The 17s are on FS2

He just swatted that out of our keeper's hands, didn't he? My stream kinda jumped. I thought he kicked out (still a foul), but that one view made me think he pulled it out with his hand.

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He just swatted that out of our keeper's hands, didn't he?

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The ball was out, but he used his hand to swat the ball past the keeper.

This ref

...match.

More disappointment.

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At what point do we start blaming our YNT coaches as well?

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Good troll.

Boy. It's a good thing these boys are playing academy soccer full time. We truly have a world class development academy... This system where they are forbidden to play high school soccer is definitely working...

You do realize that the rest of the world has cared about this for quite some time, right? Whether you attribute the changes to Bruce, Bob, or Jurgen, they've all said the same things about the way our development needs to go and us moving to the system everyone else uses will only put us on par in a few generations. What needs to happen is every MLS club being forced to implement an academy while minimizing the amount of pay-to-play, which is the foundation US Soccer has been built on for so long.

These boys qualified and are playing the best in the world at their age level. Give them a fricking break. No amount of high school soccer is going to change the result we're seeing. We can bitch all we want about the direction of the senior team, but the changes we're seeing at the youth level are what we've needed for a long time.

Hell, the fact that my little cousin (11-12 or so) is playing and being taught that winning isn't as important as proper techniques and positional aware are more important than winning matches is a step in the right direction. When I was that age, I barely had anywhere to play, and when I did get to play, I was rotated to whatever position was struggling to win. I'm tired of pissing matches over every aspect of US Soccer. On one hand, it's nice that we care now, but on the other, it's like we're some traditional footballing nation like England and struggling to keep up. Let's see how these boys develop before we write off the process.

Yeah, I was just trolling a little bit regarding one of my favorite topics. More high school soccer isn't going to make our U-17s better. But I would argue that it would never make them worse.

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What needs to happen is every MLS club being forced to implement an academy while minimizing the amount of pay-to-play, which is the foundation US Soccer has been built on for so long.

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Here's where the analogy of European nations vs. the USA breaks down. We don't have the money flowing into the game as they do in Europe in order to make our clubs cost less. So I would argue that there are a few things that we can do differently here in order to take advantage of the sporting and cultural differences that exist in the US.

Dijkstra,

I agree with what you are saying. It would be terrific if the money would be invested in the game to make it more accessible to youngsters everywhere and trained all club coaches to teach the correct techniques and tactics at appropriate ages.

The key question then becomes, "Where would this money come from?" Who will invest in the game until it is to a point where it is a product worth putting financial weight behind? The USA has been serious about soccer for at least the last 20 years, and the investments necessary to make this a reality have yet to show themselves.

Until that happens, what are the steps that we can take as a soccer nation to maximize our resources - culturally, socially, competitively?

I am not convinced that we are headed in the right direction, given the way that our nation works.

For the record - I do not oppose the USSF Academy system. I just don't believe it is in the best interests of ALL players to forbid ALL players from playing high school soccer.