@goat @bradstevens I wore covers off of tangos. Literally. To where the ball literally fell apart on the street. I grew up on a dead end street with no traffic and incredible curbs. My neighbor and I played every single free second. Literally. He was on the youth Olympic teams. Played D1 blah blah. No one in the world played more than we did. Guaranteed
we could not do what the argies brazilians Spanish French do. It is dna. And addition doesn’t improve our lot. Just redundancy. Maybe at the top we end up 3 Pulisics. Our ceiling will still be the same
Dude, you're a drunk manwhore with several diagnosable personality disorders, and you still accomplished more athletically than most of us will. That was all experience and training. It's not your fault God graced you with the athleticism of a soggy pinto bean. Take a naturally skilled kid out of his inner city whatever and give him your experience, and he might very well be the American Messi. We just won't know until it happens. Until we get kids to default to the soccer ball instead of the basketball. En masse.
I think you are giving too much credit to athleticism. Don't get me wrong, speed and athleticism absolutely matter. But, the margins are much thinner. Ballhandling, touch, curl and swerve, one v. one, all of that crap is because kids in other countries are outside with nothing else to do. So they just pickup a ball and start playing, by themselves, with each other, it doesn't matter.
It's like kids in this country did in the 50s and 60s with baseball. They'd run to a ballfield and be there for hours on end. That's how you get really f'in good.
@larsiu Not gonna happen overnight. I suspect we're seeing the US somewhere in the early/middle stages of their upward ascent in World Soccer competitiveness. Gonna need another generation or two worth of focus, and DNA, to ever fully close the gap. Getting more truly elite players to migrate to the United States, like Messi has, would help speed this process up, I would think.
I'm beginning to think there's a reason poor and socialist countries are better. They don't turn sports into a cash grab at the youth level.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
That and they don't have all of the shit our kids do. But, I agree with your cash grab comment.
I think there's seriously something to this. Remember what JoePa said about the black athlete? Something to the effect of how sports offered inner city kids such an opportunity, that they grabbed onto it with a special gusto and really ended up dominating. Something like that. Anyway, yeah, for so long, our soccer community was dominated by people who could honestly say, "Yeah, well if I fail at sports, I still have my trust fund." I mean, literally. Thirty years ago, I knew a lot of guys in soccer, and they were all rich white guys with dads making bank and paying for their schooling, cars, and credit cards.
Kid in Honduras, soccer isn't just a distraction for him. It's a dream.
@goat @bradstevens I wore covers off of tangos. Literally. To where the ball literally fell apart on the street. I grew up on a dead end street with no traffic and incredible curbs. My neighbor and I played every single free second. Literally. He was on the youth Olympic teams. Played D1 blah blah. No one in the world played more than we did. Guaranteed
we could not do what the argies brazilians Spanish French do. It is dna. And addition doesn’t improve our lot. Just redundancy. Maybe at the top we end up 3 Pulisics. Our ceiling will still be the same
Dude, you're a drunk manwhore with several diagnosable personality disorders, and you still accomplished more athletically than most of us will. That was all experience and training. It's not your fault God graced you with the athleticism of a soggy pinto bean. Take a naturally skilled kid out of his inner city whatever and give him your experience, and he might very well be the American Messi. We just won't know until it happens. Until we get kids to default to the soccer ball instead of the basketball. En masse.
I think you are giving too much credit to athleticism. Don't get me wrong, speed and athleticism absolutely matter. But, the margins are much thinner. Ballhandling, touch, curl and swerve, one v. one, all of that crap is because kids in other countries are outside with nothing else to do. So they just pickup a ball and start playing, by themselves, with each other, it doesn't matter.
It's like kids in this country did in the 50s and 60s with baseball. They'd run to a ballfield and be there for hours on end. That's how you get really f'in good.
Oh for sure. My point was simply that our buddy Karen was selling these kids short by forgetting that they likely hadn't had the experiences he had, and blaming it on some kind of national DNA. I think if you took all the kids who grow up on basketball courts and in baseball fields and whatnot, and you put that entire generation of young Americans through soccer, from their first steps until youth academy, you will in fact find some superstars. We're just not their yet culturally.
This is not very different from what @bar-down was saying, to be honest, but my version emphasizes that there is hope, that we could possibly still turn it around. It will just take far more time than we were hoping for.
@bradstevens no what your missing is the one part that matters most is what is unattainable. Messi’s last two goals in the cup. How he brought it down over his shoulder. How he kept the ball down today. THAT is not part of our dna. In 100 years of playing. Adding more won’t fix that.
@goat I just don’t believe that’s true. We’ve had 3 million playing every year for the last 30 years and we are still nowhere close. If it was 7 million it would not have mattered.
@jdb right. And it’s culture. And they just play different. You watch the guys out of the Barca academy. How they receive the ball. How they scan. How they literally move. Is so different. We say Messi. We’ve never had 250 players from Busquets to Pirlo to rivaldo
@goat I think those kids would be inculcated in the American culture way of instruction and playing and we would be no different
I guess I need you to define "our dna." I'm sure it's not an easy point you're trying to capture, but have at it.@bradstevens no what your missing is the one part that matters most is what is unattainable. Messi’s last two goals in the cup. How he brought it down over his shoulder. How he kept the ball down today. THAT is not part of our dna. In 100 years of playing. Adding more won’t fix that.
Is it like some notion that captures the collective passing down of wisdom from father to son, early training, psychological inculcation, etc. within the society like @larsIU mentioned?
@bradstevens yeah exactly. And as @larsiu noted. Your inner city bit. If you took those little athletic black kids and put them in soccer here they would be the same drill. But if you sent all of them to Spain and Argentina and France and Brazil at birth THEIR kids may end up world class. Here they won’t.
there are so many subtle nuanced things that we just don’t do here. As I said in another post how they receive the ball, scan, move, just play. They play differently. Coaching. Family. Collective iq. Etc
OK, so that I get. But I think when Goat and I say, if the US just switched totally over to soccer, we mean with the training too, but I see what you're saying: so much comes from parents, coaches, etc. that also grew up playing and pass that on, that we couldn't just do it in one generation.@bradstevens yeah exactly. And as @larsiu noted. Your inner city bit. If you took those little athletic black kids and put them in soccer here they would be the same drill. But if you sent all of them to Spain and Argentina and France and Brazil at birth THEIR kids may end up world class. Here they won’t.
there are so many subtle nuanced things that we just don’t do here. As I said in another post how they receive the ball, scan, move, just play. They play differently. Coaching. Family. Collective iq. Etc
I do think it would happen quicker than 100 years, though. Hell, soccer in South America has only been played for about that long now.
And I also want our NFL all-stars to play in the next World Cup. New coach: Captain Robert Hatch.
@mark-milton so if you take an accounting we are still probably 16-35 in the world depending on the day. Miles away from the elite countries. An argument can be made mls hasn’t done much. Pay to play stronger than ever. And Mo State U has become a very solid D1 program. This fall they will have 28 internationals. Not a single Gallagher Lou fusz city sc nxt kid.
The other major problem, and it might be the most significant problem of all, is that the cost for playing at the old Academies and now MLS is astounding.
I kept track of my boys' expenses, including travel for each year:
U8-U10: 6k each a year which included coaching fees, travel and extra training. 36k over 3 years for both
U11-U12: 8k a year each. 32k over 2 years for both.
U13-U18: Academy levels: 9k a year each plus. My oldest kid's team was ranked number 1 for much of the year and they went to Texas, San Diego, St. Louis, Florida and Arizona. 6 years at a combined 18k a year for 108k total.
By U15 I figured out it was all bullshit and nothing more than a money-making opportunity. I also figured out that even though both my kids started, neither was in the top 5 players on the team, and if you ain't in the top 5, you quicky discover that the coach doesn't give a crap about you.
I bet Scott Gallagher is right up there in costs.
You weed out a lot of really good athletes and players with the cost. Being a big fish in a small pond is important, but playing with better players is really important as well.
The most shambolic business model in sports.
Shoving carrramrod into a locker since 2024.
@mark-milton literally last week I was at Starbucks and two kids and two dads were in there. Kids in kits from some club team in Cleveland. It was a Monday morning. I’m a loud mouth. I go what are you doing in your uniforms on a Monday morning? Dads shake their heads and go storms canceled our game yesterday with 8 minutes left 🤣. So they had to finish the game today! On a Monday! Cancel their flights. Re book flights. Get a hotel room for another night. And miss yet another day of work. And the clubs and the system just expect parents to do it.
pure insanity. Declare a team winner. Who gives a shit. But mark as you well know too many of the parents are simply insane people. It’s like this bc they allow it.
@bradstevens no what your missing is the one part that matters most is what is unattainable. Messi’s last two goals in the cup. How he brought it down over his shoulder. How he kept the ball down today. THAT is not part of our dna. In 100 years of playing. Adding more won’t fix that.
The greatest soccer player on the planet can't run like he could before. Doesn't play much defense. Looks like he does a lot of walking. 40 years old or whatever he is, and he is still the best in the world because even today, he is the most impactful player on the field and not because he's an amazing athlete now. It is because he is smarter, incredibly quick first step, almost precognitive when it comes to how a play unfolds and can do what he likes with the ball. Watching Messi play is watching soccer perfection. I thought the same thing of Ronaldinho for about 4 years until he drank himself into oblivion. There will never be another Messi. Ever. World Cup knockouts and Messi scores a magisterial goal to tie the game. Placement. Speed. Power.
Shoving carrramrod into a locker since 2024.
@mark-milton perfectly stated. These last two goals were breathtaking. The touch required to bring that ball down. No one else in the world could do that and get the shot off. And yesterday. To keep the ball down. There will never be another