# U.S. Soccer's AI Scouts 70 Million Teens, Finds Them All on a Loading Screen

Federation hails 'paradigm shift' after naming its top prospect a 14-year-old who has not stood up since March.

Chicago The national soccer federation deployed an artificial-intelligence system to scout all 70 million American teenagers ahead of next year's World Cup, a process it completed in nine minutes and called comprehensive. The model returned one high-confidence finding: every prospect in the country is indoors, horizontal, and within arm's reach of a charger.

Federation leadership, headed by a former management-consulting executive, called the result a 'paradigm shift,' undeterred that the paradigm it had shifted into was a beanbag chair.

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Scouts described his off-ball movement as theoretical. — On the nation's top prospect

The system reached its conclusions without observing a single match, drawing instead on what the federation called 'richer signals': hours logged, charge cycles completed, and the precise angle at which a human spine can fold into upholstery.

The system flagged the top prospect as a ninth-grader, citing elite reflexes, exceptional thumb dexterity, and a stamina rating it could not assess because he had not, at any point, gone outside. Scouts described his off-ball movement as theoretical.

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The top prospect, reached through his mother, who knocked, said he was open to representing his country provided it did not require travel, standing, or a change of lighting. He added that he had recently led his position group in assists, a claim the federation accepted without asking which position, which group, or which of the games running on his second monitor.

Asked whether it had considered simply asking teenagers to go to a park, leadership said that lacked scalability and, more importantly, a dashboard. It confirmed it would instead invest in a second AI to determine why the first AI's recommendations hadn't moved the needle, and a third to build the needle.

### Related Reading

- AI scouting. U.S. Soccer really is using AI to scout the nation's teenagers ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
- 2026 World Cup. Coming to American stadiums. The talent pipeline is reportedly running from the couch to the fridge.

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Satyr Satire asked the model to evaluate this reporter. It returned elite thumb speed and a stamina rating of incomplete.

Tags: Sports AI World Cup Sports