I'm from the same generation. I actually think the problem is in reverse. There is so much soccer to watch, but how much of it is really critical games. I suspect the feeling is more related to how important the games are with the WC rather than watching Real Madrid abuse another La Liga Team.
Yeah, my problem is that my club team is the SJ Earthquakes. I can't say that I'm looking forward to another losing, inept season, but their my club!
It's worth remembering that in the 20s, we weren't bad. You could make as much money playing in Fall River or New Bedford as you could in Manchester or London. But our powers that be shot themselves in the foot in the late 20s, and then the Depression killed the league. Our win in 1950 was a fluke, to be sure, but mainly because 1930 was a sign of what could have been had our domestic league not croaked, and NOT a fluke. Took 40 years after 1950 to begin digging ourselves out of that hole we fell into c. 1932 or so. Gonna take more than a century to fully get out, if we ever do.
Remember that thing in the 90s where the USSF had the "winning the World Cup by 2010" thing? The most absurd thing about that whole absurd program was that it seemed to assume the rest of the world was in fact sitting still, waiting for us to catch them and blow past them.
They're all critical when you have a proper single table. I think we tend to forget that because we here are trying to get into the Big Danc- uh, Sweet Sixt- uh, whatever this playoff thing is. short attention spans need a postseason. I don't know how we arrived at this point. America has been responsible for many technical achievements over the generations- it would have been nice if they'd come up with something that would trim out arrogance a bit and get us to become part of the rest of the world around us. As far as what happens in Madrid... I can't say. Like the rest of the world outside the US and parts of Asia, I follow my domestic league.
It is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. Men have other football leagues around the world which are more competitive and continue to pay better than MLS - and this goes back decades before MLS was even discussed. Women don't have the same wholesale opportunities. For a while women's college soccer was the direct feeder to the WNT (and still is other some non-European teams) - there was no pro league equivalent anywhere else in the world. This has changed in the past 10 years, and NWSL both succeed because it draws a lot of the best players for weekly competition, but it under draws (fans v. NT) and under pays (by comparison to other top Women's teams). While top to bottom NWSL is probably still the best league, the best teams in the world are in Europe (Chelsea, Lyon, Barca, etc.) because they have more money. And the WSL (England) will overtake NWSL in the next few years because it required all top tier teams to have 100% professional contracts for everybody on the first team roster.
If you don't have a domestic league that can pay you enough for a decent living you don't really have an opportunity. That was the situation for US men in the late 80's early nineties, similar not exactly the same to US women now.
I'm gonna push back on your groupings a bit. I would put England and France in the first group. England has over 100 years of history of women's club football, but were stifled by the sexism of the Football Association. That changed in the early 1970s not long after they played in Mexico at the first semi-official Women's World Cup. France has been professional since the 1970s. Germany actually didn't become professional until after France. But they had a similar issue to England where initially men's clubs couldn't support/be linked with women's clubs by football association rules.
When I joined bigsoccer in 2000, as a soccer newbie, the main thing I "learned" was when our Reggie Bushes started to play soccer, we would destroy the rest of the world.
1. Project 2010 talked about winning the cup, because of course it would and should, but it was really intended to be a comprehensive plan to take a Great Leap Forward. 2. If Jermaine Jones and Charlie Davies had been healthy, meaning Robbie Fndley and Ricardo Clark sit, we almost certainly would have made the semifinals in 2010. From there, all it would take is a significant-not-miraculous upset over Holland, and beating Spain in South Africa again. That team was like this team in that the first XI (assuming Jones and Davies) was really solid, but we only had like 2 decent bench players. Fatigue might have caught up to us at some point.
Even reminds me of our match against the Netherlands. “Look at us as we possess the ball so well! Oh shit they have scored.”
But, again, the men were competing with long established professional leagues. The women have college soccer (historically) and also the NWSL. But the rest of the world also does not have a living wage aspect as well. The top teams do, and the top players on the rest of the teams, but not entire leagues. Hell, remember Bend it Like Beckham? The big "club" they went to was UC Santa Clara (yes, I know that was 20 years ago). I think the women and men are in two different places.
My favorite memory of Convey is a US Soccer video where they interviewed him and Eddie Pope, the two most introverted guys on the squad at that point. It was deliciously uncomfortable with a lot of awkward silences as they answered questions as briefly as possible with very little emotion.
But nobody, not even CR, could outperform Bobby Convey when it comes to the skill actually being discussed: waving frantically to be passed the ball, then becoming morose when that didn't happen.
The first time I ever saw Bobby Convey live was a game at RFK which was a doubleheader with a WCQ. I think it was September 2000 in the semifinal round against Guatemala - we won that game - I don't think I went to the September 2001 game against Honduras which we lost. But what I remember about the MLS game was Bobby Convey waving for the ball, and not getting the ball passed to him.