The big loss is not Lebron or Ray Lewis. It is the very good athletes who are built to play soccer, too short/small for basketball and football, but play those sports anyway. You also have to remember that a lot of football players who are too big to play soccer are big because they are training to play football. A lot of NFL wide receivers, cornerbacks, safteys, etc. have to work really hard to maintain football weight. I'm sure some of them would have been good soccer players if they had played it their whole lives instead of football.
I'll say this, the biggest mistake with all these writers is they keep thinking pro athletes in other sports would have made it automatically in others. But, i am pretty sure there are millions of 5'6-6'0 school yard Point Guards that had no chance of ever making it in Basketball before they even touched the ball because of there lack of height. These are some of the most agile,skilled,quickest kids in this country who are missing a golden opportunity every time they pass over a soccer ball in favor of a basketball.
Yes, it was quite funny in the John Brooks thread when we heard he was 6'7" now and everybody panicked. Height was a bad thing. Heh. Imagine somebody in the NBA draft saying, ah well this small forward is 6'7" so he's probably too tall to compete.
Based on today's game and its highlight of the deficiencies in the US soccer, I will again state my long held belief that the problem is not in athleticism but in coaching. The general term covers everything from tactical to technical to strategic. And the biggest problem is MLS. If its coaches can't teach their All-Star level players how to bang the ball around and pass&run into the gaps, what chance do the U'tes have? MLS is a collection of the best the US has come up with and it's still woefully inadequate. Sure, Klinsmann could ask those guys to just pump the long ball into the box to Gordon/Lenhart types and wait for a defensive gaffe but that's not real soccer either. You have to learn how to play a proper ball. It's all there's to it. Until then, there'll be no Messi. Or Xavi. Or Iniesta. Or the guys who can step on the field in La Liga and carry their weight. PS. Ray Lewis will kill Messi ... especially if someone holds the Flea down.
Did I hear right? Did Alexi Lalas say that maybe we actually have already produced a Messi, but maturity issues got in the way? (If so, seems like a crazy thing to say as I can't think of anyone we've ever produced with anything even remotely approaching Messi-like potential...maturity issues considered or not. Maybe if we played Frankenstein, taking Landon's pace, Clint's grit, Cletus' skill...)
I thought it was a : "I might have been the greatest piano player to ever live, pity I never had lessons" type thing. In other words, we might have had a Messi at u10 but he gave up the sport or never got developed for whatever reason.
One of the greatest things about players like Messi, Xavi, Pirlo, Ronaldo, etc is not just their athletic skill or soccer skills, but their dedication to the game. Adu had all the skill needed, but his commitment to being the best is/was pathetic. In order to be great you have to have the desire to put in the time and commitment no matter what sport you're playing. The culture of soccer in the US is one where people believe that a couple of practices a week is good enough to get there if you have a good enough coach -- BS! A player has to want to play around the clock and then put in that kind of time in order to get to the levels we're talking about. Then the player needs to have the athletic ability to match these players in speed, quickness, endurance, strength to fight off tackles, etc. Then the player has to be lucky enough to have a good coach that can teach field vision and decision making. Then the player has to be lucky enough to get noticed in a country with thousands of 'top' prospects, but almost zero real scouting -- basically that great coach also has to have the influence to get the player noticed. It's all long odds and our lack of a true soccer culture in this country makes it all that much more difficult.
Not just Messi, no. America's TOP MESSI. If only LeBron, Kobe, Adrian Peterson played soccer! If only we had guys who were athletic and can run! Wait, we have those already and they can't finish chances or dribble?
We have had some players who were extremely skilled, I'm looking at Benny Feilhaber, but never had the maturity or work ethic to get the best out of themselves. Lalas is just exaggerating, a lot.
I think we're talking about different degrees of athletic ability. I can safely say there is no one in MLS who could run with Adrian Peterson. The gulf between "good" athletes in MLS and good athletes in the NFL and NBA is a Grand Canyon. The thing about our soccer player pool is that it's so small, athletes like Josh Gatt and Joe Gyau who would have fairly ordinary quickness and speed for a major division 1 college cornerback or point guard are so exceptional that they're in the national team picture almost by default. There are dozens if not hundreds of college football players who can run a 100m in less than 11 seconds. Reggie Bush was running 10.4 as a high school junior. Jamaal Charles ran a 10.23 as a collegiate. These guys have a level of speed and quickness that you don't see in MLS or pretty much anywhere else. But soccer obviously isn't all about speed and quickness. It's more of a skill game. That's why average athletes like Beckham and Pirlo are able to become world class in the sport. It's more specialized. More about skill and intelligence than sheer athletic ability alone. Not every one of the track stars in the NFL or NBA would have been a great soccer player. But as world class athletes with rare levels of coordination and body control, I'd venture to guess that many of them would've been very good. A guy like Mo Edu is an example of a "good" athlete with just average soccer skills (by pro standards) who's still kicking around our senior NT for lack of better options. Now imagine if you had dozens of players with that speed and quickness entering the picture every year, and you got to pick the most skillful and effective from that lot. That's essentially what happens in the NBA and NFL.
More like a Drogba, Ronaldo, Eto'o, and Essien at every position on the field. That is basically what our basketball team has.
So basically you are saying that the second most popular participation sport in the US is simply attracting all the unathletic kids?
By and large, yes. It might be second most popular among suburban children, but by the time high school rolls around most of the kids with great speed and quickness have moved on to basketball or football. Those are the sports with the most pull here, especially 10-15 years ago. I played soccer when I was 5-6. So did a lot of my friends. But by the time we were in high school, almost nobody played it anymore. I even had a friend who spent part of his childhood in Portugal, was passionate about the sport, kept up with the pro leagues at a time when nobody else did, and still quit playing in high school to become the starting strong safety on the football team. He was so tired of people ragging on him for being a soccer player that he felt the need to prove his toughness on the football field. Soccer was considered a sport for sissies and weaklings. And I bet it's still viewed that way in a lot of the country. Back then nobody in this USA dreamed of being a soccer player. It was Griffey, Jordan, and Rice that inspired kids. And that's who we emulated and tried to become. With the rise of YouTube, the improved access to games, and the growing popularity of the big European leagues in the USA, I think things are changing. But soccer is still a niche sport here. If you turn on SportsCenter, you're liable to go an hour without seeing any soccer. And that definitely has an effect on kids. What we emphasize shapes what they aspire to become. Even with soccer growing, the NFL and NBA are siphoning away most of the talent. Kids with 10.5 speed in the 100M are going undrafted out of college and getting cut by NFL teams in training camp. There's a huge surplus of athletic talent in this country, but most of it is going everywhere but the soccer field. Hence why half the players on our national team have a foreign parent or some other extenuating circumstance that stuck them in the soccer pool. They probably would've wound up playing a different sport otherwise.
The idea that the only athletes capable of developing elite technical skills are those who are currently soccer players is preposterous.
That seems like a lot of anecdotal experience. The facts are that the US has 8 times as many registered players in the sport as Spain. What's the difference? I'd say it's that our players are poorly trained and groomed compared to Spain or other countries. Players like Xavi, Iniesta and even Ronaldo and Drogba are not good because they run 4.0 40 yard times or bench 400 pounds. They are good because they developed elite skill and tactical understanding and in Ronaldo and Drogba's case, combined that with strong athletic abilities to be even better. We have plenty of fast guys, yet our best player is Clint Dempsey, who is one of our slowest. Players like Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, Messi, Silva wouldn't have a chance in hell of playing in the NFL. I'm not sure why'd we'd reverse osmosis that idea that our NFL players would be awesome at soccer if they just played it a lot.
It's not NFL players who would "be awesome" at soccer. It's all the anonymous kids who played basketball, football, and baseball instead of soccer. Some of them probably wouldn't have been able to develop technical skills on par with Dempsey or Bale, but due to sheer numbers, it's all but guaranteed that some would have, had they been exposed to the sport and trained properly.
It's probably a little bit of both. I'm not sure what "registered players" means or how that factors into the discussion. What I do know is that the Spanish are crazy about soccer in a way that Americans aren't. That's why there are venues in Spain that seat 100,000 people. Much more interest in the game over there. Like I said, you can flip on the TV to a sports channel here and watch for hours without hearing a single mention of soccer. Nobody cares. Soccer is played in the USA, but not in a way that really matters. I was a "soccer player" when I was young. That means I kicked the ball around for a couple years when I was 5-6. I quit to play football/baseball/basketball and didn't touch a soccer ball again for about 20 years. I'm sure a lot of the registered players will end up like that. There really aren't a lot of kids hustling to become the next Messi here in the USA. Or at least there weren't 15 years ago. The competition for places in MLS isn't even close to the competition for places in the NFL and NBA. We're talking orders of magnitude. All you have to do is watch the sports to see the incredible gulf in talent and athleticism. And, at risk of opening a big can of worms, I'd argue that finding world class talents is not just about getting a high number of players. It's about getting the right players. The fact is, most of the really quick/strong/fast athletes in this country are black. It is what it is. Pop on an NFL game and it's pretty much guaranteed that every cornerback and running back on the field will be black. And it's the same thing in the NBA and in the Olympic 100m final. When you talk about speed, strength, and quickness, African Americans dominate in this country. And I don't think there's much evidence that African Americans have much interest in soccer. They are pressured to play other sports. If the best athletes in your country aren't interested in a sport, you're not going to field the best team you can field. Nobody is saying that soccer is all speed or that training and development aren't important. Obviously the USA has lagged behind a lot of the European and South American countries in terms of identifying and cultivating talent. But that's not the only factor. The reason why our national team is weak relative to the population of our country is because not many of the most talented athletes in this country pursue the sport. It's just a numbers game. With 50 million Germans playing soccer, you're going to find the right confluence of athletic ability and skill in enough players to field an awesome team. With hardly anybody seriously pursuing soccer in the USA, you're going to have a tough time finding talent. Every Landon Donovan or Clint Dempsey will be a national treasure, whereas the entire NBA is filled with players who are that good at their particular sport.
I agree that it's not about the numbers, it's about the culture. My son (8) loves to play soccer and jumps at any opportunity, but he plays football at school because that's what the athletes are doing. He complains often to me that many of his friends hate soccer. Almost all of those kids he plays football with are registered soccer players. None of them are skilled enough to keep up on the soccer field though and they're not learning from anyone at home how to play. It's definitely right that we have more bad coaches than good ones in the sport right now. But the best players around the world first get their passion/love for the sport from an uncle or father at home. They also get their first learning experiences in the backyard and then take those lessons to the playground games. Messi was already being developed on a professional team by the age of 8 and playing hours each day. That kind of deep cultural closeness with the game is definitely lacking throughout most of the US. We can see it with other sports, where I know plenty of dads around who will spend hours on the baseball diamond working on their son's swing. Forget about the athletes and focus on the culture. Develop the culture for the sport in the US and that's when we'll see the quality come out.