MLS Should Look To Brazil, Not Saudi Arabia, For Inspiration
The headline upset of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup came on Tuesday night in Orlando, Fla., when Saudia Arabia's Al-Hilal completed a stunning, 4-3 victory over English giants Manchester City.
Because Al-Hilal comes from what could loosely be described as an emerging league, the roughly 50-year-old Saudi Pro League, the result prompted all sorts of hand-wringing over why a team from the 30-year-old MLS couldn't achieve a similar result, along with the perfunctory calls to obliterate current MLS salary and roster restrictions.
It's true that not even Lionel Messi's Inter Miami, whose $46.8 million payroll is the largest in MLS, could come close to matching the overall depth of Al-Hilal's roster, which is nearly four times as expensive. And it's equally true that the Herons were badly outplayed in their final Club World Cup match against Paris Saint-Germain, a 4-0 loss that could've finished much worse without PSG's merciful approach to the second half.
But chasing the Saudi Pro League model would be a financial disaster for MLS and wouldn't give American fans a product they wanted. It would be far better served trying to model itself after another Club World Cup success story: Brazil's Serie A, which has put both Palmeiras and Fluminense into the last eight.
Unbalanced and Unviable
For all starpower heading to Saudi Arabia these days, the league remains dominated by a select few clubs in a manner that would be prohibitive to nationwide growth in a country with a large landmass and decentralized population like the United States.
In 50 seasons since competition began, Al-Hilal has won 19 league titles and finished as runner up 16 times. Three of the four most decorated teams are in the Ryiadh, accounting for 34 league titles total. Teams from Jeddah have won 13. Only seven teams and four cities have ever won the league in half a century.
It's fair to criticize MLS ownership for failing to invest more of its revenue in player wages; the league is well below the threshold of roughly 50% that is the guideline for salary caps in the NFL, NBA and NHL. But Saudi squad investment has nothing to do with revenue generated by clubs. Instead, is propped up directly by the Saudi Government, with an aim toward boosting the nation's global image through sport.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund assumed a controlling share of the league's four biggest clubs in 2023, tilting the scales further in favor of the big clubs. That was by design, because the biggest bang for Saudi bucks is in international competition. And the best way to support strong performances in international play is to concentrate all the resources into just a few elite clubs.
You can see this in action by looking at the squad values of clubs across the Saudi Pro League per Transfermarkt. Nearly 75% of that value is concentrated in five clubs: Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ahly, Al-Ittihad and Al-Qadsiah.
This wouldn't make any sense for the United States' socioeconomic and sporting characteristics. The U.S. is a nation with dozens of cities capable of supporting first division soccer. And while there are disparities between large and small markets in American sports, it's generally accepted that all teams in a top league should have a real chance to win titles if they are run well.
Our Southern Cousins
As high-achieving soccer nations go, Brazil is easily the one with the most similar socioeconomic characteristics to the United States.
In terms of landmass, Brazil ranks third in the Western Hemisphere behind the United Stated and Canada. In terms of population, it ranks second with a total population of almost 218 million (according to 2023 estimates), behind only the United States.
And as a result of its expansive geography and decentralized population, the history of the Brazilian game begins in its state leagues rather than the more modern national Serie A. There are obvious parallels here to conferences in American college sports, as well as the conference and division systems used in the NFL, NBA and NHL.
While the format of competition has changed over the years, 17 different teams have won the nation's top domestic honor since 1959, coming from seven different states. Yes, there is some competivie bias toward Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But no more so than we see toward the New York Yankees and LA Dodgers in Major League Baseball.
The disparity between the most- and least-valuable squads the Brazilian Serie A is much wider than MLS, but not nearly as polarized as the Saudi Pro League. Twelve of the league's 20 clubs have a squad value above $100 million per Transfermarkt data, a level well above any MLS side. Only two have a value lower than the lowest-valued MLS roster at the moment, Toronto FC.
How MLS Gets There
If Major League Soccer wants to set Brazil's top flight as a target to aspire to, it won't be able to follow an identical path. Much of the Serie A's strength is built on just the enormous abundance of talent across Brazil, which reveres soccer as not just a sport but a cultural identity. Even with the enormous number of American children who grow up playing soccer, it's hard to compete with that kind of devotion.
It's that kind of reverence that leads to an abundance of Brazilian kids who grow up playing in alleys, streets and playgrounds before they find their way to teams and academies, in a manner similar those American basketball players who count pickup games at the neighborhood court among their most formative experiences.
It's the kind of experienced that turns elite players into world-class ones once they eventually mesh it with more sophisticated academy coaching.
But MLS also has enormous advantages in the value of its clubs and the wealth of its owners. Channeled correctly, that can create pipelines for American players that rival any academy system on earth. Combine that with increased salaries at the senior level, particularly for mid-tier, domestic talent, and you can easily create a domestic talent based that rivals any in the Western Hemisphere.
And MLS could also take a page from MLB to try and mine talent from the Caribbean, where there is lots of potential but not much football infrastructure. Nations like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago increasingly rely on foreign-born players for their national teams. But they could be fertile ground for projects similar to the Dominican Summer League that MLB clubs run.
Additionally, while Brazilian teams typically don't import much European talent, they increasingly have cornered the market on the best South Americans from beyond their borders. It has become a league of choice, even for those from Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia, whose nations have their own rich league history.
At one point in time, MLS appeared to be the top destination for Central American and Caribbean talent. But that pattern has faded in recent years, and the league has never really done well at drawing Mexican players across the border from the lucrative contracts many Liga MX clubs can offer. That eventually needs to change.
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