The US....

[dawgs]

No doubt. But like I said, we've got to find some way of addressing the problem. I think JR High & HS soccer might be part of the answer, but that's pretty late for kids to be starting. Honestly, it's just something that came to my mind and would like to see discussed. I don't expect "us" here on ED to solve the issue. A whole lot of people who are smarter than me haven't figured out a way yet. Just an obvious, glaring issue I see. If it could ever be addressed, we'd unlock an insanely large talent pool.

It’s about retaining the kids that play soccer when they are 5-6 years old but stop to play other sports as they get older. A lot of that has to do with the parents kinda pushing kids to other sports. I know I played soccer as a kid but In the 80s it wasn’t on tv, we didn’t have the internet to stream games, I watched baseball, football, and basketball with my dad, so that’s what I wanted to play. By the time soccer was on tv, mls became semi-relevant, the internet allows us to stream any game in the world, my generation was too old to start playing soccer with any skill. However people around my age are far more into soccer than our parents were, and a lot of them have kids <10 years old that play sports, and these parents have soccer on tv at home and they push their kids to keep playing, so I think you will see more participation all the way up through the ranks including junior high and high school, you are increasing the talent pool, which makes for more competition and better players. It just takes years to happen.

People say “oh people have claimed soccer is the next big thing for 30 years” like there should’ve been an overnight transition. But you have to wait 15+ years to see the fruits of planting a seed today. In 1994, guys like Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard were kids watching the WC. And they formed the core of the most successful run of US soccer at the international level, but we had to wait years to see it. The problem was after the WC, we didn’t properly invest in growing the game from the ground up for the rest of the 90s, and now we have a lost generation. Between the old guys and the young guy, the generation that should be in their prime is shit. I think the younger generation (pulisic, yedlin, the U-17 team) is a result of MLS finding its footing and USA soccer doing a better (not great but better) job of developing talent in the 00s, and we are just starting to see the guys who were kids in the early and mid 00s start to get to the age of playing professionally and internationally.