NSR: CHICAGO Political Thread ***HIGHLY TOXIC - ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK***

Wishful thinking, imho.

 

Alexi Lalas, racist. Not really a surprise, but saying the "quiet parts" out loud still stands out to me.

Is diversity of the U.S. hurting American soccer? Former USMNT defender Alexi Lalas had this to say 🗣️

“We often talk about our diversity and we talk about it as one of the advantages we have.”

“But with diversity comes diversity of thought. If I go and ask a hundred soccer… pic.twitter.com/XE0XVihdnW

— GOLZ TV (@golz_tv) June 15, 2025

Is diversity of the U.S. hurting American soccer? Former USMNT defender Alexi Lalas had this
to say
“We often talk about our diversity and we talk about it as one of the advantages we have.”
“But with diversity comes diversity of thought. If I go and ask a hundred soccer people out there on what’s beautiful soccer? I’m going to get a hundred answers.”
“It may be based on ethnicity, where you grew up, even geography. All of these different things.” “So I’ve argued that the homogenous nature of some other countries and cultures just in population in terms of size are much more manageable.”
“There is a collective understanding and more importantly, an agreement in this is how we’re going to play.”
“But getting 11 men to represent this great country of 350 million people and all be on the same page, that is very very difficult.”
“I’ve argued before that maybe our best route to actually being better from a men’s perspective in soccer is actually being more exclusive, not being inclusive.”
“If you went to the New York metropolitan area or Southern California and took players that all grew up in the same area, that would be better in terms of an understanding.”
“This melting pot fallacy that I’ll be the first to admit, I bought into. I’m not saying it can’t happen. It just takes a lot longer and with a lot more work. And especially when it comes to a national team, you don’t have time to be able to do that.”
The USMNT haven’t beaten a “big” team in the World Cup since Portugal in 2002. Despite players now playing in better clubs, the results haven’t followed. Lalas was asked what he attributes that to, and that was his answer.

(emphasis mine)

 

He’s right. Let’s start by excluding him from anything soccer related. That should improve everything around the US Soccer.

 

...and anything non soccer related.

Have you heard his music?

Read or heard his politics?

Viewed his fashion sense?

He is pretty awful at life.

 

Being that gingers are 1% of the population that'd be a good place to start in the announcer's booth F**K THAT GUY! I'm totally done with that a**hole and will no longer bother to post anything that f**kface has to say.

Remember when we were losing the battle of the Pacific and the U.S. Marine leadership was like, "all these indigenous Navajo "wind talkers" we have on the radio communicating in their native toungues that the Japanese can't decode...That's just too much diversity." Everyone remember that? Yeah me neither.

 

I don't agree with Lalas but that take is not racist. It might even help explain why Holland does as well as it does.

 

Yup,

Van Bronckhorst
Van Der Sar
Davids

All eye-dentical, and no diversity there, like, at all, amirite?

 

It may not be racist, but it is stupid. What happened when Germany decided to open up in the 90’s and 2000s? They won the cup in 2014. Also, Belgium says “******** off Alexi”.

I mean, it is racist since he’s referring to the melting pot which is directly related to race and ethnicity. To think that has anything to do with building a winning soccer team is of course stupid and racist.

if Alexi had wanted to say “sometimes we can’t play our best 11 players together because stylistically they don’t always merge together“, well, he could’ve said that. But he didn’t. And it’s an issue every team on the planet from national teams down to youth teams would have to deal with. It has nothing to do with our melting pot.

 

What? I am pretty shocked by this.
I cannot believe we are even having this conversation.

"It may be based on ethnicity, where you grew up, even geography. All of these different things.”

Have you seen The Holland team?

They look, um, pretty diverse. Many of the players (Van Dijk, Memphis, Wijnaldum to name just three) are the son of immigrants. They are of many different "cultures" (ethnically, where and how they grew up, and otherwise).

If you are saying they have a similar football upbringing, only six members of the current squad even play in the Dutch league. Yes, most started at various youth teams in the Dutch league, but the majority of the players were snatched up by "bigger" teams and leagues pretty early on in their careers.

They, and the French, are the poster nations FOR diversity in world football.

Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, England have all figured out playing culturally, ethnically, geographically diverse teams decades ago.

Take a look at the French team that won the 1998 World Cup, a number of the players (Zidane, Thuram, Karembau) were not born in France directly and several more the sons of immigrants.

Also, his phrase "This melting pot fallacy..." Is pretty damned racist, and the antithesis of the Dutch or French team.

He is spouting the Republican/Trumpian line that diversity is a negative, and advocating FOR separation, not integration.

Finally, if you think he is talking about "football homogeneity," isn't this singularity what the various US academies were supposed to address? Project 40, the Florida academy (don't recall the name), etc. have all attempted to create that footballing culture. Project 40 has been around for almost 30 years and it has produced some of the best American players, including we several great Fire players in the past.
So, in a way, the US has attempted to be MORE homogeneous than Holland or other nations have, which rely on club academy systems, with a wide ranging level of training and rather different football "cultures."

Also, you have to take the comments in context of his postings over the last decade, being a very openly pro- Trump sports figure.

See, also, what Bunge posted about what he "could have" said.

Nope, this was a blatantly bigoted statement.

I wonder what his contemporaries from the 1990's, early 2000's USMNT think of his statements.

 

Didn't have time last night to expand, you all make good points. Lalas might be racist, his post might be taken as racist, maybe I am being too forgiving in my reading of what he said, but here's the expanded version of what I saw in his argument.

The Dutch team is racially and ethnically diverse with Surinamese, Moroccan, Indonesian backgrounds all over the place. But that’s not the point. They all grew up in the same footballing system. Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, AZ… it’s all built around the same core principles of the “Total Football” idea that’s been drilled into them since they were kids.

So they might be diverse ethnically, but their football brains were shaped in the system.

Lalas mixes up diversity of background with a lack of cohesion on the field, which is a completely different problem. France, Belgium, Germany are diverse too, but they’ve figured out how to build structure around that. You don’t see Deschamps complaining that Koundé and Griezmann grew up differently. They’re all on the same page tactically because they went through coherent systems.

Meanwhile in the U.S., we’ve got kids coming up through radically different setups, some are in MLS academies, some in pay-to-play clubs, some coached by a dad who played high school ball in the '90s. There’s no consistent development model. That's what I was reading into what Lalas said more than anything. I don't completely buy this argument, but I think a lot of teams have an easier time popping in players because they all know the style that the nation plays. I actually think GGG was trying to create this as USMNT Coach.

 

I agree with these points.

And that was the attempt of the US Academy. I totally agree it has not worked out as much as it should, for many of the reasons you raised (bad leadership being the primary one).

It was also why I was originally hopeful with the Klinsmann signing as USMNT coach.

He initially spoke of wanting to develop a new system from the ground up, but he was a dick about it and USSoccer would not turn over the entire system to him (probably a good idea, since he is a dick).

As a result, he went the opposite way and grabbed a bunch of "foreign" players with tenuous connections to the US, while simultaneously pissing off some of the more experienced USMNT players.

As for Lalas, I am not and will not be forgiving to that jackass.

 

[QUOTE="xtomx, post: 43045259, member: 17201
I wonder what his contemporaries from the 1990's, early 2000's USMNT think of his statements.[/QUOTE]
Likely that he's long overstayed his relevance.

Lalas was a solid defender for one world cup on a third-tier national team who couldn't afterward keep his place for a relegation fodder Serie A side.

He was then a disaster as a MLS general manager, and for a few years after provided some decent color commentary until his self-imagined past importance caught up with him.

He should team up with Seamus Malin and Alejandro Moreno for an "all mediocrity" panel. Or make a return appearance on "Pros v Joes", this time representing the Guiseppes.

 

Alejandro Moreno

That guy irritates the hell out of me.

 

Likely that he's long overstayed his relevance.

Lalas was a solid defender for one world cup on a third-tier national team who couldn't afterward keep his place for a relegation fodder Serie A side.

He was then a disaster as a MLS general manager, and for a few years after provided some decent color commentary until his self-imagined past importance caught up with him.

Seamus Malin is a good man, but the other two are not. He had good day jobs too at Harvard as director of the international student office and admissions director of the graduate school of theology. Years ago I had a nice chat with him & he's a "lovely" gent.

 

If you want the context, here is the whole interview.

Lalas' commentary starts at about 8:30 in the video in the article.

https://awfulannouncing.com/fox/alexi-lalas-diversity-problem-us-mens-soccer.html

Please note, he slips in "from a Men's perspective" about being more exclusive than inclusive at 9:40.
Why would the women's team being inclusive be a good thing, when the men's team being inclusive is a bad thing?
Oh, and the "melting pot" is a fallacy.

We can add misogyny to the bigotry.

 

??
The trend setting 1974+1978 Orange Squads had zero non-Dutch contribution.
The 1970 - 1974 Feyenoord/Ajax European/world domination had zero immigrant contribution.

 

Nope.
We went into a national team rut quality wise when epl clubs and Bayern raided our soccer Kindergartens. It was the era when we in the Dutch forum waved goodbye to another kid who was lured by the big paycheck for his age, compared to what we paid with the comment "another one for the dustbin". Of all those dozens of talents only one emerged as a quality player, Ake. But it took him far more time than others like him, who remained.
It took a while, until kids started to realize that going for the relatively big paycheck as a 15-18 yo, wasnot smart if you ended up as a nobody with a louzy paycheck going into adulthood.
So times changed and kids turned the epl groomers down and now we have stars again.
Those who since those epl raiding times succeeded were the ones who stayed and learned the trade in the Eredivisie first.

 

Dunno what you mean with "The Dutch team is racially and ethnically diverse with Surinamese, Moroccan, Indonesian backgrounds all over the place. "
Maybe it's an echo of the segregated nature of American society, but these people are very Dutch in every sense. The only thing those labels point at, is the fact the roots were outside the Netherlands. They are as blunt as any Dutch can be, to give an example.

This however is hammering the very nail on it's very bloody head:
"They all grew up in the same footballing system. Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, AZ… it’s all built around the same core principles of the “Total Football” idea that’s been drilled into them since they were kids. So they might be diverse ethnically, but their football brains were shaped in the system."

Dutch football goes by the premise we're the best and we invented the best system.

That's why we as a national team sucked, when our kids "learned" to play in inferior academies of the epl. They simply didnot learn it the right way. Since that foolishness vanished, and our talents are again subjected to the right ways we deliver stars again.

Edit: around 2000 Belgium, Germany and France consulted the KNVB about youth academies principles, and quite a few people were pissed the KNVB assisted our "football enemies/competitors" with improving their youth development systems.

 

The EPL sucks.

 

Looks like you do know what I mean.

 

That was exactly my thought, but I didn’t feel like arguing since we agreed that the EPL sucks.

 

Circling back on this, GN had the authors on to discuss. Part of the conversation included the thought that the former CPS head had the audacity to speak candidly on "reducing CPS' footprint."

 

Whitey on the North Side that doesn't need Safe Passage to schools a long distance away from home will certainly be in favor of closing South Side schools.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/educat...chicago-public-schools-works-to-close-deficit

 

They closed a school in Uptown a decade or more ago and turned it into housing. A much better use since no one who understood how bad the school was actually sent kids to it. It's really hard to turn around a failing school.

 

A lot of new & expanded CPS schools were built in Latino areas recently.