I agree with your post but I wasn't even talking about 15 years ago, more like the last 4 to 7 years. The US is getting better and better but I still don't see any top of the world field players. I don't really want to get into the whole "world class" thing, it's a bit pointless to try to define, it's different for everyone. I'm happy about the overall success of players like Boca, Beasley, Dolo(seems to be forgotten some), Reyna, Gooch, Russell, and the rest. US soccer is better than it's ever been and it will only get better. I don't think the US is being left behind but I do think there is a long long ways to go. There is still a big gap in the play and player developement of the elite nations and the competative ones(the US). Hey at least we are competative when I was a kid in the 70's and first played and followed soccer the US was nothing. I don't think Japan can be rated higher than Germany. And this is part of the problem to me. People take little blips, or victories(or defeats), or even player signings as major signs of growth. They're not. All of what's going on in US soccer(as great as it is) is just a slow process of growth. The competative nations are gaining on the elite but there is still a very long way to go. I like the Yanks Abroad forum even with some of the over the top posts and posters. People get fanatic about certain players and it's fun. It only bugs me when some people make stuff up or try to post their agenda as fact. I like following players online that I don't get to hear about in regular media. It's cool. I just don't get overly excited about any individuals. One or 2 guys becoming very good in Europe isn't going to make the Nats an elite team. It's a slow process and a group effort.
Yeah, but only in terms of the other variables. That's another fine (if quote strict; not too many strikers could crack Real's front line, or mids get into Arsenal's) definition. But I just want to know what we're talking about. By your definition, England only has one or two world class players, and we, maybe, have one...Brad, if he recovers his form from the last few years. It's just really silly to me when we have these debates and they devolve into two guys arguing about what world class means.
I am not sure if it's because of the rather abstract "form" that some players find relative success in Europe or it's something else. As far as I know, the other Clint's form never really left him..... Some people fit in right away but fade out. Some take time. A few months do not make or break a career. Being young, athletic, and adequately skillful, Dempsey would be granted enough time to settle in if he signs with them. The Dutch are pretty good at identifying and developing young telants. They'd know when to be patient and when to push the players better. BTW, if what you meant by "game day roster" is that of Wed night's WCQ, then, let me repeat what's been said before - Convey did not take the trip back to the States. According to his own teammate Murty on a radio show, he opted to stay in Reading to spend more time with the team. I'd assume that means he was invited but didn't take up the offer. That's very different from coming all the way here, showing poorly, and getting dropped.
Great post. I do think we need to step back and look at players objectively but it's fun to hype players and imagine them playing in Europe's top flight leagues. You definitely have a point though. There have been so many players who have looked like the next best thing only to fail. A great example is Santino Quaranta. he was hyped as the next best thing but after tons of injuries he is now struggling to get minutes with DC. (Although great pk in conference finals) Anyway, I think Dempsey has got all the tools to be a great player and I think that his last call up and now this trial will do wonders for his confidence. As long as he keeps playing like he can, i think he will make it in Europe. But you never know.
True, very true. You got me there. Yes my definition is rather strict but IMHO that's what being a world class player is all about. Not any Joe schmo can be one. Under my definition, I think that there are several on England's squad that would qualify as world class i.e Sol campbell, Gerrard, Lampard, Ferdinand, Butt . My belief is that the US doesn't have any world class players currently but I'm pretty sure that this will change very quickly. But it's so fun.
It is nice to talk about individuals players and their skills but it mean little to nothing unless they produce results. So really the argument of the US producing world class players is arbitrary as long as we produce enough good players to get more results like we got in WC 2002. I will agree with Rommul in one perspective, American footballers need to become more creative on and off the ball. But with that said we are very early in our football development and well on our way to start producing a great nation team (not individuals). Rommul I really want to know who these Super Star World Class footballers are, please give more information. O yeah isn't this about Dempsey going to Feyenoord. Lets try to get back on subject
* Disagree about Robben. Very few players in any sport ever reach the MJ level of contribution. He needs to consistently score some goals before he can be put anywhere near there. * EVERY club I mentioned has a BASICALLY no-name roster. Name more than 2 major internationals on each team. These teams are made up of a couple fixture players and then a bunch of great prospects or good-but-passed-over international players. * You mean the old Soviet First division that produced the quite attractive (by all accounts) Soviet Union teams of the 80s? * I don't know that Clint would or would not do well at a G-14 club. And neither do you. But if he went somewhere where they have a desire for a 2-way MF prospect who has Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard-like talents for defending, playmaking, and scoring then he may do well even at a G-14. One perspective to be put on these arguments is that we are no longer talking about players who grew up playing against the Euro youth clubs, and happy to be beaten by only 4-5 goals. That was in the 80s. These guys beat their professional European counterparts as often as they are beaten. They are kids that played on youth club teams like Chicago Magic U18s who played UP a year at Dallas Cup and beat up on Eintracht Frankfurt's U19s 5-2. These kids have real youth experience and real youth resumes comparable, IMO, to most youth players in the world. If you look at our current U20s, many of them have played - and done well against - the likes of Brazil upwards of 3-5 times as youth. Speaking specifically of Clint Dempsey; If Chris Eagles is an important prospect for a club like ManU, how is he more qualified than Clint Dempsey? Show me his resume. How could it possibly be heavier in terms of real minutes played against quality competition? Once again, I believe in perspective. But I also believe in the Reflexive Property in Geometry which states basically that if 1+1=2 for you then 1+1=2 for me. You just can't throw my resume in the trash because I am not from an old firm soccer playing nation. NL
For whatever it's worth, I think it's due primarily to two things, at least when compared to another soccer newbie Japan: 1) The very low-budgets of MLS that prevented the league from bringing in its share of older top class Euro and SA pros. 2) Abscence of quality foreign coaches. Yes, we had Carlos Quieros but Japan had Arsene Wenger. I think if MLS kept the 5 foreigner rule, regardless of the age, and brought in some good foreign players and coaches, the homegrown Yanks would have progressed faster and further than historically. I also think the reluctance up until the last couple of years to want the US born players to be loaned or sold to Euro clubs was counterproductive because many of them would have come back to improve the rank-n-file in MLS. Instead the league was too self-congratulatory with the likes of Landon Donovan, who for my money is just a very very athletic but still a rather typical American player. Rudi Völler's Germany was actually rated below the US after the former's poor Euro'04 run. Its fortunes seemed to have turned around greatly under Klinsmann insofar that Jürgen is playing two strikers and no pure defensive mid in Hamann's mode and they are scoring goals. Maybe Arena should take a note here. I get excited about guys who make it in Europe, especialy in bigger/upper Euro leagues and their top teams ... and Brian West. The US will probably be lacking in pure skills visavis the world class teams for quite some time but it will make up for that with athleticism to achieve reasonable results.
So I wonder how Demps is doing after two days of training with Feyenoord. Tomorrow he'll get to watch them play Groningen, which should be a solid win. Also Thomas Buffel has refused to extend his contract. I'll start a rumor here and now, maybe Dortmund will want him for Christmas. The money they get from selling Buffel could buy Dempsey probably 2 or 3 times.
You make some good points and I can see where you are coming from but you really seem to downplay the ablities of a lot of our players. First you say Landon Donovan is just a typical American player with lots of athleticism. Then you say Dempsey is basically another Frankie Hejduk. I do think that a lot of posters overrate both player's abilities. i have heard posts that say that Donovan can start for Man United. I have read threads that claim that Donovan could be nominated for FIFA player of the year in the near future. But you seem to take the other extreme, downplaying all our players. The US definitely has a long way to go. But we're going in the right direction. No, we don't have an Arjen Robben, but we have Damarcus Beasley who is the best outside midfielder in all of Conacaf and is playing for PSV Eindhoven, a team that will likely make the knockout rounds of CL. We don't have a Frank Lampard, but we do have Landon Donovan, who is perhaps the best player the US has produced and will probably join Bayer Leverkusen and start. We don't have an Henry, but we have Eddie Johnson who was tied for leading scorer with Brian Ching and despite having just recently started playing for the US has 5 goals and is tied for most goals with LD in just 3 games. We don't have a Nesta, but we have Bocanegra who is starting left back for Fulham. Currently we don't have any world class players, but with some luck, we will within the next 10 years.
No. Dempsey's got a brain or at least plays as if he's got one. I think Ricardo Fuller, Ramon Moralez and Jesus Arellano are better players currently than DMB, though he probably has a better upside.
A couple of "slanted" questions... What exactly did Clint do in twenty or so minutes against Jamaica, besides take a player on one-v-one (I loved it) only to take a weak dive in the box once he had run out of ideas / space that was so inspiring??? Is Dempsey older than Convey (a young player with arguable <<on these boards anyways>> potential), who has been played out of his "preferred" position in several different positions. IIRC, Bubby has said that his "preferred" position is CM... a position he last played with the Nats' in the second half against Holland in Amsterdam in February??? What was the Revs' "regular season" record before they got "hot" in the playoffs again??? Alright, carry on with the lovefest... Viva ALL US Nats!!!
Shaq in the Feyenoord area is in Rotterdam, but I think he has some computer issues. I've got some other contacts in Holland and they think he's on trial. "Wouldn't be on the team website if it wasn't a trial".
Case in point Jovan Kirovski. ManU got Pique from Barca, and Rossi from Parma, and Spector from Chicago Sockers. My feeling is that the US overperforms and is greater than the some of its parts, so that an Underskilled player who will add value when utilized in a specific tactical way cam make our team. I don't see glaring technical defficiencies in Dempsey's game that some American players have had in the past, he's not one of the of top twenty in the world at any skill but he doesn't need to be.
While there are some on these boards who may get overexcited and overenthusiastic over any possible emerging US talent or over any US player's achievement no matter how small or whether real or perceived, there are 1 or 2 who seem intent on poisoning the optimistic mood on these boards, their sole mission seems to be to point out every negative, every weakness, every blemish in any US player who has the misfortune of being praised by some other poster. They seem determined to put down any US player worthy of any positive mention and US soccer in general, and to portray the US as no better than 4th rate behind the South Americans, Europeans and Africans. After the US win the World Cup in 2014, these people will still say it's no big deal, the US is not 'solar system' class, the Martians are better. They are willing to torture themselves by reading these boards despite finding the "group think nauseating" as mentioned by one of them much earlier in this thread. Every internet forum has its share of these spoilers and the best way to manage spoilers would be for the rest of us to simply ignore them and do not respond or even refer to anything they say, as far as the rest of genuine US supporters are concerned, they (the spoilers) do not even exist. Then maybe these threads won't get out of focus or degenerate into personal attacks.
I think it's almost irrelevant about certain players' abilities. It's more the case that some fans see the glass half empty;others see it half full. There's this parent I know who is constantly criticizing his son's coach. Non-stop. Others think the coach walks on water. I think the coach has room for improvement, but is basically doing a decent job. However, I would never take potshots at him the way Mr. Know It All does. I do think some fans get carried away with certain players. For example, GAM. Some fans are trying to compare him to Thierry Henry. No, he's not in that class. But EJ is not crap, either, and because of his speed and athleticism, has the potential to compete against the very best defenders and teams. Whether he maximizes his potential still remains to be seen, but as a fan I enjoy watching the saga unfold.
"...lacking in pure skills..." is the operative phrase IMHO. For all our improvement in youth coaching, I still think most American kids from age 6-12 do not work with the ball nearly enough (esp. when compared to kids in Europe & South America), and often have no competent person to show them the way. Consequently, they're usually not as fundamentally sound as their non-American counterparts. This is an oversimplification, of course, but it does explain why players like Frankie can actually play for our National Team. This country worships athleticism above all else. I would even argue that in sports where we are generally considered to be dominant, for example basketball (Athens notwithstanding), our players are often not as fundamentally sound as the Europeans and others coming into the NBA. It's not that our players are bad technically, the players (and their youth coaches) do not reinforce fundamental technique the way they do in Europe.
The Europeans run very similar set-ups for both soccer and basketball where special academies are open for very talented teenagers (some as young as 13) who then are "educated" for ~ six hours every day on the basics of their game until they turn 18 or show their inability to progress to the desired levels. The general education comes in second as long as the kids can read and write. In the US, I assume that one can find a lot of basketball pick-up games - which is a venue that's also open for world wide soccer players who are not formally alligned with an established soccer academy - where they can play and practice their moves that augments the organized training usually run by their high school coaches. The amount of time that can be spent in the gym under a coach's supervision is strictly regulated by the sporting authorities, which does limit the development of "total players". However, with a couple of hours of training each day, one can become a pretty sharp performer on the court by the time he graduates high school. From what I have seen of the youth soccer development, most kids get their 3 training sessions per week with each lasting 90 minutes or so. Some of it is spent on individual drills, a large portion on team play. Then they play a competitive results oriented match against some other team in the same age bracket. Hypothetically, this need not produce inferior players. A suburban prospect can use his backyard to set up dribbling cones and time himself as he improves. He can learn to juggle the ball to a near perfection by himself also. Touch can be developed by trying to kick the ball into anything from garbage cans to basketball hoops. For some reasons however, the US players in their late teens come up as very inferior in the skills department compared to the athletes from other nations. Some of it is certianly due to coaching but IMO the players themselves have to accept some of the responsibility for their state of affairs because from watching a few EPL/LaLiga/CL games on TV, one can clearly see the desired standard to which aspire.