If you look at Senegal's roster, they come mostly from three academies; Generation Foot, Diambars FC, and Galaxy FA. Believe it or not they have turf fields.
Senegal's youth setup is probably better than ours. They're the highest ranked national team in Africa, and since the placement of stringent age rules have been performing consistently well at African youth and senior tournaments. They're a country of only 15 million, but manage to produce top talent almost entirely domestically. Only some dreadfully unlucky results kept them out of the knockout round of the World Cup.
And some will tell you athleticism doesn't matter. Those Senegal players were more agile, faster and stronger than ours. They have the tools to be higher level pros than what we put out. Where it goes from there is what's really important. Soccer purists don't like the argument that our best athletes are not playing soccer but it matters.
I don't doubt that their senior team is better than ours, but I wonder how their player production compares to ours from U21 down. Population/size of the country is a tricky qualifier because the relative popularity of the sport is arguably much more important and there are different challenges that come with being smaller or bigger.
Honestly, the mentality stood out to me more than the athleticism. Senegal was much more aggressive and physical. Those aren't things that translate at higher levels. It will be interesting to see to it turns out, but I still feel like we had more talent on the field than they did.
Even the most athletic players will look slow and unathletic if they don't understand their instructions, are playing on their back foot, or are not set up to succeed. We have plenty of good athletes on the U17 squad, but they played scared and lacked match fitness. These African teams know what they do well and set up their teams for it. Meanwhile we have a schizophrenic federation that wants us to play a style that just doesn't work. It doesn't work with our player pool but it also doesn't work at this level period. Possession based teams at the youth World Cup level lose more often than not. Sometimes an England or an Argentina can overcome that through sheer individual talent, and then everyone thinks they can play a similar style. It's better. They have a handful of academies (all in Dakar) that get all the best talent in the country. French, Belgian, and Portuguese clubs then pick out the best of those once they hit 18. The pipeline is strong, and the players are trained to do what the buying clubs want them to do. Meanwhile, in the USA we have a thousand academies with a thousand different styles. Maybe the USA D-Z teams are better than Senegal's equivalent due to depth, but at the top level they're better than us.
I know nothing about Senegal's system but taking your word for it, that is ridiculous their academies are better than US. The US undoubtedly has more resources and infrastructure and a much larger pool to choose from.
I also know nothing about Senegal's system...... But if it's so good, where were their U20s? We absolutely dominated a Nigeria squad that must have qualified over them. I'm just not seeing how their system could be better than ours. Even if they do have "French, Belgian, and Portuguese" clubs picking up prospects from their top academies, don't we have at least the equivalent of that with Dutch, German, and other clubs picking up our players, and a decent domestic league to develop players in on top of that? FYI - Senegal has never qualified for a U20 World Cup, and this is their first U17, which they only qualified for after another nation was dq'ed.
Yea, hence why I am simply giving him the benefit of the doubt although not sure. It does seem a lot of France's best players come from Northern Africa so his points make sense. Perhaps the MLS is a deterrent to developing great players and we should shut it down and wish for all of our top talent to go to Europe at 18 and develop over there. After years of experience in youth soccer, I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do it. So much depends on culture, a kids pedigree, his internal drive, luck and being in the right environment. That environment may be different for each kid.
Agreed on that. I assume you were joking about shutting down MLS in terms of domestic development. It's great for the exact reason you mentioned -- some kids will take off to Europe, but many top talents will stay and develop here for a bit before making that leap. The diversity of options is a big advantage for us. Just as Reyna and Pulisic headed over early, Adams and Pomykal have spent meaningful time here before going.
Yes, joking. While I think kids should go to Europe early and often, the MLS does help the popularity of the game in US and is another avenue to try and go pro.
I was completely wrong on the U20 "fact." Senegal has qualified for U20 World Cup, and they were in Poland winning their group.....
Also, I think most people don’t realize that this Senegal team has been training together since July. They had a HUGE advantage in familiarity. As we’ve seen at this level, it can take a while for the US team to gel as a unit. It was the perfect scenario for them to roll the US.
One of the first things I do when I look at the squad list is to see how much of the roster play on the same club. Then I look at when they all got together before the tournament. These things matter. Even at the senior level.
That depends on how you define "production". Process is not an automatic correlative to Result as US Soccer is so amply demonstrating.
It kinda is if you look at the results of the DA and how its affected player development. The first age group to fully go through the 10 month DA season were the 99's and 00's and looking at how that group performed at the u20 World Cup without their 2 best players I'd say its going well. Looking at the age groups after that which look to be even better as the 02's already have Gio Reyna and KHF who are 5 star USMNT prospects who have emerged before their u20 cycle where even more high ceiling players will emerge. The 03's and 04's look to blow the 99's-02's away as they're the age groups who will go from the ground up with a full DA->USL->MLS->Europe pathway. The current problem is that Ussoccer did not adapt with the rest of the world's changes and it shows with our pitiful age groups from 1990-1997 where there are few and far between players who can make it at a top 5 European league level. We're getting better it's just a matter of waiting for our results to be older than 16-21 years old
No, I'm saying it's ironic that the program with the worse setup is better. It proves that pay to play is not effective in producing the best outcome. I see it also as a dad to a 5 yr old. If this 5 yr old were in a poor neighborhood in Mexico, he'd be playing soccer with his other poor neighbor kids constantly (at zero cost). But he's living a cush life in the US and there are no neighbor kids to play soccer with, just dada. Makes me sad. I want to create pickup games for young kids. We have pickup games for adults around here but not for kids. The kids only get play time in leagues or in camps/classes. Even at his elementary school the kids at recess are throwing a football, not playing soccer. On a wider scale this is the contrast between USA vs Mexico, Brazil, Senegal, etc.
I applaud your innocent optimism but I've been listening to this record for near 30 years. "We're getting better it's just a matter of waiting...", well they do say hope springs eternal. Everybody wants to talk about "player development". It is relatively easy to proceed with producing process players. All it takes is $$$ and infrastructure which we know the US has in spades. Where the rubber hits the road is getting RESULTS. That is an entirely different road to travel.
Considering we have Pulisic, McKennie, Weah, Dest, Reyna, Sargent, Ledezma, Mendez, Llanez, Richards, CCV, Gloster, KHF, both Robinsons, and more who are all u23's with potential of playing in Europe (most already are or are about to be) I'd say things are getting better. Our current u23 group would beat the previous three by 4-5 goals. This is the first DA class produced from the 10 month change and the 2024 group is on track to be much better. Results don't immediately happen and in the 2010's the federation has actually been making proactive changes that are already reeping early benefits with much deeper ynt rosters full of players in professional clubs not going to college and a significant increase in the amount of u23 players we have that are not just going to europe but actually getting top 5 league minutes and succeeding. It's not perfect but is is ignorant to say that things are not getting better.
There has been a humongous shift in the last few years as compared to 20 and 30 years ago. And a big part of this is infrastructure, which we actually do not have "in spades." Our infrastructure is only now coming into place now that the DA system has roots (although it is still evolving), and more importantly now that we have professional teams invested in player development and lower divisions where young players who are not ready for a first team can develop. Relatively speaking, this infrastructure is all very new.
Gentlemen, "Potential" is the most over-used and under-performing word in the soccer lexicon. You should treat it as you would a Justin Trudeau blackface party, thanks but no thanks. The only humongous shift we've seen in the last 20 years is we can no longer qualify for Olympics or World Cups. You may be too young to remember but this is all very new.
Senegal wins 3-1. Worth noting they beat Japan in the warmups. No one expected much from them but they could win the group running away.
Senegal slowly becoming one of the favorites. Funny, they shouldn't even be in the U-17 WC, they're there only because Guinea cheated with two players making them six months younger.