The post-World Cup transfer is a fleeting concept these days. A player can enjoy a breakout month but to the sport's experts, someone with newfound star power is hardly an unknown quantity. If anything, a few weeks of visibly strong form only reinforce the machinations of the sport, so it should come as no surprise that U.S. men's national team forward Folarin Balogun was linked to Tottenham Hotspur a few short weeks after the tournament came to an end.
The move is unlikely to happen and it is unclear if Balogun will find a way out of Monaco before the Sept. 1 transfer deadline, even if the many invested in the forward's career may want a better club setup for him than the team that finished seventh in Ligue 1 last season. The 25-year-old would hardly be the first USMNT player subject to this type of tension – as the U.S. continues its years-long quest to break into the elites of the men's game, the conversation usually rightfully steers towards the work that gets done between World Cups. National team endeavors are essentially sports' most prestigious side hustle, the bulk of their working hours – and their professional evolutions – instead resting with their clubs.
There's a very reasonable argument that the USMNT's top players like Balogun should find themselves in the most competitive club environments, especially as they enter their peak years and with plenty of time on the clock until the next World Cup. A theoretical move to Spurs would have checked off a lot of boxes, chief among them the fact that Balogun would find himself in the Premier League. England's top flight is unrivaled in its competitive value, several superclubs occupying the top spots while a series of midtable teams with impressive financial might make up the numbers.
A handful of USMNT standouts have competed in the Premier League for several years now – midfielder Tyler Adams and defender Chris Richards are longtime regulars at Bournemouth and Crystal Palace, respectively. The Premier League is not exactly hoarding American talent, though; the player pool is made up of players who play in different European leagues and several who are based in MLS. The variety reflects the USMNT's status as a clear competitor in the international game but still outside the top tier for the time being.
Premier League-based players are arguably a status symbol for a national team on the rise, so much so that it almost forces the question: As the USMNT turn the page on a World Cup where they fell just short of realizing their potential, do the players need to break into England's top flight to make history in four years' time? The Premier League is not exactly a predictor of eventual World Cup winners – England's teams understandably skew heavily towards players in their domestic top flight on a regular basis and have not won the World Cup since 1966, almost 30 years before the Premier League was even created. English clubs, though, have consistently sent the most players to the World Cup since the 1998 edition and the concentration of wealth in the Premier League meant that Crystal Palace had more players at this summer's tournament than Real Madrid.
The competitive advantage means England's top flight has a decent track record in recent years of projecting which of the national teams might be well-poised to make history. Perhaps no team in recent memory exemplifies this more than Belgium, who missed out on the 2006 and 2010 World Cups before their golden generation took shape. Eleven members of the 2014 team, who impressed in their World Cup return by reaching the quarterfinals, played for Premier League clubs at the time and another five moved to England in the subsequent years, including future Chelsea and Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
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