TomRollTideRitter

Everyone gets the script flipped when we get bounced from the World Cup. They will say “If our best athletes played…” and “we need soccer pitches all over the inner city…”

But soccer is a skill sport. Messi went to Barcelona at 13. He developed by playing in an exclusive group of the best players in the world.

The U.S. system optimizes for opportunity for the most athletes because our most popular sports are “off the bus sports.”

Because of this, the U.S. isn’t very good at most skill based sports especially on the men’s side. In the Olympics we mostly win at Swimming, Track, Basketball. All of those are much more natural athleticism than skill. Even in basketball all the most skilled players are now Euros, but our guys are athletic enough to still win.

Our system focuses on opportunity, which isn’t worse all around, but it is worse for maximizing skill. If you want the best possible U.S. soccer team, the solution is a handful of extremely exclusive academies across the country that get the best players in there by 10 years old. Not a million pitches where everyone plays hoof ball.

This is how the U.S. largely does winter sports now, and it’s been very successful. The U.S. hockey team has played together for years and years.

quote:

---

Care that Pepi, Reyna and Weah looked like pure arse. We need those guys if we want to make a deep run.

---

I mostly agree with this except on Weah. Weah hasn’t been in form for awhile for club or national team. I don’t want to see him again, and I don’t think we need him.

His only saving grace is that Aaronson was bad too.

Arda Guler is unreal.

Maybe I’m too positive, but I didn’t think the performance was that bad. Despite the results, Turkey’s squad is better than our first two opponents, and our backups played them pretty evenly.

One of the best players in the world in Arda Guler scored, and Stu said something like “This Türkiye team does actually have quality” as if Turkey is some Concacaf minnow.

quote:

---

Is it just ABC, or does the draft suck now? Way too much going on. Just show me highlights and the analysts talking about players. I don’t care about weird rants from the parents or bands playing in the background

---

The ABC show is supposed to be focused on the players and stories. The ESPN one is more analysis, but ESPN’s NFL analysts mostly suck. Maybe try NFLN.

quote:

---

Because maybe Byrne & Co know more than the average message board loser i.e. me.

---

This sort of blind deference to any sort of authority is stupid.

How many ADs have given awful extensions over the past 20 years? Tons and tons.

There’s no reason to think Byrne or any person in the administration is infallible.

I can appreciate the writer at least acknowledging that she has made a mistake. The problem is she still misses the mark about where she was wrong. This quote proves it:

quote:

---

Ten years go by. Surely, the men left in their forties are still single because they're looking for something real, something mature; a woman of substance. Wrong. They're still dating twenty-year-olds, just now with a hair transplant and an eye-rolling age gap.

---

The vast majority of single men in their 40s are not dating 20 somethings. This woman’s main problem isn’t a focus on career. It’s an inflated sense of self worth. She still thinks she deserves a top 1% man, the type that can pull a 20 something at 40 if he wants.

The problem is she can’t pull that guy, and honestly probably never could except for a hookup when the guy was on a backslide.

I know a lot girls who like to pretend the career thing is why they are single. The reason they are actually single is because they need a reality check about how valued they are. Any thin, okay looking girl like the author could easily find some guy to settle down with, but she still thinks she’s too good for that.

I think his take at the end that having Simpson in the 15 to 20 range is better than Mendoza at 1 makes a lot of sense.

I’m not sure Simpson is better than Mendoza because Simpson’s deep ball was pretty lacking at times. I do think people outside of Alabama and the SEC don’t appreciate how bad the Alabama offense was outside of Simpson.

The running game, including RPO, was nonexistent even against light boxes. Simpson had to pick apart defenses with the defense playing for a pass every play.

I think it should be a week or 10 days and replace the all star break. I feel that every league except the NFL should move this way given the ratings hockey has pulled for the 4 nations and the Olympics, and now baseball with the WBC.

I think it’d be smart to try to get a big game on the 4th of July. Team USA playing America’s pass time on Independence Day. Seems like the easiest sell ever.

Kind of unlucky for us that Sweden finished all the way down as a 7 seed. That’s probably who we’ll play Wednesday.

In Swayman’s defense on the last one, Miller has to close that space more. Staying that far back is doing more to screen your own goalie than to block the shot.