Call this the "Punch List" since we all wanted to punch a wall on 10/10/17. Before that disaster, many openly hoped the USMNT would miss the World Cup because it would precipitate radical changes. In the hours after Couva, many identified problems that needed fixing. I've tried to come up with some items and see what has happened in the 69 days since the Recent Unpleasantness. Please add on any items. 1. Arena Fired: Was allowed to resign on 10/13/17 1a. Arena's staff fired: Currently in charge of USMNT 2. Sunil Fired: Still in the job; but could be replaced in February 3. Pay to Play ended or addressed seriously: Nothing done 4. An American in MLS sold to Europe: None yet 5. Pro/Rel Instigated: Nope 6. Solidarity/TC payments allowed: Nope 7. Coaching License fees reduced: Nope 8. Referee license fees reduced: Nope 9. NCAA moves to FIFA rules and two semester schedule: Nope
I don't think 3 through 9 would have any significant impact on the national team. 5 is stupid and people who push for it are stupid people. 7 and 8 have no impact on anything in related to this forum. 9 would be nice, but USSF has virtually no control over that arena.
7 is one of the most direct means by which the fed could directly improve American soccer (including the national team eventually) within their means. Otherwise, I'd say you're spot on.
This is a very curious post. I can see how all of 3 through 9 addresses many issues, could improve soccer in the US and hence the USMNT. Before I add anything else, it would be helpful to understand what you think could be improved and how you would suggest doing so?
Agree. 3 to 9 address or are a result of many of our issues. It took an 18 yr old carrying the NT on his back to even finish 5th in the Hex. That suggests massive problems with how we do things.
3-9 Not being addressed properly to this point, despite years of debate, are absolutely major reasons why we missed out on a World Cup. If they are not addressed now you will find yourself calling for these changes 4-16 years from now as you ponder how it is even possible for us not to qualify for a World Cup again. As jond rightly pointed out, remove one player from our qualifying campaign and you truly see how low we have sunk, largely do to points 3-9 not being addressed. The young kids are there at the beginning of the funnel year after year, the only reason we end up with garbage dribbling out as they progress through the ranks, is because we put arbitrary, unnecessary and MLS/SUM motivated barriers in the way. If we don't work on improving things now we never will, because we will always have a few great players like Pulisic, Wynalda, Ramos, LD, CD and the like to lift us to mediocrity, that mediocrity has been the justification for never fixing these glaring issues. In the larger soccer landscape we are not mediocre at this moment, right now we are total dog shit. The only possible silver lining is the potential motivation to actually address points like those covered in 3-9.
I think we should add: -Change the crest. Changing the crest would have a direct impact on improving the national team. Maybe they should also change to Adidas, because Nike is holding back the national team as well. Sorry, if we're saying stupid things in this thread, I wanted to be part of it.
Yes, the post you replied to had two suggestions which would have a bigger impact on the national team than several of the op issues. Sorry. I simply can't take any thread in which pro/rel is suggested to have any real benefits to anyone other than currently non MLS club owners. When that kind of talk is brought up, it basically relegates the entire credibility of a poster and informs me that his/her level of intellect is so low that a serious response is not worth my time.
4 is more a measure of performance rather than an action 9 probably isn't worth worrying about given the declining importance of college soccer and the difficulties of dealing with the ncaa 3 and 5 are infeasible 6 depends on how fast the lawsuit goes 7 and 8 are doable but I'm not sure people understand how slow the process is. The new president will need to appoint a new technical director. The technical director, people from the coaches and referees side along with the educators will have to put together a committee to make a recommendation. With board approval, they can move forward. Maybe takes a year and a half or two. Several rounds of coaches then can go through the training. How long does it take to get an A license? Money for this means less money for other things (development of women's soccer, youth scholarships, national team payments) so the president is going to be key to persuade the various parties to spend the money this way.
Well at least we know your stance on pro/rel and that you don’t take this discussion seriously. I don’t necessarily believe pro/rel is the answer but understand why some people are for it and issues it would help address. I’m not sure if that makes me “stupid people” or not.
The point of this thread was to list things people in the media and on these boards said would be fixed if we missed the World Cup. So far, very little has been done and strong forces are working against anything changing. Your opinions on the items can be interesting but are tangential to the point of showing nothing is changing.
I'm agnostic on pro/rel; but you would have to admit it would increase interest and stability in lower division soccer in the US? How could it not. Better lower divisions would mean more jobs and better competition for the 16-22 year olds that currently rot on MLS reserve teams. Top tier clubs all over the world loan young players to their domestic lower divisions but never in the US. The base of the pyramid is a joke in this country. Pro/Rel is suggested for fixing it. What do you suggest? Leave it a mess? thought so.
It’s not worth the time and best to not make this about any one idea, especially this one. You put a nice list together “solutions”. I’ll try add what I believe the problems are and then line up your list with some additional thoughts later.
Because of all the money owner's have paid into MLS to get a team it's hard for me to believe there is a way to instigate promotion and relegation. An alternative would be the baseball model where all teams have minor league teams in AAA, AA, one or two in A and sometimes a rookie league. The advantage would be that teams control their own players from rookie league to major league and style can be the same the whole way. In some ways it seems more natural with a team having all the academy teams so introducing differing minor league teams is just an extension of their academies.
That part is easy. Just require and entry fee to become eligible for the promotion-relegation pool. The proceeds go towards paying off the teams that are relegated. There are buyouts in the Premier, la Liga, and the Argentina Primera, among others, in one form or another.
That is one solution but I wonder how many teams could get their financial house in order to actually do that. Would there also be minimum stadium requirements etc? May in fact be very doable but it is arguable.
So looking at your list the issues that pop into my head are accountability, transparency/conflict of interest, player development (at multiple stages), “freedom” of player movement, infastructure, other (improved quality of matches, stronger culture, etc) accountability... 1. Arena Fired: Was allowed to resign on 10/13/17 1a. Arena's staff fired: Currently in charge of USMNT 2. Sunil Fired: Still in the job; but could be replaced in February Comment: this is relatively self explanatory. I don’t think it stops at just these two groups. More on this in the next section. transparency/conflict of interest... 10. Dissolve SUM and have no direct relationship between USSF and any league 11. Develop vision for all of US Soccer Comment: this is pretty self explanatory as well. We continue to float along with no integrated plan. US soccer needs a LT vision and plan to reach it. They could start by dusting off project 2010, assessing what was right in that proposal and what wasn’t and how we’ve done in the 20ish years to achieve those goals. It should then be updated for today’s landscape but there shouldn’t be one universal time frame, but each section have its own “deadline” with interim progress check points. This would not be just a proposal but the actual blueprint for the progress that is planned to be made. These short term goals should be well known and people responsible for each section and should be held accountable. The rest of the issues included below would fit into this integrated solution. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~clc5q/Project2010.pdf infrastructure... 5. Pro/Rel Instigated: Nope 5a. Baseball structure Comment: It is time to make a decision. The planned infrastructure of how 5 year olds are connected to the top league needs to be known and people interested in owning teams can begin to figure out how they want to fit into it. Theoretically Pro/rel could be solved by figuring how to payout current MLS owners over time. Current MLS teams would continue to participate in the top divisions profits until they’ve gotten their “investment” out. I’m sure there are technical/legal issues to be sorted out as well. The baseball model has the challenge of getting each MLS team to commit to at least 4 teams, while some are struggling to get to 2. I think this model solves many of the issues pro/rel does in terms of identifying and promoting top players and coaches, but doesn’t have the benefit of bringing in new investors which has the potenital for additional innovation. Access to play.... 3. Pay to Play ended or addressed seriously: Nothing done 3a. Futsal courts built in all major cities Comment: Pay for play isn’t going away completely, but needs to be or almost completely at the elite level. Professional academies need to be pushed down far enough that talented 10 year olds have a path to play in a competitive environment with competent coaching. Futsal and street soccer needs to be nurtured into our culture. This of course will take time, but identifying space, spending the limited money needed, creating tournaments, etc. player development (at multiple stages)... 7. Coaching License fees reduced: Nope 12. Parent targeted education (including very young ages... Byer philosophy) 13. Skill benchmarking Comments: This is a hard one. Is it just an investment or can enrollment in early courses that are online be increased or leverage other prior investments to offset? If we are building the infastructure and having multiple levels of professional soccer, the demand for quality coaches would rise significantly. Maybe US coaching licenses will be prerequisites or at least partially funded by the clubs. Have enough coaches participated in Program with the French federation that the knowledge could be further leveraged. Parents remain to be quite unkowledgeable about the game and how to develop players. Can there be online programs that can be created that can help build general knowledge and help change focus of parents... these could likely just be a small subset of coaching courses that eliminates all the “how to” and is just “why”. Hopefully the Byer “pilot” in Seattle works and this can expand significantly. I’ve seen discussions of these before and even websites that aggregate tests, but not followed. It could be tests or just video of what elite means at each age. “freedom” of player movement... 4. An American in MLS sold to Europe: None yet 4a. MLS buys players from lower US divisions 6. Solidarity/TC payments allowed: Nope Comment: There needs to be a constant flow of talent to their level and environment that is best for development. This needs happen as soon as possible as decisions and compensation are becoming binary... MLS or not. Scouting... Comment: everything else above should make this a necessity for clubs to compete. other (improved quality of matches, stronger culture, etc)... 8. Referee license fees reduced: Nope 9. NCAA moves to FIFA rules and two semester schedule: Nope Comment: improved refereeing is needed and in general we need to protect skilled players more in this country. I wasnt sure I saw the importance of the NCAA, but it is just one more thing that increase the overall talent and knowledge of the sport in this country, which will only benefit the next generation more.
It's only recent expansion fees which are a lot. Many teams paid very little to get into MLS. Either way, the main point IMO for pro/rel is 24-28 teams will never come close to adequately covering a landscape this big. Without it there's no incentive for non-MLS clubs to do much of anything. Some bring up the NFL/NBA and that essentially proves we need pro/rel as those league rely on the HS/NCAA system to scout/develop their talent, stretching thru hundreds of communities nation wide. When someone says we don't need pro/rel because the NBA/NFL don't have it I ask ok then, who will do all the work for MLS the 300+ Division 1 colleges do for those leagues? Still haven't received an answer other than pro/rel is stupid. We can also look at the poor level of the American player, our general poor development and perhaps ask if 150M expansion fees multiplied by at least 12 investors willing to pay that money which will simply be pocketed by current MLS owners just might be better allocated on say, player development, academies, coaching, etc. My apologies for such a crazy idea. It's a great system when the NASL winners fold a matter of days later and a team like Sac Rep willing to pay 150M to just join a club has that investment shelved and their future potentially thrown in the garbage instead of pumping that money into their own club. Some say only eursnobs want pro/rel because "Europe". I suggest we need it because we are in fact not some small Euro country. If we were the size of France then a closed system with 24-28 teams is far more feasible. In a country of 315M and a land mass larger than continental Europe, we need far more teams engaged in this game. And because we don't have it the result is not a single team across this country survives by the develop/sell model, we have clubs folding left and right and we have 1.8 Billion+ in potential investment locked out and shelved instead of pumping it into the game, into development. And that's all part of why with so many resources we can't even draw vs T&T and make the World Cup. Essentially, we have the most inefficient model globally. And parts of our fanbase are incredibly exclusive, worrying about the potential lost revenue of only a handful of owners while dismissing the potential opportunity of countless others, even while laughing at the failures of numerous non-MLS owners who largely fail because of a closed system and lack of opportunity. Somehow it's funny when the Deltas fold but if Bob Kraft were to get relegated because he's asleep at the wheel, can't finish above DCU and has zero accountability it would be a tragedy. But anyone who acknowledges that is an idiot.
I’d thank you for trying to keep us on track, but I believe you are the one that is making pro/rel more a part of the discussion than it would have been otherwise. You obviously “can’t take the three seriously” and think many of us are idiots, so why not just lets this one go.