22 Under 22: An early look at the best group of young talent in MLS history

Here’s my thing, plainly and without caveat: MLS will never – *never* – close the final gap with the best competitions in the world by buying its way there. You can sign all the aging European DPs you want. You can TAM your way into quality mid-career grinders. You can chase Lionel Messi’s lightning in a bottle, and when he’s done you can, I don’t know, try to bring Kylian Mbappe over.

All of it moves merch, and all of it moves the needle in marketing meetings. None of it, however, moves the needle on the thing that actually matters, which is the long-term, sustainable quality (and growth thereof) of the product on the field.

Player development is the answer. It's the only answer.

And honestly? It's also the most interesting thing the league (any league) does, by a distance. It’s why I write about Seattle so much. It’s why I’m fascinated by this year’s Quakes. It’s why I lament St. Louis and both LA teams doing essentially nothing despite sitting atop two of the most loaded talent hotbeds in North America. The teams that create the path to the first team and use it shrewdly, that genuinely develop the players in their pipeline rather than just parking prospects on the bench, those are the clubs that are set up to dominate five years down the road. But also, those are the teams that are winning more and more consistently in the here and now.

The equation is pretty simple, even if the execution requires patience. You have to build systems, trust your process, and accept that development is occasionally messy and nonlinear (and sometimes a guy you bet on just doesn't make it).

But guess what? A lot of those TAM players don’t make it, either, and a lot of DPs stink (that sound you hear is Atlanta’s fanbase sobbing collectively). Invest in one of those guys and get it wrong, and you’re kind of stuck.

Invest in a pipeline, though? Do that and you’re building the foundation for long-term success.

MLS is still young enough that it gets to decide what it wants to be. The clubs that take development seriously – that treat it as the core competitive advantage rather than a secondary consideration – are the ones building something real. The rest are just renting relevance.

Ok, I needed to get that off my chest. And now, here is the good news: More MLS clubs are taking player development more seriously than ever before, and as a result we have what is starting to look like the best 22 Under 22 crop... ever? Or at least since 2018: