The point was made that Mexico has dominated the US. That's simply not true--and historical evidence indicates that. It is a crisis--and yes the US has had arrogant leaders. The biggest mistake was not firing Klinsmann after 2014 (who was one of those arrogant leaders) as Germany did after 2006. That said there are a lot of good soccer nations out of the Cup this time around. Ones that never should miss a cup. It happens. One reason it happened to us is the positive development of soccer in the US, especially with MLS, which has given CONCACAF players another place closer to home to play and develop and jump to higher leagues. The jump from MLS to Europe is established now and it's a smaller jump than that from most of the smaller leagues that make up CONCACAF (Gonzalez for us to Italy was a good example). The rising tide happens to have floated more boats than us. Though it's starting to work for us now. Look at all the young players getting a real chance in the major European leagues. That didn't happen 10 years ago. Yes, soccer countries with less population and resources qualified. But that's their only real sport in most cases. The US will always have a division here. There's not one sport that dominates (some are stronger than others). It's how you get a pro basketball player having a son who plays in the NHL, for example. But this is not the same case as the Browns--not by a longshot.
I didn't say Mexico dominated the US. I said: FMF is better at developing the sport in their country than the USSF is here, I don't think that's a very controversial statement. And then I said the US and Mexico have been more or less equal since 2002. Who cares about winning WC group stages or second rate Gold Cups?
It's easy to throw out the data that don't agree with your points.... And I don't think FMF is all that better at developing the game--if as you say they are "more or less equal since 2002". Equal isn't better--except maybe in Animal Farm. Or Lake Woebegone. Better how? One World Cup qualification? Meh. I'd be willing to bet there are more US born players in major European leagues than Mexican. Mind you, that's largely because FMF has traditionally, until recently, made it difficult for Mexican players to go overseas and still play for Mexico. But still.
What data? That the only thing that really counts for the US, the World Cup, we have done no better than Mexico since 2002? US U-17: 4th place at the U-17 WC once. 3 time CONCACAF U-17 Champion. US U-20: 4th place at the U-20 WC once. 1 time CONCACAF U-20 Champion. Mexico U-17: 2 time U-17 WC Champion. 7 time CONCACAF U-17 Champion. Mexico U-20: 1 time U-17 WC Runner-up. 13 time CONCACAF U-20 Champion. ??? Do you watch Mexico? Saying that their level of talent and ours is the same is laughable. Saying their style of play and ours is the same is laughable. The US still relies on hard work and hustle, not skill, not technique, and certainly not tactics. We also rely on getting Germany and Iceland's rejects to fill out our rosters. How about this, in the United States' history, they've made it out of the group stage 5 times, including in the 1930 WC featuring 13 teams. We've made 1 quarterfinal. The other 4 times all came since 1994. We also went 40 years (1950 - 1990) without qualifying. We have failed to qualify 10 times. 6 Gold Cups, 0 Confederations Cups, 0 Olympic Gold Medals. Shit, the US has never even gotten out of the Olympic group stages. Finished 4th at the Copa America twice. Mexico has made it out of the group 8 times, including 6 consecutive times between 1994-2014. They've made 2 quarterfinals. They've failed to qualify 3 times. 10 Gold Cups, 1 Confederations Cup, 1 Olympic Gold Medal. Finished 2nd at the Copa America twice, and 3rd three times. OK, that's easy enough to figure out. Since you said US born, I assume you mean people that came up though the US youth system, and not foreign born guys like Brooks and Chandler. Also, I assume major European leagues mean no second division players. US (12): Pulisic (Dortmund) Cameron (Stoke) Hamid (Midtjylland) Wood (Hamburg) Miazga (Vitesse) Yedlin (Newcastle) Horvath (Brugge) Moore (Levante) Hyndman (Bournemouth) McKennie (Schalke) O'Niell (Excelsior) Payne (Excelsior) What, 4 regular national team players? Mexico (14): Hernandez (West Ham) Guardado (Real Betis) Corona (Porto) Vela (Real Sociedad) Moreno (Roma) Lozano (PSV) Herrera (Porto) Fabian (Frankfurt) Layun (Porto) Ochoa (Standard Liege) Reyes (Porto) Jimenez (Benfica) Salcedo (Frankfurt) Govea (Royal Excel, loan from Porto). What, 11 or 12 regular national team players? TL;DR - Saying that the FMF and USSF are on par is completely laughable. Perhaps recent results are somewhat similar, but how those results have been achieved, both on and off the field, are not comparable.
Oh, for the love of God. Can people stop acting like the United States is the worst country in the history of world soccer? Yeah. We failed to qualify. We have issues. We’re not the worst team on the planet. We finished with one more point in this qualification cycle than Mexico did in 2013. And it still took a 35 yard blast, a cheap own goal, a hit post, a phantom goal for Panama, and a ridiculous Honduras goal that went off the crossbar off the back of the goalie’s head and into the net.
You've missed a few. Stanko for Freiburg. Klinsmann for Berlin (though he's not played yet in the BL). I'll not count Johannson, even though he is US born, as he learned his game in Europe. But I *will* count Rossi, as he learned his game here. Keaton Parks for Benifica. And I'm sure I'm missing some. I'll also note that Mexican players in European leagues is a relatively new thing, Hugo Sanchez not withstanding. Go back a few years and the answer would have been "not many", as FMF kept their players home. But some of their poor results caused a change in that--that and some of their guys crossing the border to MLS and getting a wider audience. My comments using Animal House and Lake Woebegone were simple. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." and "where ... all the children are above average". Lastly, you seem to have forgotten the US's second place finish in the Confederations Cup--10 years after Mexico's win--including one of Spain's few competitive defeats in that era. As far as the Olympics go, you are also incorrect in one point. The US finished 4th in 2000--which is out of the group stage.
whether they are "regular national team players" isn't within their control. I think USSF, for a couple years now, has been counting on "household names" to sell merchandise, more than they were interested in winning anything. They figured we'd beat all of CACAF, even if we finished second to Mexico, so why not sell a few extra Zardes jerseys, or whatever. As to style, I think we need a "national" style that players can absorb, so that when called to the nats, they have a basic understanding of how things will be done. I don't think this style should look like a South American team, nor necessarily like any European side, but there must be something there. For starters, I think we should take everybody to the "track meet", work on a system to run them for all they're worth, take advantage of medium sized, quick players. We should also expect players to learn some ball control, more than we have now.
Zardes and Trapp get the start against Bosnia & Herzegovina. Trapp is wearing the armband 957788091737149440 is not a valid tweet id
Second half, Steffen in, Zardes out. Trapp did fine, took all the set pieces and they looked good. Zardes played on the wings and was...Zardes. Boring game overall.
Cameron gives some strong opinions. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/...ron-stoke-city.html?smid=tw-share&mtrref=t.co Safe to say him and Bruce do not exchange Christmas cards.
I'm no fan of Cameron's politics, but he's a good player. Starting Omar over him was Arena picking his boy, nepotism plain and simple. Klinsmann was a joke and deserved to go, but I didn't like Arena coming back from the very start, I would have got someone else. Honestly, everyone is to blame and no one will ever be able to hold the morale high ground on this situation.
Huh. On the other hand, I think plenty of athletes and entertainers are secretly not quite what you think (and this very, very much pre-dates Trump). It's just that most of them go along to get along most of the time. In any case, being a "huge Trump guy" is a bold move, Cotton. So, how does it manifest (no, I'm not going to Twatter unless it's for SaveTheCrew purposes, or maybe some Kmele Foster-related stuff)? Is he a super-nativist, or what?
When the whole 'muslim ban' thing was happening, everyone in the US team was against it. Except Cameron. He openly supported it. Its whatever. He's allowed to have that opinion. And obviously most athletes leave their politics private, it makes financial sense. Like Jordan once said, even republicans buy shoes. That being said, if you're gonna make those opinions public, people will become divided. It is what it is. Like i said, i don't like his politics, but he's a good player, and should have been playing those final two games. I'm not gonna say a guy shouldn't play because of his politics, unless he's a nazi or something.
Repped for finding this and posting it. We wouldn’t have qualified with Klinsi. And there is *plenty* of blame to go around for why we didn’t qualify. Timon—it’s a long article, but he gets into politics at the end of the story. I got the impression he didn’t like either candidate but leans conservative. I haven’t read his tweets.
Reposting this for his blunt honesty and his passion. Even if he’s an ML$ shill, this rant is dead on. "Belgium played Bosnia on a cow pasture!"