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Retired US Soccer / World Cup Thread (RIP)

538 says...
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Mexico definitely Pot 2 for the WC
Panama and Honduras (if they make it) definitely Pot 4
CR probably Pot 3 but could sneak into Pot 2 if Italy and Peru both lose
 
I expect Panama (and Honduras, should they make it past the Fightin' Cahills) will take some serious beatings in group play. Perhaps not North Korea-in-2010 bad, but pretty bad.
 
deacvision7 said:
I would give my left nut to hire Marcelo Bielsa and give him complete control over US Soccer. Dude is a complete lunatic but if given authority of our entire program/system he would work wonders.

Most geniuses are lunatics anyway.
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I could roll with this. Two inexcusable games cost us our spot, the 2-0 loss at HOME to Costa ( the absolute worst we should expect in this type game is a tie) and the mind blowing loss to a terrible T&T team.
 
PhDeac said:
I think the problem is that it's even a question.

How does the US only have a few players capable of playing in the top leagues? Would the US have been a top WC contender?

This isn't like the Wake team that lost to WVU. That team was actually good and made the tournament.
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The biggest problem is the pay-to-play system of US Soccer. And I will freely admit to being a part of the problem. If you ask most of the kids on any travel or academy team, they will tell you that they are looking to get an opportunity and some scholarship money to play in college. Great kids, but they are just looking to be part of the 98% that don’t play professional sports. Other than Dempsey, the current team is made up of players that have lived a relatively comfortable life and don’t see soccer as a live or die sport. Not all their fault, as there is relatively little national pressure to win. Until the soccer system is reconfigured to be closer to the AAU system in terms of fiscal support, the US will never catch up.
 
While I agree with the premise that an AAU style funding model would help soccer in the US, the truth is that the pay for play system isn't the reason we fail. The 2% who end up playing professionally number isn't going to change. But if you think kids who hope to go to college to play don't think about being the next Messi, you're wrong. Sure there are some kids who can't afford the travel or Academy model, but there are club scholarship opportunities for those players. What doesn't work here in the US is the weak player development, and the crappy system for identifying talent. Paul Arriola, Jordan Morris, Darlington Nagbe, Jorge Villafana, Omar Gonzalez, and the rest of these guys simply aren't good enough to compete on an international level. If they were they'd be in Europe or England. You think they don't dream of following Pulisic to Germany? Of course they do, except they haven't got the talent. Until we figure out how to develop these players to the elite level nothing good is going to happen. Having a college scholarship as your goal is a blessing of being American, but it's not the reason we don't have more Pulisic's.
 
We have a system where the 4% are looking for college scholarships and the 2% happened to be better. Unlike every other country in the world - and our own system for basketball and football, the kids playing do not have the “incentive” of the only way to make it out of the Hood” mentality. Even the guy that scored the second goal for T&T will be a national hero,. Donovan, Dempsey and Bradley are examples of soft US players that came up through the US system but couldn’t handle the pressure cooker of big-time soccer. The US system does not attract and rqdetain the best soccer talent
 
Fusiondad10 said:
While I agree with the premise that an AAU style funding model would help soccer in the US, the truth is that the pay for play system isn't the reason we fail. The 2% who end up playing professionally number isn't going to change. But if you think kids who hope to go to college to play don't think about being the next Messi, you're wrong. Sure there are some kids who can't afford the travel or Academy model, but there are club scholarship opportunities for those players. What doesn't work here in the US is the weak player development, and the crappy system for identifying talent. Paul Arriola, Jordan Morris, Darlington Nagbe, Jorge Villafana, Omar Gonzalez, and the rest of these guys simply aren't good enough to compete on an international level. If they were they'd be in Europe or England. You think they don't dream of following Pulisic to Germany? Of course they do, except they haven't got the talent. Until we figure out how to develop these players to the elite level nothing good is going to happen. Having a college scholarship as your goal is a blessing of being American, but it's not the reason we don't have more Pulisic's.
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It shuts out a lot more than you're intimating here, scholarships aside. Besides, the high cost barrier to entry means that many kids never get to kick around serious soccer to see if it's something they want to pursue, so many athletes may not pursue those scholarships because the sport's not readily available to them at the earliest levels.
 
Dan Wetzel's column in Yahoo Sports today hit the nail dead on the head regarding traveling soccer and the US mentality of tying sports development to scholastic and collegiate sports. I would link if I remembered how to do it.
 
Official Christian Pulisic / Burn it to the ground thread

That seems too broad. Men's soccer is the only team sport the US tries to be good at and fails.

Part of that is the whole world plays it. But the other part is what deaconson is saying. It's a rich kid sport. The best athletes don't play it. And apparently the powers that be are just trying to get paid.
 
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Official Christian Pulisic / Burn it to the ground thread

I'll add that the US hosted the World Cup 23 years ago. That was supposed to kick off the age of American relevance on the world stage. The USMNT should be full of experienced players who watched that USA-Colombia match when they were little boys. Instead, it is a roster of crap players led by a kid who wasn't even born then.

What a missed opportunity. You all should have been way more pissed before now. 30 years of planning led to losing a must tie match Trinidad.

I'm glad you all are waking up though.
 
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Read the article it addresses what you said about our best athletes not playing as well. Wetzel makes many great points.
 
PhDeac said:
I'll add that the US hosted the World Cup 23 years ago. That was supposed to kick off the age of American relevance on the world stage. The USMNT should be full of experienced players who watched that USA-Colombia match when they were little boys. Instead, it is a roster of crap players led by a kid who wasn't even born then.

What a missed opportunity. You all should have been way more pissed before now. 30 years of planning led to losing a must tie match Trinidad.

I'm glad you all are waking up though.
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Oh for fuck's sakes
 
Bluegrass Deac said:
Read the article it addresses what you said about our best athletes not playing as well. Wetzel makes many great points.
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Good article. I think this part spoke to my issues with low expectation posters here.

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Low standards, weak accountability and administrative cheerleading have allowed the U.S. to claim success when there really wasn’t any – such as the 2014 World Cup where simply limping out of group play was deemed acceptable by organization president Sunil Gulati.

The truth is the U.S. has won just two games in the past three World Cups: nothing in 2006, a 1-0 victory over Algeria in 2010 and a 2-1 win against Ghana in 2014. That’s it. The two-victory run will now stretch to four World Cups, since you can’t win if aren’t even in. The team usually battles hard and occasionally survives, but it is of no threat to anybody good. Grit and Tim Howard in goal was not much of a plan. It was all we had though.
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https://sports.yahoo.com/usmnt-doesnt-need-better-athletes-win-world-cup-060526124.html
 
At least the takes this cycle are different from the usual "I could get into this sport if the best players didn't dive/fake injuries all the time."
 
Also of note - I don't believe anybody lost their jobs yesterday. It must be nice to enjoy that kind of security.
 
PhDeac said:
I'll add that the US hosted the World Cup 23 years ago. That was supposed to kick off the age of American relevance on the world stage. The USMNT should be full of experienced players who watched that USA-Colombia match when they were little boys. Instead, it is a roster of crap players led by a kid who wasn't even born then.

What a missed opportunity. You all should have been way more pissed before now. 30 years of planning led to losing a must tie match Trinidad.

I'm glad you all are waking up though.
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Jesus Phucking Christ
 
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