[Bushnell] A ‘broken’ system, nascent culture: Why the U.S. has never had a world-class men’s soccer

I don't see it "exploding" again--far easier to make the leap from where we were in '94 than to make a leap from where we are now. (We didn't even have MLS before we were awarded that cup, and European soccer on TV was negligible--I recall watching "Soccer Made in Germany on PBS, in which Bundesliga games were compressed into an hour.) At this point, I think "nudge" is more what I'm hoping for.

 

On being content: unless you root for Brazil or France or Real Madrid or whomever, remaining sane as a soccer fan requires a commitment to contentment that's alien to US sports fans generally. There's no parity in soccer. You have to find contentment someplace other than winning it all, because there are structural impediments that prevent almost every team from winning it all. The article does a decent job of describing the impediments that prevent the national team from moving up from the middle class into the elite ranks.

How do we chip away at those impediments? Professionalization and time. Or, as a brilliant and charismatic person wrote earlier in this thread, "MLS and patience." The league has already replaced the old developmental system for high school and college-aged players with one aimed at developing professional players rather than garnering wins for ambitious coaches. That process will continue to seep into younger age brackets. For every good pro that's produced, there will be dozens of players who can take what they learned in these professional setups and use it with their kids one day.

 

FIrst let me caveat this comment that I'd like to see the US make a real step change in being a Top 10 team in the world. We aren't there yet.

BUT I get a kick out of people who say we are a country of 350M people. We should just be better than all of these other countries. My response?

We are as good as we are because we have 350M people. By the time kids get pulled from all the different sporting opportunities we have (soccer, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, skiing, gymnastics, swimming....you get the point) its amazing that we are actually pretty decent in ALL of those sports.

 

I think it's better the longer we last but we see kids emulating players from other leagues all the time during club seasons. Just like any sport if eyeballs see amazing stuff pulled off kids will pretend they're that player or team and try and recreate it.

Use our huge video / film media and keep popping out commercials showing Messi types playing with their dad and now their own kids. Playing in the streets and parks with their friends. Make it known that if you want to be really good you have to work on it a lot but also make it fun (it is).

 

Exactly. When I tell people R16 is the ceiling we should strive for and that anything after that is gravy, people think I'm being "too negative" or that I'm accepting the "bare minimum" when the reality is being a consistent R16 team is a hell of an accomplishment considering the status of the sport in this country. And as I've mentioned in other threads making R16 will be more difficult with this new format now that you have to win a KO game to get there.

 

Saudi defeated Argentina last World Cup. So what? These upsets occur not infrequently during the group stages. The real tournament starts in the knockouts.

 

Also the only 2 countries bigger than us (and both by ~4x) are ass at everything other than Olympic sports (China) and cricket (India)

We're #1 in basketball, baseball, Summer Olympics, golf, top 2 (currently #1) in ice hockey, probably #2 after Russia in combat sports, top 5 in Winter Olympics, top ~25 in soccer and rugby

 

Do we have data on what regions of the country overproduce in what sports?

For example, I would expect the South to be significantly overrepresented in baseball (Mike Trout was partly overlooked because he came from New Jersey) and also overrepresented to a slightly smaller extent in football.

But I've never truly seen a comparison across the major sports.

 

Huh? It’s better to win than lose. Good teams win more than bad teams.

I probably don’t understand your post.

 

today i read two headline articles saying no one here gives a crap about the world cup. same shit we saw in in 94. bloomberg had a graphic showing it trailing all sports including college ball, except golf. and my answer is, yes, but the media still covers golf like its a major sport......yet soccer is more popular and maybe, once in awhile, i will hear a soccer score on the news. we don't have a world beating team because there is just not enough interest or passion. its that simple. we should be happy to have a league and a national team. i remember when we didn't....we had a national team that met at the airport. we used to have a guy here who played back then, he wasn't even american and no one ever cared. he used to post comments. that was in 2000 or so.....this whole topic has become tiresome and doesn't change over the decades.

 

saw an article today by a yank living in england, who starts with the obligatory no one in the states cares, who said soccer fandom is not about the joy of winning, but wallowing in the misery of losing...he does admire the locality of teams, whereas in the usa, vast stretches have no pro teams of any kind; he was from rochester, and the closest team to root for was the buffalo bills, hours away...

 

No argument that "soccer density", and Parents that grew up with the game etc. are pieces of culture, but culture, the way I think of it, is far more complicated than that. The word "culture" implies connections to all parts of life: social as well as sporting.

So how do we build a soccer culture? Is it something that we have to copy from the rest of the world? Is that even possible? What if our version looks different than that in European countries?

In USA, do we have separate "basketball, baseball, football etc cultures", or do we have an "umbrella sport culture" under which all of the sports coexist? Obviously, you can argue that the different sports are not homogeneous; they vary in popularity by location and ethnic group but are they separate cultures? If it is one "umbrella", is there room under that umbrella for soccer, or do we need to construct/develop a separate culture?

Perhaps I am taking this too far but I really do think that the solution to improving development is actually pretty simple, but takes more patience than many realize. Many think that because we are a wealthy country, we should be able to buy success. Money does give us many advantages in sports (including soccer), but it can't buy everything.

 

This topic is the very reason I can’t stop following US soccer. I like big projects, and I like sports, and this is both.

It sounds like the argument here is about what will get solved passively, and what still actively needs intervention. That depends on your level of involvement. From an outsiders perspective, MLS is getting better on its own, but real people are actively making those decisions. And I love hearing about them. I also love hearing about stuff the Fed does (having our own Clairfontaine now is… incredible).

I get all of the sides here. I don’t think we’re behind Japan, but I also don’t think Japan is a helpful example. We’re as far away from their collectivist society as it comes.

I liked the article. I agree that coaching is a great way forward. I also think MLS clubs can make a much better product and market much better, especially in certain laggard areas. The more 20 year olds in cities like soccer, the more 30 year olds put their kids in it.

If NYCFC was ever as popular as the Knicks are (of which *most* people watching this week did not watch a game all year, and maybe not in decades), a world cup would not be far away.

Pay-to-play doesn’t help, but it’s not like AAU basketball is free. No one thinks that system is great, but it doesn’t impede having a dominant roster every Olympics.

 

One thing I'm curious about is what the impact of volunteer coaches look like. A lot of kids start in rec leagues, whether AYSO or other. When I played as a kid, my Dad was the somewhat rare daddy coach who had actually played college soccer. Many of the coaches had never played at any level and were mostly learning from a book. Now, the volunteers (at least many of them) have played. I would think that would help kick start those younger ages in a different way than the players who grew up to be the '94 team. And that should continue to be a progression.

 

USSF had a pilot setup with Tom Byer's and his Soccer Starts at Home program, that is credited in part for Japan's technical foundations.

ANd then US Youth signed a deal with Soccer Shots as their development partner. Part of the deal was if. you officially partnered with SS the club got some $ per head.

So, work with the guy who helped build Japan, or, the company that is always hiring teenagers.

Actual development vs. soccer as childcare with some kick back for the club.

I'd love to see the results of a comparison between a club that gave all their new dad/mm coaches Soccer Starts at Home and had them work on ball mastery at u5-7, and one that just sent them to the USSF 4v4 "don't actually teach, just ask questions, because the game is the best teacher".

 

So I took the Futsal level 1 class in person, taught by William Sampaio when the NSCAA/USC was workig out the kinks before offering it online in conjunction with USYF.

https://www.soccerwire.com/news/united-states-youth-futsal-announces-leadership-expansion/

During the course he had the participants doing the drills. There were guys from a local dedicated Futsal club, guys that were active on our USL team/coaching in the USL academy, other coaches with college experience who were coaching for the local pay to play clubs.

He was doing a drill where he'd call 2 numbers, to determine the number of players on each side until the ball went out of play or a goal was scored. So 3 3 would be a 3 v3 , 3 2, etc....

He called 4 1. Played the ball into the team with 4. They quickly advanced to the attacking half, passed once, and a guy quickly dribbled over the end line. Instructor blows the whistle:

"Why in America, are you in such a hurry to give up the ball. In Brazil the 1 would be begging for the other team to score so he could stop chasing the ball."

I always come back to Sacchi - "I didn't know to be a jockey you had to be s horse first".

 

It’s been a decade since the MVP was American. SGA is Canadian. Wikipedia doesn’t mention him playing AAU so he probably didn’t. But he spent his last 2 years of high school here, so I can’t be sure without researching more. Wemby is the odds on favorite for the next 6-8 years, and he didn’t play AAU.

Here’s my point…does America win at the Olympics because of our system, or despite it? Me, I feel pretty strongly it’s the latter.

AAU ball is notorious for poor development.

PS looking at the MVP list, there was a run of 6 years at the turn of the century where 3 winners were foreign, and Tim Duncan won 2 as well.

 

(imo, only):
Good news, bad news. What do you want first?

Ok, here goes bad news.
Again...only my opinion....I don't really see how we can accelerate significantly the process. Other soccer countries followed a path that took generations. I don't see it taking hundreds of years but importing coaches and coaching expertise only helps the older kids. Throwing money at the problem doesn't increase the level or number of parents that can effectively help their kids get started through the early stages of learning the game. The parents that would be coaching low cost recreational soccer at the young youth soccer level is the key. The parents coaching AYSO, or local rec leagues; they are the key imo.

Good news: Much of the infrastructure required is filling in (the gap between the young teens to the professional leagues for our best players (USL, MLS next, MLS etc), but more importantly, I think we have begun to enter the inflection point of our development curve. We obviously still have a way to go but the difference in knowledge and appreciation for the game compared to the 60's and 70's and now is immense, but the first 30 years changed far slower than the last 30 years.

 

Earnest Stewart said in the end of an interview with AD Sportwereld yesterday about soccer in the USA this:
Soccer is played by who pay the most with those who pay the most against those who pay the most. In Europe the best play with the best against the best.

 

Major lack of representation in the South. If you look at per capita which states are producing the most NFL and NBA players it’s places which are badly underrepresented here or not at all. And it primarily comes down to lack of interest in the sport comparatively but also lack of opportunities.

The flipside is we don’t get enough out of California as we should given it’s a state with a very large population (and a ton of immigrants) with lots of interest in the game. Part of this is also the MLS clubs (both the LA clubs and San Jose) have not been great places for youth players to break through. Hopefully San Diego starts to change that but for areas with MLS clubs we’re also at the mercy of a handful of clubs to do a good job. Whereas in another country there are no territorial rights but also a massive amount of local clubs offering opportunities.