And culturally, I think the women's game is different here in the U.S. than the men's side. I expect our player pool to stay very, very large and very talented which will always keep us in the mix but to stay dominant the NWSL needs to be twice its current size and more women need to go directly and skip college. The problem is kids can't afford to go pro here for what NWSL amounts to be just a summer league. Many players go to Australia when NWSL ends just to keep the checks coming.
I think this is the real key regarding whether or not the European clubs will outpace the US (with its youth structure + college). Culturally, the women's game is not just different compared to the men's side, culturally the women's sporting landscape in the US is very different than in other countries. Our participation rates in all team sports - boys and girls - are way higher. When I studied abroad, I played on futsal team. The guys were athletic enough, had better footskills than I did (a non-soccer player but I played a lot of baseball and football and lacrosse so I could play in goal), but very few of them played organized sports growing up - one played team handball, one was a runner and one played tennis, many skied and played tennis recreationally. Compared to their female peers? They were total sportsmen. I expect that the landscape has changed some over the years but from talking to my friends in Europe and looking at the level of participation in team sports of their kids, there really is no comparison. So, the boom that Europe will experience may occur but whether they have the sheer volume of players to produce elite soccer players remains to be seen (this is akin to the points
@MakeAPlay has made re the number of players in the 18-32 range).
There is a larger philosophical issue as well - and my perspective may differ than those on this board (it does with many on the NorCal equivalent when similar points were discussed years ago). If you measure "soccer success" at WC titles playing soccer "the right way", all of this matters. But if you measure success on participation rates - not just at the youth level but through college, in pick-up, in old men and old women leagues, etc.) - fitness, love of the sport, an ability for some kids to turn sport into education, exposure to different kids and different communities, opportunity to travel (domestically and internationally), etc., we continue and will continue to do things right. Thank you, Title IX, for that and for the effect of it becoming totally normalized for a girl to be juggling a soccer ball on her own or when my younger kids ask to be taken to the field to meet friends to kick the ball around. I believe that remains unique in other countries, even countries whose national teams have made significant gains.
Can La Masia produce elite players better than we do? Maybe. But what happens to the ones who don't make it all the way? Will there be other avenues for those who have given up everything for that academy model? Stated another way - how many of La Masia's players who were 15 when Messi was do we actually know about? How many have made a living in soccer? And how deep a fraction do we take w/r/t girls/women since it is a HUGE leap to think that community-based 3d and 4th division women's teams will have the following like the equivalent men's teams?