just failed to qualify for the World Cup. Disgraceful.
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just failed to qualify for the World Cup. Disgraceful.
No one cares
That's what we get for hiring Bruce Arena
It was lazy & about like Polk 2.
Of all the soccer coaches in America, I just have trouble believing that they can't find a legit coach.
I care. They should be embarrassed. One of the worst nights in US Soccer history. Fire Bruce.
I don't know anything about soccer, but there isn't a sport on the planet this country shouldn't be able to play for a world championship in. I do know that.
And fire whoever hired him. Any player who has national team aspirations needs to be in Europe. I'd rather see them playing for Brentford or even Southend that playing the MLS. MLS is fun to watch, but the competition is no better than third tier in Europe. It sucks but it is what it is.
USSF needs to get in line with the rest of the world if we want to compete -
1) force MLS to alter their schedule to August to June
2) create a real pyramid in the US by breaking MLS into a Premier and 1st Division, assign NASL and USL to next levels
3) start relegation
This
USNT needs to take hiring a new coach seriously. The time for lazy hires is over. Soccer in this country has come way to far over the past 20 years to make lazy, nostalgia hires.
Whoever hired Arena should be fired with Arena & the USNT needs to go far & wide to find a Saban/Belichick type personality that can take this program to the next level.
Perhaps in the end, this will be best for the national team as the embarrassment will force much needed changes.
Welp, we don't have to worry about any players kneeling at the WC***
Dammit, now I can't pull out my US soccer shirt from 4 years ago
I disagree. Atlanta was fun as hell to watch this season. The problem is MLS is too big and the talent pool too spread out. Break the top 15/16 into MLS Premiership, then drop the rest into MLS 1st Division. That will force teams to consolidate talent or get relegated. Let teams develop organically - like Detroit and Miami in USL have and let them their way up and develop talent and fan bases.
The women will make it. It is their sport.
US soccer is the Big 12 of the world.
No matter how many resources we pour into the program, we aren't to turn the corner until the culture is changed.
Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, & Brazil are SEC teams with real identities, toughness, & play makers, while the US is a soft, over coached team that lacks physicality & an identity.
Hopefully soccer will soon go away. Probably not in my lifetime though.
Thank God. Maybe we're one step closer to soccer going away in the US. One can only hope. **
We're closer to football going away imo than futbol going away. I enjoy watching international soccer, especially the WC, so I'm disappointed. Maybe this will finally cause a much needed reset with American soccer, and we'll start focusing on skill development at an early age and stop with the "pay to play". The only kids getting refined skills are the ones with money to pay for expensive travel clubs....that isn't right, and it's killing US soccer in my opinion. We have the athletes on the field, but our players have an ounce of the skill some of these countries have. And coaching....coaching & showing up should have beaten Trinidad. That shit was an embarrassment
Oh look. A thread with men aged 40+ calling soccer irrelevant or a pansy sport. How original
Time for the system to be gutted. Got to drive up professional clubs and development. Introduce relegation and quit letting talent slip through the cracks. Enough with hand picking teams because "my daddy knows your daddy." There is no reason that the USA should not be top 10 in soccer other than corruption and incompetence.
That was the worst game I have ever seen USA play. Zero energy. We intimidate nobody.
Mullenz to US Soccer!
If you think the problem with US soccer is that it isn't tough or physical enough, then I don't know what to tell you. The problem is that we don't have enough creative talent, and our touch still lags way behind the rest of the world.
And the problem isn't really that we haven't sent people abroad. We had an entire generation (4-5 years) that didn't develop, for whatever reason, and it is killing us. Klinsmann had a lot of great ideas about soccer development in the US, and the good thing is that we're starting to see the benefits at the 15-year-old to 20-year-old level. We have some legit talent there, and some of these guys are already starting to break through at legit programs across the world.
I am not a fan of Arena, but this is not his fault. This team just wasn't good. Period. Sure, they should have been better than they were, but the talent itself wasn't good enough. John Brooks being out hurt, because it also meant we weren't comfortable with Cameron on the back line. Bradley has declined and is no longer good enough to control things in the middle, and we have essentially no other controlling center midfielders we can turn to. Nagbe is not good enough to be starting for the US national team.
It is time to commit 100% to a youth movement. I don't want to see guys like Dempsey, Nagbe, Gonzalez, Besler, etc. ever play for the US again, and I don't care if Bradley ever does again. This is Pulisic's team; Altidore and Wood are fine up top, but it is time to start getting these young guys caps with the senior national team, even if they're really too young right now. Emerson Hyndman, Weston McKennie, Josh Sargent...they need to be playing now. And yes, guys like Kellyn Acosta do need to leave MLS.
What I don't get is when soccer comes up the pro soccer guys feel they have to go out of their way to defend it. When someone says something negative about soccer they get all offended. Just look at some of the post in this thread.
In the US soccer will always be viewed like the Olympics. Every four years everyone will get excited and then they forget. It will never change. I am indifferent about it. I will watch World Cup when the US is in it. Just because I can. Got something to pull for. After that the only soccer I will see is from the road passing by the soccer field.
If someone likes it fine and if not that is fine as well. There is a lot of sports I don't watch and to be honest I would watch Soccer before NBA, NFL and MLB if that is all I have to choose from. You know I don't like volley ball but will turn the channel every time to watch women beach volley ball. "That gives me something else to pull" :)
MLS is fun, and the crowds are getting better all the time, but the level of competition is just not good. It?s seen as a retirement league in Europe. The Latin Americans that come are the ones that have little to no shot at Europe or playing big time in Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico. The US team has declined as more of the bigger stars came home. Until we produce enough homegrown players to staff MLS at a higher level it?s always going to be that way. For now the guys in the national team need to be in Europe, even if it?s not a top tier league. In England the championship is defiantly better than MLS. I think League one is at least as good, and it?s a tougher, more hard nosed league. It will build backbone more than MLS will at the moment.
It’s not like that everywhere in the US. Some of the MLS teams have fantastic followings now. Seattle, Portland, and Atlanta stand out. As for as defending it, we aren’t really defending it as pointing out that not everyone in the US could care less. That has been changing for a while now.
Now what’s REALLY funny, at least in my case, is that I actually HATE international soccer. I wish it would go away and never come back. All it’s good for is getting the best players at a big club hurt. My club just lost its best player for at least 6 weeks. It happens dang near every international window. It took me a while to understand why the phrase “We aren’t English, we’re Scouse” carried such venom among soccer fans on Merseyside. Most other big club’s fans feel the same way toward their national teams. Club soccer is the best. It’s even awesome on down the pyramids in many countries over seas, nowhere more so than England.
I think a lot of it is where you are and your exposure to it. If you grew up around a larger city, you were exposed to more soccer and began following at a younger age. I grew up in the First Wave of Metro Atlanta youth soccer - late 70s and early 80s. Everyone I knew played. We went to weekend clinics with NASL players. We played 11 v 11 full field games from age 6 up (not this 3v3 or 7v7 small field crap you see in a lot of youth leagues now). Everyone had a team they got interested in from it - Atlanta Chiefs, NY Cosmos, Chicago Sting, Minnesota Kicks, Tampa Bay Rowdies. When the NASL folded shop we got the Atlanta Ruckus/Silverbacks, went to international exhibition matches at Atl-Ful Co Stadium, or Grant Field, and then got pissed off and stayed pissed off that after MLS formed Atlanta never got a team (that shows the long running stupidity on MLS's part). Now they are seeing 70,000+ at United games in Atlanta.
So yeah, those of us who are pro soccer defend it because contrary to some anti-soccer opinions its not just some fad invented for soft millennials so they all get a trophy. It's been a part of our lives - just like MSU, the Braves, or any other team we follow.
Soccer is basically the working class game everywhere but North America. Here, as you pointed out, it’s a game of the middle class, with the better players tending to come from the upper middle because they are the only ones who can afford the travel teams. Until that changes we won’t produce much top notch talent.