I do NOT really expect the US to fail this time around but it "may" be a close thing. I got to thinking (VERY dangerous at my age) and began wondering if another failure might be exactly what we need to really get the ship floated again. It could force the USSF into a real, but somewhat expedited, search for a new coach and this search might yield a coach that actually can take the good and great players in the US pool and get them playing above expectations instead of below. Wouldn't it be nice to walk into any stadium in CONCACAF with a real swagger and expecting to win not just praying for a draw? I am not going to speculate about the "who" we might choose because I am not really deeply aware of the various personalities involved but along with the "who" I would like the "how" to be discussed. I hope this leads to some interesting speculation. Once again I am NOT saying we won't qualify, I believe we will, but it could be close.
Same as what happened when we didn't qualify. It didn't slow down our advancement as a soccer nation one iota. In fact, we've gone from strength to strength, starting to churn out good young players like never before. Good nations don't qualify. Italy, Holland, Chile, and others didn't qualify last time too. [In fact, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. Only one current federation champion was at the last World Cup. Only CONMEBOL. US is the current CONCACAF Champ. Italy is the current UEFA champ. Qatar is the current Asia champ. Algeria is the current African Champ. And Oceania didn't make it to the last World Cup.] Worth noting that we've lost one out of our last 20 games against CONCACAF opposition. The over-reaction to that one loss on these boards is truly astonishing.
There is absolutely zero good that can come out of not qualifying again. You'll lose a generation of fans. You'll get youth players who will look at the USMNT and think "why would I want to be part of that?" and look toward other sports. You'll see dual nationals go toward those other countries, particularly Mexico. You'll lose the interest in MLS. Nothing good comes out of not qualifying again, which is why so many of us are nervous about the very real possibility that it won't happen should the US not win tonight.
Nope. We didn't lose a generation of fans when we failed to qualify last time. People said that garbage nonsense then and it didn't remotely happen. Not even remotely. In fact the game has continued to grow and grow and grow in this country. We're stronger than we've ever been domestically. Progress will not be stopped.
The reason that didn't happen was because we had this generation of young talent that was going to come along. They're here. What do we look forward to if we don't qualify again?
More and better and more better talent. Most fans in the US at this point are already getting their fill from club leagues, endless friendlies, and the international game is icing on top.
If we fail to qualify it ought to be the end of the entire unaccountable, insular, USSF leadership regime. A mob will shave the head of Alexi Lalas and other apologists.
I don't think it is likely at all to happen. We're struggling for form right now, coming off a silly loss and we're still in solid place for qualification. Nope, not even Berhalter will screw this up. If the unimaginable were to happen, it would suck, especially for everyone who really cares about this game and this sport in this country, like most everyone here. Likely heads would roll at the fed. The sports media would react with all the old school retro types laughing at the silliness of Americans playing soccer anyway with the same tired old bits and the ones who actually care about the sport furious far beyond what we saw after Couva. Twellman style meltdowns would be considered mild. Still, soccer in the United States would go on. I honestly think we've reached a point with the domestic game that we can withstand this sort of setback and sophistication as fans that many would understand it wouldn't be reflective of the actual progress of the sport here. Maybe the USSF would struggle financially creating a viscous cycle for the national team, but MLS would keep churning. American players would keep getting to Europe through MLS academies and club teams with ties to Europe that litter the landscape now. The investments are too hard to walk away from for the MLS owners and the fans will still show up. No one is abandoning their club team because the national team sucks. Fans would watch a mix of the leagues from around the globe as they do now, and would keep arguing online maybe with a bit more vitriol toward the national federation if that's possible. But I don't see a lot that would likely change other than the shame and scandal of missing out on on the world's greatest sporting event with a more than adequate player pool. Most would recognize that the problem isn't a lack of quality players as they likely continue to succeed and only grow in stature. I really think it would be more of a black mark on USSF specifically than the larger world of soccer throughout the United States. These are not one in the same.
We will take almost a year to replace Berhalter only to finally land on a brother or relative of someone working in the USSF.
That you have the brains to make good movies is truly astonishing. Italy, Holland, and Chile didnt qualify because they werent good. They kept making excuses like you do, thinking they were because at some point in the past they were, and then found out for years, that when you step on the field not a damn person cares about what you were a decade ago. Instead, you have to score more goals than the other team. And Italy and Netherlands were not good teams, they were ranked 9th and 15th in EUFA in the leadup to that world cup The Netherlands had been bad for some time, and Chile went on an absolute nosedive they were such a bad team after 2016 and havent improved since. If we cant beat Panama away from home, how are we beating Spain in an overseas tournament?
i think the single biggest impact would be the effect on an mls that is expanding at a dangerous rate. i think that would be a real reckoning.
The bigger issue would be who is in charge to make the changes that need to be made? Earnie? McBride? Pfft.
We won't. Also: The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other and it still boggles my mind that so many people don't understand this.
Just about any team could isolate one bad game like that and use it to preach nothing but doom and gloom. "If we can't beat North Macedonia at home, how are we beating XYZ?" -some angry German fan on March 31, probably
Yeah, but then they qualified for the World Cup already. And have won 4 WC's. And went from having WC-winning Loew to one of the best in the world in Hansi Flick. It's a fair point that one bad result doesn't make/break a team usually. But that misses the underlying sentiment behind such comments. In our case, you shouldn't point to Panama and only use that loss to describe Gregg's tenure. But you probably shouldn't hand-wave our struggles as a team when we've mostly struggled to generate offense consistently, especially in the 2nd half, and Panama loss or not, unless we see some significant improvement in the quality of our games, there's little to suggest that this team will do much at the 2022 World Cup.
(sighs) One more time for the people in the back (and I'm sorry to seem to go off on you specifically...you're just the one who laid the straw that broke the camel's back), it has been established through multiple examples that form during World Cup qualifying and form during the World Cup have somewhere between virtually nothing and absolutely nothing to do with each other. Are they going to be playing a World Cup game at Estadio Rommel Fernandez in the middle game of a three-game-in-seven-day period? Are they going to over-rotate in a game against Spain? Can you tell what in the hell is going to happen over a year from now regardless of anything else? Did our form in the CONCACAF Nations League group stage have anything at all to do with our form this summer? The answer to all is an emphatic "no." Stop trying to extrapolate between things that have very little, if anything, to do with each other. The only thing that matters is finishing third in the group and qualifying for the World Cup...if it's via the most esoteric tiebreaker you can think of, you should not care one whit. It simply does not matter. The only thing that matters until March 2022 is results...that's it. Everybody can frankly stow their opinions about whether this performance or that one would've been good enough to beat freaking Brazil. Why in the actual hell should anybody care in the slightest? You're currently operating like a baseball fan fretting over a bumbling win in early June because that performance wouldn't be enough to beat the Dodgers in the World Series in October. Even if we accept your premise on that, who freaking cares?
The specific teams are almost immaterial. Nobody's specifically extrapolating one single game based on another single game of performance. Performance in WCQ does have something to do with performance in the WC. Why? Not because 1 result against Panama matters a year from now. Because we know Turner is probably the #1 GK now. Antonee Robinson couldn't get a game under Berhalter for a year. Now he's likely our #1 LB. Pepi's challenging to be a starting striker, and for the moment looks to be the one we're going to use for the foreseeable future. Etcetera. If you honestly think you can't make any reasonable judgements about a team based on the competitive matches they play, why even come here before the World Cup? There'd be nothing to discuss! Why should we care about the Olympics or any YNT program? None of it matters.
Missing two in a row, though? I think you definitely lose some fan interest, more than our fair share of dual nationals, and perhaps a handful of other players to other sports. It wouldn't be a catastrophe, but it would sting more than a bit.