As a final comment, related to Greenman’s article, winning surely does seem to do wonders for popularity with spectators. F1 was widely popular here when Ayrton Senna was alive and tennis got a huge boost when Guga became #1 in the world for a little while. Nowadays MMA is all the rage (after soccer, of course) and that’s probably because Brazil has a lot of good fighters in there.
The chances of US winning a World Cup are, however, extremely small, in my view. To win you probably need a team on par with other top teams and then you need lots of luck. The World Cup is mostly a single game playoff and you have a single shot at it every four years - there is a lot of possible randomness and I really can’t explain how some squads have won it so many times.
Also, WTF is Klinsmann doing by letting Donovan home? It’s like the Justice League letting Superman in the headquarters because they needed space for Robin in the plane
Ironically, there’s another article addressing this exact question. The short answer is that Julian Green was picked instead because of his ability to draw penalties in the penalty box, resulting in what Klinsmann believes to be almost a sure goal.
“Julian has his sparks,” Klinsmann said. “[Against Turkey] he drew a clear penalty again, like he did against Mexico. That is two goals he nearly gave.”
Klinsmann has nothing but Robins to choose from. Any US athlete worth his salt chooses another sport by the time he’s 15. Superman, Batman, Aquaman and the rest are in the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB and that isn’t going to change anytime soon, particularly if places like Qatar continue beat out the US on WC bids.
I don’t think dropping Donovan was that surprising. He’s already angered JK by taking time off. But just on a tactical level, Donovan is not seen as a starter by JK at forward, and hasn’t impressed as a MF either. So now he could potentially be a substitute, but he doesn’t have the right attributes to be one - usually pace or the ability to play a different tactical formation. Green has that ability.
It’s similar to Del Bosque dropping Llorente. In terms of talent, he should probably be in the squad, but most likely, VDB sees Llorente = Costa, and he favors Costa, so he wants the other strikers to have different attributes, hence Villa and Torres are called.
I’ve had that discussion before with the soccer dogmatists. No US athlete in history could have been anything close to a decent soccer player, because being freakishly athletic is not a good thing in soccer. Great soccer players have to be short and not overly fast or strong because, well, that’s what historically great soccer players were.
LeBron is the only one who is really all that tall and he could be a goalkeeper (he would not be the tallest player in professional soccer either). People tend to think that Moss is really tall, but he’s only 6’4". NBA players with the most potential to be good soccer players would likely be point guards or shooting guards. Iverson immediately comes to mind as an NBA player who might have made a really good soccer player due to his unbelievable quickness and ability to change directions.
I think that theory of “US athletes could be great soccer players” is mostly sour grapes. I would never say some soccer guy would be a top volleyball player or whatever - it’s almost like saying Bolt could be the best swimmer in the world or Phelps the best runner - skills are not that transferable and the required genetics and body buildups are different for different sports. US actually tried that nurture-the-athlete-since-he-was-a-little-baby approach with Freddy Adhu and nothing happened.
If I had to guess why US sucks at soccer, it’s probably because kids play it too tactically - 11 little kids worrying about positioning and touching the ball for a couple seconds each match. That’s the right approach to teach professionals but, for kids to get good, they must play with the ball. Brazilians play 1-on-1 and 2-on-2 all the time - that probably helps for kids. That’s a wild guess though. I have no idea what makes countries tick at soccer. There are dozens of countries where almost every kid plays it and yet 3-million people Uruguay hold its own against most, if not all of them. That shouldn’t happen and yet it does.
Also, for kids, dribbles are much more important than goals (at least in Brazil). I think US basketball has some of that mentality - in soccer most little league coaches would probably be displeased by dribblers.
And US guys shouldn’t worry about not being great at soccer. US is great at many sports and has that almighty GDP - you’re doing OK, guys.
A funny thing about soccer when you’re playing as kid is that, unless you know the group, you can never know who’s good when picking your line up. Sometimes the top player at the random place you are is the smaller kid, sometime sis the freakishly tall dude with glasses and sometimes is the fat guy. At a professional level a decent level of athleticism (mainly speed) is a prerequisite, but it’s not at the core of the sport.
Specific current athletes is not really the point of the argument, which admittedly may include some sour grapes. Would Iverson have been an amazing soccer player, maybe, maybe not. My primary position is that the US has a very large percentage of the greatest athletes in the world, which I posit is a function of the fact that there are 300+ million of us and we have the facilities to allow athletes to develop their skills. As it stands now, soccer attracts almost no great athletes after the age of 15. The best athletes in the US, as demonstrated by the compostion of the NFL and NBA, tend to be black and generally come from lower income families (of course there are exceptions). Those kids play basketball and football, they don’t play soccer. In the US, soccer is predominantly a middle and upper income, white, suburban sport. That is changing as the demographics of the country change, but that will take decades more to filter through the system.
Freddy Adu is one person. Plenty of basketball and football phenoms have been huge disappointments as well. If you replaced every basketball court and football field in the US’s inner cities and the kids started to play soccer, it would be absolutely ridiculous to think that some fantastic soccer players wouldn’t be produced. I get that raw athleticism does not automatically translate to being a good soccer player, but it rarely hurts.
The ‘Our fastest, bestest players don’t play football’ is such a joke and so far of from reality that only someone from yankeeland can say. Yes America can produce decent quality players, any country can. However there are fundamental problems that would make it very unlikely in the future and it isn’t just the popularity of other sports.
America’s benchmark seems to be England which is strange because England don’t pull their weight on the international stage considering they have the most watched league in the world and a per capita GDP that dwarves most of the world. Crazy’s assumption is perfect, England have top notch facilities and players play on full length pitches from a very young age. This is actually detrimental to their development because they get lesser touches of the ball and in such an environment players who develop faster physically are preferred and the rest fall through the cracks. In such an environment players like Xavi and Iniesta would never have reached the level they did. Germany and Spain have taken specific steps to reverse this by forcing their players to play on smaller pitches and postponing conditioning and nutrition only once they decide the player has the required technical quality. By default, players from slightly more poor countries follow these conditions.
Could America follow this? Sure, it isn’t a secret but it will require a rethink in the way you do things and it is the complete opposite of the development patterns used in your mainstream sports where size and power are the main attributes. This is just one problem, there are quite a few more like how the college athlete pattern won’t cut it in football and the fact that the MLS model is flawed etc etc.
Anyway moving on, Reus also out looks like. Shame, such a enjoyable player.
As Charlie Munger would say, always invert. If we reverse the claim - “Imagine if the best soccer players played basketball, football, and baseball, they would be dominant/the best in the world/etc”. Somehow, I don’t think so.
Pretty rich coming from the second fattest nation on the planet.
You have no base here, absolutely nothing and everyone has pointed out why. If you want to go ahead and make a wild assumption to sooth your ego, go ahead.
You don’t have the right ideas, You don’t have the infrastructure (Clear defined paths to the top, not industrial), Your leage model pays washed up Europeans to come and play instead of promoting your own youth, The college athlete model is flawed to such an extent it isn’t even funny. You need a massive overhaul ground up and i wouldn’t be surprised if some south east asian nations and maybe other outliers like Iran and the Uzbeks overtake you.