The US population is 349 million. Guess what the population is of all of the Quarter-final countries COMBINED. Do you think it is more or less than the USA? Drumroll.... it is... 279 million France 69M, Morcocco 39, Spain 48, Belgium 12, Norway 5.6, England 58.6, Argentina 46.6. Now of course population is not the only thing that matters. As we are reminded when Americans say "yeah BUT look at China, look at India" to appease their egocentrism. BUT combined with population, we spend a lot on soccer! And we have great resources and facilities! What we are missing is... well, it's a bunch of things. Its a lot of things that the adminisration and fans don't really think about. Some of those things are simple, like a lack of pickup/street/unstructured play at youth. I listened to a interview with Berhalter, Bradley, and Bruce Arena. Even they don't get it. It's a bunch of "we need better coaching education"... "keep improving the MLS academies" yada yada If you listen to Thierry Henry... he says he was forged on the concrete pitches of outer Paris Who do you think knows more on talent development?
IMO, a recent interview I saw with Landon Donovan hit the nail on the head. "Pay to play" football teams are the major problem and as long as that's not fixed there will not be any major changes.
If you don't think we need better coaching in this country, I don't know what to tell you. Kids playing pickup on the streets is just the raw material.
I don't see any kids playing pickup on the streets. so what you're saying is we're missing raw material, and France has a lot of raw material ding ding ding!
But even if we had the raw material, what would we do with them? Our current system would chase most of them away from the game, and fail to maximize the abilities of whoever makes the cut.
I came into a bunch of money 10 years ago. I thought about what I could do with it that would help society. The US Mens Field hockey team has been abysmal and I wanted to change that. I mean we haven't qualified for the Olympics when we are not the host since Melbourne in 1958. Our best finish was in 1932 with a bronze medal performance out of 3 teams. We've consistently finished near the bottom of the standings in the Olympics. I wanted to change that. The US needs a better pickup field hockey culture. So I bought a few houses around me and knocked them down. I built a full sized field hockey pitch with goals. I look out every day waiting for the pickup field hockey culture to take off. Turns out not a darn person has showed up to play field hockey in ten years. I tried letting schools use it for after school field hockey clubs but they said nah. If people don't want to do something you cant make a culture out of it. You have to create the culture. Start with supporting MLS, USL, and amateur teams to your most financial abilities and perhaps beyond. If everyone did that we wouldn't be in this position because stadiums would be full and players would be making millions and be on TV. Then you might get some some kids who would choose basketball to pursue despite their dad being 5'9". Or you would have dad's worrying about how to get their kid to be a 2 sport D1 athlete in soccer and something else. Or, if people want street soccer culture go out and find it. It's there. You have search for and it and be willing to sacrifice some things. My son played street soccer by himself. We also went out searching for park pickup soccer, mostly against older kids. There were a few places in our mid sized town where high school aged kids would congregate, mostly immigrant. Idk if they were any good but they were older and pulled no punches. Drive around and find those, push your son out of the car and tell him to go down and join. If he has skills he will be allowed to play.