It's about options and choices for kids in the U.S. They can play alot of sports and soccer is not the most popular. In Croatia it is about the only thing going so all the talented athletes train for soccer from a young age. Pretty simple.
Dismal US soccer must be coaching
- Thread starter Marylovesthelions
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It seems pretty simple, but for some reason others don’t find it that simple.
I agree. Look at Uruguay, where soccer is an obsession and point of national pride for their 3.2 million people. Every young boy plays and wants to be a futbol star. It’s deeply embedded into their culture in a way that no single sport could ever be in the US. Clearly US soccer players and officials care deeply about making the USMNT successful, but we don’t have an entire population and govt obsessed with soccer and success at the World Cup.
Some countries have all of their athletic resources invested in soccer and it’s far and away the most popular sport for youth and fans. As a counter point, India with 1.3 billion people hasn’t ever come close to even qualifying for a World Cup. The entire population of quality sides like Croatia and Uruguay, is a rounding error in a census in India.
This is part of it but not all. All of these countries have structures where their professional leagues run youth academies. Kids get proper teaching and training from a very young age. We have more kids playing, but learning from people who have no idea what they are doing. Then they go on to high school to learn from people who don’t know what they are doing. And then on to maybe college. Where it takes a back seat to academics. Also, on top of that, it’s for rich kids.
The very structure is why.
But that is changing. Finally our pro teams are creating academies. It’s not great that they are so spread out but it’s a start
Coach is horrendous, yes. I follow the team closely. He was hired because his brother was in charge of hiring the coach. Imagine that.
You folks are missing the point. For those who want to be great at soccer in the USA, which is a lot of kids mind you, they have all the resources, support and training available at as of or even higher of level than any other country. Once again saying we stink at soccer because its not a national sport is crazy.
Seriously, what kid in Iran has a better opportunity to be individually greater at soccer than an American kid? Serious question, the answer is none. Undrape the flag from your shoulder and realize US isn't superior at many, many things. In fact its quite the opposite when you look at many international rankings from economics to sports to education etc.
By your logic, Saudi Arabia could be the best in the world at basketball if they nationalized it and put a basketball in their kids hands at age 2. You realize how far out that sentiment is?
This just isn't true. I have 4 soccer clubs within a 25 minute drive of my house. One is run by the Pittsburgh Riverhounds. Kids aligned with soccer willing to spend the bucks start being trained by former professional soccer players at age 8. I know I have one doing it.
The REC soccer your talking about with parent coaches that know nothing is #3, for extra reps, for good young players who are being coached by experienced professionals in club to that's #1, then travel soccer which is #2, then rec if you can find the time to get to a few of those games and practices.
Also let's not pretend that youth football players are getting coaching by former NFL players. Mainly parents who might have played in high school. They are typically coached by coaches who ain't great at least until high school, if that.
Funny you mention basketball because for years we dominated basketball, but then other countries started taking a serious interest in it and closed the gap by quite a bit. Why can’t we do that in soccer? This has nothing to do with draping the flag, it’s a matter of interest. We have way more population and a lot more money than most of the smaller countries, so the only logical answer as to why we can’t close the gap is because the interest lies elsewhere.
Here's what your not getting.....For the thousands of players, coaches and administrators that make soccer a passion or profession in America they take it as serious as the folks who play and run soccer in England....From the same age, with the same amount of experience, with same amount of resources.
I suppose if American football was international it would be a lot harder to make the league or get a scholarship to a P5 school because the competition would be world wide for spots.
Baseball is America's pastime yet they only have one gold medal in baseball.
It has nothing to do with interest or eyeballs. It has to do with skill, coaching and work ethic.
So we can’t find 26 guys out of 150 million that have the skill and work ethic to compete with a country that gets 26 guys out of 5 million? Really?
That's right.
Penn State has a ton of resources and tries to win the national championship every year but they haven't been good enough to accomplish that feat in 28 years. But they try their hardest in the athletic department, training room as well as the coaches and players giving their all. However sometimes the opponents are better than you.
It's not because they lack interest or commitment.
No, it’s because the opponents who consistently finish better than them recruit better players and have a better pool of players to choose from. Why does Florida have so many better football players than New York when they are about the same size? The answer is that football is a bigger deal in Florida.
We tried that with Klinsmann, but that didn't last (we had a similar result in Brazil WC to this year). Klinsmann ruffled some feathers, IIRC, by encouraging US players to play overseas instead of in the MLS.
But that is old news and playing in Europe is now encouraged...there are a variety of proven world stage coaches to pick from...the choice isn't Burkholder or Klinssmann
They average yutz off the street in this country is going to know more bout Gridiron Football than the average yutz off the street is going to know about soccer however.
The main difference between elsewhere and here is that in the richer countries soccer is handled like hockey is in Canada where its mostly taken out of the hands of the high schools and colleges and just ran as juniors. And in the poorer countries its like basketball where you have Rucker Park or And1 Tournament intensity level pickup games going on constantly.
For most here Soccer is just another one of those "other sports" that if you are good enough in maybe you can get to go to college on a scholarship but few have any real aspirations past that.
This is a good post. The youth soccer players (<12 years old) are the first generation of soccer players whose parents most likely played soccer when they were school. I never played soccer but I coached many travel teams because no other parents would take the job because they didn't know how to play. Today, the "parent" coaches actually played soccer so they know what they're doing. Family get togethers now include soccer balls. Soccer as a regular family activity really just started less then 10 years ago.
I was walking outside the HUB this fall and there were two guys throwing a football a few others playing frisbee, and about 30 kids kicking a soccer around. It's changing.
The US will become competitve (we did just make the round of 16) when grandfathers who actually played soccer are out kicking around with their grandkids.
In the US, soccer is the sport kids play when they can't play anything else. Most everywhere else, soccer is the only sport to play.
It is all the same thing.
-So many options for sports and most of our elite athletes are not playing soccer
-Soccer not embedded into the culture so the coaching and training is not at level of what other countries have
The other day I saw soccer was on so I figured I'd tune in. It was OT and they did penalty kicks so I only had to watch like 5 minutes to see Croatia beat Japan.
Then Brazil came on and they scored rather quickly and then had a chance to score again after a penalty kick. I watched the alleged penalty which was tripping if I'm not mistaken and what an acting flop job. I then thought out loud that I can't watch this FFS and turned it off.
I'll try again in 20-30 years amybe.
go to south america and watch three-year-olds play soccer with a wad of tape. Go to any US city and watch kids play basketball in the inner cities in the 'burbs you'll see kids play baseball, football, basketball, and tennis. You do see soccer but it isn't a passion. parents, for the most part, don't understand the game and pass it along to their kids. Soccer is a part of societies in most other nations. We just don't care at that level.
What interests me in the world cup is that the nation's society ends up being reflected in their games. Teh Germans, now defeated, are very efficient and clinical. The Japanese as well. Brazil and Argentina have flair and passion. The Brits have great teamwork and sacrifice. The French game reflects the art of the game. The Pols play the game all in and often over commit. It is cool and odd. But it does reflect that the game has become part of their culture and politics.
What interests me in the world cup is that the nation's society ends up being reflected in their games. Teh Germans, now defeated, are very efficient and clinical. The Japanese as well. Brazil and Argentina have flair and passion. The Brits have great teamwork and sacrifice. The French game reflects the art of the game. The Pols play the game all in and often over commit. It is cool and odd. But it does reflect that the game has become part of their culture and politics.
We don't have some of the most important resources. We have more money and population. The problem is we don't have coaching. We have 4.4 million players. We dont have anywhere near 200,000 quality coaches. We can eliminate about 4 million players from our pool because they dont have the coaching.
Then how do our women dominate? Maybe because the other countries don’t care about women’s soccer.
Womens soccer has less competition in the USA. Women are not going to the nfl, NBA, NHL and mlb. WNBA is a little competition but not too much.
The womens team has great women athletes. The men's team doe not. Christian Pulisic is like Kasey gaines little brother.
In college the football team has 100+ players. No womens football. The womens basketball team has 15. Womens soccer still gets good athletes.
Other countries probably don't care about womens sports. I doubt they have title IX.
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good point. if you are a great female athlete what path do you have to fame and fortune? Almost none. The WNBA pays horribly. The average salary is just over $100k, about what you'd make as a programmer or long-haul truck driver.
Title 9? LMAOROFL. Libs insist on allowing preop trannies to compete with women. There are no women's rights with Democrats. On addition, many US college hockey teams are mostly Canadians. Jow dies that bring American women closer to equity?
Do you think womens soccer would even exist if it was not for title9? Schools are now required to have womens teams. Womens soccer was not a varsity sport at psu until 94.
Do you think other countries worry about having a equal number of women's sports?
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Agreed - if every CB and WR...maybe some RB's in the NFL had played soccer instead - we would dominate the world.
Somebody brought up baseball. Irrelevant. To quote John Kruk when a woman complained about him smoking, as an athlete - "lady, I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player."
And not just played soccer but played soccer exclusively.
As others have pointed out, in most other countries kids are playing soccer and only soccer pretty much from the outset. Here kids are encouraged to play a plurality of sports when they are young and not specialize until puberty or later. I played from age 6-18 but it was always 1 of 2 3 or 4 sports I was playing at any given age.
I’d be curious what age every member of the current national team started playing soccer exclusively 12 months a year.
So that pretty much confirms what I’ve been saying the whole thread…we don’t excel in men’s soccer because of a lack of interest compared to other sports.
Do they even let women play soccer in half of these world cup countries? I think it is the U.S. and maybe 5 other countries that even take wonen's soccer seriously.
Think about if athletes like Bo Jackson or Deon Sanders started playing soccer at age 3, trained twelve months a year and were coached by the smartest futbol coaches in the world. Wala, you have a world cup contender.
As the head of soccer for country X, your goal is to find 5 kids a year that are the absolute best of the best and have the passion to grind all day everyday. The program achieves that purpose.Those academy's are brutal from a psychological POV. I don't think you would want to subject your 7 yr old to that kind of lead pipe reality.
How a Soccer Star Is Made (Published 2010)
In Europe, a cutting-edge talent factory trains elite soccer players — starting at age 7.www.nytimes.com
For the other 99.99% of kids, it’s probably not the right path.
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