Better team selection may have gotten us qualified, but that still doesn't solve the underlying issues in why a country our size can't identify and develop talent better.
If you have multiple teams battling for your services and are willing to invest in your career, you will see more kids choose soccer. Pro/Rel opens the doors to massive investment in youth development.
USA Hockey has the model. They went from being a nobody to a world power! IN HOCKEY!! I believe it can be done with the USSF as well. Junior Professional Leagues - NO PAY!! Pay to play won't ever go away, as it did not in youth hockey. But, the best players are picked to play in the USHL and other Junior Professional Leagues. Each team has an owner and operates as a business. They sell tickets, merchandise, etc. More importantly, they provide top training and a professional environment. These franchises are typically located in cities without major league sports, so kids live with billet families, etc. Definitely a model which should be looked at to overhaul the USSF.
I don't see pay to play as the problem so much as lack of turnover/serious talent evaluation on travel teams. There are always too many kids whose position is guaranteed on a team. If you have been on a team 3 years, you probably will be picked to be on it a fourth. And oftentimes kids whose parents are big volunteers for the team will be selected no matter what their talent.
I don't agree at all. A guaranteed position in the league allows an organization to invest in scouting and facilities that would not be possible if a team is in danger of taking a big financial hit from relegation.
I hope whoever the next guy we hire is finally throws the 4-4-2 in the garbage. Especially because there's a gaping talent void in the years between Bobby Wood and Sargent/Weah/Wright and we have a plethora of young, talented midfield prospects.
start training more coaches and try to enlist 20 licensed coaches for every 50,000 person in America. (justt a guess)
Watch the Philadelphia Union to see a team trying to play the 4-2-3-1 without the personnel to do so.
I watched team USA lose to trinidad and tobago running a 4-4-2. If there is some advantage to us running the formation based on personnel, it certainly hasn't manifested itself.
Lived in New York. Didn't see much soccer at all compared to basketball, baseball, and football. The other cities may be hotbeds, which still wouldn't be enough of a national culture. I live in a sports crazy area now, and I'm more likely to see kids playing golf on their own time than soccer.
Also the Dutch had a horrible manager (Danny Blind) at the start of this qualification round and he is as bad a trainer as Klinsman was.
How what that made the league competitive regionally? Whenever one or our MLS clubs steps outside of the league they struggle. This will continue as long as the league is set up for parity and single entity.
Ultimately pro/rel for reasons outlined elsewhere. That won't happen now though nor is it a quick fix. Quicker fixes: 1) Immediately allow solidarity payments and training compensation which incentivizes scouting and development. 2) The above applies for the entire landscape. MLS needs to compensate the youth clubs they sign players from, whether stateside or in the Caribbean. Likewise, we need MLS to receive compensation for academy products who go elsewhere like McKennie. 3) Strike down territorial rules. KC slapping HG rights on 17 yr old Sargent is an example of the insanity. It crushes competition/accountability in development but also limits choices. Sargent trialled at a number of clubs overseas. So did Pulisic. They have choices of where to sign and they consider the coach, system, opportunity for youth, track record, environment, teaching, etc, just like a five star basketball recruit does when picking a college. We don't have any of that. It forces players overseas and shoehorns them into bad situations here. Pulisic would have been shoehorned into a Philly HG contract.... 4) Do away with allocation(650K) limit off transfer fees. It kills incentive to sell upward. ATL might sell Almiron for 20M and can only put 650K of that back into their roster. That my friends is ludicrous. When you can't put most of a transfer fee back into a roster, what does it do? Limits the incentive to sell. Then players stall. They fall behind the global curve. 5) Hire Tom Byer. Or hire others like him with a proven development track record globally. Enough of this good old boys club bullshit full of American arrogance. Get tried and tested development experts here ASAP. For the USSF, for MLS. 6) At some point the USSF needs to confront the issue that there's little incentive to invest, scout, develop outside the 22 MLS teams. This is a massive landscape. 22 teams will never cut it. The USSF needs to invest in and provide incentive for 100+ clubs nation wide to have true skin in the game.
This is wrong. The current MLS academy structure is total shit. These teams are not investing in scouting and facilities. They are investing their funds into Central and South American talent. Who gives a rip if two owners get relegated? There will be a 100+ teams/cities chomping at the bit to take their place. There needs to be a push from lower level teams into these untapped American markets where players are ignored because their families can't afford travel ball. It saddens me to see anyone defend this current system. This thing will never get f'n fixed.
Which is why Pro/Rel is necessary. Everything else is lipstick on a pig. Pro/Rel brings in a level of youth investment that MLS would NEVER be able to achieve in a hundred years. There are kids all over the country who will never be captured in the current MLS academy structure. They will choose other sports over soccer nearly every time. Pro/Rel gives US Soccer a fighting chance at the best athletes in the country.
Every single park I go to in Los Angeles has a middle-aged man screaming at 5-8 year olds and making them do push-ups any time there’s an errant pass. The first thing I’d do is eliminate every one of those coaches.
I’ve never been a fan of pro/rel and I still think it’s completely overrated and pointless. But at this point it’s time for everyone to question what’s been happening and pro/rel definitely is something that should be taken seriously.
This sounds like the right plan. You can't force the coaches at the local level to do something that hurts their income. But you can change how they get their income. The fact is that prospects are a valuable international commodity but we have broken the path from PSG's pockets into the local coach's pockets. We need to connect that path and the money needs to flow downwards and the coaches will figure it out themselves. The few coaches who manage to turn out $1M+ prospects will get mobbed, they will train other coaches. If the clubs can finance training some other way they would _love_ to pick up the talented kids from the cities. But not at the expense of their own livelihood. You can't blame them and you absolutely do need them.
Herc dropping the race card is total crap. The Olympic team was full of small Hispanic kids very questionably taken over other non Hispanic kids and we bombed out. Garbage. This U-17 team he is degrading is the most exciting since Donovan. I agree with the T&T guy a bit but just building fields to play on doesn't do anything. The solution is a combination of removing the restraints on MLS clubs, pro/rel system, and finding a way to make NCAA soccer more condusive to transitioning to the professional game. First and foremost how about using FIFA rules? Unlimited subs.... seriously? Do they get orange slices at halftime too? A big federal program will always fail. Put it in the hand of local MLS clubs. Pro/rel has never been more important then it is now. Those 2nd and 3rd tier sides will work to develop youth talent because it can benefit them a lot. That puts it to a local level. Free market solutions.
It's not at all pointless. It opens hundreds of doors all over the country for youth be excited about their professional prospects. Players do not fall through the cracks with Pro/Rel. Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati... these teams will have massive financial incentive to gobble up the best local talent. Teenagers who are great at two sports will no longer get ignored by soccer. For the first time ever here, the money will flow to them to get them to commit to soccer, not away from their parents pockets just to get them to play travel ball. Our youth coaches will be employed and held accountable for the first time ever, rather than run their pay-to-play scheme. Having 22 MLS academies spread out all over the country is like shooting a BB gun at a bear. Pro/Rel is the ultimate answer.
I think there are other solutions but like I said, I’m ready and willing to accept it. Not sure how or if they will ever implement it in mls, but I want to win more than I want to be right