What's changed since U.S. failed to qualify for 2018 World Cup? Sadly, nothing

@chad still waiting

 

I miss USA in the world cup

World cup without ny US boys....

I remember our discussions during last world cups...it was so great to discuss with US fans...I miss it

Klinsi is out...hm...so I have not posted long time anything.

I hope US fans follow world cup....you can root for Germany☺

Enjoy world cup

Greetings from Germany

Your bltleo
M.Müller

 

He was poking fun at you - not claiming greatness for the article - but you know that.

And it's not a great article, but someone needs to point out the obvious, on a regular basis, to a readership beyond the BS regulars.

When the system cries out for top-to-bottom reform but you replace Gulati with Cordeiro ...

 

@TimB4Last I was reacting to posts like this.

To me, it wasn't a dumb article, it was mediocre and mundane. I wonder why people think a proper reaction is PREACH.

 

There are clearly some changes I'd like to see the way USSF runs things. But I hate to burst some of y'alls bubbles but here is a very simple point. If the USSF doesn't make money and lots of it then the MNT will never be any good.

Do you guys think class players just pop up on trees? It takes a load of money to put all the pieces of a strong soccer program in place. We can argue all day whether USSF should do it, clubs should to it, private corporations should do it. But it doesn't change the simple fact that it takes money.

 

Seems like when focused solely on money (Gulato) we're not any good either.

 

Oh totally correct. But you still have to have money.

 

America was always about the Atlanta model. Horatio Alger (Blank) funds immigrant (Tata)who doesn't know anything about the old ways. Tesla would never be started by an American. They don't have the guts.

2022 will be the good ol' boy model. Kids will be put through every imaginable "combine" test to gauge their athleticism and a soccer machine that looks like the Alabama football team will take the pitch led by savants from the good ol' boy network. As the process goes forward, the cry will be just wait til manana - "Tyler Adams is a once in a generation athlete" will be one superlative. When it's over they will spout the usual clichés, the players were to blame, the coaches cant' get on the pitch and play, the players left it all on the pitch. At that point the imagination will start coalescing around a new idea - the players never meshed as a team and we lacked the tactical sophistication and individual technical ability to go all the way. A fancy pants from France will take over the program and be given "full control" together with boatloads of money and assigned the task of winning the cup on home soil in 2026.

 

First off the article was stupid. Go back to October. Think then where you expected the MNT to be today and what USSF would have done so far. An honest answer is that we are really better off than I expected. We have an interim coach who played a bunch of new faces and injected some enthusiasm into a dead program. What more do you think should have happened so far?

How about lets wait until the permanent coach is chosen and they are given some time. Seems like a bunch of BSers just want the MNT and USSF to fail so they can keep singing the same old blues. Give it a rest.

Not saying that the results won't be crap. But I am going to wait and see how it turns out and not say we are doomed before we are even out the gate.

 

Hmmmm. Maybe USSF shouldn’t limit themselves to $30m out of a minimum $90/year that SUM generates despite far higher ratings. An extra $30m could go a long way, no?

 

SI or ESPN should fire everyone and hire this guy. Finally, some reasonable perspective. Sound journalism. Interesting perspective. And metaphor!

 

I was reacting to jond's comment. The article was fine.

 

Sorry. I have jond on ignore.

 

This is 17 kinds of wrong.

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Tesla is a bubble about to burst. Musk's Boring Company is pure grift.

 

Biggest problem in our youth development.

 

This editorial is basically a glorified Big Soccer post. And not even the kind that passes for good discourse, like in one of the better forums. Mostly just repeats the echo chamber of cliches about what it takes to get to "The Next Level" by people who don't know any better: copying whatever Barcelona is doing, less focus on winning at the youth level, "hardening" players by sending them to Europe, "soccer robots" (whatever that shit is about), and other nonsense.

For instance, the hiring of Earnie Stewart is described thusly:

Is that who Earnie Stewart is? A coach with "MLS ties", even though he's a foreign-born American dual national, who spent most of his career as a pro player and technical director in Europe? I guess everyone forgot how up his ass they were when he helped bring Jozy to AZ -- a club he lead to back to relevance and a championship under his directorship (a fact that makes him a lot more qualified than other recent technical directors we've hired). Gulati (and now his secret, puppet regime) are the shittiest xenophobes I've ever seen, given they keep hiring people born in other countries to top positions.

 

More? How about how these rubes keep painting the NASL lawsuit as some kind of smoking gun of MLS / USSF corruption:

Yeah, MLS? Why didn't you do your best to help a failing league become a viable competitor to your business model, the very thing that destroyed American soccer in the 1930s, the last time we had a world class team? It's almost as though you behaved as any rational business would -- shame on you!

By the way, the anti-trust laws that the NASL is appealing to for protection (and ultimately failed to prove their case) don't even exist in Europe where football associations are concerned -- those structures are run explicitly as monopolies, where a challenge from an aspiring upstart league could not even exist conceptually. The US sports landscape is pretty unique in this respect, which has actually been an impediment to structuring the sport here. What happened to wanting to be just like Europe?

 

Literally wrong. Tesla could only be started by an American. It was started by a South African immigrant who went to America to achieve his potential. That's literally what we do. And it's hilarious that you bleat about "guts" despite the fact that there are a plenty of "gutsy" startups going under in Silicon Valley every year started by Americans.

Americans in general have plenty of "guts". That's why many take on big loans and start businesses, half of which fail in a year.

 

Exactly.

Americans is the only nation on earth to have the 'guts' and 'brains' to come up with Uber, AirBNB, Facebook, Google, Tesla, SpaceX, etc. etc.

Then the Chinese have the 'guts' to steal them.

 

Not sure I’d be counting Uber as a positive. Theyve never made a profit.

Unless your point is that Americans are especially successful bullshit artists.

And Tesla is going to fail too.

 

Isn't MLS a failing league? And Commisso is basically muckraking on the USSF and SUM since he's tired of US soccer's mediocrity and not reforming when needed. The NASL lawsuit was about the USSF attempting to kill off any competition to MLS so they can keep the narrative of MLS being the best and only top league and pro/rel will never work.

 

Now that's a hot take!

 

No.

Next?

 

With the obvious exception of 2026, be prepared to see the USA not qualify for a long time.

 

Uh....no.

We fxcked up everything we possibly could have this past cycle and still needed a perfect storm of incompetence and bad luck to miss out on the final matchday. Mexico isn't going away anytime soon but CR is aging and likely to take a big drop, with no one else looking likely to step up and take their place (maybe Jamaica, but they tend to severely underperform in WCQs compared to the Gold Cup). Plus starting in 2026 the WC is expanding to 48 teams.

The USSF is a train wreck but even if purely by default it would be absolutely shocking for the US to ever miss out on the WC again (unless CONCACAF and CONMEBOL ever merge, and even then we'd need a shitshow on par with this last WCQ cycle to not finish top 9 or so).