A few things: over my lifetime, I have seen an incredible increase in the quality of play at the youth level. I know everyone likes to dump on AYSO, but I include AYSO in this statement. When I started playing AYSO in 1969, nobody even new what soccer was. Voluteer coaches were telling players to kick it with strange parts of their feet (toe, that "bump" on the side of your ankle) and few understood anything about the game. None except a few immigrants had ever played the game before. AYSO is still not a serious league. Even at the U14 level, there are quite a few 1st time players and more than one coach that has never played the game before but the quality of play is light years ahead of the past. And this is without most of the "elite" players in the league...remember that there was no club soccer at that time. The most important thing about the growth, is that it hasn't been linear. I know it has been a long time since 69, but it has taken a long time for the curve to get started. At some time, in the near future, that tipping point will be reached. Don't underestimate MLS, my son talks about playing professionally in the MLS. I know he isn't alone. His favorite player is Messi, but he wants to play professionally here. As MLS grows, more and more kids will think like my son. Most won't make it, but it's the desire. Another thing is Density, we may have the largest number of kids playing soccer in the world (I don't know), but most are not real serious. They play in AYSo for a couple of months a year until they get to middle school or high school. The SERIOUS kids, however are spread out over a greater area. I think this is an extremely important issue. it means that it is much more difficult for the best players to play against other players of quality. This is true at every level from lunch time pick up games to weekend games and tournaments that may require hundreds of miles of driving per week. This is true even in Los Angeles where many of the clubs are travelling distances that require overnight stays. these huge travel demands place huge burdens on families and make it more difficult for teams to have competitive games week in and week out. I live in an area where there are several cities with a total poplulation of probably at least 1,000,000 people within approx 10-15 miles and the club teams still travel regularly 30-50 miles per weekend (or more). That wouldn't be the case in mexico, or any other soccer crazy country. We don't have a family friendly league that is also friendly to elite or semi-elite players. I doubt it is possible to have one as family friendly as ayso, but there is a happy medium. lower costs, less travel. The more family friendly leagues would be the least competitive, but the highest level would be subsidized by professional teams in the area. I know this is already happening to some degree. The good news? In my opinion, we are getting there and we are getting there faster than most seem to think. I think that most have such a pessimistic view because they have not experienced the growth of soccer over the past 45 years. Our final success won't be the result of anything any USSF president or any coach/technical director does. It will be the result of us reaching the tipping point and the exponential curve going sky high. It will also be the result of economic motives driving US professional teams to develop the elite. US soccer only developed US talent when there was no league (Bora had a team that played friendlies and used that as a professional league of sorts to develop the US team. Brandenton tried, but failed for several reasons, but one was the scale and the fact that there was only one Brandenton. Who did they play on a regular basis? density again. The question is when? people are saying at least another 20-30 years or more. I disagree. I would say 20years at the most and probably closer to 8-16 yrs before we have a realistic chance. If we win this year or in 4, it would be a perfect storm situation. I hope we win this year but either way, I expect us to win before I die.
I think you're right but I think there are other factors in play. For instance, in successful soccer nations (and even not so successful ones) there are a lot of pro soccer teams. Every city has a pro team. The local pro team reaches into the community for players to train. And they do this at a young age. So the barrier to entry for players is very low. If the kid can play he will get trained. And if he's really good he'll move up through the system. We don't have that in this country. Kids in the U.S have to join expensive club teams or traveling soccer teams. Most of our cities don't have pro soccer teams. Even MLS academies like to see their kids go to college now because they are restricted by MLS rules to offering them all contracts. So they let many of them go to college and then get a better idea of what kind of player they are.
I wouldn't call Bradenton a failure. It produced Landon Donovan and two of the players on the 23-man roster in Brazil in its very first class. But I get your point.
Bale is world class. Ramsey is pretty damn great but I doubt he'd be ranked as world-class. Besides Wales only has 1 or 2 "Great" players every 30-40 years. No need to get too excited.
He was not able to cement his status because of injury. But, when he was fit this season he was the best midfielder in the PL.
don't count out Captain Gerrard. I don't doubt the quality Ramsey has but I still haven't seen a consistent season to season world class showing from him. Maybe it's due to his injuries or just his bad luck when it comes to scoring.
Culture, popularity, all of that stuff matters. But the original question the OP was posing seems to be more asking what about the 'system' is broken. To me it's the economics of it. In the US the development of players is funded (largely) by their parents. That excludes a large percentage of the population from ever gaining initial exposure to the sport. Sure, once a kid demonstrates elite talent he may get helped along by USSF but the die is already cast by that time and we have already narrowed our choices. So we have parents paying all of this money to fund their kids development and advancement, as opposed to those other countries where kids are identified early by numerous pro teams who bring them in and pay to develop tons of kids with the hopes of getting one Wayne Rooney that they can sell for profit and fund the entire generation of the program. Those clubs have a specific financial interest in identifying and developing large number of kids in hopes that they can find that diamond in the rough. Here we have 100(ish) tiers of club teams, most offering various levels of competition from recreational to 'travel' teams (A, B, C, D whatever). Those clubs have a specific financial interest as well... but it's not identifying and developing talent... it's in cashing parents checks. Sure, there are a lot of individual people within all of these organizations that are good hearted and well intentioned doing their best to teach kids the game, but the system is not set up to reward clubs for player development. It's set up to reward clubs for marketing and size. If it comes down to doing what's best for the development of the clubs 3 best players vs doing what's best to get the club 300 MORE players then every club in the country will go for the cash from those 300 parents. So that has been our development system for decades. I think things are getting better now, I really think the Development Academy league will turn out to be a big improvement, but if you want to know what in the 'system' is broken then just follow the money.
People can say whatever they want, but Bradley was the best midfielder in the world today. Dude, is seriously almost Zidane-esque in a US shirt.
Yup It's basically a middle class sport in the U.S. While in most countries that do well its also a working class sport. I don't care what some apologists for our system say, not having a proper soccer pyramid hurts us. If we did have one we'd have more pro clubs recruiting and training up local kids from their own communities. This is how it works all over the world where soccer thrives.
People have been saying this for 30 years. The problem is that when youth soccer began to be developed in the country there was no real league to support a professional youth system. So we got pay to play. Pay to play demands immediate results so that the parents will come back to support the Director of Coaching's salaries. When the top tier can begin to pay (or at least finance) the youth sides then the pressure for immediate results will be eliminated and the clubs can take a longer term approach. That's when you will see real development between the ages of 14 - 18 years which is where our players seem to fall behind.
It's amazing how little credit Americans give their own players. We don't have any "elite players?" That's nonsense. Clint Dempsey scored the same number of premier league goals in one season than Aaron Ramsey has in his entire Arsenal career. If Aaron Ramsey was American we'd be talking about he's seemingly always injured, really hasn't accomplished all that much, and has been a relative disappointment in comparison to the hype he's generated. Since he's not, I guess we can pretend he's a special talent. People do realize that we just had a player developed almost completely in the United States retire with over 400 hundred appearances in the Bundesliga. Right? People must think we're ranked 13th in the world based on smoke and mirrors. Tim Howard has finished in the top 10 in the IFFHS world goalkeeping rankings for three years (and very well could this season)...................and he's not an elite talent? If he was Dutch, people would think he was hot stuff. Since he's American, American fans don't seemingly think he's anything "special." Tim Howard would start for Argentina or Brazil folks.................................
I'm pretty sure we are talking outfield players and Ramsey is a box to box while Dempsey is a supporting striker
Ramsey is a box to box midfielder his 10 goals this season are extremely impressive considering how hard he works defensively. He would have made the PFA team of the year and be nominated for PFA player of the year easy if he did not have that long injury spell. Plus he is only 23 so he could get better. And I think most people rate Howard as one of the better GKs around
There is a mathematical problem with your analyses, something known in statistics as "multiple hypothesis testing". If you picked a small country out of a hat and compared it to the USA, you could do a valid comparison. But when you chose Wales BECAUSE it has those famous players, you actually mentally "tested" all of the small countries in the world and chose Wales. The result is not at all surprising. And the analysis is not valid.
I might be alone, but I think Michael Bradley is the equal (if not better) than Aaron Ramsey. All we've got to look at is the number of youngsters developed in America that are being recruited by big European teams. The number of U20 and U18 youngsters that have signed pro contracts in Europe, Mexico and MLS over the past 6 months is astonishing. We had another one two days ago with Obinwa of the US U18s to Hannover. That followed two more youngsters going to Liga MX (Requejo and Rodriguez) and Ethan Sonis of FC Dallas to Freiburg. Our "best" squad for our U20 national team is probably............................. -----------Rubin (Utrecht)----------- Green (Bayern)--------------Arriola (Tijuana) ---------FLores (Dortmund)--Hyndman (Fulham) ---------------Cannouse (Hoffenheim)---------- Requejo (Tijuana)---EPB (SKC)-Miazga (NYRB)--Acosta (FCD) ----------------------Steffen (Maryland)------------- Others not in the XI: Castano (NYRB) Gall (Lorient) Sonora (Boca Juniors) Scott (Swansea) Pfeffer (Union) Lickert (Freiburg) Vasquez (UANL) Novakovich (Reading) Bailey (Leverkusen) Spencer (Molde) and on and on and on. That's just off the top of my head. There's 20 more. We're developing players being coveted by big European clubs and also recruiting top players like Green from abroad. I didn't even list a talent like Zelalem. We have this youngster Scott at Chelsea. We're not 20 years away. We're 10 years away. There's a flood coming with the next generation. Our U17 team is just kicking ass and taking names. Will any of these players develop into "special" talents like Gareth Bale? I have no idea, but there's enormous depth in our prospect pool. Those of us who are long-time followers of the national team and youth national teams remember the days when 4/5th of the squad were NCAA players. [Hell, we had NCAA players in our U23 Olympic team a couple of cycles ago.] Those days are long gone. And people ask why the youngsters aren't in MLS. The elite kids are being given big bucks to go abroad. After the U17 World Cup, there will be kids like Haji Wright of the Galaxy going off to Europe. Some already have. Danny Barbir signed with West Brom recently. People have to stop looking with covetous eyes at the pool that other nations have. For God's sake we're ranked 13th in the World. We're the Champions of North America that finished in first place in the Hex. We just kinda dominated the Champions of Africa. Let Wales have Bale and Ramsey. With those players they're ranked below the Cape Verde Islands in the FIFA rankings. Good luck to them.......................
I haven't had a chance to read through all the posts in this thread but I truly believe that multiple world class players born and raised in the US have already been born and will make a major impact in the next 10-12 years. At the youth level, there was a lack of coaching talent for decades. That has changed. It's not perfect but it's vastly better than before. Additionally, I think more kids view soccer as a sport they can grow up and play professionally. That wasn't the case before MLS. Finally, I think we have or had some sort of disconnect from the YNTs and the MNT. The 2007 US U20 team should have produced stars. Altidore and Bradley are the only two players from that roster to be in this WC. They had some serious talent on that squad. Not sure what happened.
Grew up in Ohio as well and agree completely. As an example our club team at 13 was the best in the surrounding counties. Then the following year we only won a single game because our top 4-5 kids all went to play 8th grade football for the school. I think switching it even to a spring sport would greatly increase the interest in certain areas. Several of the kids I mentioned ended up coming back to soccer after liking football but now they were a couple years behind. If soccer was a different season then those kids could give football a shot while not sacrificing soccer until they were absolutely sure football was the way they wanted to go.
Let's be blunt. The MLS "homegrown" signing rules were only adopted in about 2008. Meaning there has only been incentive for MLS clubs to develop and sign players in their academies for 6 frickin' years. Before that their youth programs were basically community service projects. Our domestic league is in its infancy in this regard, and they're doing pretty darn well based on that. Obviously MLS is generations behind clubs like Bayern, Barca, etc. Do people expect the San Jose Earthquakes to develop the "next Gareth Bale" right now? That's lunacy. The coaching and infrastructure is just in the process of being built. In effect that's why our top prospects are going to Europe at the moment. So at the moment we're "out-sourcing" that work while we catch up. It's not even something you can throw tons of money at. You can't just create a generation of elite youth soccer coaches throughout the nation out of thin air.
You're being absurd. And, in 2014, Dempsey couldn't get off the bench at the relegated Fulham. And don't even try looking up his WhoScored grades there. Meanwhile, no US player is being deemed worth above $10M, which is a relative pittance in global soccer where superstars change hands for upwards of $50M. In other words, the market sees US players as, by and large, of the bottom EPL quality - some slightly better, some significantly worse.