The Coming ‘Golden Generation’ Will Not Accomplish What the 2002 Team Accomplished

Issue is that the US isn't good at youth soccer devolvement yet. It will take time before we can stop relying on the EU to develop our players. I would wait until 2030 to see where we are and if we are constantly protecting good players.

 

The problems I see the other direction are that it is not going to be a steady supply of players just looking around for whoever happens to have a passport and also the top players from countries with better track records are more likely to stick with their home countries unless they can't cut it and then we're stuck thinking we can somehow compete against top countries by using their leftovers. I think we got pretty lucky recently with guys like Dest, Musah and Balogun who are maybe good enough that they would eventually be in the conversation in their home countries but came to the US because they were impatient about waiting for a chance behind a long line of other players where the US could offer a World Cup now. But, I don't think any of them has definitively shown they're better than guys they would be waiting behind.

Realistically, I think we need to use whatever resources we can in both directions. I'm fully on board with bringing in any dual national better than what we've got and sincerely hope they feel welcomed.. But, sometimes it seems like people think we can "recruit" our way to having a top team and I just don't see it. It's only a band aid that is limited in how far it can get you.

Also, I think these are sort of only tangentially related. We should be doing what we can to develop good players and we should be looking for whoever can help. But developing youth players mostly happens before the national team level so it's not like we should expect the national tram to be developing players. Recruiting players from abroad is something the national team can do, but also often happens much sooner as all the recent recruits had a history with the program before they got to the level of the full team.

 

I just want to interject that of the players who are really the key to our chances in 2026, Dest and Jedi are the only ones without any US youth development. Balogun may become that but isn’t yet. Musah has been poor for us lately, and may or may not fit in with whatever Poch wants to do tactically. (Unless someone is slipping my mind right now lol)

 

Maybe you could help us with the house training.

Doesn't deliver as promised. We need more of these guys. ?

 

Matt was good until he went to Europe to eat bench.

Zim and Ream were okay in Qatar but still made some ugly mistakes (Wales game) and I never really fully felt comfortable with either of them but they played better than I expected.

Now I really don't want anything to do with any of those three but sad thing is they are still some of the best we got so we may have to rely on them.

 

Zim and Ream may not have played a role if both Richards and Miles hadn't gotten hurt...................

Ream in particular, who hadn't played a single game with the USMNT in the calendar year prior to the World Cup. Wasn't even in the squad. Then he's not just on the World Cup team but went 90 minutes in every game.

I do think CB is one position in which we can say previous generations were better. I still think Eddie Pope is the best American-born CB we've had. I know the number of people who watched his games in his prime are lessening on this board. The Gooch/Boca combination worked very well. Played better than the sum of their parts.

....................but we're not devoid of talent in the current group. We're not lacking options. Poch just has to work his way thru them and figure out the right combo.

In other parts of the field, I think we have more talent now.
Heck....................I'm prepared to say that Antonee Robinson is the best LB in the history of the USMNT. Right now.

But that's how these things go. Unless you're France, or one of the elite-of-the-elite programs, you're always going to have ebbs and flows in talent at certain positions. We're not there yet.

 

How long you think that will take?

 

Zimmerman made one mistake. Unfortunately it was critical. Otherwise the USA didn't concede a goal in the group stage and it was the midfield that caved against Holland.

 

It's an ongoing thing. There is no "finish line." We also will always look out for anyone not developed in the US that can help. This isn't an either/or problem. It's both that need to keep happening. I just don't think recruiting players from abroad can possible get you there alone.

Timeframes? My personal opinion is that the US des not have nearly enough of a cultural imperative that is needed to become a truly elite team and until that changes we will continue to be a good, not great team for the foreseeable future. And, I think that semi-regularly making the round of 16 over the last few decades is actually quite good when you weigh those results against the cultural motivations of the US in soccer compared to countries that win things. Countries that are world powers and win things are laser focused as a culture with soccer the way the US is with say American Football or maybe basketball. Until that changes, we're simply not likely to rise above other resource rich countries that simply care a lot more about the game and put the resources toward it that leads to success. We've improved over the decades as the game is followed more and more strongly emphasized and that long, slow process will continue. But, there is no magic bullet to make us instantly better. If there was one, all countries would be using it and it wouldn't be so magic anymore.

 

World class players are like buses. You wait a generation or two and three come along at once.

Look at Canada. Alfonso Davies and Jonathan David aren't products of a brilliant talent pipeline, they just happened to arrive from different directions at around the same time.

Look at Morocco in Qatar. Hakimi is French and Boufal is Spanish.

We're not going to be a Croatia or Uruguay where every kid wants to be the next superstar but at some point those superstars will emerge.

Even the big nations like Spain, Brazil and Italy have had long fallow periods between their successes. It's just a matter of doing what we're doing, while continuing to tweak and improve, and things will happen.

 

And what have Canada, Morocco, and Croatia actually won?

Its EXTREMELY difficult for any of these secondary nations to break into actually winning things.

Brazil right now is in a really bad place. After 8 WCQers, Brazil is one point above Bolivia. One point above NOT making the World Cup. That's Brazil.

Its hard to consistently win in this sport like France has generation after generation now.

 

I hope you're not expecting the US to win the World Cup this century. My expectation is for the US to break into the top ten.

 

What culture change do you want to see? I could easily argue that we already have the culture to become Japan, Colombia, Switzerland, and many more—second-tier national teams. Soccer is the top three most played in youth. Issue is that we don't have good youth soccer development. People can talk to YSC, Marcus, and USMNT prospects, who will tell you that our youth development is not good. Some of that could be because it's still young at the same time, some MLS academy don't do their due diligence and try to develop players.

There is a magic bullet. It's called having good youth development.

 

That's not a "magic bullet".

It's hideously expensive, complex and involves changing our entire national culture.

 

I'm not.

Nor do I think it should be our expectation.

The top 10 isn't going anywhere.................................

Is it a coincidence that the 5 European nations to have won a World Cup are also the 5 nations with the top leagues in the UEFA coefficients? Italy, Germany, Spain, Italy, France.

No.

How do we break thru into the elite of the elite national teams. Its MLS.
Let's repeat that. Its MLS becoming one of the best leagues in the World.
They need to grow financially to the point that they're a developmental machine.

Anybody on these threads that thinks we can develop an elite national team program without MLS is living in a really complex delusion.

And we can't snap our fingers at make it happen. Its generations worth of investment in coaching development, infrastructure development, player development, etc. etc. More than half of MLS has been founded since 2011.

Its way beyond anything I see on these threads. There is indeed no magic bullett.
Its generations.

These boards are always in a state of blaming the USMNT coach or the USSF or somebody other than..........................the fact that our players just aren't good enough to consistently compete at that level. And if we take out European born or developed players, the situation is even more stark. That was like half our starting XI in some games.

Anybody who thinks the difference between us competing to make the semifinals of a World Cup is switching from Berhalter to Pochettino......................is living a lie.

We should, of course, switch from Berhalter to Pochettino. Mauricio is a much better coach. But his job isn't player development. That doesn't happen at the international level. That happens at the club level where the players train every day. He can't turn our CBs into the caliber of France's centerbacks. The pool is the pool. He's not going to turn Haji Wright into Kylian Mbappe. He can't perform miracles. He's just a coach.

 

We're already getting results to match those teams though. We don't have to improve at all to be in the conversation with those teams. We already are. Improvement at this point means top 10 or so teams in the world. That's the next step. We've finished top 16 in 2 of the last 3 World Cups. That's already a solid mid-tier team.

 

Generation after generation? France spent a century being inconspicuous! Football has been around a lot longer than 20 years.

 

The top 8 are generally:
France
Spain
Italy
England
Argentina
Germany (despite it's short term issues)
Brazil (ditto)
Netherlands

Then you have the likes of Belgium, Uruguay, Portugal, Serbia and Croatia, all much smaller soccer obsessed nations, which produce solid top 5 league starters then pop into the top ten by churning out superstars like Figo, De Bruyne, Suarez, Modric or Ronaldo.

But you need to get the players into MLS.

If you live in Europe and you're a tall fast 10 year-old you play centre-forward. If you're tall and slow you play center-half. If you're crap at football but love sport they might have room on the rugby team, which is how I got on my school's rugby team.

If you live in the US and you're a tall fast 10 year-old you play quarterback or wide receiver or center . If you're big, tall and slow they might make you a linebacker. If you're crap at football but love sport they might have room on the soccer team, which probably where I would have played had I been raised in the US.

That's the default. Obviously there are schools that are very proud of their soccer teams and kids that really, really want to play soccer but most schools and most parents would push the athletic kids towards the more prestigious sports.

I don't ever see the US getting to the point where most kid's first choice is to play soccer. Maybe 15 to 20 per cent of boys would prefer to play soccer but old coachy is still going to be there with the helmet, or the sleeveless tank top that comes down to your knees.

 

We don't need most of the kid's first choice to be soccer.

Croatia has half the population of Dallas-Fort Worth alone.

We'll just keep building and building and building.
More and more and more kids will see soccer as a viable career path.
More kids will become passionate about the sport.

I'm old enough to remember when we couldn't watch the World Cup in real-time in the US.
When there was literally no soccer on tv.
I became a fan in the period in between the NASL and MLS. There was no soccer presence at all in this country. None. At my first live USMNT game, we lost to Bermuda.

Things change. Things evolve.

This will all require an evolution, though.
It will take a long time before we're challenging the top.
Partly because its a moving target. The top will keep getting better. Our competitors in the second tier will keep getting better as well.

Right now, we're very dependent on foreign born or developed players.
That will not be a strategy for long-term success.
Hoping to get a continual pipeline of the Balogun, Musah types.

There's a reason that England let Balogun and Musah go.
There's a reason that all of the Germany-Americans we've recruited over the years have been allowed to walk by Germany.

These players are good, but they're not THAT good.
Taking England or France's discard pile isn't going to lead to us being as good as England or France.

 

The number of high school kids playing soccer is slightly higher than 1996..

 

I will argue that the US is already in the %15 or very close.

 

I think we get carried away with the numbers game. It's not that we need more raw numbers. We've got a ton of raw numbers, far more than smaller geographic counties. But it's the quality of those numbers that matter. If the bottom half of your athletic pool is counted up you can come up with a ton of raw numbers if you're a large country. But not too many of them are particularly useful. I'm not saying the US soccer players are bottom half of the athletes in the country, but just pointing out that how many isn't as important as who. Give me a small high quality pool over massive numbers of mediocrity any day. We can crow all day about how many kids play soccer in the US, but if it's not the right kids it won't matter.

 

In fact, I saw a survey once that more people in the US play organized soccer than in any other nation on Earth. This is partly due to girls/women, but its presumably true.

We have enough numbers.

Its just continuing to invest in the quality of coaches, the quality of the infrastructure, the quality of player development programs, etc. etc.

Have people seen the amount of youth coaches that the top MLS academies have?
Here's FC Dallas' and this is just their Frisco academy. it doesn't include the coaches at their 11 youth affiliates.
Youth | FC Dallas

Its a huge number! But how many of those coaches are equivalent to the coaches that a River Plate or Dortmund or PSV has? That's what we can't snap our fingers and fix. We can hire a few foreign youth coaches at each MLS club. But it takes a huge community from the youngest of age groups. We're building and investing.

More than half of MLS clubs have been founded since 2011. Most are still developing their pathway, much less producing a lot of talent. We have some early adopters that are ahead of the rest.

 

But elite Croatian athletes play soccer. Elite US athletes tend to play other sports.

 

It's also more spread out.

A third of the population of Uruguay lives in Montevideo. That's where all the coaches are and its where all the talent goes. Our talent and coaches are spread across the width of the continent and we have competing academies, high schools and colleges.

England used to have 90+ professional clubs competing with high schools and counties until they gave up and handed youth development to the EPL and a few other big teams.