to be true and so do we and they want to help us go do that. And I think part of what kicked off this morning was okay, great, we’re philosophically aligned so how do we bring that to life? And over the coming weeks and months, there’ll be a whole lot of work around how we operationalize that.”

Not ready to subscribe? Sign up here for our free newsletter.

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Paul Kennedy edited Soccer America for 41 years (1985-2026). He began writing for SA in 1974. He started writing for France Football in 1978 and has served on in Ballon d'Or jury since 2007.