I think granularity is an issue - here in Europe, as a small kid wanting to play soccer you basically just join the nearest club to where you live (and almost every village has one) for a minor cost (250 to 300€/yr) and take it from there. Kevin De Bruyne started out at KVE Drongen, a typical regional league club that nowadays fields two men's teams (first + reserve), one women's team and twenty youth teams at various age levels. I live in a nowhere rural village and even here the village soccer team fields 15 youth teams.
Talented players quickly get picked up by scouts from national league teams (in KDB's case nearby AA Gent), but once they reach their mid-teens the better ones basically can pick their own academy to go to (KDB moved to Genk at the age of 14).
Structuring your youth leagues matters a lot for talent development in soccer.