The ref looks tired and sweating...She may wonder why it's not over in 90 minutes...Both teams already qualified for WC...
I asked earlier in the week, how accessible is making a youth national team if one comes from a lower income family? If a child is not from a wealthy family are they brushed aside? Thanks in advance.
It might be possible if the family lives in Colorado and close to the right club. No one is intentionally brushed aside, but effectively they are by the high cost of youth club soccer even excluding travel to tournaments, etc. and just the logistics of getting to and from practice/training, etc. And many lower income have two working parents...they might invest the time, effort and $ for a boy if the kid is very good just because the income potential is high if they make it. They have to make tough choices. I think the new GDA is meant to lower the cost ... especially for those most in need.
I watched the whole game and was very unimpressed with the US team. Bad passes, give aways, defense looked slow and mistake prone. The USA didnt deserve to win. Then the kicks. OMG Two blocks? Maybe the coach should practice that since they dont seem to be able generate much offense any other way. So we go to the WC now. Coach better keep looking. This roster is going nowhere
Often coming from a low income family gives a kid a more difficult path in more ways than just the high cost of the club dues. 1. Parents of low income families often have their hands full with trying to make ends meet. They do not have the time to navigate through the club scene to learn about the different teams available, try out dates, etc. for the their player and often do not have the resources to get them to every training session. 2. The player would need to be given financial assistance on a team that is playing at a level that their matches are scouted by college coaches. (Mostly ECNL or DA teams.) 3. If the player is not able to pay or travel to the nearest "best" team, they will have less visibility by not playing in the biggest tournaments, and often their coach is not as "connected" to ODP and college scouts. 4. Many top players are receiving private lessons in addition to team training. This is not likely an option for low income families' players. 5. Many top players have parents that make it a part time job to market their kid with video services, emails to college coaches, membership to recruiting sites. Again, this takes time and money, both of which is limited for kids of low income families. 6. Even if the player received an invitation to youth ODP camps, the cost is significant. We need a much improved player identification process, with a much bigger net. We need to keep the youth national teams' roster competitive and open for newly identified players at all ages. We need to make it affordable to more kids.
Broadly speaking I agree with the idea that the rest of the world is "catching up" to the US in terms of women's soccer. This is problematic because we basically train and develop our girls/women the same (if not slightly worse) than we train our boys/men...and well, the way we develop our men's program apparently isn't good enough to consistently qualify for the World Cup. However, outside of this one tournament, there simply isn't much evidence that the rest of CONCACAF is "catching up" in any meaningful way. Let's look at all of women's programs represented in this tournament. Canada: Almost always good enough to give the US a good game. They are occasionally better than the US at the youth level, but almost never better at the senior level despite being competitive. Basically Canada is the same as they have always been relative to the US, which makes sense considering how closely our club and development programs are tied together. Mexico: They improved a lot, but that was a long time ago. In terms of quality both there senior and youth programs have stagnated over the past decade or so. The new women's Liga MX could be a big development going forward and I'm sure that it helped this current crop of Mexico U-20s, but the league is still really young. Haiti: Haiti has improved rapidly and recently, in part because they moved their entire women's program to Indiana for a few years. If their improvement can be linked at least in part to the US, what does that say about the state of the US program? Costa Rica: They improved quite a bit. However, like Mexico they have kind of leveled off and haven't really improved for several cycles. Nicaragua: Have they improved? I assume they have, because I don't recall seeing anything from their women's team until recently. My cynical side thinks that the relatively good performance from Nicaragua in this tournament is due to a temporary increase in funding because they are hosting the CONCACAF U-17 tournament. Regardless, the fact that they have done relatively well only underscores that the rest of CONCACAF is still really, really bad at women'.s soccer. Also, Nicaragua isn't exactly the type of "football culture" we worry about "catching up" to and beating the US women. Jamaica: Basically the same as they've been for years. They rely on the US for basically all of their players, who either grew up in the US or play in the NCAA. T & T: Not a significant program...still rely on the US for some of their players. So basically: -We have Canada which was always good. -Then we have two programs (Mexico and Costa Rica) who put the minimal resources necessary to make decent women's programs. They partially "caught up," but didn't complete the process and stagnated. Mexico may possibly be poised for another jump in quality depending on what happens with their women's league. -Haiti improved recently, but still not really on the level of the US. -and then a bunch of teams that don't appear to be anywhere close to "catching up" to the US. You could probably still throw Haiti into this category if you really want.
We all recognize that there are significant deficiencies in our youth programs (specifically our women's programs). However, I suspect that the poor results at this CONCACAF U-20 tournament are mostly an aberration. We will continue to struggle at the youth World Cup (as we have for a while). However, I expect that in the future we will go back to easily beating every CONCACAF team except Canada, Mexico and maybe Costa Rica/Haiti. That is...unless the current technical staff A) is not replaced, and B) really screws things up to an extent that I find hard to imagine.
My kid's club is generous with the financial aid including waiving fees and flying kids and a parent to distant venues. However, the kid has to be a top player to get this benefit. They can get the skills they need to reap this advantage cheaply if a parent trains (plays) with them when they are small. Most of these kids that I know like this are children of immigrants who love the game.
The other asterisk next to Mexico should be that they still rely heavily at all levels on Americans and players developed in the US.
Fact remains this team was coached horribly. TD started the game on the bench and she is hands down the best player on the team. The goal conceded came from a half hearted stab from the CB who started ahead of her. Why was she not on the pitch to start the game? Half of the girls on this roster could probably be upgraded between now and summer but the brilliant minds of us soccer will continue to bang there heads against the walls
I just watched the first 22 minutes and the U.S.A. completely bossed Mexico--made a number of good passes, controlled the ball, had at least three or more corner kicks and nearly scored on a sequence in which the Mexico goalie and then one of her defenders made crucial stops. We were putting lots of pressure on Mexico. Mexico had a couple of counters but I don't believe had even one shot in the first quarter of the game.
Quite a stretch to give any credit for Haiti's ascent to US. A case can be made Haiti's recent teams play a more polished style than any US WNT, youth or full. Give most US program coaches those same athletes and they would play nothing like the Haiti we see today. If anything, a tiny nation with a fraction of the resources and player pool being competitive in such a short time says something about coaching in the US program. Give the credit to Borkowski.
The Law of Small Numbers is a term coined by Kahneman and Tversky, brilliant scientists studying how humans make decisions. It's their name for the fallacy of thinking that one can draw conclusions from a data sample no matter how small. If I weren't having fun dropping a neat name, I might have said, "Before we draw conclusions about Haiti, let's see how they do over the next year." When I hear people grouse about how the US did last year in the SheBelieves Cup, I likewise think about the Law of Small Numbers. I'll note that one of the things Kahneman and Tversky showed was that even highly educated statisticians fall victim to the Law. It's a natural human tendency.