I think the biggest thing is kids don't play by them selves there is always some adult around. What I mean by this is basketball skill and imagination took a major spike from the advent of the TV and games being watched on TV with kids going out not with adults telling them this is how you are suppose to play just copying what Dr. J did ,it gave us Michael Jordan which in the 90's gave us LeBron James. I feel bad for kids nowdays because everything is AAU ball and they play for coaches that want to win who stiffle the imagination of kids who just want to play the game to have fun and be like their idols. I see the same thing in soccer in the States and it's been going on for much longer with orginized club ball as these kids only outlet which takes them away from just playing with their friends in the streets having fun making up new moves or copying what Messi or Neymar did and with all those games it's surprise that they even get a chance to see a game on TV to copy or have an imagination to just play the game for the love of it. I see US basketball going down the same slippery slope where there is no kids at the park on their own any more. They're ranking kids in the 5th grade these days sounds familar. Just keep in mind Michael Jordan couldn't make varsity his 11th grade year if that would of happen today his career would have been over right then and there. Let kids get better on their own because they love the sport it will translate into better players.
The Micheal Jordan myth has been debunked. He was never cut from the team. He played JV as a sophmore and Varsity as a junior and senior. we will not stop creating great basketball players. We have basketball culture. Lebron James and Kevin Durant are the latest world class players and they aren't the last. the reason we have difficulty creating world class soccer players is because we don't have soccer culture yet. how we get that culture is the question. And the answer is not just "time".
As it relates to basketball I can argue that yes we have great athletes but are they REALLY great basketball players we are producing. I think the basketball IQ on kids these days are slim to none on most kids and I believe it has alot to do with the AAU culture that is so sterile like the youth soccer culture. I beleive if not this Olympics but soon you will see that the international players will be on equal footing very soon with our great players. As to your soccer/football culture comment until kids who find this game fun and enjoyable can go get pick up games and play until midnite in the parks and streets with there friends like we use too as kids playing american football, baseball/stickball, basketball the skills or technical ability will never reach that of the best footballing nations. We"ll always produce good athletes that never say die and may even acquire tactics but never that game changing playmaker, mercurial goal scorer or smooth as silk center back that can play with the ball at his feet and make the correct decsion with the ball everytime or the player that can ride all challeges and you can never take the ball from them. If culture is what it takes for that to happen then the answer isn't simple but a good start would be if the urban youth saw the game as cool I mean" street " culture cool then the rest of the nation will follow.
This article sums it up.... http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf...unate-last-name-blewitt-182217441--ncaaf.html
meh, even then we have 200 million people to work with (and i don't really get BMI anyways, hell im 5'11 190 and im considered pretty much in the middle in the overweight territory... i know people who have 20-25 pounds on me who are pretty jacked and they would be considered obese)
Call the USSF in Chicago. They have lists of agents with connections to most eastern European countries. After the nasl folded. We had the club league like the Cosmopolitam soccer league here in ny.then our version of the champions league the Northeast Super Division. The the USISL they played pretty good soccer like the Long Island rough riders and that Minnesota team a good team with good coachin. Then the A league. I thought the best league of those were the USISL Then came the MLS.
Where's 16)time? You can claim soccer existed for a long time in this country but there hasn't been a real league developing youngsters. We still don't have all of our MLS teams developing their own players. Academy products are the pipeline. If the pipeline was just made, how soon can you expect the oil to start flowing through?
I'm not sure what you don't understand. The guy was a soccer player and got a scholarship at football camp. If the implications aren't obvious, I am sorry.
Don't you get it? In jfallstaff's mind (and the minds of those like him) there is just some switch we can magically hit and overnight we will be better than Spain. All of the obstacles soccer faces would magically disappear if we had promotion and relegation. If this guy who coaches Barcelona USA (which has NO affiiliation with the real Barca) were coaching the national team, he'd immediately get rid of all of the players and find all of these people that the USMNT is avoiding and we'd be better than Spain. The fact that our domestic top league is only 16 years old doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that we haven't had kids wanting to play pro soccer until recently. There are changes that need to be made with youth training. However, it's not going to make us better immediately. Anyone who thinks that is kidding himself/herself.
There have been kids wanting to play soccer in the USA for a very long time, many have and have gone overseas to do it. You can say there are a lot more now than before. But there have always been some.
Really? I live in a heavily dense latino neighborhood and even here the kids still don't say they want to be a professional soccer player.
Really? I know many here play semi-pro in the local metro leagues, a dude I knew had a team he would pay some players a few thousand a year to play in Clasa. But I was talking about Lalas and Wynalda, etc the few pre MLS players that actually made a career out of soccer. There were a few, there has always been a few here and there, but now with MLS and Euro soccer popularity that may open the doors for more (I do see lots of Mexican-Americans in the Mexican league). Ah I see what I did wrong. I did not mean play pro inside the USA. I was going for soccer players that grow up in the USA wanting to play pro overseas before MLS. my bad for not making that clear.
well not sure what that guy was implying, but what i got out of it is that our soccer players would rather go and be a kicker in football than to continue pursuing soccer...
well the article doesn't provide any background about him. For all we know he was a soccer player at his local YMCA. I don't see how this article tells us anything. Unless you want to make the argument that are best soccer youth players are choosing to be place kickers for college football teams? it's not that dire of a situation here. If the kid was a good soccer player he'd be playing soccer somewhere.
I'm actually going to agree with you on this. If that kid was a good player, he would have been playing somewhere. The fact that he chose to be a kicker instead doesn't really say much about soccer in the US.
No, they don't. Not in the least. There are bigsoccer posters whose names no one remembers that are better than that. However, I agree with you on one point: The implications? It just said he was a soccer player. It doesn't say if he's a good soccer player. For all we know, the implications are "some crap soccer player can get a free college education by switiching a football."