re: The real problem with the USMNT

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I feel confident that everyone outside of soccer involved in athletics will make the same suggestion to you guys

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I hope you’re starting to see the problem.

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When the day comes that we have a team full of that kind of god given size, speed and athleticism, coupled with development from the time of 5 years old

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Are they being developed in a European academy or in America? Because if all of those guys played soccer right now I bet none of them would be on the national team.

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The United States is not the only country that spits out physical specimens.

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Yeah, Brazil is as soccer-centric as any nation and loaded with "physical specimen" type athletes yet most of their top players are not "NBA" athlete types.

In fact, many Brazilians believe that their national team has suffered from club academies valuing athleticism too highly over smaller players with great technical skills since these bigger players are easier to sell to European clubs.


The one interesting thing that really separates the USA from most great soccer countries is not the type athlete that commits to soccer at a young age but the economic situation of those kids.

The percentage of young French, Italian, Brazilian etc etc kids that become world class players is, aside from coaches/players sons, remarkably skewed to the lowest income and recently immigrant populations. Stands to reason that a much higher percentage of those kids are likely to throw all their eggs into the basket of "making it".

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The percentage of young French, Italian, Brazilian etc etc kids that become world class players is, aside from coaches/players sons, remarkably skewed to the lowest income and recently immigrant populations. Stands to reason that a much higher percentage of those kids are likely to throw all their eggs into the basket of "making it".

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We definitely underrate the "desire" aspect of training. I'd also argue that those lower-income kids have more incentive to play soccer to pass the time, as they don't have access to other means of entertainment.

The Brazilians are the most likely to produce a player who has everything, size, speed, and technique, and arguably, already have, with players like Ronaldo and Adriano, but that is an interesting point about academies valuing athleticism too highly.

There has to be a place for smaller, technical players without great athleticism, and I think Southern Europe seems to produce more of those players than elsewhere.

Quicker off the ball isn't the same as overall speed. That's an issue with technique. Knowing what to do with the ball makes players look quicker. Take a player like Santi Cazorla. He runs like he's overweight, but has superb technique which allows him to create space. But he isn't all that quick.

We generally field players that have high top-end speed, though not superb technique. The player for this cycle might be Morris, but we have had one or two players that fit this bill every cycle. We do have pretty good fitness too, which is an indication of athleticism as well as training. Bradley, in his heyday, could cover an alarming amount of ground. The ability to run is pretty much what we have going for us versus more technical teams.

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We’ll agree to disagree but I have never watched a USMNT game and thought “wow we’re so much faster than them we just don’t have the touch”. shite, last time we played frickin Honduras they looked so much quicker than us

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I would say that there has been a concerted effort recently to focus on the better technical players in the USMNT pool mainly to get away from “wow we’re so much faster than them we just don’t have the touch” players those of who have watched for a couple of decades have seen enough. Zardes is a real throwback.


Whether we may have been just as effective results wise against the top teams defending like banshees and hoofing it to a bunch of athletes is probably a decent argument.

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The one interesting thing that really separates the USA from most great soccer countries is not the type athlete that commits to soccer at a young age but the economic situation of those kids.

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Like the NBA or college football here, to an extent.

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Yeah, it would seem that to produce numerous world class players the US would not only need to move closer to European level coaching/academies at young ages but also have those academies mainly filled with kids from the lowest economic groups -- and a large percentage of those ones that aren't physically likely to make it in American football or basketball.

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The frick? This thread is 8 pages?

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It's a common topic after the USMNT fails to perform.

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It's a common topic after the USMNT fails to perform.

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I know, but damn, even after the World Cup, the sidewalk football fans usually give up after a day.