Didn't even realise I had much of a 'profile', its been a while but I can't remember this place asking for my age, I wonder if I lied?
The right side of https://www.bigsoccer.com/members/crawleybus.231886/ says your age. Everybody has a Profile, but it's possible to stop other people from viewing it.
You can also have your profile viewable but your age hidden. I tend to keep personal info on websites to a minimum. Not that my age is a secret (four decades young).
You can spot I am a bit of a technofobe! I ought to do something with my profile, at least get a picture sorted, trouble is I can't really be a**ed
Ha! The only "beaches" close to us are along the Potomac. It's a few hours to the real beaches, either the Delaware/MD coast or down in VA Beach. They're nice, but it's a few hours away. A lot closer than when we lived in Nebraska, though, that's for sure. We're only about an hour and a half from Shenandoah National Forest. We're more walks-in-the-woods people than beach people so that works great for us. (Although it's been way too long since we took advantage of it).
United States soccer underachieves because the organizations involved think that they can profit without becoming a world power. Do MLS teams need Champions League budgets to have higher profits? They think not.
The US will become a world power. The US is not underachieving. Profit has absolutely nothing to do with it.
As somebody who has lived in Canada and the USA, I agree with you that Canada isn't as big on sports. It seems like sports are far more popular in the USA.
I disagree. United States isn't dominating Mexico, both in clubs and national teams. The MLS only attracts former stars from European clubs. I see very little progress both in performance and marketing. Again, this is because the organizations don't care.
You lost all credibility there. "Former stars from European clubs" are a small fraction of the foreign players. The number of players fitting that description has rarely been greater than an average of one per team.
MLS can’t afford current stars from European clubs. Transfer fee alone is probably more than the salary for most/all non-DP players..
Neymar's transfer fee this past summer exceeded the salaries of all MLS players, including DPs, combined. Dembele's exceeded the top 10 MLS team payrolls (including DPs) combined.
Corrupt and incompetent leadership. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The USSF's primary concern is not to promote and advance soccer in this country. It is to protect their phony-baloney jobs.
A lot of vindication today. For those that told me that it was perfectly normal for World Cup qualifiers to be broadcast on beIN Sports. For those that told me it was perfectly normal for a country of 330 million+ to scour the depths of lower European leagues for talent. For those that told me that it was perfectly normal doing it 'the American way' without pro and rel. The bottom line is that no one from broadcasters, to youth organizers, even to MLS see soccer in the U.S. as more than a niche sport and have no idea how to run it. And the sad thing is that if the shot by Dempsey in the 78th minute went in, the majority of people would still see everything as normal. There is nothing normal about how U.S. soccer is being run, which is right into the ground. On the bright side, two things that will come out of this: I have no doubt that all games for the next qualifying cycle will actually be broadcast by some mainstream network (ESPN or Fox) and that the typical American fan (the ones that tune in every four years for the World Cup) will actually find out that there's a qualifying campaign. I can't wait to have people ask me next summer during the World Cup when the U.S. is playing. I'll then tell them they didn't qualify because they lost to Trinidad and Tobago, a country of 1.4 M, in their last qualifiers. Then I'll proceed to: 1) explain the qualifying process; 2) explain to them who plays in CONCACAF and where in the world T&T is and 3) kick them squarely in the nuts.
I would seriously doubt that contention if you compare them to Brazil. Half a billion people in China have probablky never even seen a soccer game or could care less....
That's utter nonsense. (For starters there are no Ronaldhino types anywhere!) The speed that a player like Klinsman or Ginola or Giggs or Gerrard were operating at requires a co-ordination skill that is hard to quantify but just as difficult to master as is the slower based trickier play Denilson was the ultimate of the type of player you mentiuon and he wasn't really up to scratch when it came to being a big player in the big leagues. Th eLiverpool team of the late 80's had one/two guys from outside of britain/Ireland and was as skillful as any other team on the planet (Flamenco perhaps aside). Your analysis is off base ...... One can overdo the development of trickery at the expense of good ball sense (in terms of advancing the thing toward the opposition goal).
There's nothing in this post that would have prevented last night from happening. The problem with US Soccer is at the development level where we have coaches with little to no training coaching kids between 6-12. Whether kids get access to coaches that actually have training isn't necessarily determined by their talent, but rather by whether or not their parents can afford the multiple thousands of dollars it costs to put them into a pay-to-play system. This system pre-filters kids that have raw talent, but come from less affluent families, and those kids are shunted out of the sport directly, or into systems where coaching is lacking. Additionally, with pay-to-play the priority is on winning games rather than developing talent. While they will certainly use the kids that turn pro as recruitment tools, if their teams aren't winning, parents are still not going to be interested in them. If USSF wants to get out of this hole (and it isn't just the Men's game, the USWNT are hovering over a very similar hole as other nations have rapidly caught up), they are going to need to spend a crapton of money on training coaches, developing a proper training system, and focusing on finding kids that have talent rather than parents with fat wallets.
1. Parents want to pay. 2. Parents have the means to pay. The problem is really the lack of value in terms of quality instruction & competition. If the kids actually received good value for their money, 1 & 2 would actually be significant strengths compared to most other countries.