It's a status multiplier to be able to say that your little Johnny plays for the FC United Pony Dicks. And for that, dipshit parents will pay out their empty heads.
Right. We need those clubs unless you're turning kids essentially pro like they do in Europe. They just need to be able to fund them differently
Hell, I think it'd be just fine to let kids have fun playing a game while they are...kids. It shouldn't take a big budget to do that. So what if we aren't the best kickball nation in the galaxy? Let kids be kids. I feel the same about any sport that kids play. Let 'em be kids. Plenty of time to ruin the game for them as they grow older.
interim no sense hiring anyone until after this world cup is over. they won't play a meaningful match for a while.
It's not just about infrastructure, some of those banlieues in Paris develop the best technically-skilled players in the world on what's effectively a bunch of kids playing 5-on-5 soccer on a neighborhood basketball court. I'm sure in South America and Africa you have something similar where every poor neighborhood has kids kicking a ball around. Our culture is just radically different, soccer for us is for rich kids whose parents are too pussified to let them play real football.
our poor kids are playing football and basketball, not soccer. There's not much of a talent pool [by which I mean technically-proficient world-class 15 year olds] to "discover" like there is in Brazil or Ivory Coast or Italy. we might have like, a few parts of the country where there's a legitimate 'soccer culture' that poor kids grow up playing but it would be a rare exception, not the rule. when ppl talk about "Infrastructure" OTOH, countries like England, Spain, Holland, Belgium and Germany have the "infrastructure" even if they don't always have the natural talent pool. The key to that is having large groups of kids basically turning professional at age 15, where soccer becomes an actual occupation. Liverpool, Man Utd, for example have kids joining their club as young as 8 or 9 years old and start getting paid at age 15 or 16. So for them, by age 17-19 they've been playing their asses off in a professional setting with the best coaches in the world for almost ~10 years, and are more "mature" players than American 24 year olds who've been dicking around in college.
But there is a talent pool. It was estimated that in 2015 there were 15 million kinds playing soccer in the US. Iceland seems to be the example de jour right now of opposing the talent pool argument. They have 325,000 residents in the entire country and only about 20,000 youth soccer players. But they have a much better ratio of top level coaching to youth players compared to the US. Coaching and the cost of coaching here seems to be a big hindrance in the process to develop more of the youth talent. I do think we can do a much better job of reaching into the parts of this country that soccer isn't penetrating to build the talent pool even more, but we have a significant talent pool right now. And if Twellman's notion about European clubs scouting here is true, they see talent and are trying to get them overseas to develop them before we mess them up.
i think you look at talent pool in terms of volume of players and perhaps their long-term potential, i am talking about it in terms of the actual quality of the top players around age 15-17.
Are you saying the quality is that much better in some of the lower income areas that aren't being scouted and looked at right now? That we're basically leaving most of our best options at that age out of the system because of its current structure?
no, i'm not saying that. no. I'm saying #1 - we lack the "indigenous soccer culture" that enables poor kids in Brazil or Africa or wherever to develop skills on the street without any coaching to speak of, and then go on to join local clubs that have minimal/moderate resources. #2 - we lack the "system" or "infrastructure" that enables average kids in England or Germany to develop skills at professional clubs under expert tutelage starting around age 10 #3 - we lack the legal immigration/visa system that enables Portgual to bring over 14-year old Brazilians, already technically amazing, and become portuguese citizens within ~2 years and eventually join the Portuguese national team if they want. (Similar to how Spain has special visas for Mexicans, Argentines, Chileans, etc., Holland and Belgium have special rules for Africans, Germany pulls in kids from across Eastern Europe to become German citizens) on point #3, what we should have is an immgiration system that lets clubs offer visas to Jamaicans, Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Brazilians, Africans, etc., in their teenage years and give them U.S. citizenship in like 2 years. Many of them would come over for the quality of life alone. This would be a massive injection of talent for us but it's controversial. Many foreigners would call it "cheating" even though 90% of countries in Europe do it.
I agree completely about the culture and trying to pull players from areas of the country that already has some of that soccer culture built into their communities. And I think with the talent pool we do have, we're not doing a good job of developing it.
Same could be said for AAU basketball and travel baseball, which are probably MORE expensive... so, that doesn't really fly.
I think current events lay out quite clearly the economic engine driving AAU Basketball. Maybe Umbro can start making it rain on these young soccer players with IU, UVA, UNC, ND (are these some of the good soccer schools? idfk?) greasing the gears too.
Do you really think every kid that plays on an AAU basketball team plays for free? Do you think a top flight soccer player couldn't finagle his way on to a team if he couldn't afford it?
No every AAU basketball player doesn't play for free. Yes some soccer stars probably get special treatment. But you're talking about the exceptions on both sides. Any basketball player worthy of a D1 offer doesn't have to ever worry about cost. For soccer, you're only talking about the elite.
You're overlooking an entire demographic of poor people, bud. Anyways, the U.K. Is notoriously poor at producing talent. I think part of that is certainly owing to their cultural arrogance and/or discomfort, wherein they essentially refuse to play outside of the U.K.
That is false. AAU basketball teams getting big deals with Adidas or Under Armour IS the exception in basketball. There are only so many D1 prospects and from there only so many teams with them. This is a straw man argument. Nobody makes it for hockey or baseball and we still compete on a world level and those sports are comparitively much more expensive. A very talented kid that just couldn't make it because traveling soccer was too expensive is an extreme exception. If this was golf, ok. If you're poor there is no way to develop your skills. Soccer players that show talent at an early age get nurtured through the process just like they do in all of the other sports. The problem is within the system, style of play, and coaching. That is the reason extremely poor countries like Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico are in the World Cup now and we aren't. They don't grow up playing traveling soccer like they offer in the US but they beat us in qualifying and go on to professional careers. A lot of them in the MLS alongside Americans. A handful of the better players like Pulisic made it by going elsewhere to develop their skills.
At least once a day I have random realizations that we missed the World Cup or Donald Trump is actually president and both still surprise and anger me. Just had one while poopin'
So we play in a region with mostly poverty stricken countries and we can't qualify for the World Cup. I'm sure the Germans have a word for this.
This didn't blow up bc it's in a soccer thread lol But maybe the USMNT just boycotted Russia on purpose? It's what I tell myself
you don't have to be wealthy to be good at soccer, like Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ukraine, etc. etc.
Are any of those in our qualifying region? I get Mexico being better in our region. But we should always qualify for the World Cup ahead of the Central American countries and island nations.
on the day of, it made me sick, been trying to keep it out of sight out of mind since then i feel like the feels will pick up again around May when all the qualifying countries are playing their tune-up matches
But it's really not even close to unfathomable. I think this thread did a good job outlining the issues before anyone from any organization even made an announcement or summarized why we are where we are. And again, not confuse my statement with where we should be. This is multi level fuckery at play here.