On March 29, an overcast Sunday in rural Georgia, Matt Crocker strode across a vast pitch that represented the future of U.S. Soccer.

By his side was JT Batson, the CEO who’d hired him. Together with U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone and other leaders, they led a tour of the federation’s new national training center. “We,” Crocker said, “want to create an environment [here] where the community, the whole of football, soccer, comes together.”

And a couple weeks later, he left it all behind.

U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday that Crocker is departing his job as the federation’s sporting director. Multiple sources told The Athletic that Crocker has accepted a similar role with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation.

He informed higher-ups over the past two weeks, but many he worked with — some of whom spoke to The Athletic Tuesday on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss Crocker’s departure — found out less than 48 hours before the announcement. Some were “shocked” or surprised.

Crocker, for months and as recently as March, had been speaking privately and publicly about his long-term plans for player development in the United States. On that Sunday at the national training center in Fayette County, Ga., he repeatedly used the words “we,” “us” and “our.” He spoke dreamily about “evolv[ing] and grow[ing] into this amazing facility.” He’d been in weekly meetings about the design of the facility, which will open May 7. And although he didn’t have an office, he had specific visions for how it would be used by players and staff — or even for the mid-May filming of videos that would “say what youth development needs to look like in the future” and help instruct coaches nationwide.

He spoke passionately about subjects like that over the past three years, since taking the job in 2023.

So why did he move on so abruptly?

Crocker declined to immediately comment.

Three sources suggested to The Athletic that the Saudis had offered to pay him multiple times more than he was making at U.S. Soccer. (He received $658,787 in base compensation and $179,100 in bonuses and incentives in the tax year ending March 31, 2025.)

What seems clear is that he was not pushed out. He was respected and well-liked in U.S. Soccer sporting circles. Even across the youth soccer landscape, he’d been working to earn trust.

His departure, in that sense, is perhaps a blow to U.S. Soccer’s efforts to reshape and refine developmental pathways.

But, according to U.S. Soccer officials, including Crocker himself, it is not a blow to the USMNT’s World Cup prep.

Crocker’s role was a high-level strategic one. USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino and his staff, on the other hand, “have done all the planning” for the tournament, Crocker told The Athletic last month. “And hopefully, I’m not needed. I think the only time I’ll be needed is if things aren’t going too well.”

So, although the optics are troublesome and the timing “clumsy,” as one source put it, this is anything but a crisis that must be solved over the coming month.

What does an international soccer sporting director do?

Crocker was U.S. Soccer’s second-ever sporting director and, like other international soccer sporting directors, including his predecessor Earnie Stewart, his role and responsibilities evolved based on needs and wants.

He was the federation’s highest-ranking soccer official, a guru tasked with overseeing all of U.S. Soccer’s national teams. In that sense, he was the equivalent of, say, an NFL team’s president of football or an NBA franchise’s president of basketball operations.

But in international soccer, sporting directors can’t trade or sign players. They lead coaching searches, as Crocker did twice in his first six months on the job; but most of the work is far less visible and more indirectly linked to success on the field.

“He is responsible for setting the Federation’s sporting vision and performance strategy,” Crocker’s U.S. Soccer bio read. He led “the technical direction of U.S. Soccer, with a focus on alignment, performance, and long-term player development.”

In other words, he was a big-picture strategist who worked to develop things like training methodologies and systematize things like scouting that could improve American soccer for years to come.

What did Crocker do for U.S. Soccer?

Crocker’s first priority after initial coaching searches, he has said, was “getting our own house in order.” He worked to implement processes and philosophies among youth national team coaches and within U.S. Soccer departments such as talent identification and coaching education.

Then, he looked beyond the federation. “What I pretty quickly realized,” Crocker told The Athletic last year, “is that we can have a way of doing things, a philosophy internally; but the players that come to us are always going to be the same players, unless we impact the landscape.”

So he canvassed that landscape, traveling to dozens of different meetings and conventions, listening and learning about American soccer. He developed a “plan for changing and improving, hopefully, player development in this country,” he said. He codified it in the “U.S. Way,” and later a so-called “pathways” strategy. And rather than dictate it to thousands of youth clubs across America — which is where “95% of player development happens,” he often said — he tried to invite and inspire them to join the movement.

He had limited success — more than his predecessors, but less than he would’ve liked.

“It’s a bigger beast than I ever expected,” he said of the youth soccer ecosystem in an interview with The Athletic last month. “It’s so complex. It’s so political.

“It’s taken us a while for people within the system — important people who make decisions about the game — to start to believe and trust U.S. Soccer; [to trust] that we have the right people, that we’re building a robust plan that involves collaboration and working together. … Maybe I underestimated how long that would take to begin to build that trust.

“I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated at the speed of change,” he concluded. “But, you can definitely see and feel, I believe, positive [indications] about how U.S. Soccer is perceived and its ideas about working together with the whole system.”

What Crocker didn’t do: hands-on World Cup prep

After hiring their coaches, Crocker’s influence on the men’s and women’s senior national teams, on the other hand, was relatively minor.

One day at a USMNT training camp last month in Atlanta, for example, he strode onto the sidelines of a training pitch in a plain T-shirt, long after players and team staff had already arrived at Atlanta United’s training facility.

He chatted with Pochettino, and of course the two communicated. Their relationship dates back to their stints at Southampton in England. Crocker had recruited the Argentine coach and supported him, especially during Pochettino’s early days on the job.

But Crocker was not intimately involved in tactics or personnel decisions.

“He’s not in the war room with Mauricio debating player No. 26 in roster selections,” one source said.

When asked on a recent U.S. Soccer podcast about preparing the USMNT for matches, Crocker said: “That’s the Mauricio decision. My job is not to tell or dictate or get involved in those tactics. … Mine is very much the broad lens of everything, whereas Mauricio’s is laser-focused.”

When asked last month if the World Cup would be busy, Crocker told The Athletic he’d be with the team in June, “but outside of training and breakfasts with Mauricio and the staff, and whatever they need me [for], for me, it’s business as usual. The planning’s done. You’ve gotta let it take shape.

“That’s why you appoint good people. You trust ’em to do the job. So, I’m there if they need me, but hopefully I won’t be needed.”

For that reason, U.S. Soccer does not feel like it suddenly has a World Cup void to fill.

What comes next?

The federation, instead, will take its time to appoint a successor or perhaps even restructure its sporting department.

In its Tuesday news release, it said that chief operating officer Dan Helfrich would “provide executive oversight and support across the federation’s sporting operations” in the interim. Helfrich will work with assistant sporting director Oguchi Onyewu, a former USMNT player who was nominally Crocker’s No. 2 but focused on different areas and initiatives; with Tracey Kevins, who leads the women’s youth national team program; and with others in the sporting department.

Helfrich, a former Deloitte CEO with extensive experience in soccer, became U.S. Soccer’s COO in January and has made a quick impression. He has involved himself in all sorts of federation activities, on the sporting side, commercial side and otherwise, sources said.

And he will, it seems, be heavily involved in the search for Crocker’s replacement — or in a restructuring — and potentially in the search for Pochettino’s successor atop the USMNT.

Pochettino’s contract expires after the World Cup, and although he has said he’s “open” to staying with the U.S. beyond 2026, the assumption is that he will likely move on.

Crocker’s departure now leaves the federation without an experienced sporting director to lead that post-World Cup process. And it seemingly leaves Helfrich in charge for the foreseeable future.

“Helfrich, in coordination with U.S. Soccer’s sporting leadership, will continue to guide sporting operations and support the Federation’s strategy through the next competitive cycle,” the federation said in its release.

As for Crocker, he “will work with the team to ensure a smooth transition,” U.S. Soccer said. And he will join an executive leadership team meeting on Wednesday, a source added, in part to say “a proper goodbye.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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