I don't know if this has been posted in any of the post-mortem/looking forward threads, but I thought this piece by Ryan O'Hanlon was pretty good: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_...world-cup-fixed-overhauling-youth-development His basic argument is that we aren't doing anything inherently wrong with our talent development, or at least we're not more wrong than any other country. Being a contender is driven by having the top, top talent, and a lot of times, a player becoming a top, top talent is a matter of luck. He has stats to show that when he first debuted with Dortmund, Reyna was comparable to guys like Wirtz, Bellingham, Mbappe, Doku, and Pedri in terms of their production as teenagers. Obviously, those other guys took off, and Reyna very much did not, but O'Hanlon thinks this is mostly down to luck. Plenty of very good prospects don't work out, but if you produce enough, some will take off and hit that superstar level, which makes you a WC contender.
I wouldn't say that part is his argument. I'd say his argument is that at the end of the day, the very elite teams tend to have elite players, who are somewhat outliers and out of the control of a federation (that O'Hanlon would, wrongly, in my mind, call luck). But he's very careful to mention there's very much issues and things to improve. I don't think he would say there's nothing wrong. I think he'd say it's much about large forces and random variation. What I would say to his argument is that clearly there are nations developing a lot more elite players and while the individuals are out of said control, there absolutely is a question of volume and culture. There's reasons why France and Spain and Argentina and England are here, and he's right it's not what the DC United academy isn't doing specifically or even pay to play but something broader.
Agree. Still don’t like what DC United Academy are doing at all and hope that changes but not counting on it.
Yeah, if I can self-post a link from a couple years ago after Copa, I agree that top-end players are luck, but it's about how many lotto picks you generate. The difficult part is measuring that fairly across nations. Big 5 minutes is the most accessible and objective, although with inherent biases towards some nations (like Senegal and Austria). https://substack.com/home/post/p-147599169 If we could fairly measure something that predicts Big 5 minutes better, that would be an even better number to track. But I don't know of one.
Luck that Gio is not like the rest of his teenage cohorts? It's also due to dna. His Dad also had a lot of soccer injuries.
Every single country that loses in the World Cup automatically starts talking about youth development, youth development, youth development. Yeah, we know. Youth sports in the US cost money. And it doesn't matter if we're talking about baseball, hockey, basketball, or soccer. Do people think these tennis academies that kids go to are free? Is the Boy Scouts, youth orchestra, or the 4H club free? Soccer isn't free in Spain. It's not. SOMEBODY is paying. It's the clubs that are paying. I went on that two week trip across Northern Spain last season. It's hard to explain how culturally significant soccer is in the Basque region (where I was). The more soccer becomes a profitable business in this country (which speaks to cultural significance), the more and more and more youth development and academies can be paid for. The Barcelona academy isn't "free." Its estimated that Barcelona spends upwards of 50 million annually on La Masia. The club is paying for those kids to be there. Its not some moneyless utopia. DC United doesn't have that 50 million. People say we should set up a Clairefontaine in the US. Great idea! And who do you think is paying for it? Do people realize how much the FFF spends on Clairefontaine/youth development on an annual basis? 100 million. Where does that money come from? That's a good question you should ask yourself. And when you find the answer, ask yourself if we'll do that in the United States.
Men: 2026 WC: Spain or England/Argentina UEFA Champs: Spain UEFA NL Champs: Portugal (Spain 2nd) Olympic Champs: Spain U20 WC: Morocco U17 World Cup: Portugal The next men's World Cup will be hosted by......Spain, Portugal, and Moricco. Women: WC Champs: Spain Olympic Champs: United States Euro Champs: England U20 WC: North Korea U17 WC: North Korea
.................and if England wins the World Cup people will be talking about how the men are the World Champs and the women are European champions (and finalists at the last Women's World Cup). The 4 semifinalists at the World up are the top 4 teams in the FIFA rankings. Its not some surprise. These are nations in which the cultural significance of the sport is extreme. Spain, France, and England all top 10 in women's soccer (for some reason Argentina has always been behind in women's soccer compared to Brazil). The money being spent in those three Western European nations dwarfs that which we're spending in the US. ...............but we keep plugging away. We're not 50th in the world and failed to get out of the group phase. We were just in the final 16 of the World Cup. I know. We're Ameircans. We want to be the best, and we're not at this sport. Unfortunately, the media is all in "why do we suck?" mode. We don't suck. We've been to at least the round of 16 in 5 of the last 7 World Cups. And when you make a list of nations who have done that, its a really small list. We just don't have what it takes to get to the final 8. Not right now anyway. We bumped into a team in Belgium that's better than us. A team that, by the way, lost a tight game to Spain. Spain's better than us. Belgium's better than us. We're closer to being a top 10 team than about 190 nations that field national teams in this sport. Most nations on Earth would love to be where we are. Heck, Italy would.
We are a massive country compared to all the other BIG soccer countries. Comparably it costs little to get the best kids in England, Argentina, Netherlands, etc to play against each other. It costs enormous amounts of money to get the best kids in SoCal playing the best kids in Texas or NYC metro area of the DC metro area. We have to fly everywhere. It's a 4 1/2 hour drive from London to Manchester. The Netherlands is about the size of Maryland and Texas is 20 times larger than it and yet it has 38 First and Second division teams. That right there is why their development is so much better than ours. 18 million people and 38 clubs. We'd need around 400 First and Second Division clubs to equal that.
This is why luck is a terrible term and it drives me nuts when statsy people -- who should know better -- use it. When anyone uses luck here, it more accurately means that it is often within unexplained variance, or out of the control of what you are talking about, or not a clearly, repeatable skill, etc., or there's simply a lot of noise in the data. It's like when they say finishing is not a skill. Eh, that's bullshit, Finishing is a skill. In fact, you can see it when you move a player down or up a level they are too good for / not good enough for. What the reality is though, is that for the level a player is at, the finishing skill of most players is not differentiated enough from each other for clinical finishing (as defined by scoring higher than xG would put you) to be a likely, repeatable skill over time. Of course it's a skill. But when you line up the best 60 strikers in the world ... that's not where they differentiate from each other and short term runs of success or failure are OFTEN, but not always, simply hot streaks or cold streaks driven by factors other than long term skill.
I was just saying this elsewhere: Spain is the best footballing nation on Earth. Since 2020: 1x Womens World Cup 1x Men's World Cup Final (so far) 1x Women's Euro Winners 1x Men's Euro Winners 1x Men's Olympic Gold 1x Men's Nations League Winners 2x Women's Nations League Winners Individual awards? 1x Ballon d'or (Rodri) 6x Women's Ballon d'Or (Putellas, Bonmati) 3x Golden Boy Awards (Pedri, Gavi, Yamal) 1x Golden Girl Award (Lopez) Coaching? In 2026: PL Winner: Arteta PL Coach of the Year: Arteta PL Runner-Up: Guardiola UCL Winner: Enrique UCL Runner-Up: Arteta Europa League Winner: Emery
Then everybody will complain that the reason we aren't a top tier team in soccer is because its boring and nobody watches it so nobody want to learn to play it. You know like they have said forever. We finally got a product that was wroth watching AND could compete (yes were still short some quality in the back) but good grief some want to go back to what we all complained about for years. No thanks.
Bigger picture, my problem with this idea is that there is clearly off strategy to our goals. The long term goal for me is to get the into the "Common Contenders" rung of teams for the World Cup. Winning one is something of a confluence of factors, so I think leadership should shoot for being accepted as one of those usual Top 8 types -- so when we get a good run, we can win one. Teams that win the World Cup don't bunker. They are highly skilled, highly tactical, and while they can be very strong defensively, there's not a won that has overcommitted to defense. At worst, they are balanced. So how do you get there? There's a million and one things we can talk about, but in specifics to the National Team ... what's the point of winning an extra game or two with a style that: a) We won't keep long term. What will our players learn that they will use next cycle? b) Does nothing to inspire or influence players to learn the tactical, technically astute game we need them to play. We want our young players to want to play like any of these top teams. Having our team play like Paraguay or 2004 Greece and grinding out an extra game or so helps with that less than having the team look amazing as they slice and dice teams, even if we lose an extra game. Anyone who has ever played a sport understands that sometimes, as you work on elements of your game, you get worse before you get better. I don't get why fans forget that.
Yeah I mean neither Pulisic or Reyna reached the levels we needed. Pulisic obviously a good player, but project restart Pulisic with Chelsea was playing at a level where he seemed like he could be one of the best players in MLS. And Reyna is someone who seemed like he had world class potential at one point who we just don’t seem we are going to get much out of. Pulisic still very much a success story of course and if we had a starting lineup all at Pulisic’s level that would be progress and we’d be better. But he’s just not quite a match winning player at the level of a Haaland, Mbappe, Yamal, Bellingham, etc.
And this is where I differ from a lot of US fans in that I never thought our guys reaching the level others have was all that likely? In particular, I separate Haaland and Mbappe from even that group -- physical freaks who were literally great from day one. Mbappe, in particular, required zero squinting. I think Christian, in terms of ability hit something like his 80th percentile. Obviously, injuries kept him from the productivity reflecting, and his body simply isn't up to the rigors of a full season of continental, US and club ball. But take that out, and I think this sort of sometimes brilliant, sometimes just very good but able to be shut down Christian is what you should expect. Reyna, obviously, wildly underachieved. But we had this discussion before; I never thought of him like Haaland. But he should have been far better. I just think the odds of World Class were well under 50%. The big issue for him is that he's hit like his 15th percentile outcome, which is a disaster. When Reyna was a hot commodity, I remember a number of players in the Eredivisie around then that were as well -- Gravenberch, Xavi Simons and Ihatteren. There's a whole range of success there, but no one is World Class though Gravenberch is very good (and just getting there). Meanwhile, Fabian Ruiz came up through Betis, Napoli and is now one of the better players out there at 30. If we're talking this level, we also need to note that aside from the uber elite, the next half tier down often have five year spans or so of being amazing in their mid to late 20s. Development doesn't stop.
Yeah. I have four sons. We wouldn't let them focus on one sport until high school (13-14 yrs old). One son focused on soccer (played two years in the DA as a GK) and another son decided to focus on football and played college ball. Now, I "coached" a ten year old who came to practices for his older brother and my son. His parents asked me and he was interested. He was so focused and better than the players on the team. He went on to play professional, but those are special cases in my mind.
Yup, I can't find a decent local team for my middle school aged son. He picked a different travel sport going into 5th grade. Half of his old local team went travel and the other half stopped playing to focus on other sports. I'm not paying 5-6K+ a year plus hotels for 2 travel sports. My friend who does this for his kids frequently changes clubs as coaches get mad when they focus on the other sport in the "off-season".
For anybody who wants a different perspective on youth development, please watch the recent ESPN 30 for 30 on Argentina’s youth soccer development system. Might make you re-think one or two things.
This is something we really need to solve. I have no suggestions at goalkeeper, but I did have a stray thought that as he gets older, I wonder if Jedi could move to left-sided CB? He's tall, decent in the air, and not a bad passer, if not as good as Ream at passing. Of course, we lose his overlapping on the left, but that might happen anyway as he ages.
Maybe? There are times when a guy can play a different position, even if he hasn't moved at club. But it's not always so it's tough to tell who will succeed in that situation, or whether a club will move them, etc. I don't think you can count on it.