Staten Island’s AB7 Earns MLS NEXT Status, Putative Gateway to Pro Soccer Dreams

The elevation of a Staten Island youth academy into the ranks of elite American soccer portends broader opportunities—and reveals the complex interplay of ambition, investment and uneven access at the heart of the city’s sporting landscape.

Last autumn, in a modest patch of Staten Island nestled between warehouses and rowhouses, a cadre of teenagers chugged through drills as brisk winds buffeted the field. These gritty sessions have now garnered their reward: AB7 Soccer Academy, a once-obscure local program, has been formally granted MLS NEXT status, catapulting it into the most prestigious tier of youth football in America.

MLS NEXT, an elite youth league operated by Major League Soccer, offers a highly structured pathway to collegiate scholarships and professional contracts. Until now, the borough’s soccer prospects had needed to cross bridges—often literal ones—to Manhattan, Brooklyn or New Jersey for similar opportunities. The new designation positions AB7 as a direct pipeline for Staten Island’s aspiring athletes to the NCAA and—if boots and luck suffice—Major League Soccer itself.

For New York City, never short on ambition but perennially strapped for athletic fields, the move matters. Until this point, access to high-level competitive soccer has clustered in affluent suburbs and select enclaves. Staten Island, the oft-overlooked borough, gets something rare: recognition as a locus of talent worth investing in. More than a dozen AB7 players will, this season, face off against counterparts from the metropolitan area’s powerhouse academies like Red Bulls and NYCFC. No longer are Staten Islanders consigned to the periphery; the borough, population 500,000, merits a place on the soccer map.

The first-order implications are direct and, by local standards, profound. AB7’s youth now gain not only sharpened competition but also exposure to collegiate and professional scouts who previously bypassed Richmond County. That raises the prospect of athletic scholarships funneling inner-borough talent westward to NCAA Division I schools—dollar figures that, for many working-class families, are not trivial. It is a subtle rebalancing of opportunity in a city notoriously riven by postcode-based disparities.

Yet the pathway is neither smooth nor universal. Acceptance into the MLS NEXT ranks demands resources that many city-based programmes still lack: professional coaches, high-quality pitches, travel budgets for tournaments stretching as far as Florida. The academy model, for all its promise, portends new divides. Participation fees can approach $3,000 per year, far beyond pocket-change for the borough’s median household, which hovers at $89,000—well below the citywide average. That, as ever, risks transforming grassroots sport into a preserve for the already fortunate.

Second-order effects will ripple across the city’s economic and social fabric. In the best scenario, more local talent could rise through the sporting ranks, garnering attention for the borough and a smattering of national pride. The city’s amateur clubs—long overshadowed by European immigrants’ loyalty to far-off teams—might find fresh relevance amid a homegrown success story. Meanwhile, an uptick in local interest could boost business for sports retailers and trainers, and perhaps, in time, nudge the Parks Department or private investors to cough up for better playing surfaces.

Politics, never absent from New York’s athletic quarrels, are likely to follow. Borough president Vito Fossella and council members have already filed celebratory press releases pointing to the ‘vital investment’ in Staten Island’s youth. But the attention also invites scrutiny of public funding disparities: more than half the city’s ballfields are in disrepair, and Staten Island, for all its new soccer prowess, still lags in per-capita youth sports provision. If AB7 succeeds, constituents in the Bronx, Queens, and upper Manhattan may rightly clamour for parity.

The city’s recent census data suggests the stakes may be wider still. Staten Island is one of New York’s fastest-growing counties for immigrants, with a burgeoning population from Latin America and Eastern Europe—both football-mad regions. The MLS NEXT imprimatur offers hope of folding these communities more tightly into the city’s mainstream, using soccer as a mild but persistent solvent on old ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

A high bar in a city of high hurdles

Nationally, New York City’s emergence as a footballing (if not football) hub is long overdue. The United States continues its fitful effort to rival global giants: Germany’s Bundesliga subsidizes youth clubs for all; Britain’s Premier League runs sprawling academies in post-industrial hinterlands. American youth football, by contrast, is still a pay-to-play labyrinth, with the nation’s best prospects often unequally born or bankrolled. AB7’s elevation to MLS NEXT status is thus commendable—but also a reminder of the country’s still-patchy approach to meritocracy in sport.

Even so, the economics of selective youth teams remain forbidding. The US Soccer Federation and MLS talk a fine game of ‘diversity and access’, but have yet to underwrite the associated costs at a scale that would be noticed in Tottenville or Tompkinsville. In 2022, federal and city grants for sports infrastructure amounted to a paltry $2.3 million for Staten Island (less than half the figure for Brooklyn). If soccer is to be the game for all, the financial bar needs lowering and the ladder widened.

Our own view is sceptically optimistic. Progress, while overdue, should not be derided because it is partial. The arrival of MLS NEXT is a tangible step forward, both in sporting terms and, less tangibly, in citywide self-perception. But the risk is that, absent concerted reform and hard cash, today’s elation yields only to tomorrow’s new forms of exclusivity. Soccer will not alone erase the city’s inequalities, nor should it be expected to. Still, each investment in talent—however modest—marks a toehold against the city’s tide of inertia.

AB7’s newfound elite status does not guarantee a pipeline of future stars, nor does it dissolve the hurdles that have long faced New York’s sporting hopefuls. But for this season at least, the pitch on a far-flung edge of the city feels a little more level—and for thousands of borough families, that is no small thing. ■