What is wrong with the US Men's Soccer Team?

What's wrong with US soccer:

1. Other countries are as good, or better. I know, it's amazing to believe that the US isn't the best at every sport, but it's the truth.

2. (Football) Kids from those other countries play in the streets practically all day long, not just during organized "practice" (Soccer kids).

3. Soccer kids play with their phones all day. Football kids, not as much. Poor kids in the US are fat and don't play.

fisky wrote:

At a very early age, the best potential soccer players in the US gravitate to the speed and skill positions in football and basketball.

The next best level athletes try to succeed in football and basketball.

The next level below that, who can't make the team in football or basketball, play soccer.

Especially for football this just isn't true because just about every youth football program starts at an older age than what youth soccer programs start at. That is usually true for basketball as well. So they aren't choosing football over soccer at a "very early age".

2018

G: anyones guess (bring 2or 3)

D: T Chandler, Yedlin, Brooks, Miazga (Diskerud)

M: Bedoya, Hyndman, Johnson, Pulisic, (Morales/Zusi/Alashe)

F: Kiesewetter, Wood, (Rubin, Altidore, Zardes)

we just missed on Tony Tchani, big miss

Health permitting Bradley and Dempsey, though Klinsman may Donovan them

For several decades now, soccer has been widely popular among American kids, enough so that you would think we would be producing tons of superstars. Because of our depth, we are able to put together decent national teams, which kind of gives the American public the sense that we are better than we actually are. We aren’t horrible, we are perhaps somewhere between decent and good. There aren’t many U.S. professional soccer players and only a few stars. There are very few U.S. soccer players in the English Premier League or the German Bundesliga. In fact most of the top U.S. MLS players are from the Caribbean, Europe and South America.

I've lived in Europe and have had several long stays in South America and there is a big difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world’s approach when it comes to soccer. In the U.S., soccer is primarily a White suburban upper middle class activity. I say activity simply because for nearly half of the U.S. kids playing soccer, it is just something for the kids to do. The parents never played soccer, therefore the parents can’t teach them anything and the only times these kids play soccer is team practices and games.

In other countries, the kids play soccer for hours every day with no formal equipment or adult intervention. Soccer is like basketball, no matter what other sport you do, everybody plays soccer. I have watched poor kids in other countries play for hours, with no shoes and a homemade ball. Many of them can’t afford to be on a team; however, as they get older and show promise, somehow they will make their way onto a team. By the time they get on team in their teens, they already have over 5,000 hours of playing soccer against the best athletes in the neighborhood. Whereas, the average American kid in his early teens will have less than 1000 hours of soccer and much of that was against kids who view soccer as one of their many other activities. Obviously I am doing some generalizing, but the point is, there is too much reliance on teams, coaches, competitions, trainers, clothing, traveling and MONEY as opposed to allowing the kid’s to develop more organically.

American players need to get out of the North American leagues and play in Europe. Even if it is a smaller league or a second tier league - Championship, Serie B, Belgium, whatever. The level of intensity and hunger is so much higher. Playing for promotion/relegation, playing domestic cup games, playing midweek games on 2-3 days rest, playing in winter, playing hard through the Christmas season - MLS doesn't offer all this. The perception that it is a retirement home for European stars doesn't help. Right now it seems American players are willing to move to Europe only if it's the EPL.

It's got nothing to do with the quality of athletes participating in soccer. Very few international soccer players have the physical qualities to be professional athletes in the NFL/NBA/MLB. It's touch on the ball at pace, team awareness and vision that make great soccer players.

The problem with youth soccer in the US after U13. We have tens of thousands of good athletes playing organized soccer year-round in their younger years. In Europe and South America the best of these join professional teams as teenagers in youth academies. Most won't make the highest level, but they're schooled as professionals. In the US, soccer enters a dead phase in middle school before reemerging as a high school rec sport. Outside of a minor few who go pro early, those who go on play in college, which is not remotely preparation for elite international soccer.

Until the US has a similar system, despite the relentless growth of soccer interest we'll continue to struggle.

This. Except now there actually are a lot of parents who did play soccer. But they played it as a rec activity not even the comp level or even high school.

Poor coaching. Youth leagues where they don't keep score. These things really hurt soccer in the US.

Ask your average 9 year old to name a soccer player. Maybe they'll say Messi or Ronaldo if they are from the suburbs. Good luck even finding a soccer player any where else. Now ask them to name as many NBA players as they can. In Europe, all the kids domestic sporting heroes are soccer players.

Go to any park that has a basketball court and you'll see kids and teens playing late into the night. European kids and adults(!) are playing soccer late into the night at fenced in / netted tiny urban soccer fields.

And the icing on the cake is that besides not having any heroes or coaches, soccer just doesn't appeal to the US because it is too random and does not have enough scoring.

Not a huge follower of soccer except for World Cup. I have a question to you knowledgeable soccer people. If the men's team is so poor, why is it the women's team can win World Cups and Olympic medals. I imagine the main two reason for the men's team -- talent migration and lack of skills would also somewhat apply to the women. Maybe talent migration not so much because there are few pro sports available to women in the US, but the women have ALSO not grown up playing soccer in the streets from an early age -- so why is it they have success and the men don't?

The standard and depth of international men's soccer is just incredibly high because of the global popularity of soccer and the amount of money in it. There are thousands of professional players in the leagues across Europe earning salaries well above average folks. Kids in Europe enter academies at a young age and live and breathe soccer until they turn pro. Add to that the millions of kids playing on the streets in South America, Africa and Asia, dreaming of making it to Europe. Against this context, the US men's team, while competitive, cannot be a powerhouse.

Women's soccer, on the other hand, is a largely amateur sport internationally. It is a lot more like track or swimming than like men's soccer - a few top pros who make most of their money from endorsements, with the rest of the top athletes getting by on a semi-pro lifestyle and capturing media attention once every four years. The top international women's teams are the usual developed large countries that do well in the Olympics: Germany, Japan, France, Australia; and naturally the USA is up there with them.

I'll say it again: you and Track Coach and others are espousing a conventional view that is not the crux of the problem. I understand the appeal of "if only LeBron, Allen Iverson (since he was relatively small and quick) and all inner-city kids grew up playing soccer, we'd be dominant!" Sure, we'd be better than we are now because we'd have an even bigger talent pool to draw from.

But it's simply not true that we don't have enough kids and enough great athletes playing soccer, and that they're not playing it for enough hours, to be a superpower globally. Yes, there are lots of kids who play for a few months a year, but there are thousands and thousands who play year-round club soccer and they're getting plenty of hours! Then when you factor in that we're a country of 300 million and don't hold a candle to the likes of the Netherlands (17 million), the "our best athletes were drained away" doesn't hold water. Again, we have more than enough kids playing more than enough soccer just through our sheer size alone.

And this notion that it's only suburban kids (i.e., white) so they're not great athletes ignores the fact that USMNT is always among the most "athletic" teams at the Cup. They don't lack size and speed at all. And, guess what, Germany has a pretty darn white team that by and large didn't grow up in poverty and they're one of the world superpowers of soccer. Thomas Mueller and the likes of him are no more "athletic" than your US strikers (if we really had any), but the guy has a genius for scoring.

It's too easy to shrug our shoulders and say that soccer isn't popular in the U.S. As other have well said, we have a massive problem with our youth development which has nothing to do with lacking numbers or interest or athleticism.

Unlike more popular Amercian sports other nations participate seriously

Thanks for your typically snide response. I love that you consistently live up to British stereotype on this board, or perhaps you just enjoy playing the role of the snide and pompous Brit. But if you're English, I wouldn't be too smug as, needless to say, the English team has been a horror show for years now, especially at the World Cup finals. Being eliminated at the group stage in 2014 with two opening losses and drawing against the US team in 2010 must have been difficult to bear.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Unlike more popular Amercian sports other nations participate seriously

Exactly right.

This one's easy based on recent experience with high-level youth soccer in the US. To succeed in US youth soccer you need a combination of three things:

1. Size

2. Connections

3. Money

You won't go far without a healthy mix of all three although I'd say being an early developer is most important. If you have a good dose of connections and money they'll wait (a bit) for you to grow :). A meritocracy based on vision, skill and technique US soccer is most definitely not.

Our son has amazing skill (was scouted playing on an adult immigrant team and offered a two-week trial at Gremio) but couldn't get a sniff at the regional or national level in the US because he was told he was too small, too weak, and too slow by the English coaches and their American sycophants.

He had a gap year arranged to take a shot at Gremio but realized he couldn't stand any of the people in soccer. I'd say recent events have proven him correct :)

Anyway he took up track at 17 and is now one of the better 800m runners in D3. As a college sophomore he ran a 49 open 400m and a 1:53 open 800m. His career goal is to break 1:50. He's not so small, weak and slow anymore.

The US soccer youth "coaches" just want to keep the money flowing and the best way to do that is to pick the biggest, strongest, most aggressive kids at 12. What you see on TV is the end result of that.

Yes it is the crux of the problem. Basketball and soccer are two analogous sports. They are skill based (I'm speaking of basketball players under 6'3"). Athletic (and size in basketball) measurables matter as a cutoff, but aren't the deciding trait for greatness. People with good coordination, agility, quickness excel at each sport, but a person must spend thousands of hours working on sport specific skills to reach the top professional ranks in either sport.

The USA kids with the right DNA for ball sports (and that DNA isn't primarily based on running/jumping ability) aren't choosing soccer at a young age. From there it takes at least tens of thousands of good prospects with good genes practicing constantly to find one great pro, so USMNT isn't very good because they don't have the base of gifted athletes constantly playing soccer from age 6 onwards.

Many USA fans are so ignorant that they are measuring the wrong skills in soccer. You are doing precisely that by comparing Thomas Muller's raw athleticism to any soccer player in the USA. This lack of skill is precisely why the USA team is 'athletic' in compared to top teams. The USA has so few skilled players that the best USA players can stand out amongst their national peers because of speed and strength, which are secondary skills in soccer.

If you are going to argue that youth coaching and the setup of the soccer system holds the USA back, then why haven't the Europeans overtaken USA in basketball? Also, why aren't the European clubs over here gathering all the great 6-12 year old soccer players the USA apparently has for their clubs? It would be a HUGE untapped market if there were stars over here.