Quality will go up when they completely abide by the FIFA calendar and quit making ridiculous bullshit rules regarding salary distribution and player development/movement, and stop pandering to over the hill one-legged players like Beckham who'd probably rather spend his time at Derby County.
No, quality will go up when people actually start playing the sport.
As for the FIFA calendar, it's a pain in the ***, but you can't seriously make the claim that it is a big factor in player development. 99.9% of the players aren't even affected by it since they're not in the national team pool, and the ones that are get to play and miss a club game. If they're not allowed to, they miss out on one national team game. Not too big of a deal.
Salary distribution and player movement has to do with the fact that it's a franchise system. That's the only way it's going to work here. European-style club system would not work with American sports for geographical reasons and because we have several sports that are very popular here, and of course in the case of soccer, it's not one of them. It also has nothing to do with player development.
As far as player development goes, in case you haven't been paying attention, the MLS has already developed an academy system, and although there are a lot of problems, a lot of progress is being made. Every year the system gets better and the youth leagues are being more consolidated. Keep in mind that a lot of our good players now are academy players, Bradley, Altidore, etc. Andy Najar is a very promising 16 year old academy product. It's going to take time, especially because no one over the age of 25 or 30 ever played the sport, but we're making a lot of progress.
As for Beckham, he completely put soccer on the map in this country and every game he played him had much higher attendances than usual. Most Americans hadn't heard of a single soccer player before he came, and now, everyone knows who Beckham is and most people have even watched a game. Our record World Cup ratings have a lot to do with him.
You have way too high expectations. The league has been in place since 1996 and isn't commercially successful. You can't expect us to have a top ten national team just like that. More importantly, it's not taken seriously here as a sport (although that's changing), and young kids don't really play it on their own. In any country in the world, by the time you're 3 or 4 you play a lot in the yard, and you play with your friends constantly by 5 or 6. By the time you're 9 or 10 and join a team, you have great ball skills, an understanding of the game, and creativity. In America, it's different. You start playing at 6 or 7 on a team without having really played on your own. It's probably a co-ed team, a parent who has never played the sport is the coach, and it's purely recreational. You don't really play in your free time and by the time you quit the sport in favor of basketball, baseball, football, or hockey, when you're 11 or 12, you still aren't as good as your typical 4 or 5 year old Latin American kid.
If you're European, don't comment on what you're not informed about. If you're American, you should start paying attention and support our league rather than just belittle it for not being attractive football. I hate watching MLS but it needs a lot of time and support to grow. Which is ultimately the only way we can have a good NT and the only way we'll get meaningful soccer at home.
