Legit Soccer Question for the Cognoscenti

[annina]

Not so bad USA players
I think USA team will be competitive very soon....
.... I wish so

[Doc JS]

Not so bad USA players
I think USA team will be competitive very soon....
.... I wish so

I just hope its not a wish in one hand and whizzn in the other and see which one fills up first...

Doc

[Socrates]

The United States is large enough to scrap together 15 or so footballers that can organize well and make a deep run, with a little luck and good USSF organization. If Holland can get to the final with a small population, the U.S. can do it.

[Pokerjoe]

Not just that, but the best american athletes have to want to play Soccer; currently they don't --

Till players like Lebron James, Reggie Bush and Carl Crawford choose soccer over baseball, football or basketball, the US will always be behind.

Lebron James? RU kidding? There are maybe 100 guys in the NBA with the athletic skills to play pro soccer.

From football, forget the linemen right off. MAYBE some of the secondary and reciever spots, maybe some running backs could make it.

MLB? UR joking again, right? Why would you expect guys who are basically only good at one thing--hand/eye cooridination--to succeed in a sport where you have to be an all around great athlete?

[Pokerjoe]

my answer is this (no offense, just my opinion), US will have major chance at World Cup when you can admit soccer is bigger (or equal, at least) than your 4 major sports and MLS can make into "5 major sport leagues". Reason, if European clubs can grab major talents from South American like Ronaldo, Robinho, Kaka, Elano, Aguerro, Tevez, Mascherano, Forlan and the list go on and on, why cannot US grab such talents just like they grab talents for their MLB league, for example? "

First of all, soccer has passed hockey in this country. We're number 4, baby!

About getting more players for MLS, it takes salaries. The league has to grow. Our salaries and attendance are ahead of probably any other soccer league in history for the age of the league (I think it's about 15 years old now). It's on pace, any US soccer fan should be happy with it. It's certainly more successful at this juncture than football, basketball, etc, were. I mean, do you know fragile those sports leagues were when they started? Do you know how many francises went bust? How poorly paid the players were? What podunk towns they played in?

Here's the thing about US soccer: it gets better every year. We are probably the only team in the sport's history that can say our team is better this world cup than last world cup for 5 cups in a row. At this rate, we might well win it within another generation.

Look at it this way: suppose to win the WC you have to play at a 10 ability on a scale of 1-10. Okay, why wouldn't you like a team that played at a 1, then a 2, then a 3, then a 4, then a 5 ... you see where I'm going with this?

Outside the 8 teams that are pretty much always contenders (Dutch, Spain, England, France, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Brazil), there are no possible contenders. Nothing can change to allow any other nation to be a consistent contender (although the possibility of a fluke great generation exists).

With one exception: the US. It is the only other nation that can move in to contention, and is, in fact, headed in that direction.

I have no idea why people think we're supposed to just overnight win the world's only true sporting championship. This isn't some minor league sport like football or baseball we're talking about, where we win because no one else plays it. This is a sport where we have to actually have skills and athletic ability AND compete against the best athletes in the world. Why would you think that would be easy?

[Pokerjoe]

MLS plays in the summer when every major European team is in the off season. The MLS will never attract the best. They will always get the washed up European / S. American on his last wheels.

Brazil and Argentina play in the summer. The Scandis do. Russia does.

MLS doesn't attract the best because it doesn't pay the best. It isn't complicated. As the league grows, the quality will increase. They're doing it right. You're just understanding it wrong.

[Pokerjoe]

Doc,

Unless american parents send their children 8-16 years old into Europe and enroll into Manchester United, Barcelona, Ajax soccer academies full time you will never see top talent in US team. The players you saw competing today didn't go to high school. They were bread in the youth academies and played with the best of the best since they were 8 years old. They lived in dorms in the soccer youth academies and were "home" schooled there. All they did since they were 8 years old was play soccer 8 hrs a day. With the current system in the US being the HS, either private or public, and without foreign coaches we will never win the World Cup.

You're out of touch. The US is developing an academy system. The US youth program is constantly getting better. When I was a kid, my coaches weren't even soccer guys.

My own kids, besides having me coach (ex-college player) had guys who'd played pro soccer in England. The coaching is way better than ever before. And the play is better. My son's HS team could have easily beaten my college team. He had played more games before he was 12 than I did in my whole life.

Everything is looking great for US soccer. People need to have perspective.

How many times do I have to say it? This isn't some minor league sport like baseball or football. Soccer is the big time. It's hard to score, it's hard to win, it's hard, period. That's what makes it great.

[blackf1re]

Pavy,
That was sorta what I thought...

Followup question:
How many of the USAs starting line-up would start for either Spain or Netherlands?

Doc

None for Spain but I'd take Howard over Stekelenburg and Donovan over Kuyt.

[forsberg21]

The United States is large enough to scrap together 15 or so footballers that can organize well and make a deep run, with a little luck and good USSF organization. If Holland can get to the final with a small population, the U.S. can do it.

What does population have to do with it? Slovenia (3 million) and Uruguay (4 million, plus a 4th place finish) both made the World Cup this year.

India and China, both with populations of over 1 billion, didn't make the World Cup. So what does population have to do with it? Just because you have a big population doesn't make you a lock to have have success in the World Cup.

[Flying Dutchman]

The United States is large enough to scrap together 15 or so footballers that can organize well and make a deep run, with a little luck and good USSF organization. If Holland can get to the final with a small population, the U.S. can do it.

We have approx. 18 million, and at least a million of those play even in the Winter. Many is the time when I went by the club at 6-7 in the evening, with temps around 0 C (32 F for you non-metric Americans) to see all 8 football fields in play.

[rm18]

Ghana will be the first team outside of Europe or S. America

[forsberg21]

Ghana will be the first team outside of Europe or S. America

I like South Korea, Ghana and Mexico, even though if it happens, it won't be in my lifetime.