The 2018 race for the US Soccer Presidency

There are so many candidates for President of US Soccer. I thought it would be fun to talk about the candidates, what they advocate, how they will “fix” USSoccer if they even believe it needs fixing. If anyone knows how the Prez gets elected, I.e., who actually gets to vote, that would be Interesting.

 

wow that was a weird tool.

I looked at this very long article by Anthony DiCicco, but I want names! real names! and a clear concise summary. oh well.

• https://medium.com/@adicicco/who-the-hell-votes-in-the-us-soccer-presidential-election-58e2c198c389

Who is Anthony DiCicco anyways? When I saw his name in Twitter, I thought it was a parody account, since Tony DiCicco just died this year. So is this Tony DiCicco's son?

 

American Outlaws has created its guide to the election page. Their "first step is to focus on change in leadership and leading the conversation of candidates to replace Sunil Gulati."

• http://voao.theamericanoutlaws.com/ao-election-center/

 

My guess is Sunil or his right-hand man Cordeiro. Because Putin would want USSF to continue overlooking the ongoing Russian doping scandal. I would assume all the player candidates would take some action as prez if they could.

 

I would vote for Rapinoe over any of the player candidates, gulati and gulati2

 

smart courageous female!

 

I just finished reading Raphael Honigstein's "Das Reboot: How German soccer reinvented itself and conquered the world", 2015.

It is a detailed analysis of how German soccer changed from 2000 onwards. The 2 prime motivators at the beginning were:

• in 1996, they were going to submit a bid to host WC 2006. They wanted to improve the youth system to ensure they would have a competitive team
• No one wanted to spend the money, but after losing in WC 1998 to Croatia and then exiting Euro 2000 in first round, youth development got funded

Key developments were that

• The German FA working with the Bundesliga, set up what eventually became 366 regional performance centers. The goal was to offer weekly 2 hour training to 10,000 U12 boys and 4,000 13-17 year old boys, within 25 kms of home. This helps identify players who don't live near the clubs
• Concurrently, club academies became requirements for the 36 Bundesliga clubs in divisions 1 and 2. Academies are certified (e.g., must have a minimum of 4 training pitches with one of artificial turf). 3-star clubs get 400k euros annually from the UEFA Champions League Solidarity Fund (unless the clubs played in the CL), whereas zero-star academies get 100k euros.
• The academies now develop kids at a professional level, both physically, tactically and mentally. E.g., by age 16 they know many tactical systems and can change on a dime.
• Jurgen Klinsmann is credited with bringing in many changes to German professional soccer. Changes he made at the national team level spread to the Bundesliga clubs

• • Individualized fitness training
  • Mark Verstegen’s methods
  • in-depth scouting of opponents
  • holistic attitude to man management including sports psychologists and mental coaches
  • use of specialists
  • professionalism
  • training pitch improvements

There are also many other things they have done. It's quite mind-boggling. More than half the book is about the players and games at WC 2006, 2010, and 2014. Very good read.

 

so if the ussf candidates knew Germany's history, maybe they would get some ideas on how to improve soccer in the USA.