Tom Brady offered the most unrealistic advice for elevating the USMNT

USA Today

3 days ago

One of the major critiques Tom Brady has faced as an NFL broadcaster is that he rarely offers insight beyond stating the obvious. And that very well seems to be the same for Brady's soccer expertise.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion is a minority owner of newly promoted EFL Championship club Birmingham City FC. And while his time around soccer pales in comparison to his decades of NFL experience, he has still gotten to see the inner workings of a club battling up the EFL pyramid. That's a unique perspective on the game for sure.
But there's plenty Brady doesn't know about U.S. Soccer, and that became clear in his recent interview with Men in Blazers.
For Brady, he felt that U.S. Soccer and the USMNT really needed to find its own Lamine Yamal or Lionel Messi — a phenom to take over. He said that as if it was simple enough to find a once-in-a-generation superstar at 17 years old who also happened to be American. Or in Messi's case ... oh, just the best player of all-time.
Every team could use a Lamine Yamal. That's like saying the Washington Wizards only need a player like Prime LeBron James. Well, yeah. But Brady obviously overlooked the how of that point.
To avoid getting into a full breakdown of the many shortcomings within U.S. Soccer's pay-for-play system at the grassroots level, it's very difficult for any country to produce a transformative phenom like Yamal or Messi. And the U.S. is far less equipped to luck into one despite its population.
That being said, the U.S. has been able to find some very good players and two borderline world-class players (Christian Pulisic and Antonee Robinson). And 15-year-old Cavan Sullivan could potentially be a player to even surpass them one day.
But no, Brady isn't offering realistic advice here. That's not really thinking outside the box at all.