The current state of our youth national teams

So, failing to qualify for the World Cup from the easiest region around, is not a data point?

U17BNT - Failed to get out of group in 2019
U20GNT - Failed to get out of group in 2019
U17GNT - Failed to get out of group in 2018

If Senior team results are just the tip, how are the youth results looking? Except for the U20 team under Ramos, who was forced out, not looking good at all.

Or it that too simple?

 

The landscape is constantly evolving. Less than 15 years ago, the survival of our domestic league was in serious question. Player acquisition and compensation costs were serious concerns. We are seeing an evolution toward something more in line with global soccer markets now that there is more stability and incentive to do so. So much of the criticism of USSF is ignorant of where the game in this country was 10-15 years ago. Of course, there are many areas where they deserve criticism, as well. But to act like USSF is some evil organization holding back the game here lacks serious perspective.

 

This will probably be way too long of a post, but I think its necessary to get the specific talking points out there so we all have an understanding as to where people stand.

Creation of DA - I personally think it is good, but there are plenty of people on the other side of the fence. There are some undeniable facts that come with DA - increased travel costs to players and families (even MLS Academies charge for some out of town trips), concentration of talent into MLS Academies (this is good when playing on a National scale, but it has dramatically diluted local competition), easier to identify talent (not sure if good or bad because the Fed has basically left this job to the clubs, which is what is should do).

MLS - while the size of the league has increased and players wages are increasing, USSF is not responsible for that in any way other than SUM...which is an entirely different debate.

USL - see above. USSF doesn't play a role.

In the end, USSF has one foundational function - to grow the game in our country. That one foundational function should eventually lead to the ultimate goal of winning a World Cup. However, youth participation has decreased significantly over the past decade. It is pretty simple math - the bigger the player pool, the better chance of developing world class players. They have failed to grow the sport.

Now, have we had an increase in players moving to quality European leagues? It seems that we do, but I am not willing to state that as fact until I see a comparison between now and the past. People tend to forget that we have always had players in Europe, the fact that we can now see them on TV every weekend seems to make it look like there has been a huge jump in numbers. I am specifically talking about top leagues and again, the statement above is not based on any fact, just my opinion. I think it is a huge stretch to give USSF credit for our players moving to Europe. For me, it was more of a function of the market and the fact our Fed didn't have its shit together, and therefore, European clubs could raid our talent for a fraction of the price compared to other countries.

So, they haven't grown participation in the game and our YNT and MNT results have seemingly gone backwards - what have they done other than take over a youth league? Which by the way, is the only youth league in which the Federation actually runs that I am familiar with. Again, there have been some positives from the DA, but it has come at the detriment of participation and added cost to the players and families.

I am fine with you and others who think the Fed has been doing good things, I just am not ready to come around to agree with it. I think USSF is the single biggest issue in our country and they are holding our game back more than any other entity. If we really want to look at it in the way they should be set up, they simple need to set forth the rules, sanction the leagues, develop grass roots programs to increase participation, and manage our entire NT program.

As for setting up the rules. They chose to be one of only a couple of Federations around the world to not follow FIFA's guidelines and mandates on TC, SP and promotion/relegation. They got too involved with MLS and are in a hole that is too deep to dig out of. They have failed to grow participation the game, which is really their sole purpose as an entity. Our NT program is currently a bigger mess than it ever has been from the full team all the way down through the youth teams. No one wants to work for them, the on field results have been disastrous, the organization if rife with shady financial deals and nepotism, they are being sued by multiple parties, the top league sanctioned under their governance is a closed league that does not foster competition, they let MLS dictate how they govern, etc.

Another thing that is starting to get on my nerves a little is the plaudits that the MLS youth clubs want to give themselves. I had this conversation with a friend of mine that lives in Dallas. LA Galaxy, FC Dallas, DC United, NY Red Bull and others want to act like they have some kind of magic stroke to produce talent. For anyone that has been around the game in this country for any time at all, knows that LA, Dallas, NJ, St. Louis, and other areas have been producing NT and professional talent for 50 years. Before the MLS teams came along and way before DA came along, there were multiple clubs in each of these markets producing kids that went to top universities, producing players that played in Europe and foreign leagues and produced many or our NT players. We are producing the same talent in most areas, its just a different name on their shirt. The difference is, all of that was done without the unnecessary intrusion of our Federation. They really only got involved to the point they are now when it became apparent that there was money to make in youth soccer.

My fingers are starting to hurt, so I will leave it with this. I feel anything good that has been done over the past 20/25 years is more in spite of the Fed than it is because of the Fed. We are a long way off from becoming a footballing power and the only way we get there is if our Fed gets out of the way.

 

Sure, but that data point is reflective of practices that were in place long before that failure occurred. That failure in 2017 was the sum of what was going on from circa 2000-2008.

 

I think we can safely say: argument destroyed.

 

Not really. He is looking at the minutia of each individual situation and interpreting much of that incorrectly (for example, Weston was never going to Virginia. He would have accepted FCD's huge homegrown offer if he had not gone to Schalke. Sargent went straight from the DA to success at Bremen -- that is a direct reflection on his development in the DA... a USSF initiative. Van de Bergh found Dest while he was an employee of USSF. To act like he just went out and scouted and integrated Dest on his own accord is silly. Etc., etc.)

 

The survival of a domestic league. Soccer is simply more popular. MLS is maybe the third most popular league in the USA. If they had folded, another would have started.

Evil or incompetent, always hard to tell.

If I told you that the charitable arm of an organization was suing the business arm, you would think something evil was going on.

They are being sued by their one successful team because they have subsidized the men's game, through SUM to MLS alone, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that the women's leagues never got.

Why was MLS saved at the costs of hundreds of millions and the WUSA was allowed to fail at the same time?

The game in this country 10-15 years ago was mostly kids paying crazy amounts of money to play and hopefully use it to get into college. It is pretty much the same now, with 22 clubs in the country offering free play to the best kids the only difference. Of course, that is only for the boys. Girls are still paying crazy money to play.

 

This is where we are going sideways. What would USSF have to do with any of these players pulling off result after result? From your list above, Pomykal is the only player currently playing in the US, all the others went to Europe at a young age.

If your scenario above happens, I will stand up, clap and be very happy. But when I sit back down, I will still be able to say that each and every one of these players got out of under USSF rule as fast as they could and that alone would be the biggest reason they were able to generation results.

To put it another way - was the Spanish Fed responsible for Spain's dominance? Or was it Barcelona, Real Madrid and the other clubs in which their players developed as professionals?

To be fair to you, it also goes the other way. We can't place all the blame on the Fed for the fact that most of our players can't compete on the world stage. We can place a lot of that blame on our league, but for most of us, the line between MLS and USSF is very blurry at times. Also, our Fed is the one that has bowed down to MLS and not enforced FIFA's rules.

I'm not sure why you would give our Fed credit for these players. They left the country our Fed is in charge of as quickly as they could.

 

Come on dude, give it up. You are far too intelligent to drink your own Koolaid. Are you saying SL Scott Gallagher would not have existed were it not for the vaunted USSF DA? I also don’t think anyone is denying VDB was an employee of USSF; sometimes employees do great thing in spite of their crippling bureaucracies, see Silicon Valley, et al.

 

We don't know what Weston would have done. Would he have received a decent offer from FCD if Schalke hadn't come knocking? Either way, he had to go outside the USA and USSF to get to where he is.

Sargent had to sit around for almost a year and do nothing because the local MLS team wouldn't let him play in their academy if he didn't commit to 5 years with them at a non-competitive wage. When he did get to Bremen, all that sitting around hurt and he has not taken off like many expected. Of course, he couldn't go to another MLS team because those are the rules. He will hopefully overcome all that, but nothing from USSF or MLS helped and it actually hurt him.

Ajax found Dest and let DVdB know about it because of his personal relationship with Ajax. USSF might have paid for the phone call. But that is the extent of it.

You picked the players in your dream scenario. It is not my fault that most of them will get to their professional ceiling because of little to no help from USSF. You could have picked other players; but of course you couldn't. In 2019, the most optimistic scenario for the USMNT going forward mostly relies on players that had to dodge MLS and succeed in spite of MLS and USSF.

 

The opinion that if MLS folded in the mid 2000s another league would just step right in is wildly naive and completely underestimates the challenges of such an undertaking.

Yes, of course there are still big hurdles to overcome regarding pay to play. But even that issue is much better now than you suggest.

Pulling the plug on WUSA on the eve of the 2003 World Cup is a mind blowing decision by USSF in hindsight, but it is a fact that they simply did not have the investors for the league. They were losing money hand over fist due to the poor logistics of the league and a lack of sponsors. Investors were pulling out, and USSF decided that they would not subsidize the league under that setup, which was completely doomed. They tried back up with more of a sustainable shoestring budget only to see that league also fail. They rebooted again with the plan of subsidizing the salaries of the national team players, and there finally seems to be something growing as MLS also is at a point where there appears to be some cross investment and resource sharing finally.

These things are a lot more complex than you are making them out to be.

 

Even though most of those players are playing in Europe now, they, by and large, developed in the US. The fact that they left the US to compete at some of the highest levels in the global game is not a knock on USSF/MLS/DA (however you want to put it) but rather an endorsement of how and why those players were prepared to take on that challenge.

Many of those reasons might not fall directly on USSF, but it should get a lot of credit for how the overall landscape has developed.

 

It's not just Scott Gallagher... The entire landscape, which Scott Gallagher is a small part of, belongs to USSF. Scott Gallagher is a member of USSF.

 

McKennie WAS offered a lucrative deal from FCD.

Sargent would have been with SKC's first team in no time. The fact is he wanted to go to Europe and had a great situation waiting him there.

Any way you slice it, Van de Bergh worked for USSF.

Those players are not just my dream scenario (unless you are referring to them all being healthy). That is the current player pool. It is no mistake that the are 90% Olympic eligible. That is the exact timeline that makes sense based on how the landscape has developed/changed over the last decade+. Even the players who "dodged" MLS developed within an environment that USSF is responsible for.

 

So then, what would you say to Chad Deering, Claudio Reyna, Clint Dempsey, Brian McBride, or any of the other players in the past that had good European careers? Did they leave a bunch of talent on the table because they didn't have a Federation run league to play in when they were young?

I don't want to get into a debate as to the merits of DA, because I think there are some good aspects to it. But, if creating the DA is the best thing our Fed has done, that says a lot. Mainly because our Fed doesn't develop players, clubs do. I fail to see how this is something we give USSF the credit for.

 

Yes, I would say congrats on a tremendous career given the deck that was stacked against you. You overcame major odds. If you had come up in the current landscape, you would have been a better player, and your fellow compatriots that you were playing along side would have been much better, also.

Let's look at them individually:
Chad Deering - I'm not sure who he is.
Claudio Reyna - had to play in college despite being national team caliber at the time.
Clint Dempsey - didn't really come of age until 24 or so after playing in college.
Brian McBride - failed in Europe, after playing in college. Furthered his development in MLS before going back and eventually becoming a nice player in the EPL in his late 20s.

All of these players would have been much better served in the current landscape.

As for the credit due to the USSF for the DA, they restructured a grossly inadequate club soccer landscape into a much more optimal level of training and competition by reorganizing it into a national system and placing higher standards for player development across the board.

 

Chad Deering................another midfielder from DFW He's from Plano.

Went to Indiana, and left after two seasons for Germany. Bremen.
That was back in the era when IU was a powerhouse.

By the way, Chad Deering coached Blackwatch Soccer Club in DFW. That youth club was merged into what became Solar, and he served as director of coaching at Solar for a while. Now he holds the same position at Dallas Rush.

 

QUOTE part has nothing to do with current USSF regime. Those change happened under Sunil Gulati (President), Jurgen Klinsman (technical director),Tab Ramos(youth technical director). Current USSF regime only care about protecting MLS interest and benefit SUM bank account.

 

ha. Klinsmann changed nothing structurally. He just encouraged young players to get to Europe asap.

 

In case you don't see it Technical Director!

 

@Duncan Edwards i miss u - best user name ever

 

He might have had some input philosophically, but nothing structural. I'm not sure if he mandated the 433 throughout the youth national teams or if that came from Ramos. Either way, his TD status was largely just a title.

 

I heard a lot of great thing regarding Duncan Edwards.I really want to see how special he is. It is a shame Munich Air Disaster took his life.

 

Can you define lucrative?

 

Supposedly the highest homegrown offer to date.