United States' humiliation a result of players staying within borders

Following Tuesday's embarrassing 2-1 defeat at Trinidad and Tobago's waterlogged digs, an inquest into the state of the United States' soccer setup is underway.

Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated reported that a meeting in Los Angeles was to be held less than 24 hours after the sorriest episode in the United States' history in the sport. The general view is that the issue is ingrained in both the U.S. football governing body and MLS - a failure to secure an eighth successive World Cup conquest doesn't just boil down to questionable tactics and Geoff Cameron.

Like most amplified football crises, light can be found. Scratch away at the basement window papered over by charitable statistics on things like improving MLS attendances and decent All-Star outings, and you can see that the precocious Christian Pulisic, already the best player in the USMNT squad, is indeed capable of leading a generation to better times. He will no doubt be accompanied by other prodigies like Weston McKennie, Erik Palmer-Brown, and Andrew Carleton, and will personally be boosted by one of the finest educations a youngster can receive in the global game: at Borussia Dortmund, and not in MLS.

But the teenage sensation is the exception, not the rule: there is now a dearth of players at the peak of their powers vaulting U.S. borders and testing themselves against the best. The number of those pitting their skills in Europe's top five leagues is dwindling.

Maybe the players of that 24-to-28 age range simply aren't good enough. Maybe, like with Michael Bradley, there's a patriotic urge to move back to MLS and help drive its objective of establishing itself as one of the finest leagues in world soccer. That is detrimental to the national team, though. Bradley, with his penchant of playing needless Hollywood balls instead of simpler and wiser passes, has not improved since rolling into Toronto FC. Aged 26, the midfielder turned his back on training with Daniele De Rossi and facing an in-form Mario Balotelli (as Bradley had a month before his transfer) at Roma for a more comfortable life nearer to his Princeton, N.J. birthplace.

The inability to book a 2018 World Cup berth highlights the need for the country's best to develop their skills abroad, and at the first opportunity. The progression of genuinely gifted players from MLS academies and into first teams is scarce. Those that do so, like Matt Miazga, should've probably moved on earlier - there's been little to suggest that Miazga isn't out of his depth in the Chelsea system.

The issues with poor coaching standards and youth development isn't unique to the United States, of course. The neglect of parks and other tactical mindsets beyond bypassing the midfield with a hoofed clearance has held England back, while Spain, with ancillary teachings at Barcelona, and others rewrote the footballing manuscript in Europe.

What links the American and English approach is arrogance. An arrogance that the domestic league is better than it is. An arrogance that, for the United States, it can arrive late to the world's biggest sport and do just fine and, for England, that history still ensures a place in the upper echelons of the international game.

This has suppressed improvement in the standards of the sport and, until the money is used to polish the grassroots game rather than further line executives' pockets, young players from those nations are better off being schooled in the leading academies of mainland Europe.