Germany, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Spain, etc. are all improving and are investing in youth development at faster and larger rates than we are. Its a race and we're starting from behind and think we have time to catch up but they're running fast too.
I'm not impressed. Most of those countries have been better than us for years but we still managed to beat them. USA will be 1 of the Top 4 in a decade or so.
Facts are facts and opinions are opinions, and it is my opinion you are confusing your opinion as fact.
“You’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.”--- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Opinion We will be top 4 someday Fact We have beat some of the best teams in the world, who were far superior at developing talent. If we are just gonna continue being behind the rest of the world then why even try to improve youth development? I believe that once we start training our youth like the best countries in the world, we will be 1 of the best.
Follow the money. When soccer becomes a big money sport in the U.S., our national team will be formidable year after year. That's why efforts to promote the game to sports fans who haven't yet embraced soccer is vital. USSF needs to target that market and go after it with zeal. Trying to create elite players while distancing the sport from traditional American sports fans is a fool's errand.
Fact, our youth NT's have been losing and not progressing in international tournaments. Fact, Mexico's youth NT's are getting results in those same tournaments, if not winning them outright. Opinion, that us beating a top country somewhat rarely somehow has a crossover effect and means we'll be a top 4 country in a decade. A worrying opinion which might be close to fact, and is a sign of our lack of development. We don't have another Landon or Dempsey in the pipeline we can point to right now.
What about our performance in the 2007 U20 World Cup? If I'm not mistaken, Mexico failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics and 2009 U20 World Cup.
I wonder why the hell not? Were they secretly coached by some of the best coaches in the world or something??
A one time YWC performance doesn't prove anything. Many of the top senior NT's have had consistent results over the years at the YWC that wipes away any one time bad performance. Just like Italy being eliminated in the group stages of the 2010 WC, only to make the finals of this year's Euros. Also to take into account is UEFA. Many European countries don't take the YWC's too seriously, they take the UEFA U-17, U-19, U-21 championships much more seriously. So you won't see some of the top U-20 players on some of the Euro teams.
One thing to note about future prospects - Clint was not a starter in the midfield when he played for us in the under 20 world cup. There were several people ahead of him back then that everybody agreed should be ahead of him. It wasn't until he played for the New England Revolution that people started to notice that he was very good and it wasn't until he had gotten a couple of years under his belt in England that people started to notice that he was a very productive offensive player at that level. In short, 8 -10 years ago, Clint Dempsey was not "Clint Dempsey". We are working hard and I am sure there are some prospects that will end up better than we could have imagined and others that will end up worse. But the point that others are improving at a faster pace is fair when you look at our performances in qualifying in CONCACAF both at the full national team level as well as the junior national team level. We are working hard to improve, but there is much left to be done.
He was playing reserve games. Don't know how close he is to the first team, but unfortunately I think he's kind of far from it.
Feel free to change the subject to about a player that is actually eligible for this thread! He made a few sub appearances for the Timbers reserve team, and he turns 19 next month.
This is my point. HG kids who are not getting first team minutes. The program is a few years old. I think people expect to much to soon. I would like MLS use mandates to help get younger kids more time. NOt sure what those are
Obviously the US hasn't done any better creating star players than, say, 10 years ago, but is it fair to say that we haven't advanced any? I first started following the national team during the runup to the 1994 World Cup, and despite the fact that the US overachieved, that was some ugly soccer. Ten years later, things were better, but it still wasn't very pretty, with a lot of long balls and little flow and possession work through the midfield. Almost 10 years after that, we sit where we are now. There isn't a hell of a lot of creativity out there, but there is a marked attempt at possession and the US plays more like the majority of the top soccer countries, albeit with less technical and technical acumen. So, yeah, the US's results haven't improved on the surface, but the type of game the US is playing has improved. That is progress, but not the type most people pay attention to. To pull this back around to youth soccer, I can't truly judge whether youth soccer has improved the same way that the nats have since finding youth games on the internet even as recently as a few years ago was awfully hard, but I suspect there has been a similar evolution, albeit not across the board. The results haven't changed, but the quality of the game we are playing has. Given what I'm seeing of the youth teams now, that should only continue to be the case.
With all due respect my friend..................99% of fans in the country didn't know Dempsey was in the pipeline when he was playing youth soccer. Unless they lived in a certain part of Texas, they didn't know he existed. Lets remember that Dempsey wasn't in our U17s, I don't believe ever got a look with our U18s, and wasn't a starter for our U20s. At the 2003 U20 World Cup our squad went all the way to the quarters (beating teams like Korea, Paraguay, and Ivory Coast), and he only made one late substitute appearance. If my memory serves me correctly (which is dubious with the amount of sleep I've gotten) he couldn't displace our attacking players like Convey, Mapp, Quaranta, and company. If people tell you right now that they thought Clint Dempsey was going to end up being the big star of that group...........they're lying straight to your face. It's revisionist history. We're not about to fall off the "talent cliff" (an homage to last night's election). Look at Geoff Cameron for a second. Nobody knew who Geoff Cameron was as a youth player. He wasn't on the national stage. Hell, he was a good college player......but not an elite college player. He was drafted with the last pick in the THIRD ROUND. He went from being unknown by any of us (unless they followed A10 soccer in the early 2000's) to a premier league starter. Plenty of talent will continue bubbling to the surface. We only acknowledge a small sliver of the talent pool on these boards. Basically, if you're not one of the ~70 kids routinely called in for the U17s and U18s.......................then we don't know you exist right now. Now if people think we're actually competing with Spain, Germany, and company in the youth development arena.............they're delusional. Utterly and completely delusional. We did a back-of-the-napkin calculation when an ESPN article about Bayern Munich's youth teams was published about a year ago. We realized that Bayern Munich alone probably spends more money on youth development than all of the USSF and MLS DA teams combined. And until some sugar daddies appear in MLS to bankroll the whole thing, I have no clue where the money is going to come from for us to effectively compete against the Spain's of the world. Certainly not the USSF, which is a break even not-for-profit entity. It's gotta come from MLS. First they have to fully embrace the youth development arena (right now some seem hesitant), and then some of the clubs have to spend the money on development like their European counterparts do.
Hell, Michael Bradley, as highly rated as he was as a kid, was not Michael Bradley until last year when he moved to Italy. And we have prospects that are very promising. The problem is that while our overall quality can be improving, Donovan has, for the vast majority of his career, been so far ahead of the average quality of our team that we can raise the average while still not developing a Donovan-in-prime level player.
And to think that an alligator almost ate Donovan's foot while he was playing golf as a teenager in Bradenton............................... When Donovan was a U17, we thought he'd be good. But we weren't sure how good. And you're right about Bradley. He was thought of a good prospect, but let's not forget that he was a 4th round draft pick. 35 players were picked in the 04 draft before him. That was the Freddy Adu draft, so nobody was paying much attention to Michel Bradley. We thought Tim Howard was going to be good, but we really didn't know. We also thought Earl Edwards was going to be good, and he's kind of fallen off of the map. Sometimes it's just an impossible thing to figure out. I think some of these youngsters like Flores have the chance to be good, I just don't know how good. It's just tough to say. There could be a Landon Donovan-level player down there. We just don't know.......................
While it's true that Edwards seemed to have fallen back a bit he's been the starting GK for UCLA this season, so he still has time to rise back up. We'll see....