It does take oodles of money to field a professional soccer team and not fold. That's the part pro/rel isn't going to fix. And if pro/rel were really going to spur that kind of investment, we would have seen it already. Remember, the highest payroll in all of MLS is about half of the NHL salary floor. It doesn't cost that much money to build a league that can challenge and sweep aside MLS. If it were really true that pro/rel could spur massive investment in soccer, there's nothing stopping those investors from creating a pro/rel pyramid whose top tier could literally offer every single player in MLS (including DPs) double his current salary. It would still be cheaper than running the cheapest teams in America's fourth-most-popular pro league.
I understand the sentiment, but that is the basis of "everybody is a winner." MLS should be the pinnacle of league soccer in the US, and that should be the best players get there. The best players are the best, not very very good, not excellent, not great, they are the best. More teams means more dilution of talent and less competition. And those who are truly the best, those who could and do make the NT, don't have to work quite as hard or do quite as much when playing versus a more diluted talent pool. And that matters when it comes to playing in places like Trinidad and Panama. Agree on this.
So I’m a big fan of basically all sports. I’ve been actively involved in various sports for my entire life. Soccer is the only sport I know of where you not only have to go to classes and get a license, but you also have to pay for it. This idea that the best players are “made” is utterly ridiculous. If you didn’t watch the 60 minutes feature on Pulisic, you really should. No one was forcing him to learn how to dribble. No one was yelling at him any time he made a mistake. The players have to want to get better. Coaches are never going to make them. So find the players who want to dribble a ball home from school like the kids who love basketball do. Teach them to play defense and some tactics. Get them to play futsal so they have the quick thinking and technical ability, and get them to play in full fields so they understand tactics and spacing. Stop picking the best players at 8 years old and trying to force them to improve when they don’t even really like the sport. Teach the kids some important things, but mostly, teach them to love to play and provide them with a place and other kids to play with.
Borussia Dortmund must not be too worried about "character and resilience," I guess. Estimated cost for that machine is between $2-4 million.
Maybe, but I'll tell you, England won the U20 WC and their U17 team is looking like a finalist team. England is going to make waves in 4 years.
Maybe but Mexico has made waves at the youth level and won no major trophies at the senior level recently. It depends on a few things and in this sport just a bad shooting day and your opponent keeper stands on the head and you win nothing.
One thing which has occurred in England is a push to get youth into the club teams. Tottenham have 2 players who have have transfer fees of over £100mil (yes, speculation, but still) who both were considered youth players (okay, Dele was never really in the youth team). But there is Dier and Winks who were both looked at since the youth aspect came. Other teams are trying to do the same (Man City comes to mind). So the teams showing they will give younger players the chance is helping younger players work harder to get their spot, which is showing in the English NT results. But, there is coaching at club level as well. One of the things which many may not know about Kane is that he did not do all that well when he was younger and loaned out. But he kept getting advice and working on the advice he got and his work rate was very high early on. So when he was played that first season in the EPL at Spurs, the team knew he would succeed because of dedication, which came from coaching. And that is what the US is lacking, is that level of coaching (and scouting) to help a player improve, but then just let that player improve on their own with encouragement to keep playing.
Geography alone dictates we can't really use the same strategy as Iceland. Iceland turned its small size into a bit of an advantage in one sense: it went all-in on training enough coaches to make the entire country effectively one big youth academy. UEFA "A" licensed coaches at all age levels down to U-6. And the concentration of coaches means Icelandic kids are not only getting high-level coaching, but playing all their games against other kids coached by high-caliber coaches. It's the same way Uruguay produces talent, taken to an even greater extreme. We have talented kids and some high-quality coaches, but those kids never see high-quality opposition until they're at double digit ages, because we're working in a minority sport in a sprawling country. I don't think we can really take the approach of trying to make one city a football factory for the nation; that's likely to make people angry in a country this size. That said, we absolutely do need to expand our coaching pool. Coach training needs to be more accessible, both in terms of cost and availability of license courses. And we need to figure out how to get our most talented kids playing against each other earlier and more often, without falling into the "winning is everything" trap at early age levels.
Tell players, especially young ones, to watch more games from around the world. If there is WC game Peru vs. Iran you sit and watch, if there is WC qualifier Germany vs. NI you sit and watch, if there is EL game Hertha BSC vs. Dinamo Minsk you watch. Simply, get as much exposure to international game as you can from the youngest age. If you try to play professionally, but have never seen EL or WC game other then USMNT, well... It is like trying to play hockey and never watching NHL, or Basketball and never watching NBA.
Maybe we fans should start by boycotting all things USMNT until Sunil is out. Step one is starting with a clean slate from the top. If the press won't apply enough pressure it's up to the fans.
Screw the angry slackers in the other cities, which city cares about that? I nominate San Jose to piss everyone off and dominate with all A-grade coaches. How many is that in Iceland? I found an article that says 600. I think we can do it. We just need Sergey to care about soccer as much as freakishly large airships and synthetic-meat hamburgers (?!?! Sergey, google paints unflattering picture of you, maybe you should talk to them?).
We're improving on that. As recently as ten years ago, we had players entering MLS who had never seen a single professional game, not even MLS or the USMNT, before their own professional debut. As of two years ago, soccer is the second-most-watched sport among American teenagers.
I believe that first part. Matches exactly what I know of college soccer players from the early-to-mid 90s. That second part? I don't believe. Who where? The teens I know (who all play soccer or have recently given it up) watch basketball most and football second. A little baseball. Hockey families watch hockey. I never have seen, heard of, or been in a house with a teen watching soccer. They sometimes watch highlights of Ronaldo and Messi on youtube.
For all the folks with heartfelt opinions in this forum, based on the opinions expressed there seem to be few active youth coaches....
Well, you have to get more kids to play and get excited to play. The numbers have been declining every year. MLS needs to start programs like RBI and NFL Play 60 to increase participation. The idea is, if you have more teams and more chances for kids to make a great living as a pro athlete, the quality may suffer at first, but as kids grow up and it becomes part of our culture, it will be better in the long run. Plus, as long as mls continues to grow, many very good players from overseas will continue to come over to improve the league as a whole. Plus, I think dividing the country up to reduce travel will improve the overall level of play. I have a friend who works college basketball for espn. He said that during the season, he is in a different city about every 2 days. By the third day, he wakes up in a hotel and has no idea where he is. Mls clubs are traveling the day before games and fly commercial for all but 3 games in the season. Plus, they fly home after every game. That means when Orlando plays in Toronto Wednesday and Houston Saturday, they fly to Toronto Tuesday, play Wednesday, fly back to Orlando late Wednesday night, train Thursday, then fly to Houston Friday, and back Saturday night after the game. They save their 3 charters for cross country trips (or to Montreal, Toronto for teams like SKC, FC Dallas, Houston). Flying commercial also means they are subjected to the same weather delays, maintenance issues and passenger problems that we all are. DC United’s flight to Montreal Friday, June 30th was cancelled and they had to be at the airport at about 6 am Saturday for a 7 pm game. Needless to say, they lost. While we’re at it, with how tired the US looked in every single road CONCACAF game, I think they should be looking at their travel schedule and how they go about their road trips and player selection.
ESPN Sports Poll, 12-24 age group. As a sport, soccer edged out basketball for second, and was behind only football. As far as leagues go, MLS was still below the NBA as well as college football and basketball, but ahead of both MLB and the NHL.
I worked in an urban school which was 85% Black in SEC territory, and I was surprised at the number of students who would ask me about a game they saw on TV, or a player (usually Messi or CR7, but sometimes other players). It wasn't a huge number, but it was notable.
US finished with 1 win, 4 draws, and 3 losses on the road in World Cup Qualifying Fourth round: 1-1-1 Win: St Vincent & The Grenadines; Draw: T&T; Loss: Guatemala Hex: 0-3-2 Draw: Panama, Honduras, Mexico; Loss: Costa Rica, T&T That’s pretty pathetic. Pretty obvious that there were problems throughout the whole cycle and it wasn’t something that just popped up out of nowhere
And he'll be replaced by someone with the same agenda as Sunil. Fans need to boycott the closed single-entity structure that is crippling our player development. The US Soccer structure is run like Kim Jong-un runs North Korea. The Politburo is not going to get rid of themselves.
The Dutch U21 was European Champions in 2007, and none of them made it into the Orange team going into the Final of WC2010 or semi final WC 2014.
That is true and one example. But look at a team like France. Their team has players from the U20 World Cup team that won in 2013. They also finished top 4 in the 2011 U 20 World Cup. They went to the EURO Final and are a top 5 fave to win in Russia in my opinion. So it can go either way when it comes to youth translating into Senior team results..
Yup, but for 47 years we never made waves in youth tournements before that Euro U21 title, yet we became a super power and the country that gave the world exhilirating matches still talked about in which we destroyed world champions and runners up Even with a selection not rated much by the pundits we baffled the world with the revenge match against Spain. So a good performing youth team isnot a prerequisit to success, it takes more than that. The Belgian team had overall better players in the WC2014 than us, and where did they end up?