The best analogous country (in soccer terms) to US

Australia, mate

 

I'll go a slightly different direction and say Norway, not so much because of the similar situation, but because of the similarities of styles of soccer, quality of domestic league, number and reputation of players in big leagues and overall National Team quality.

They play the same sort of long ball, run like hell brand of soccer that allows them to compete with anybody but is often uninspiring to watch. They have some players in the top leagues, but not a ton and nobody who is readily considered a superstar (Riise, Solskjaer, Carew are all good players but not up in the Zidane, Henry, Davids category).

The main problem with coming up for an exact paralell for the USA is that there simply is none, now or ever. The combination of wealth, population and genetic diversity make for a situation simply unlike any other in the world.

 

There is quite some big difference between our nats and Turkey, first of all they have Gala and To a big extent their Fans are some of the most fanatic plus the sir Ali Yemeni stadium is always a factor. Another thing is that in the past few years they have tended to produce the so called natural midfielders,from Emre,Okan and Oktay.I think Turks also have this Mentality of always playing beautifull soccer,I remember watching their qualifiers against Belgium in 96 and depite being 3-down at home they still wanted to walk the ball into the net. As far as France,whoever thinks that France has just one decent crop of players better realize that in Europe right now everyone is trying to play catch up as far as producing talent compared to France. We can compare ourselves to Japan as far as the J-league,but I tend to think they have invested much more on the coaching front than we have. So I could say in the next 2 years we would have to compare ourselves to everyone and measure ourselves, to the progress that we have made,or the progress that others have made.But ours is a unique situation.

 

jri cracks me up.

Australia and Japan are perfectly fine analogies to me, as is Korea; though the J League is probably ahead of MLS in terms of infastructure, teams, pro/rel, attendance, etc. Closest is probably Aussie or Japan. Mexico's WAY ahead of us on the league level.

I'd say we've a ways to go before we get to Turkey. Much as it pains me to say that about those ... (edit). People.

 

I have come up with a new country to compare you with. Wales. (Wales borders England to the west). Wales have got a shyte league, their best players move to the EPL (or BP for strange individuals) but have a failry nifty team on the world stage. The fact that Wales has a pop of 2 million while the US has 300 m can be overlooked

 

Japan is clearly the most analogous to the US.

Australia is similar to the US in its sports obsessed culture, but soccer is always going to be second tier. However, they will continue to produce quality talent, as they do in any sport the compete in.

 

"always", can you be sure on that ? ISn't football the fatsest growing sport in Australia now ? You Aussies took a look of delight in the friendly win over England last year

 

I can be pretty sure>

Fastest growing? So what Are you sure that growth is going to continue.

Its like the US. The big sports are unlikely to be surpased.

 

Iran was part of South America in 1998?

 

I seem to remember that Australia wasn't the only team Iran beat in 1998.. ;-)

 

MLS is much better than the Welsh league, Rambler. But you could probably take MLS out of that sentence, put in any other league, and it'd still be true.

 

Have we thoroughly trashed the idea that the US is anything like Turkey?

 

What exactly are you looking for?

A national team which had equivalent success as the US, or country where the sport of soccer, its support, and relative success of its teams and players is equivalent to the US?

 

Altough its' really the only common denominator we have to compare international teams, basing opinions about a teams quality based on tounament play is, and always will be flawed, given the nature of tournament soccer. D2 and D3 teams consistently knock off 1 or 2 premiership teams during the FA cup, but can't seem to make it into the higher divisions through league play.

 

May be you would consider changing the thread title. From the current title, I thought this was going to be a discussion about which country's soccer scene (be it success or failure) is most similar (analogous?) to that of this country.

 

Ahem.

Turkey need to 'prove' their World Cup performances over a longer period in order to be able to 'match' the US team's achievements?

I have to ask this jri - do you really believe it when you post things like this or are you having a little chuckle to yourself at the thought of people's reactions?

Turkey are a better team than the US.

 

Turkey was a better team but I'm not too certain now.

Otherwise you're right

 

I don't want this to turn into a massive argument about the relative strengths of the two teams , but I'd argue there is nothing to suggest that the US has overtaken Turkey since the World Cup.

Admittedly Turkey failed to qualify for Euro 2004. But that's just because England got the better of them over the two games between the sides. They won all their other matches, if I remember correctly, then slipped up against Latvia.

But the US hasn't exactly set the world alight since 2002 either. Confederations Cup? Gold Cup? OK, so those tournaments may not be representative of the US team at full strength but they're still competitive matches. I see no evidence that US fans can consider their team better than Turkey.

 

It's about more than just the national team though. Turkey is analagous to the United States in terms of the domestic leagues, too. The passion and intensity of a Besitkas or Galatasaray match may rival that of, say, Columbus or San Jose, but that would be a recent development. So, given the status of their various domestic leagues, Turkey is still a more analagous country to the US than, say, a country like Australia, where soccer isn't the most popular sport and where the league struggles to make money.

 

You raise some very good points about Ireland and soccer. I'm sure there are Irish people on the boards who are far more qualified on the subject than I am, but I'll take a try at your theories, etc. Although I've never lived in Ireland, I do have Irish parents and many other Irish relatives who emigrated to the US, have many relatives who still live in Ireland, and I've been to Ireland many times. From my experience, you're correct that it's a misconception that soccer is historically a mainstream sport in Ireland. It probably differed by regions, but my experience is with the West of Ireland (e.g., Lietrim, Roscommon, Sligo, Kerry, Limerick) and many people there were anti-soccer (the political reasons are a tad stronger than you hint at above). I think at one time, an athlete could not register with the GAA to play Irish football if they also were registered with a soccer team. Back in the 1950's & 1960's, any discussion of soccer was banned from some of the Irish-American social clubs my father was a member of and frequented. Some of my Irish uncles and cousin's comments about soccer sound very similar to a stereotypical American football player. My uncle in Leitrim used to endlessly needle my soccer playing cousin in Donegal for playing a girls or sissy sport. In the early 90's, one of my cousins from Sligo explained to me the reason soccer was getting more popular in Ireland was because it was an easy game to play unlike the more challenging Irish football which requires hand and foot coordination. He discounted the national pride in the Irish soccer team's international success or the opportunity for players to make significant money on English teams. Interestingly , the Irish sports (football & hurling) are still amateur. So the best player in the country who plays in front of 50,000 people in the finals, has a day job.

Whenever I see an American soccer fan insist on calling the sport football because "it's called football everywhere else in the world", I always think of Ireland where football means Irish football.

Now someone Irish can correct all my misperceptions above.

 

One more vote for Japan.