***Official USMNT Thread***
- Thread starter ianoconnor
- Start date
It's like the Bears with the McCaskey family; bad 'system'.
The US model for youth sports sucks. It’s been that way for years in soccer and we can see it now happening in basketball.
My thought on the matter is that SUM (soccer united marketing) only care about making money and nepotism/cronyism.
I think it's two parts:
A) A horrible manager who has somehow evaded being fired all these years, and
B) Our "golden generation" isn't actually that great on an international level and it leaves you with a bunch of prima donnas who aren't good enough to act that way.
You’re going to get a lot of mumbo-jumbo, club soccer, pay to play blah blah blah…but the real is we’re not that bad, a lot of other countries are really good.
England hasn’t won **** in forever and they are way better than us with way more built in advantages. There is a whole lot of luck involved in winning major international tournaments.
The simple answer is to take your pick:
- coaching
- talent (other countries are simply better)
- money
A longer TL/DR version:
Iron sharpens iron. Our current youth system is filled with the best players that can afford to play, not necessarily the best players. Now take those players and pit them against teams of "not necessarily the best players" and you get a product that isn't as sharpened as other countries. Nearly every team we play competes against better competition on a more consistent basis.
The money angle works two-fold. It costs more and more to put kids in club sports and parents work with a finite amount of it. The ROI of a pro soccer player is dwarfed by what pro football, basketball and baseball players make. It's not that way in other countries.
Plus, soccer is still the butt of jokes in the US and a large portion of our population would rather make fun of it versus taking the time to follow, support and appreciate it. As a result, you get a lot of talent that never sees the soccer pitch because their parents don't view it the same as the big 3.
Lump all that together and then sprinkle in the hundreds of years of infrastructure and passion that we are competing against, and it's like climbing a mountain that continues to grow.
Our womens' team made a quicker ascent because other countries really didn't give a **** about womens' soccer for a long time. Now that other countries are putting more resources into their own womens' teams, we're seeing a leveling out in there as well. It's already happening, but it wouldn't surprise me to witness a continued decline in our standings before things level out in that regard.
When we’ve had professional affiliated youth academies for a century and we’re still not making the QF’s of WC’s then my opinion might change. So I’ll get back to everyone in 2108.
The overly simplistic reasoning is “America’s best athletes play football, basketball, and (not as much these days but still) baseball. The much more complicated answer is the way America’s soccer systems are set up going all the way to childhood it by design cuts out America’s best athletes from the beginning, whether intentional or not.
Objectively speaking, in America soccer is a rich-person’s sport - it costs a lot of money to get into beginner’s leagues, and significantly more money if a child is talented enough to play real competition. Add into the fact that more cost effective routes such as HS and college aren’t playing by FIFA rules and you end up with a bunch of players who aren’t quite as talented as the rest of the world playing a game that isn’t quite like what the rest of the world plays.
So why doesn’t USSF do something about it? Because of the things that drive all decisions going back to the beginning of history: money and power. Overhauling the system would force the USSF to give up both, and the results of such an overhaul wouldn’t be seen in this generation.
@JM4CY this is the mumbo-jumbo I was talking about. The bottom line is the rest of the world had a big head start on us, and there’s no way to really make it up.
So explain how we can have the best golfers and gymnasts in the world?
Having the MLS gain traction is important. Seeing that professionals can make money in the sport will get more of the gifted athletes to participate. Maybe with NFL RBs becoming a position that doesn’t earn much money will get those athletes to give it a chance.
We don't have the best men's gymnasts, we do have the best women's gymnasts but that's a pretty recent thing and took a long time, and we do have a lot of the best golfers (including the best) but certainly not all of the best golfers are American.
MLS is also part of the problem. Their salary cap rules and no pro/rel in US allows for league owners to get rich but hampers growth and development because there is no incentive or ability to buy better players. They also stunt growth by putting a majority of their matches behind an Apple+ paywall.
In terms of why USMNT is struggling, I see two primary issues. 1) Coaching - GGG has been the coach of USMNT for 4.5 years and has very little to show for it other than consistantly beating one of the worst Mexico generations ever. He is a nepotism hire who never won in the MLS. 2) Our players are overvalued due to teams wanting to capture the US fanbase. Other than Pulisic/AROB/McKinnie our starting 11 have underperformed or are currently hurt (see Dest).
Ugh...2 years to whip this team into shape. I'm scared if this team doesn't get a semi-final appearance we never will.
We are unlucky? This has to be the laziest thing out of you. FFS unlucky. Certainly luck plays into it but isn't the crux of our issues.
