Exactly. The cost is no exaggeration. One of our grandaughters is in travel soccer as well as playing on her HS team.
OT: Will the USA win the World Cup in our lifetime...
- Thread starter Bwifan
- Start date
If USMNT made it to a World Cup final and you’re still above ground you’d be watching and screaming your head off, guaranteed.
Brazil and Argentina (amongst others) would disagree. They have been cohesive despite all of their players being in Europe. US players get way better development playing in higher leagues.
Agree, travel hockey is well organized and the coaching is very good, especially as you mentioned once the kids are above age 10. Very expensive from an equipment, extra training clinics, and crosscountry travel. My grandson plays travel hockey.
Yes, much better training in Europe but when I watch the USMNT there is a lack of cohesion. Is it coaching?
I don't think this statement is particularly controversial: at no time has the USA ever had a soccer player who was among the Top 10 individual talents of the world.
Christian Pulisic has been close, but he's the only one who could even be in the conversation.
And it's going to be damn hard to win a World Cup without at least one of those elite talents.
Christian Pulisic has been close, but he's the only one who could even be in the conversation.
And it's going to be damn hard to win a World Cup without at least one of those elite talents.
The answer is no.
I have told this story before on here. Wife is from brazil. We go back to see her family every so often. One year, we drive by what is supposed to pass for a soccer field. It’s in a rough-ish part of the city. It’s almost midnight on a Tuesday. School is still in session. The “field” is jammed with kids. No leagues, no uniforms, no ref, no coach, some with no shoes. Just the local kids age 1 to whatever killing each other. I have no idea when they went home, but it wasn’t going to be any time soon.
No parent in the US would allow this scene to happen. No amount of money, private coaching, or competitive leagues will replicate this. Until you can reproduce what I saw that night, and it happens everyday for decades across the US, maybe then you will get a championship World Cup team. Maybe.
I have told this story before on here. Wife is from brazil. We go back to see her family every so often. One year, we drive by what is supposed to pass for a soccer field. It’s in a rough-ish part of the city. It’s almost midnight on a Tuesday. School is still in session. The “field” is jammed with kids. No leagues, no uniforms, no ref, no coach, some with no shoes. Just the local kids age 1 to whatever killing each other. I have no idea when they went home, but it wasn’t going to be any time soon.
No parent in the US would allow this scene to happen. No amount of money, private coaching, or competitive leagues will replicate this. Until you can reproduce what I saw that night, and it happens everyday for decades across the US, maybe then you will get a championship World Cup team. Maybe.
I can’t speak for soccer, but I know many think that if you have talent in baseball, they will find you and that’s just not true. A kid needs to go to camps run by colleges and even most of those are just money makers and they don’t really pay attention to the kids. They need to be invited to specific camps. They also need to go to showcases. Playing on travel teams doesn’t always get you noticed either. Players need to pay recruiting services and join baseball clubs specifically designed to get them into showcases and in front of recruiting ranking services. Even most small college coaches don’t know who the best kids in their area are.
I'm not sure it's cohesion as much as it is skill. Our players just still aren't as good as the top dogs. Maybe partially due to development, partially due to a lot of our best athletes playing other sport? Coaches have changed over the past 10-20 years but the results haven't changed much.
@Erial_Lion follows the national team much closer than I do and probably has thoughts.
If I was king, I would have kids heavily invested in futsal for the first 4-5 years.
It’s the Country Club effect where for the first several years the players worry more about having the best spikes, uniform and navel oranges for snacks than playing with heart because they never learned that aspect of it.
Thanks GG, I don’t have the time to get into this too deeply with MtNit, whom I enjoy as a poster.
But, I’m sure you and I played against each other at a very high level back in the day.
And Steve Carleton was my idle growing up as a lefty pitcher, threw a curve/slide, hit curve balls till 9th grade, played ice hockey from 7-14 yo, chose soccer through HS and college.
Agreed, and then it vanished from our area in the last two years. One local club (03s won club NC), who invested into a futsal court in their indoor facility, ripped it out after 3 years.
I would go as far to say my grandkid (less than a year old) will have grandkids that won't live long enough for us to win a World Cup.
I know there's luck involved and that's probably an unfair statement but the US isn't committed to soccer. The best athletes want to play in the NBA or NFL. I don't see that changing.
I know there's luck involved and that's probably an unfair statement but the US isn't committed to soccer. The best athletes want to play in the NBA or NFL. I don't see that changing.
It will always be tough in this country with football, baseball, lacrosse, basketball, ice hockey all competing for the best athletes. Add to that no organized development training program with elite coaches where kids learn at a very young age critical skills such as ball control and footwork which has been brought up by other posters.
Right now it seems we have this disparate club program across the country which costs a lot of money and I don't think is really producing any world class elite players or very few. We have Pulisic and maybe a few others but not many and this is in the last 10-15 years. Look at college soccer, not an elite showcase of soccer talent. And I think very few Americans are able to play at the highest levels in Europe or Latin America. Until something changes and I don't see it changing soon we won't win a World Cup.
Right now it seems we have this disparate club program across the country which costs a lot of money and I don't think is really producing any world class elite players or very few. We have Pulisic and maybe a few others but not many and this is in the last 10-15 years. Look at college soccer, not an elite showcase of soccer talent. And I think very few Americans are able to play at the highest levels in Europe or Latin America. Until something changes and I don't see it changing soon we won't win a World Cup.
Did you play in the Philly area? I have some deep connections to the old Delco program.
I could type out novels about my thoughts. As with most things, I don’t see it as black/white…it’s lots of complex issues, negative variance, competing national sports priorities, etc.
Could there be areas for improvement at our youth levels and talent discovery? Sure. But we’ve still done pretty well at the u17 and u20 levels, are getting more and more young guys into Euro youth systems, etc. It looked like we were on the right track to make a huge leap with the current generation, then a whole bunch of guys stopped developing or couldn’t stay healthy (Julian Green, Musah, Geo, Konrad, Scally, Slonina, etc). Needed more of those guys to continue on their early trajectories.
In some ways, we face the same issues that PSU basketball faces (or faced pre-NIL dominating the decisions)…we don’t have a lot of kids growing up dreaming about being the next Pulisic (or Jalen Pickett)…sure, there are some, but every kid in Indiana dreams of playing hoops for Indiana, every kid in Iowa wants to play for the Hawkeyes…every kid in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, France, etc grows up dreaming of playing for their national team. If LeBron grew up in Mexico, he might have been a world class goalie, Tyreek Hill a world class winger, etc. In other countries, everyone plays soccer and no one slips thru the cracks…here, it’s a subset.
Also bad luck that we haven’t had a real superstar. Do we think that George Weah was a world class player because the youth development in Liberia was incredible? Or was there a bit of luck there for them to have someone of his skill?
Overall, we continue to grow, even if the results on the field don’t always show it. Our player pool is deeper than ever, we’ve got younger guys thriving all over Europe, the level of play in MLS increases every season, etc. We get some positive variance over the next 5/10/20 years hitting on a few world class guys, staying healthy, winning some close games that could go either way, etc, and we could be in the mix at one of these tournies.
We should recall that we did make it to the final of the Confederation Cup (a tourney the year before the World Cup used as a test run) and had a 2-0 lead at half vs Brazil a few years back. We beat Spain in the semis to get there--one of the only competitive games Spain lost in that era. Broke Spain's 35 match unbeaten streak. So, unlikely but possible.
Never mind every single team in Europe has players spread out in the leagues. People using this line of thinking don't watch the sport, so you kind of just nod at them and realize they don't know what the ***k they are talking about.
Wife is from Brazil.....lucky you
But seriously, excellent post....you hit on one of the main reasons. No matter how much money many parents pour into their kids here. Middle to rich income kids won't be as hungry to be great as those poor kids in many countries.
It's gotten better each decade of my life, but if you took our roster and tried to place players on Portugal, Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina.....etc....Pulisic could possibly be on the bench there....maybe. I've seen the progress as well and it's the non soccer fans who tend to bark the loudest about the US winning it, but they really don't watch or care for the sport.
I basically spend all of my weekends watching soccer matches (last Sunday I began the day by watching Celtic-Rangers and ended the day by watching River Plate-San Lorenzo). I began watching European soccer matches on TV in the 70s when I would watch Serie A games with my grandfather on a NY station. Therefore, I don't need to prove my soccer bona fides.
You're correct that most of Brazil's and Argentina's players play on a multitude of teams in Europe. However, most of England's, Spain's, Germany's and Italy's players on their national teams play in their own domestic leagues. My point is that if our best players like Pulisic and McKennie, who admittedly is one of Juve's best players, would play in the MLS, not only would the MLS continue to grow, but there would be more cohesion with the National Team because a lot of these players would play for two or three MLS teams. I don't know how you can dispute that it's very hard to establish cohesion with the National Team when most of the players play on a multitude of teams in a multitude of countries, most of which are in Europe, and are totally fatigued and jet-lagged by the time they fly to the US to play games.
Until the the Carell Tate's, Sonny Styles, or Caleb Downs of the US start playing soccer or won't matter. Our best athletes are not playing soccer. They are playing football, basketball and baseball. Until those kids play soccer or won't matter.
So you think that people who have the body mass of an average football player would be good soccer players? I hear that a lot, but think that it's a specious argument. Messi had to take growth hormones when he went to Barcelona's Academy and still isn't big, and he is one of the greatest soccers players ever. Maradona was a very small human being, but also was one of the greatest players ever, and the same with Pele.
By the way, the US has had and currently has a lot of physical specimens on their National Team; it's just that they don't have the requisite skill to beat the best national teams.
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Messi wouldn’t be a pro in a single sport you mentioned FWIW. He’s the GOAT or one of them, but you see the point. No doubt athleticism helps but hold up play matters. Ball control and touch matter so much at that level. If you can’t possess the ball, your speed doesn’t matter. Players positioning and mind can help nullify someone who runs fast in a line.
Again every top nation has the same issues. Playing down in competition, several leagues down is not a way to get better. There will never be a dumb enough US HC that will push his best players to play in a lesser league for less money. You can keep trying to say it, but it will NEVER happen. Feel free to think it, but it’s not happening.
And if the top players all played here, they would be spread out over 30 teams.
We’re much better off with guys challenging themselves in Europe, but finding the right club situations is important…sitting the bench or getting loaned out year after year while with a big club isn’t as important as playing (in my opinion).
We’re much better off with guys challenging themselves in Europe, but finding the right club situations is important…sitting the bench or getting loaned out year after year while with a big club isn’t as important as playing (in my opinion).
I think that it would be like in Italy in which most of the National Team right now comes from three clubs, namely Inter Milan, Juve and Napoli. If most of the USMNT played in the MLS, they probably would play mostly for three or four main clubs, like Seattle, LAFC, LA Galaxy and maybe one or two others.
They wouldn’t…that’s not how it works in MLS (or American sports other than baseball, and that will be changing too sooner than later).
If the best athletes are training for soccer and not football, they would have a different body. I understand that soccer has special skills and if you have your best training to be soccer players, they will develop the right skills.
Don't be that impressed, lol. Women are all the same. Doesn't matter what continent they come from.Wife is from Brazil.....lucky you
Our kids don't even look at soccer. They play other sports. When they did play soccer, they were no better than the other kids. There isn't some magic gene that other countries have. I see it with baseball and my son. His private coach is from the Dominican and played MLB for years. Great guy. He grew up doing with baseball exactly what the kids I saw in Brazil doing with soccer. I pay him to teach my kid for 45 minutes, twice a week. 0.0% chance that gets me the same results with my kid that he got for himself. Sure, there might one day be some genetic freak who is born in the US that can score goals from mid-field with his eyes closed, but unless you can replicate an entre culture that organically develops the other players on the team, you are asking to catch lightning in a bottle.
Those guys are big because they lifted and trained for football since they were 10. If it was soccer they focused on exclusively and they had the right development and training at a young age they could easily play the sport.
The MLS being good has very little to do with us developing a national soccer team that can compete with the elite countries. It all starts when kids are 4 and 5 and the training and development that occurs then not when they are 20.
I'm not sure what makes you think the players would want to take less money or the MLS owners want to match their Euro salaries or that they can even afford to and make any profit. You know who the MLS does that for....true international stars who are basically playing during retirement and get shares of a team. Beckham, Messi....etc who were just looking to get a piece of a club or do an early retirement in the US. I'm grateful for the MLS, hope it flourishes, but also know it's not on par with mid level Euro leagues.
Never mind the other teams in the MLS wouldn't allow them to stack 3-4 teams, that isn't how any league works. The Serie A's best teams have the most money to buy the best players there and still their players are spread throughout the league and have several in England and France. I understand you have an idea of what you think could work but $$$'s and level of play will keep the very best in Europe where they need to be to grow the game for the US. Do you even understand how not possible your idea is for the players financially? If the MLS starts to grow and attract the best in the world (which won't happen...Champions League alone will stop that), it would be one thing, but that isn't occurring either. The very best young players also want to play in the best leagues against the best players, if they don't......then they have zero drive IMO.
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