Do really call your team USMNT?
Not exactly catchy
Do really call your team USMNT?
Not exactly catchy
It's okay guys, we are thru to the 2nd round in the U-17 World Cup. If we beat Colombia, we win our group!
See, everything is fine is US Soccer world!
(rolls eyes)
wejo wrote:
Klinnsman lost to Mexico at home and Panama on the road. That's it. That really isn't that deep a whole. Most you're wanting from playing Mexico is 1 point anyway over the season. Arena did get that on the road to his credit..
We could drill the lesser teams at home but not take care of them on the road. But we can tie Mexico on the road?
How hard is it really to go play Honduras on the road? The same setup as at home would seem to work tactically I'd assume. It's still a soccer pitch. I think mentally the guys aren't ready for the road for whatever reason. That's all I can think of or we change tactics too much as we didn't have a problem getting a point at Mexico. US seems to do OK against decent opponents.
You want more than 1 point in 2 games vs Mexico. USA also disastrously lost to CR at home.
Many of these teams play in rainforest like areas. They wisely do not hesitate to play under the most advantageous conditions, which drastically affects the game and appropriate tactics. Meanwhile USA hosts many games in areas filled with immigrants of the visiting teams to sell more tickets. There is no excuse outside of $$ for not playing the bulk of the home spring and fall qualifiers in places like Denver, SLC, and MPLS.
Sad for fans that the team won't be at the world cup but the team has nobody to blame but themselves. This is a team with limited talent, but qualifying for the world cup in CONCACAF is as easy as it gets. 3 guaranteed slots is incredibly generous considering the quality of play in CONCACAF. The fact we finished 5th is a sad indictment on the players. Winning 3 out of 10 ten games and being unable to get a draw against Trinidad's B team is embarrassing. Trinidad had lost their last 6 world cup qualifiers. Bruce Arena saying "nothing needs to change" in US Soccer after the game was the icing on a very ugly cake.
On a larger scale, this result underlines many of the well known problems in US Soccer.
A decades long ignorance of technical ability and one touch passing is on full display in virtually any game the team plays. Many of the players need 3 touches just to control the ball before getting their head up and passing the ball sideways or backwards. They are suppose to be international players and some of them cannot control or trap a ball.
The pay-to-play circus of youth soccer excludes so many potential players it is mind boggling. Here in Southern California, self proclaimed "elite" and "travel" teams fleece terrified but sufficiently wealthy parents into paying $3k+ per season so their kids can play in rigged, meaningless tournaments and attend training sessions that often involve running sprints without a ball. The youth game is awash in money but virtually all of it wasted.
Like many things in the US, an entrenched industry (i.e. the pay-to-play youth soccer circus) stands ready to fight tooth and nail against any progress and equality that are suggested.
Hopefully lessons are learned from the embarrassment that was this WC qualifying cycle, but I won't be holding my breath.
Most of the US team plays in MLS. A league which plays much of its season in summer. The players should be more than used to playing in the warm conditions that they get in CR, Honduras, etc.
800 dude wrote:
That was exactly my point. There's no GENERIC best athlete. Each sport places unique demands on an athlete, and the optimal physiology for one sport is not the optimal physiology for another sport, which is why it's silly to say that "the best athletes are playing other sports," as though being good at one means you would automatically be good at another.
The crossover with basketball skills is vast. Both favor coordination, quickness, agility, endurance, and importantly thousands of hours of skill specific practice starting at a young age to master (for short basketball players). USA is sacrificing most of it's potential soccer talent to almost exclusively supply all the short players in the NBA and college bball.
Soccer is not worth paying attention to. Even the likes of Galen Rupp rejected it to pursue distance running.
Rupp might want to rethink that.
Looks like he got around $100k for winning the Chicago marathon.
Mediocre MLS'ers like Altidore and Bradley make $100k every single week.
Wrong pursuit?
rojo wrote:
My god.
Yes my son, I'm here, how can I help you.
Luckily Messi did Not become a Basketball player. Hahaha. The real reason for the USA sucking is, that soccer is "Sport". For Basketball you Just need to be a tall freak. For Football you need No braun because the game is stopped and a Coach tells you every move. Only soccer needs you to be a great athlet and decently intelligent
Geography class wrote:
800 dude wrote:That was exactly my point. There's no GENERIC best athlete. Each sport places unique demands on an athlete, and the optimal physiology for one sport is not the optimal physiology for another sport, which is why it's silly to say that "the best athletes are playing other sports," as though being good at one means you would automatically be good at another.
The crossover with basketball skills is vast. Both favor coordination, quickness, agility, endurance, and importantly thousands of hours of skill specific practice starting at a young age to master (for short basketball players). USA is sacrificing most of it's potential soccer talent to almost exclusively supply all the short players in the NBA and college bball.
I agree with the comparison, but not the conclusion. It isn't that the "wrong" kids are going into the sport. Rather, you don't have a truly coherent soccer culture in the US like you have with basketball. You can drive around any US city in the afternoon and evening and see kids (and adults) playing bball in parks. But when is the last time you saw kids in a pick up soccer game? Sure, it happens, but not like in other countries where it is hard NOT to find kids playing the game after school.
Plenty of US kids play soccer, but I recall taking my kid to travel tournaments, and half the time you'd see boys throwing a football around while killing time for the next game.
The New Yorker had a interesting article on Wayne Rooney a few years back, the slant on it being his mental development as a player -- what coaches call his "understanding." For a variety of personal reasons and compulsions, he lived the sport obsessively from childhood to adulthood. Verbally, Rooney isn't articulate, but his capacity to see the game is pretty extraordinary. It is that ability to see all the other players on the pitch and grasp their intentions, so that when he touches the ball he already has three or four (or more) different options mapped out in his mind.
Maybe with the rise of MLS and their club systems, they can create "cultural islands" or niches where talented kids can live and breathe the sport and get the quality coaching that'll take the sport here to the next level. However, it won't happen organically like in other nations. We'll see.
Wait til 2022 wrote:
I agree with the comparison, but not the conclusion. It isn't that the "wrong" kids are going into the sport. Rather, you don't have a truly coherent soccer culture in the US like you have with basketball. You can drive around any US city in the afternoon and evening and see kids (and adults) playing bball in parks. But when is the last time you saw kids in a pick up soccer game? Sure, it happens, but not like in other countries where it is hard NOT to find kids playing the game after school.
Plenty of US kids play soccer, but I recall taking my kid to travel tournaments, and half the time you'd see boys throwing a football around while killing time for the next game.
This isn't really true in a lot of the country. I see far more pickup soccer than I do basketball. I see kids dribbling soccer balls on their way to school and juggling the ball at recess. At the park by my house, there are multiple pickup games going on every night. These "islands" have long existed in certain parts of the country like St. Louis and New Jersey, and it's been spreading for a long time.
I do agree that culture is the important factor, though. What you choose to play is largely a dependent on what you're primarily exposed to. When I was growing up, the people who played soccer were middle class suburban whites, the children of recent immigrants from Africa, and latinos. In those groups, soccer was king. We were all immersed in soccer culture. We played on teams together, we got together all summer to play pickup games, and we certainly never threw footballs around on the sidelines at tournaments. Most of us had never played any basketball in our lives, so even if we had the talent for it, we'd never have known.
"But when is the last time you saw kids in a pick up soccer game?"
Too true. Kids play kick up games near where I live (SoCal) but nearly all are Hispanic kids who aren't part of the "pay-to-play" crowd that decides who is "good" at soccer in this country. Many of these kids playing pickup soccer are remarkably skilled on a technical and tactical basis, but they don't get funneled into the "talent pipeline" because their parents don't have $3k+ a season to pay to "elite" club teams.
"It is that ability to see all the other players on the pitch and grasp their intentions, so that when he touches the ball he already has three or four (or more) different options mapped out in his mind."
This is probably the most noticeable difference between US players and high quality internationals. US players generally receive the ball with their heads down, take a couple of touches to control the ball and then get their head up and think about what to do with the ball. During that time, their team mates have been closed down and the number of options for the player with the ball have narrowed down. Watch how often Pulisic receives the ball on the half turn, ready to dribble, pass or shoot before the ball arrives. The rest of our players don't do that. This is basic stuff and we have 30 year olds with 50+ caps who can't do it.
Its soccer. Who cares.
Folks gotta stop scratching their heads wondering why the U.S. doesn't play better soccer than "small" countries. Newsflash: the US's best athletes DON'T play soccer, unlike these "small" countries people are whining about. The world powers in soccer do little else in the way of team sports other than soccer. Their BEST athletes play soccer. The best US athletes play American football and basketball and many of them play baseball and even ice hockey. You have to go waaay down the list before you get to soccer. THAT'S why the U.S. isn't as good. It's like expecting your chess team to beat the world's best even though you're sending your 5th string to the tournament.
Why?
It wasn't Klinsmen's fault. It wasn't Arena's fault. IT was largely bad luck. Look at our goal differential. I mean look at today's game. We had a million chances. They got a fluke own goal that and then a 1 in 10,000 shot.
I hate how people think we always have to blame someone.
If I have Aces, and you have a pair of 2s, you still win 20% of the time.[/quote]
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Bad luck, huh? It is not bad luck when you lose so many games that you put the team in a position to be shut out of the World Cup. What happened on Tuesday night could have been prevented by winning or getting a tie in other games.
This was a complete meltdown by USMNT. Everyone is at fault, you brain surgeon!
Mud Duck Grant wrote:
Folks gotta stop scratching their heads wondering why the U.S. doesn't play better soccer than "small" countries. Newsflash: the US's best athletes DON'T play soccer, unlike these "small" countries people are whining about. The world powers in soccer do little else in the way of team sports other than soccer. Their BEST athletes play soccer. The best US athletes play American football and basketball and many of them play baseball and even ice hockey. You have to go waaay down the list before you get to soccer. THAT'S why the U.S. isn't as good. It's like expecting your chess team to beat the world's best even though you're sending your 5th string to the tournament.
Couldn't bother to read through the thread, huh?
In elementary school, we used to play soccer every day at every recess. So, at least an hour every day. It was amazing. I only played with a team once, but I didn't like it because we played with cones instead of proper posts and it was on small fields. Maybe a bad reason for quitting. I never played on a middle school or high school team. I still feel like soccer might have been my best sport. Years later when I played it as an intramural sport, I did ok.
If I have a boy, what's the best way to get him playing in Europe by 16-18? Does it really require doing "travel" soccer and paying a few thousand a year? And from there maybe you try out for an MLS academy and from there hope that they get interest from a Euro team?
At it again. Once again you have no idea what you are talking about.
wejo wrote:
Klinnsman lost to Mexico at home and Panama on the road. That's it. .
I was thinking about this. A lot of it was just bad luck. Think about our schedule. Two of the team's closest to us end up playing some of their toughest games that have already qualified and don't need to try.
Yes, we also played a team that had nothing to play for but teams always want t beat the US.
Imagine if we play T&T in game #1. I assume we beat them (yes I know we lsot to them yesterday but think it was a totally fluke) and then guys are relaxed with 3 points. Instead of having to open with the best team at home.
Anyway, I just went to odds shark to figure out the odds of all 3 games going against. According to the betting odds, i twas .
US loses to T&T - 11.7%
Panama wins - 45%.
Honduras wins - 37%
All Together it's 1.9%. Taht's why I didnt get why everyone acted like we were automatically in.