Germany went through the same phase from 1998 to about 2006, with only Kahn, Ballack, Lehman and Klose as notable players, then the generation of Muller, Ozil, Neuer, Lahm, Khedira, Boateng, Podolski, Kroos, etc. emerged and fully restored them to the elite. The Dutch themselves went through a similar decline in the first half of the 80s, then came back strong with Van Basten, Gullit, Rikjaard and Koeman to win Euro 88.
Right now if you look at the top talent in the Eredivisie arguably most of it isn't even Dutch... Ziyech, Unal, Traore, Jahanbaksh, Dolberg, Larsson, Sanchez, Ayoub, Klich... It's almost like even in the Eredivisie top class Dutch players are at a premium. Klaasen and Kongolo are the only Dutch players that come to mind...
Definitely not the same phase. As I mentioned, this isn't just in reference to the national team, but of their overall footballing structure. Germany from 1998 to 2006 achieved a WC QF, Final, and Semi-Final. Club wise, Bayern went to multiple CL finals. The Dutch on the other hand, missed out on an expanded European Championship (which is absurd), may not make the World Cup, and their club situation is beyond abysmal, with the league currently ranked behind the Czech Republic's per UEFA. How many people can even name more than one Czech team? Considering that the current, elite European nations all have strong leagues, this is an important, and obvious, correlation particularly considering the increasing gap between the best leagues and the rest.
You're making the mistake of over emphasising the importance of national league strength on international success. Yes, a level of tactical cohesiveness can be found in the German, Spanish, and Italian teams since most of their capped players still remain at home. And the English style of football has fallen so out of favor, even among English clubs, that the EPL offers little by way of unified style to the English. But I think that that is where the primary importance the domestic league's relative strength in relation to their national team ends. There are many other secondary factors that are aided by leagues such as depth, but in those cases merely having a league that is solvent is sufficient. The Eredivisie was little better than it is today when the Netherlands was in the final of the WC in 2010. And unless you consider River Plate or Boca Juniors on the level with Barca or Bayern, then it wasn't really crucial for Argentina either. Their best play never even played professionally in Argentina.
Except for Messi, every single player for Argentina's current and past national teams have played professionally in Argentina. That being said, I still agree one shouldn't place that much importance to the relative strength of the league regarding the national team success.
It was crucial for player development. Players didn't fall through the cracks or underdevelop to the extent it happens in Nigeria.
Netherlands is a small country , it's seems to me that it is more likely that other teams catch up with them (Belgium for instance) that for them to catch up with the bigger nations like Italy, Germany or France. This happened with Uruguay, they were during decades one of the top teams of Southamerican football along with Argentina and Brazil, but then the other nations catched up with them, and Argentina and Brazil resisted as the 2 continental powerhouses, while Uruguay although very good is closer to Colombia, Chile or Ecuador.
They've never been a true contender, just incredibly consistent. They seem to be trying to fix this by competing more in South American competitions and buying up SA players into Liga MX, but despite the strengthening of their league, never seem to develop the type of player or players that they need to step up to the next level. It should have been working better than the English doing the same with the EPL since South Americans play such a similar style than some of the players infiltrating the EPL, but Mexico has often displaced Mexicans with South Americans in many key positions. England doesn't do this quite as much but the lack of tactical cohesiveness, vision and identity is their particular weakness. This is why Chivas still has such a strong following since, like Atletico Bilbao, they only play Mexicans or players directly descended from Mexico. They came close with Chicharito at Man U and Gio at Barca, but neither became quite the players that they could have been. Footballing fans and ppl around the sport tend to overlook the mental aspect of sports. Alot of what propels the better footballing nations is also a sense of personal belief and confidence that comes from being from Brazil or Germany. Even smaller nations that are consistently good have t his intangible aspect to their ability to develop players. With players from less hailed nations, there's an initial inferiority factor once you're on the same field with famous kits. That's a big thing that hurts players trying to bwcome world class. You see this in all sports. It took a long time before foreigners began having success in the NBA bc, at first, it took awhile for them ro begin to feel that they deserved to be there. Even Dirk took some time to get his confidence in his own abilities and most coaches would not have given him the time to find his legs...
In which decades were they so abysmal? They've been continental champions in every decade. (Of course Europeans don't know this because they only know about European football)
No wonder if you think how often your Continental Championship are held - every dog has its day. '75 to '85 '91 to '01 and several single world cups here and there, they didn't make it to the World Cup. They even failed in a play-off against Australia.
Lol 10 years without a title abysmal? What do you call "so called" powerhouses (that shall remain nameless) going on an 18 year drought? Or 23 years without wetting it?
I agree that mentality is a big part. That's why I think the first time an emerging team wins the World Cup it will be better for the others too. For example, let's say Nigeria win a World Cup. After that Japan and the USA might think "Nigeria didn't have much of a presence in soccer until the 1990's just like us" and as a result they will gain confidence too.
Yeah. This is something that plays itself out time and again in multiple sports. Once you have that pioneer, then that belief kicks in. I can't exactly pinpoint who it was in the NBA that broke through bc it seems like they all seemed to happen at the same time. At first you saw guys who had all the talent in the world like a Drazen Petrovich, who still carried the "soft" tag and never really made the type of impression that a guy of his skillset could have. But then you get guys like Dirk, Manu, Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Pau Gasol, Yao Ming and Peja almost all breaking through and having significant impact on basketball at the same time. It could also be said that without Yao Ming giving young Asian Americans belief in the fact that they too could become professional basketball players, then you'd have no Jeremy Lin. Baseball has, likewise, seen a major breakthrough in Japanese players proving that their best can compete on level terms in the highest league in their sport and some of that came from Japan winning the WBC twice but it mostly came because Ichiro Suzuki went to Seattle and proved that being the best in Japan could also mean being one of the best in the US. It's a bit harder in football because there are sooo many players in the sport, sooo much history and (what we Americans like to call...) mystique involved with the more established contenders, but once you kill that monster and get rid of the preconceived notions on both sides, then you'll see a bit of a more level playing field. You'll see defenders on less regarded sides begin to press a bit more and not give quite as much space to an Iniesta on the dribble. You'll likewise see a Sergio Ramos give, say, a Christian Pulisic a bit more space to run because mentally, he's actually worried about being beaten by his dribble. Michael Jordan had this. He could scare a defender by the thought of what he might do moreso than what he was actually doing. Ichiro made pitcher do silly things like leave breaking balls down the middle because the second-guessed themselves during the motion of a pitch they've thrown a thousand times perfectly because they suddenly doubt their ability to successfully stop a tiny player who, years ago, they wouldn't even have thought twice about being able to beat. Players form their own reputation, that is true. But after a time, that reputation begins to augment the maintainance of their status. I don't know how many Anatomy and Phys guys are out there, but it's alot like what is called a positive-feedback loop. One aspect sets the other into motion, which in turns accentuates the initial aspect which goes on to further the secondary aspect, and so on and so forth... Yeah, so I think that once one non-UEFA or CONMEBOL team wins, you might start seeing a surge in competitiveness from other nations from AFC, CONCACAF and CAF as they start looking at that first team, what they did and how they did it. Then belief kicks in, players from their parts of the world start to get even more looks from scouts looking to find the next cheap "diamond in the rough" and suddenly World Football gets a bit bigger as the sport becomes truly global and wide-open, at least at the international level. As I said before, the cohesiveness of tactics will remain an advantage to Italy, Germany and Spain. Even England, should they find a new set of tactics among their top eschelon clubs that can be replicated by their national team. But ultimately, what you see to combat that is certain countries starting to choose leagues that best reflects their particular strengths and sending more of their players to those leagues. South American players who go to the EPL, like Sergio Aguero for example, start to develop habits and stylistic qualities that don't work particularly well with the style preferred in their home country. But Messi, having never even played in Argentina, plays the Spanish style of football which is currently closer (not the same but closer) to a style preferred in most Latin American nations. Americans are beginning to choose Germany as the style to best develop a tactical approach and much of this was influenced by the reign of Klinnsman as national team coach. If nothing else comes from his time in the US, it is that more American players might start to choose German clubs over English clubs when deciding on their next stage of development. (BTW, as an aside, as much as Germans hate RB Leipzig, bringing East German talent into the fold and developing them can't exactly hurt German football's ability to maintain it's resurgence. I mean, noone else in East Germany was doing it, and West German clubs weren't exactly making a meal of the void. And the cultural aspects of a potential Bayern-Leipzig rivalry might one-day rival Barca-Real. They should be thanking Mateschitz. All due respect to BVB, but they're more an Atletico to Barca's Bayern than a Real. Or is it Bayern's Barca??? ...not...sure...if this...really even matters...) Dutch players have been doing this for years which is why I don't think that the decline of the Eridivisie in importance has hurt their NT as much as it might have otherwise. What you've seen is a slow absorption of certain aspects of Dutch style football into the German game; more Dutch coaches and players stemming from similar histories and location in Europe have shown this to be a beneficial marriage for both nations. This is why Neymar did well to chose Barca over any other European club that was out to seek his signature bar Real, who would have been nearly as good a choice. But what was key is the fact that playing next to Messi and in that system would allow him to express himself and become the type of player that Brazil needs him to be moreso than even Real. The old Brazilian style is not reflected directly reflected by the style predominent in La Liga and Barca in particular, but it is of a certain tactical approach that doesn't directly conflict with the unrestrained technical sort of expressiveness favored historically by Brazilian players. The more restrained sort of technical expressiveness favored in Germany is flavored by the attack-minded flair favored by the Dutch. This link has augmented and even changed German tactics as much as it has sustained Dutch football. It's symbiotic. Americans would do well to tie themselves more closely to Germany in the future. Even Nigeria has shown their best moments in football under the tactical approach of German or Dutch handlers, and it shows. Even though West Africans once typically favored the flair of Latin American football, our respective size in comparison to most Latin Americans or even Mediterranean peoples, doesn't allow us the range of mobility to pop up in spaces like the smaller players from these countries can. We'll usually be noticed. Kelechi Iheanacho seems to break this rule, but, even at 6'1" (from a very recent growth spurt) he's still not the most physically imposing individual and can often find ways to make his somewhat tall frame go unnoticed by defenders as he makes runs through their lanes. He also takes on an aspect of passing then running into adjacent lanes in order set up his own scoring angles. He likes to think about the play two or three passes ahead which is why he works so poorly as a target lone-striker, since his best scoring angles come when he can see the play developing ahead of him. He doesn't do well on the end of a run unless he's coming into the play at the same time as the man providing service. This is distinctly something he learned from watching so much more Spanish football than English football. But why the German approach works best, even for one like him, is that they also favor the build-up in attack even when working through counterattacks. They don't tend towards direct tactics. But they also acknowledge that the sort of elusive presence of smaller Mediterranean or Latin American footballers is much harder for them since they don't always have the tiny players that can benefit from this the most. So setup and cohesiveness is promoted. Getting the entire side to work for one another. I've never seen a Nigerian side more together from a spiritual aspect as this one and alot of that goes to Rohr bringing in that familial quality to the side while still able to mix lineups enough to promote competition within the team. So tactical cohesiveness can be accomplished in many ways without drawing all of your players from similar setups, so long as you have an over-arching plan which can draw enough mutual aspects into the team dynamic to still make a unique approach that works for your side. Dutch football has been doing this. Latin American football is learning to develop something that works in the modern age that isn't centered around their domestic leagues. African, Asian and North Americans are starting to realize the importance of this while planning ahead. I worry a bit that the USMNT might become more insular in it's approach with Bruce Arena back in charge and stop trying to push the attack minded philosophy that Klinnsman was starting to develop. I think alot of the team's recent struggles have alot more to do with things that were happening off the pitch than anything that was taking place on it, but Klinnsman had alrady made alot of enemies within the US fanbase when he could have been more diplomatic, so... who knows... Bruce is a smart man and a good coach. I don't think he'll unravel everything that Klinnsman was able to instill. Rather, he'll pull back a bit tactically, but find the balance that lets them use what they've learned.
I agree. And I think that this falls into the whole depth argument. Domestic leagues are no longer the primary driver for fully developing your best players as one usually wants those guys to challenge themselves on Champions League caliber clubs. However, when fleshing out all of your positions and eliminating redundancy within your roster, having a strong domestic league is invaluable. During the early 2000's West African teams fell into a trap whereby they were unable to place players who weren't either defenders, defensive midfielders, speedy wingers or target strikers on any team. This enabled them to build teams with strong spines up and down the pitch but very little by way of creativity from the central attacking mid role, the outside wingback roles or second strikers. They were stronger defensively but easily blunted on attack and often had to play strikers out of position in false-9 or even as 10's or pull in their D-mids into the 10 role in order to try to offset this. This resulted in very boring and overly-physical West African football, still strong enough to compete on the continent and even with the North African sides who, at the time, remained very insular with few European players, but they would struggle with sides who could not only defend but unlock even the best defenses. Nigeria's recent resurgence has coincided with the simultaneous development of Iheanacho, who operates best as a false-9 or a second striker, and Iwobi, who could potentially be their future 10. Also, better balance within the team has allowed Mikel to express himself more in a alternative box-to-box 10 role that finds him bridging the back 4 to the attack, holding up play in the midfield and showing some of the dribbling skill that many thought was gone and finding spaces from the midfield with non-route one through-balls into attackers set up to exploit lanes exposed from trying to mark a more dangerous front three (Iwobi, Iheanacho, Moses). Is the team more balanced because Nigeria has become better at foreign player acquisition and marketing more of their creative young prospects to European clubs, or is this merely a chance run of positive development that doesn't reflect any changing philosophy in European scouting nor the Nigerian academy system and will be gone as soon as it came just as it did at the end of the 1990's. I can't answer that question. Only time will tell. They are still sending attacking prospects to prominent leagues and clubs. Should even a quarter of those pan out, then it could bode well for the next group of Nigerians looking to make a mark. And, what had started under Pinnick (I really like him, and Salomon Dalung's recent incompetent remarks along with Gernot Rohr's success as coach are beginning to vindicate his track-record with alot of Nigerians. Nativism and mediocrity is no recipe for success in any culture. There's a reason why living creatures are encouraged to randomize their DNA.) is continuing under Rohr who is kicking the overseas scouting for young Euro-born Nigerians available to make a switch into overdrive. Is this run of competence the new normal? Is this style of NT development maintainable as an alternative to the league-initiated program that worked back in the 1990's when the league was still relatively strong enough to develop players? Or will it work best once the current strategies are coupled with a resurgent domestic league? For all that I think that FC Ifeanyi Ubah is a dumb name, I'm really rooting for him because he's got a lot of money and a lot of ambition. If he proves successful, hopefully other rich Nigerians will follow, sans naming their clubs after themselves... please don't continue that... E2A: For those of you who don't follow the politics of Nigerian football, here's a quick rundown of the past year. You don't have to read this if you don't want to, that's why I'm making this super, super small...
Wow nice post as always from you. As for Bruce Arena I'm not quite sure he'all be able to fix the problems with the team. Most likely I see a group exit for them at 2018, though, similar to 2006. It is my lifetime dream to see a team like USA, Japan, Nigeria or Turkey win a World Cup one day.
most of these countries we expect to be the new World Cup winner have hit a ceiling or are actually regressing in comparison to competition. *** I don't think any African country can win without "insular thinking" reforms. This is the heritage of the World Cup, no team has even won with a foreign coach. You can't have 23 players who play in 4/5/6 countries for clubs come together to play around 8 matches together in a year and expect them to be World Champions. This is without adding the fact that the foreign coach is at first a mercenary. When your coach is not singing the national anthem with you, he is just not invested in the success or failure. *** If there is no healthy foreign-domestic ratio like 12-12 then it's not going to happen. Even CONMEBOL is suffering from this. Are they going to have a world cup winner anytime soon? Don't think so. Domestic Football is the basis of progress just look at the examples *** South Korea and Netherlands appear to be regressing due to external pressure. Korea is now losing players and coaches to an inferior league while the situation of Netherlands is now known. *** African countries continue to give Europe the leeway to develop Papa bouba dioup's because this is their stereotype of the African player. They naturally prioritize their needs in developing players rather than those of the African country. *** Mexico and USA are stuck in a loop, they have hit a ceiling. There is not enough competition within the Confederation to push them forward
Thanks. As long as you can put up with my tendency to fly off on tangents, we're good. I've tried to formulate my thoughts into smaller statements, but they never seem to get across the gist of what I'm trying to get across. So I've gone away from that and just put down what I mean, with whatever supporting statements that I need to get across the total aspect of what I feel is my point. That way, you can either not read it or read it and fully understand it but you can never truly misquote me or read anything other than my intended meaning. It's the difference between making nuanced points vs talking in sound-bites. I hate sound-bites...
I think that this completely discounts the mental hurdle, which I think is a bigger hurdle than anyone will ever admit in this sport. For a new nation, and especially a nation from outside of UEFA or CONMEBOL, to win they have to have an almost perfect storm of not only belief from the side itself, but also contributing attrition of belief on the part of their opponents as well as other actors on the pitch. It's long been a part of sports that, when a decision is close, often official (refs, umpires etc) will subconsciously assume that the better player in their mind got the better half of a particular exchange. Now, more often than not (perhaps 60% of the time) they'll be correct, but when they are not, it's usually in a manner that is extremely detrimental to the side in question. And, in a sport like football, these notions can hold far more weight than in other sports where scoring is very frequent. I don't agree. For one thing, this may have once been an aspect that was a realistic concern when football was primarily domestic world-wide. But, in a global population that will only become more global as time goes on, this will become more and more impossible to manage. Even today vs the 1990s you only have to look at the birthplace and the speaking accents of the team to understand that globalization has not left Nigeria untouched. Even those born in Nigeria, raised in Nigeria, are in fact more European in mindset from the growing number of years having lived there. And, in return, this has also changed Nigeria. Look at the broadcast vocalizing of the anchorpersons on, say, Channels TV News. Some have authentic UK accents and others, you can tell, affect the accent in order to seem more "worldly". These affectations are not simply symptomatic of an inferiority complex, since the same thing happens to the UK from it's relationship with it's foreign colonies. Both countries change due to the relationship that remains through legal and illegal immigration, cultural exchange, historical influence that engendered similar governmental and legal structures, even corruptive elements were borrowed. This is not something that can be stopped anymore than the bacteria that eventually became our cell's mitochondria can become an individual organism again. These are environmental and evolutionary forces that are beyond conscious action. Now, how that affects Nigeria and other nations focus in the long-term is to understand that this will ultimately benefit a very small number of nations in the short-term, and eventually not even all of those. Spain, Germany and Italy have won each of the last three World Cups and they remain the most culturally cohesive national teams in the world. But they also have the most successful domestic leagues in the world. Now unless you think that any league in the world, and especially in the developing footballing landscape (including the US) is set to topple that trio anytime soon, then developing along these lines is highly improbable. So the first step to success is understanding that direct emulation of the strategies that worked in the past under nations whose football developed differently from ours is likely also highly improbable to impossible. You have to understand how a system works. Take a certain system at a certain period in time and make a inventory of the various rules that allows that system to be maintained. Then take another snapshot in time. See what is the same. See what is different. Take the trajectory of the current changes and project them onto another hypothetical timeframe further in the future. Does it look the same? What ways does it look different? This is how you plan long-term. You understand that systems do not remain the same. We might not how South American football has been slowed in recent WCs, but you would be overlooking how it has been maintained in the face of those changes. They accepted that the changes in their football were inevitable and worked ahead of time to begin to find new tactical approaches to offset the effect of those changes and marry it to what might still work for them. They may not have prospered as much as those three nations that I mention, but they still have made a WC final and their teams are still ahead of many European teams that have been seen as possibly encroaching on their position. When you're not in a position to control the movement of the board, you have to adapt with how those rules change. Stagnation is slow death. And innovation can often mean taking the concepts of others, learning them, and then improving them. It's like Trump wanting to bring back all of the jobs in the old US economy that the country had evolved past, rather than investing in oooooh say NASA and other research institutes to create the new industries and new jobs to support future generations. Looking backwards will only take you backwards. Remember, Brazil didn't invent the game, the Brits did, they just learned it and improved upon what they learned. They're already starting to do this again. Lastly, you only have to look at the EPL to understand that the success of the bigger leagues will ultimately become as much of a burden as not having the most successful leagues. Tactical cohesion will ultimately become secondary to business interest just as they have for the players who have been leaving their countries to play in those same successful leagues. English tactical approaches have fallen and given way to foreign concepts. This happened quickly because the English approach was always sub-optimal, but it's happening slowly in the other big leagues. Italy is a league that hasn't been dominated by the Catennacio in almost decades. And though it has persisted the ravages of globalized football, that was mainly (almost in a meme-inducing manner) through the enduring career of some of their older players who remembered the purest form of their style. Of the three nations that I have mentioned, Italy has begun to show the most extreme signs of wear since that core was always aging. Spain was second, since the style that they played was never adapted. Still, having control of most of their national team within their boundaries allows them to adapt, but not without more foreign concepts creeping into their ideology. Concepts that will serve their opposition as much as themselves. And this has long been the case in Germany. Even now, the German national team is a bit of a mix of concepts borrowed from the Dutch and sometimes even France. They're growing influence in Europe and around the world will be coupled by growing influences upon them from Europe and around the world. Its the balance between entropy and homeostasis. You simply cannot fight those flows of motion. The wise path is to find ways to work ahead and make those trends work for you. Foreign coaches have always won World Cups because most of the nations who have won World Cups have lineage and pedigree within the sport that goes back a century to the nascence of international competition. They developed their own leagues when the rest of the sport was learning the game. They created the competition that we all play. Even England's struggles can historically be tied to the fact that they were not part of this movement and thus did not play an active hand in developing the game that they initially created. That system is not eternal. That element of success cannot be recreated by new sides looking to join that elite because that history of developing alongside the sport cannot be recreated. Ultimately the factors that came from how this began will give way to the factors that predominate today's and tomorrow's reality and ultimately create different opportunities to those who are understanding enough to take advantage. There is a equation in physics on the influence of dark energy vs regular matter/energy in the universe and how one gives way to the other over time. It's long and drawn out and most people won't really understand it, but it all boils down to the ability of one set of interrelated circumstances to predominate over another at one point in time and slowly give way to the other while both have obeyed the rules over time. These things may seem random while you live through them, but if you pay attention and you follow the trajectories, you can find a pattern and understand how to be in the right place when it's most opportune. Trying to recreate the past is not the way forward. I think that I've already covered this. Yes look at the results on the African continent alone. If you find solution that does not hold up under varying circumstances, then it's time to look for another solution. Chances are that it's wrong. Correlation does not equal causation. Netherlands has regressed before and re-surged when they found the players. South Korea, otoh, was never a world power. Their progress was always going to be in fits and stops until they had a system or ideology that could sustainably develop the players that they need. All nations have to find this balance. The good nations are good because they've been at it for a lot longer than the rest of us. It's not one simple factor but a confluence of factors. Trying to peg it all to one simple thing like domestic coaches, leagues, the ever-nebulous "best athletes" (particular to the US), or any other simplistic solution doesn't take into account that there is never anything simple in any dynamic system that can be pegged to a single factor without that same factor changing later. (I think everyone would benefit from learning the theory of relativity which requires the abstract concept that universal frames of reference regarding speed, position and even timing of multiple places and events are all equally true in an intricate dance in what seems like a chaotic mess of speeds times and distances... noting is simple...) That's why you experiment with different approaches, including diverging from what worked for much more esteemed nations developing under different conditions. This goes for economics too. You can't try to emulate the blueprint of say, the US in terms of economic development unless you also intend on taking on a policy of enforced slavery, multiple military occupations and a number of other tactics that might today be frowned on in Geneva if any nation tried to do the same today. And I'll leave you with one other thing. If physicists around turn of the century had assumed that their preconceived notions of reality superseded evidence gleamed by "modern" experimental techniques, then they might have seen quantum physics as a ridiculous notion and these computers that we're all using would not exist. Sometimes it takes time to understand that there are things at work that go beyond the most external and easiest to grasp notions. If you gravitate towards the first thing and hold onto it despite all evidence that it does not work for you as well as it might have someone else under different circumstances, then you will fail. I'm not going to pattern my life after some scion of Ivy League graduates who were able to pay his way through life and assume that his path to success will work for me. Why would anyone do this? So why do we assume the same in football? It doesn't work like that in any other aspect of reality... I agree with this. I've probably been among the loudest in mentioning this discrepancy. But that's not on Europe, they're going to do what they think is best for them. Just as Europe and other nation's tendency to negotiate trade deals that don't help African nations as much as they could also is a reality. That's on leadership. Just because those factors don't favor us, doesn't mean that we can afford to stick our heads in the sand and ignore it. If you put yourself in a box, cover the lid and lock it, the world still goes on and prospers without you. It's incumbent upon the outsider to find ways to turn the system to their benefit. Because, short of imposing a dictatorship bordering on Cuba-like controls on movement of people, you aren't ending the effects that globalization will have on Nigerian and other African players. Period. In South Africa, North Africa, Mexico and the US, it may appear that it's your league doing something to keep these players at home, but in reality, if the balance between what those players could make abroad exceeded what they could make at home they would all be gone. This is a balance between quality of player and domestic spending power. Only the US could potentially compete with these factors were they capable of producing large amounts of world class players, and even then, this would be compromised by the multitudes of other sports supported here. Ultimately, that balance gets tipped towards going abroad and the players leave. There is no realistic approach in which this changes any time soon. You have to learn to compete in the environment that exists as well as the one that is most likely to exist in the near and far future. That's how you plan. Possibly. Many fans of both teams would like to have closer ties with CONMEBOL without actually joining CONMEBOL. Not sure how possible both of those things are, but CONMEBOL helpfully always extends invitations to all of their major tournaments. What keeps occasionally hinders Mexico and, almost always, the US from accepting them is the need to also compete in our own confed's competitions since winning them actually count towards things like CWC and Confed Cup. But noone plays enough against the top sides outside of the confeds they're located in. Ultimately, it's best to find strategies to bridge the gap from where you are. I've often pointed out that the US has improved in the sport faster than the rate that the top level has improved. Now to those who also say that the top level improves at the same rate, this belies reality. The higher a level one is within anything always require more and more and more to improve from that point. And there's an ultimate limit to how good any human being will ever be at this sport. At a certain point it's easier to regress than improve. They're going to be caught at some point in the future. That's inevitable. The question is by who. I'd put my money on the US someday, but I can't say when. But I'd also put my money on some other country by means that noone has yet predicted because we are still very hung-up on maintaining concepts rather than goal-oriented progress. Someone is going to figure that out... E2A: I missed your point about the 12:12 ratio. Of course I agree with this, but most countries do this and still struggle to augment their football because it's not so simple as having your player play if none are key players within your league and play low-impact roles. And that you cannot legislate. No league can tell their managers to play only domestic players in the 10 role. They'll think that the league is insane. Nothing replaces planning, scouting, opportunistic thinking, and being able to adjust all of that on the fly if conditions change.
I agreed with your point of mental hurdle. But only in the sense of a pioneer to open the gates. Even then, since Cameroon in 1990 has much really happened for Africa? *** You speak about the values of globalization and yes there are gains. But as an African, the fact on the ground I see is that before the 90s the leagues were robust with huge following but after satellite TV the stands are empty except for a few countries that have had some resistance. *** There is no way of succeeding in this climate. How can it be that in other sectors we agree that we have to be more than suppliers of raw material to Europe but in football we deceive ourselves into thinking this is the way to success? When the player goes to Europe, he fills stands and brings revenue to Europe. He pays taxes to European government. When he comes to Africa to play 8 Qualifier matches, what value is he really adding to the continent? *** Look at USA. They built an insular sports market even if it's not Football. Today, China is moving towards this direction. They understand that there is no success in prioritizing European football development over your own. It's not possible that a country will win the World Cup like this unless you have 6 or 5 players who are the best in the world in their positions. This is what South America is left with. They are relying on the luck of a great generation to win the World Cup. *** This is infact the single factor. We have no coaches because we do not give them a chance. We rather overpay for Europeans who have never proved their worth. Look at CAF Champions League in recent years(since Manuel Jose), most won by underappreciated Africans. They don't go back to Europe after a Qualifier match when they coach national teams like the Ghana coach. *** If Football is still pegged to Europe then the new World Cup winner will be a European country. It's straightforward really.
What Cameroon did in 1990 is not a breakthrough. They proved that they could compete, yes, but that is hardly the same as winning a championship and this is the same mental hurdle that every nation yet to win a title deals with. It's the same with every other nation on the globe, including nations from UEFA and CONMEBOL who cannot find it within themselves to defeat players from top nations. Until a nation actually holds the cup, this dynamic will remain the same. I don't speak about the values of globalization, I speak of the reality of it. I don't know what you believe, but I'm coming at this from a background of understanding the convergence of various factors involving evolutionary biology, sociology, anthropology, etc. The idea that the world will ever regress to completely isolated entities in a world that is becoming more and more economically and socially interconnected is a fallacy only relevant to those who chose to deceive themselves into believing that they can stop it. With every generation the boundaries that humans have set between themselves have grown slightly less prevalent. Unless CRISPR-Cas9 allows humans to successfully replace incomplete and degraded portions of our genetic information and extend telomere length, then even the populist revolutions in Europe, Brexit, and the election of Trump are primarily led by older generations who fear this idea and will be dead and replaced by their offspring who have grown up in a more multicultural world. This isn't going to lead to a more perfect world, just a world with a whole new set of challenges and ideas on how to address them. This doesn't event account for the effects that scientific innovations might one day have on the principles of scarcity and energy production. If you don't understand and plan for these changes, then you're living under the false premise of a static reality. There is no such thing. If you plan in a manner that assumes that such changes can be offset or that the rules will remain the same, then you're setting yourslf up for failure. My point is to understand those changes and plan accordingly. If you can't by dynamic in your planning and have a short and long-term plan for growth, then you cannot succeed. This is hardly a similar case since athletes are not commodities. What they provide are services whose value is secondary to the economic conditions that you speak of. Services always tend to gravitate to economies with the highest spending power since human resources have value that is dependent on the ability of a particular structure to have use for them and properly compensate them. Africa's need to supply value-added goods supercedes their need to overpay in order to keep millionaire footballers in house. That comes first. Doing it the other way around is part of what ails us in the first place. Look at most African governments, for example. Nigerian senators collect salaries that are on par with or exceed many European nations while it's per capita income is far lower. Priorities in development do not include creating unsustainable systems until the support structures are in place. It's like how Africans are encouraged to spend money to build bridges, roads and power-lines while overspending to import the materials for their construction, when improving mines, building refineries for metals and factories for components and finished materials will enable them to not only build them, but also maintain them at much lower costs. In the end, the finished structures degrade, the components become obsolete and you've wasted all of your money and built up debt to build things and yet still have not built actual internal capacity (Skills and support industry). With capacity in place, you can support higher level social structures, but simply trying to spend on those higher level social structures; in fact, they'll develop on their own. Doing otherwise is like building a table with no legs. I've harped on African industrialists investing more in to the domestic leagues for years, but I do not advocate for them or anyone else to do so at the expence of more pressing needs, nor to spend beyond the means of economic feasibility. The idea of Nigeria trying to compete economically with the Bundesliga is a waste of money and effort. At this point, their time is better spent developing their skills there anyway. At this point, the most realistic plan is to develop a sustainable and relatively successful league that allow more control over player development, but not with the idea that it can replace the highest level of football. I'm looking at the USA from within the USA, and we employ a policy that has gotten us on par with most of the rest of the developing football world but no further. For as far as it has gotten us, many of us recognise aspects that have to change, case in point- the "pay to play" system. It also develops along a line of circumstances that are unique to the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. Should we also try to employ our respective militaries all over the world because they can? The idea that our plan of development should in any way emulate the US' is short-sighted and naive. The US can get way with alot of things that African nations cannot. They can also stockpile nuclear weapons with impunity. They can exert diplomatic pressure on other nations to turn against their own interests. They can initiate investigations and subpoenas in other countries and actually have them honored if you've paid any attention to what has happened in this sport or on the internet file-sharing network. When an African nation can do any of those things, then we should start thinking about doing things the way that the US does. Their reality is not our reality. For all that you mention China and the US in the same sentence, their ideas on development of anything are drastically different, and they should be. That's the real genius in what the Chinese have done. They didn't simply assume that they could do a "paint-by-numbers" approach and succeed. They recognized intrinsic factors that worked for them. As for football, why are you using them as an example to emulate anyway when they have yet to show any more success or progress in any sport than anyone else. They're experimenting just as we are. Once again, when you assume that there are single factors, you're already heading in the wrong direction. As for our coaches, you need to be abit more familiar with the situation in Nigeria vs what happens in other African nations. Yes the goal is to develop our own coaches, but the way to do it is not to simply throw them into the fire without proper preparation. Your football ultimately suffers and your nation loses confidence in it's own talent-pool. Initially, the emphasis should be on placing the most qualified and competent coach, not rewarding incompetence in order to fool yourself into believing that you're doing something positive. The NFF's crime isn't not employing Nigerian coaches, they've done that for well over a decade with sub-optimal results, and they're not learning anything since they keep making the same mistakes and succumbing to the same pressures. The NFF's failure was in not putting the infrastructure in place that would develop the coaching talent in the first place. Nigeria's primary development tool is their underage youth teams, which is not a proper means of training coaches. The league is a mess, and the certification process is indefinitely followed. Once again, this is the attitude of trying to build table without legs. We want fruits of development without actually developing anything, which is impossible. You build from the ground up, not the top down. The World Cup has been pegged to Europe since the mid-90s and since then Brazil has won the World Cup twice and Argentina has made a final. And one of them will probably win another WC and most of their players will still be based in Europe. There is no basis for that conclusion. Does it give European countries an advantage? Yes, if by European countries you mean Germany or Spain. Everyone else is in a similar boat. And those advantages are secondary to about a hundred other factors that take priority over trying to compete with UEFA clubs for football players. Even the US is not trying to do this. They saw how that worked out with the NASL, it is unsustainable.
I get that the domestic leagues are vastly different in terms of strength, but how is the part in bold much different than what the Dutch NT has done lately in WCs? Those WC results for Germany are a bit misleading too. They had home advantage in one cup and the easiest draw ever in another. You point to the Dutch failure in the latest Euros but Germany was pretty bad in Euro 2000 & 2004. And those disappointments weren't flukes. Those German squads just weren't that strong. They didn't beat any good teams for an entire decade except Portugal in a 3rd-place friendly.