U.S. U20 March 2023 Friendlies: PBP When Available

In every u-20 group, there's a player or two who start out the cycle as key players and then fall behind. Cuevas looks like one of these players to me. Maybe Alvarado too. The coaching staff always has a difficult time deciding to replace them.

My main takeaway was that France was super freaking impressive. They should walk to victory at the u20 world cup. The other games should be a better indication of where we’re at.

 

I like Sullivan. I think he is legit, but he didn't have a good game.
He looks like he grew some since last year.

 

I was pretty impressed with this guy

Here is the defender, Marseille's Isaak Toure, standing near Paxten Aaronson. Aaronson literally looks half his size.

Dudes this tall aren't supposed to be able to move as smoothly as he does. pic.twitter.com/Tb1ieWQtqW

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) March 22, 2023

 

He is going to make a great living in soccer but some youth basketball coaches in France should have let him know how much Evan Fournier and Rudy Gobert makes.

 

And the big differences are more cultural than anything. Just look at France/USA in another sport. Frank Ntilikina and Killian Hayes have the athleticism of NBA PGs but lack the on ball creativity that American PGs usually. They come from a basketball culture where there is more of a focus on team development instead of individual development. Maybe if they played more one on one and 21 growing up they would be better at creating their own shot.

And you can watch Ballon Sur Bitume which was on Netflix to see the culture they have in French soccer. Young players can get good competition not far from their apartment building. Different country but recently I read in a story about Middlesbrough recruiting players in London and they mentioned that one of the players had only played "Cage Football" until he was 15. In places like Paris and London they have similar cultures to the cultures some American cities have about basketball.

 

Right now, yes. Have you seen our youth sides?

 

What are you trying to prove with that France 11? Greizmann is the only guy in that photo who isn’t an above-average athlete. Maybe you’re trying with Giroud? You’re telling me a 6’4” guy who is built like a tank and jumps like a deer isn’t a good athlete?

 

No doubt. They have to be one of the favorites.

This is why we play nations like France. We want to test ourselves against programs at the top. That's how the kids learn and develop.

And, of course, what happens when you play a nation at that level is you're exposed a little bit. Reality check. That's a good thing. You don't get that by playing the Dominican Republic at the CONCACAF Championships.

It doesn't mean we replace these players prior to the WC, which is kind of imminent. It means this group of players takes lessons from that match forward to the event.

 

Whenever you’re dealing with professional athletes you’re already at the tails of population distributions. France’s best XI are obviously good athletes. They’re also universally hard working and driven with access to some of the best fitness coaches on the planet (and in many cases some of the best performance enhancing specialists).

At the same time I’ve definitely noticed in the highest level teams in the world that their youth teams tend to be made up of notable outlier athletes. Big, strong, fast, etc. At the senior level, though, they tend not to be as extreme. At a certain point, the potential gains given by athleticism beyond the (already high) standard have limited utility while skill/knowledge have continued value. That’s what then gets selected for.

It’s not a binary; obviously, there are multiple different components to what makes an elite soccer player. Physical, mental, technical, etc. And while players have different potential in any of these domains it takes hard work, drive, and quite often a little bit of luck to reach that potential. In the end though technical and mental potential are more important to being an elite soccer player than having next level athletic potential. It’s very clear that those technical and mental traits are distributed differently than physical potential because you can see it in the top players in the world.

I just disagree that the USA has some great untapped soccer potential in terms of a specific athletic profile, and that if we did get 100% participation the team would look radically different as athletes. They’d be a lot better but they’d still reflect the global game. Or in other words, if 30 years ago soccer was the only sport in America the big name athletes now would be lesser known, and instead the stars would likely be people you’ve never heard of or the ones who are soccer stars now.

You can say that’s a strawman, but that argument is everywhere when the World Cup hits the general consciousness. I’m even leaving out the obvious troll arguments like “Tyreek Hill is the best soccer player in the world despite never kicking a ball” that I saw at least one media outlet make.

 

They are certainly a good team, they lost to Israel (obviously personnel has changed a little over the last 9 months) in the Semis of last years Euro U19s, which serves as the qualifying tournament for the World Cup, so I'm not sure many would have them down to walk to victory.

 

That is an insane roster and if the USA gets any kind of result it will be a big deal.

Bringing Aaron Ramsey to a U20 tournament seems like blatant age cheating.

 

I think France has better talent identification, coaching, and development such that if France has their best athletes playing soccer and the US has their best athletes playing soccer, France is still going to be producing better players.

But at the same time we definitely have untapped potential in terms of large areas of the country where there is no grassroots interest in the game and/or there is no development structure at all.

I'll give you an example, but I was listening to a podcast with Chris Richards who said growing up playing soccer in Alabama he was almost always the only black player on his team. In fact he went on to say that it wasn't until he got to Bayern Munich that he was playing with players that looked like him.

This is a less of a question of what would happen if Tyreek Hill or whoever played soccer and more a point that there are a number of areas in the US which aren't really producing a ton of professional soccer players (but are producing lots of professional athletes in general).

 

Yeah, this is where all this started.

Our MNT is pretty athletic. Our youth teams ... we're lacking in a lot of spots.

I agree with Thundering we need more skilled players, but in the end you need, skilled, athletic players. If your pool is only 10-20% EPL level athletes (making up a number), then the chances that the really skilled technicians are the athletes are low.

(And that's before the fact that yes, more athletic people often tend to be more coordinated. And players who are better at a sport young also tend to play it more and practice more.)

We can point out the Modrics all day, but I think the chances of us developing more Pulisics and Reynas is higher than developing a Modric.

 

The thing about sports is that you can get a “hothouse” effect, where being in an highly competitive environment causes rapid gains in ability from an early age. This is especially true in soccer for a variety of reasons. In parts of Paris, Rio, and London kids are getting a soccer education before they ever out on a real uniform. It also teaches kids how to play to their own strengths in ways the current coaching systems don’t do well enough.

That doesn’t really exist in America. The groundwater isn’t there yet. The public places don’t exist in great enough numbers. Residency programs attempt to mimic this environment but it’s frequently too late.

The truth is that with a sufficient environment the USA could become a world power on the back of just a few cities. Most great soccer countries are already like that. There’s a lot more kids playing soccer here but the environments just aren’t the same.

 

I think coordinated people tend to be more athletic due to positive feedback loops. You stick with it and invest more personal resources when you get early success due to coordination. It could just as easily work the other way though.

 

Culture is vitally important.

The Paris suburb thing is interesting...

France's WC Squad:

Lloris - Nice
Pavard - Border of Belgium
Varane - Lille
Kounde - Born in Paris, but grew up in Bordeaux
Guendozi - Paris suburb
Griezmann - Macon
Tchouameni - Rouen, but grew up in Bordeaux
Giroud - Grenoble
Mbappe - Paris
Dembele - Normandy
Fofana - Paris
Rabiot - Paris suburb
Saliba - Paris, grew up with Mbappe
Upamecano - Normandy, with Dembele
Benzema - Lyon
Coman - Paris
Lucas and Theo Hernandez - Marseille
Konate - Paris
Camavinga - Brittany
Thuram - Italy, then Sochaux

That's the 21 people I recognize on France's WC roster... and 7 are from the greater Paris area.

That's an over-representation, but not by as much as you'd think -- Paris is about 20% of France's population in terms of the Greater Metro Area. It also has more immigrant population ... and sports often have strong economic incentives for immigrants in many nations.

So is it tight, dense neighborhoods? Yes? But that's also overlapping with other overlapping demographics... many of those same demographics tend to be the US' best athletes as well.

I think a lot of this is all wrapped together.

 

Agree, and vice versa. There's part of this that is developed and part of this that is genetic.

For example, certain people are absolutely born with different levels of fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, but you also develop them. And those positive feedback loops are super important for young kids. There's some people who are natural born distance runners and some who are natural born sprinters, but they also tend to move to extremes based on training.

That's kind of my point, though. Part of the aspect of our cultural aspect is that the people most interested in working at sports, at playing sports ... simply don't play soccer. You focus on the competition, but it isn't just that. You can't take a random person and competition them up completely.

If you can convince the kids who are best at sports to play soccer, then you both get the kids who are best at sports naturally, and the kids who will likely work hardest in there (feedback loop) and you raise the competition they play at.

But it's hard to have high level of competition in free play when the would-be best players are playing another sport.

People can point to the sheer volume of people we have playing soccer, but in a country like France, the distribution of kids playing youth soccer is also way overdistributed to high level athletes, even in a skill sport.

In the US, we don't have the same distribution. If we use the sheer numbers, the top of the bell curve in terms of those things -- and often the work ethic and obsessiveness that makes an elite player -- aren't even getting their fair share versus other American sports.

It's absolutely cultural. But there's an interconnection there that we can see. We have a ton of people -- so we can get some great athletes anyway. Weston is a good example. But we don't have 300 Westons in the system so that a few of them come out with elite skills. France does.

We have like 5,000 Westons playing high school football or basketball, though. (Okay, I'm making up a number, but you get my point).

 

eh....

switch Mbappe to the USMNT and take him off of France....and who do you think wins that game?

I would bet heavily on a USA win.

the gap between france and the USA isnt as great as you all are making it out to be....

the depth really doesnt matter that much on the field ....so france goes 100 deep where the us goes 20 deep so what? only 11 can play....

usa first 11 is still very good. not as good as france...but good enough to compete with anyone (granted a proper coach, of course)

 

Musah and Dest don't really count here, and this is just our most recent roster, but we've definitely got some clustering going on ourselves.

The hometowns of the 🇺🇸's on the March Roster #USMNT🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/nXfmO70mWX

— US Soccer's Bot (@USSoccersBot) March 18, 2023

 

The lack of players from California is crazy and, IMO, a damning statement about player development by the Cali MLS teams.