Intelligent investment

If you take a look at the ideal footballer though what you get is a 5’8″-6′, 180 pound guy who can run fast and run all day while possessing a high degree of coordination. Do we really need to cut into football and basketball to find these guys?

Out of this board and its readership, you could probably nail the first quality down.

But you’d be pushing your luck after that.

Most of us don’t actually want to give up the high quality of football and basketball play in this nation.

Basketball blows. I think you’re confusing “most of us” with “most people who post at Barking Carnival”, as baseball is significantly more popular than basketball. Personally, I’d laugh if every NBA fan died in a car crash tomorrow and the league had to fold.

To be serious for a moment, the big difference between the European countries and the US is their training style. They spend hours a day working on their technical skills in Europe growing up, basically in lieu of school. That’s why Guiseppi Rossi left the US for Italy at age 12 or whatever it was. He probably wouldn’t be starting in La Liga otherwise.

To further my point, the Netherlands has a population of 16 million. Granted, they’ve never won anything apart form Euro ‘90, but they’ve been vastly more successful on the world stage than the US. The population of soccer players in the US isn’t the problem.

I think it’s a big part of it. In the U.S., soccer picks (roughly) after football, basketball, baseball, golf, hockey and tennis. In the Netherlands, soccer gets first pick.

U.S. soccer won’t get its shot at the AWB (not the Average White Band, but I think you can figure it out — mine starts with Athletic) until MLB stops giving multimillion dollar no-cuts to guys who can’t play, while MLS runs its league like Roller Derby, and counts every penny that drops into its hands.

Jurgen Klinsmann was talking after the US lost and he says that the only way that the US reaches an elite level is to attract youth from lower class areas. These are the kids who would be trainging all day long recognizing soccer as their way out of poverty. It’s where a number of great players come from in other countries. The problem is that in the US those kids are attracted to the sports that Americans support because that is where the money is. Also, it’s easier to come by a slab of concrete and a hoop than a full soccer field…

Instead we mostly have upper middle class kids who look at success in soccer as obtaining a college scholarship. This is great for the kid and his family but it isn’t really going to do much for the US in international competition.

The suburban family’s resources in the form of talent, summer camps, and public school programs has been more than enough to allow the US to dominate every sport they’ve shown interest in. That’s where a large portion of America’s athletes come from, including the African Americans.
Netherlands needs all that training to build players from their population, America doesn’t. Basketball and football camps are the closest we get and they are more than enough to own those sports.

I think the lack of financial and cultural incentive to play soccer is the problem in America, not our training methods which haven’t failed us in any other competition. And I don’t understand why someone who enjoys soccer wouldn’t like basketball as they are probably more similar than any other 2 major sports.

As a very casual soccer fan, one that swore off soccer after the Ghana OT, here are my grievances.

1. Officials have negatively impacted seemingly every game in the world cup.
2. I haven’t kept count, but it seems that 25% of goals (in a sport where points are so damn precious) have been surrounded by controversy. Unacceptable.
3. FIFA has said it has no interest in replay. They don’t see the issue with such a huge number of the games being won by an undeserving team. Disgusting.
4. Constant flopping and injury faking. Just impossible to watch without getting pissed off.
5. 98% of the time I spent spectating the world cup I was frustrated/angry/indifferent. There’s so little enjoyable time from a fan perspective that it’s just not worth it.
6. Chicken-shit plays like elbows to the head, tackling from behind (head butting the chest, yanking down by the poney tail, etc)… The frustration players feel on the field (perhaps due to the outrageously bad officiating) leads to odd aggressive tendencies. A friend of mine that played soccer all his life was banned from an indoor league due to on the field fighting. Then he got arrested at my wedding for threatening the bar tender, but I digress.

Oh, and baseball is already (unfortunately) on the decline in this country. I absolutely love the individual opportunities and pucker moments baseball provides. From a game mechanics perspective, I appreciate how baseball doesn’t suffer from the same “re-do” phenomenon that most other major sports do. When something happens on a baseball field, a foul or penalty is not going to negate it.

Just my worthless two cents.

One of the unintended consequences of Title 9 is that it has inhibited the growth of the men’s game in the US. Most D-1 universities have been unwilling to add another non-rev male scholarship sport to their plates with attendant requirements of providing an equal number of female scholarships. As a consequence, men’s soccer at the collegiate level is predominately a club sport. Find a way to crack that structural issue and the men’s game takes off just like the women’s, where there remains little or no payday at the end of the tunnel (beyond the value of an education, of course).

Most major universities don’t have a varsity soccer team (UT still doesn’t, I believe). We do on the women’s side, where we dominate.

We do have one of the fastest teams in the tournament, but our midfielders are woefully weak when compared to Portugal, Brazil, etc. Those teams have guys who are simply better at creating opportunities for our forwards. Donovan is often called our best player. In truth I think he’s clearly out best midfielder and probably about our fifth best player.

And we had defensive breakdowns throughout the tournament. That’s a real weakness for us.

My son got it right at 12. My baseball-playing middle son went to a soccer tryout for 12s, his first time to touch a soccer ball, with more than 90 percent of the couple of hundred kids attending having played 10-11 y/o soccer. He tied for first in one drill, came in second in another and finishd in the top 10 percent in the third. “Guess you’re gonna wanna play soccer,” I said afterward, my heart sinking. “Hell, no! This game is STUPID.”

He just, at 23 now, emailed his rabidly pro-futbol international friends that the game is still stupid, citing pretty much the same points as texasengnr above. It IS stupid, and adding replay ain’t enough to help.

Gents, I posted my thoughts on the problems with the US player development system over at our sister site: www.pitchmen.fantake.com

Overall, I agree with Nickel. Except that I do not think we were one of the fastest teams at this Cup, not by a long shot. We also lack the requisite technical skill, as bigduke points out. But the bigger problem is locating sufficiently talented young players and then putting them into the expensive, rigorous training programs necessary to develop them into world-class players. That’s a task accomplished by big money professional league clubs in other countries through academy programs. All we have ever had was the Bradenton Academy in Florida, which was responsible for the development of a number of the key contributors on this year’s team.

As to the size theory, that’s another one I will kind of disagree with. there are plenty of small, low-center of gravity players like Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Wesley Sneijder, and Carols Tevez, sure. But there are also lots of tall, powerful players who are very good with ball, like Kaka, Maicon, Javier Mascherano, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Didier Drogba, etc. Size in itself can be a huge asset — look at Marco Van Basten, Dennis Bergkamp, Miroslav Klose, Luis Fabiano, etc. Soccer differs from many sports in that you can still excel without size if you have other attributes.

To wit: http://pitchmen.fantake.com/2010/06/26/reflections-on-a-loss-and-the-future-of-the-nats/

not in my lifetime

This describes my soccer fandom…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVWoF57sZg

That beehive droning got to be intolerably irritating, especially when combined with the hit or miss play action. What’s up with that, anyway?

All of the reasons you list for soccer noy being a major sport in America are nice except the one that matters the most is money. If ESPN could market the sport, there would be a following. Since soccer is typically played commercial free for 45 minutes straight ESPN could not sell enough Citi/Budweiser/Viagra spots to justify the investment.

Hence it is not on TV and not part of the American pop culture. All of that shit with refs and faking injuries like the African teams do would not have to be part of our sport. But we would have to drastically change the makeup of the game play to fit into our television sets.

In Brazil, a Dad and his 10-year old son go out and kick a soccer ball. Here, a Dad & son throw a football, shoot hoops or soft toss. Oversimplified? Yes, but you get the point.

Can’t wait.

It’s about culture. There is none in the USA.
All-don’t assume the woeful WC officiating is mirrored in club leagues.
Newy-I disgree. English league has a TV contract to rival the NFL. Perhaps you’re implying the revenue is just not there in America? You might have a point there.
All in all, this WC has been quite predictable, which is to say it’s been more boring than entertaining. Also peculiar is the division of remaining teams by region, especially when taken in context with countless disallowed goals (skewed towards Latin America).
Nice wrap-up Toad. I appreciate the Pitchmen site.

Soccer is an interesting topic. I don’t profess to understand why so many countries are so invested in the sport; however, it does require an amazing array of skills and tremendous athleticism.

On BC, I’ve seen posts detailing a linebacker’s ability to run laterally, an end’s quick first step, the speed and elusiveness of a qb and running back, and the explosive power or quickness or players at multiple positions. Combine all of these ingredients with endurance, train at 100 degrees for a few years or ten, and it’s possible a great soccer player will develop.

The sport requires far too much talent and development to allow poor officiating to influence the result of any high level competition. IMO, incompetent and biased officials should not be tolerated at the college level in any sport, and most certainly, incompetent and/or biased officials should not be tolerated in national and international competition. Perhaps FIFA doesn’t subscribe to the same value system that most people I know subscribe to.

Though soccer requires an amazing array of skills, I love ‘the real’ football. Texas baseball and basketball are a very close second. Soccer will never come close to that group. Soccer is just too boring, once you get past the great quads and hammys, that is.

…and that’s what she said.

Hook ’em!

It is an interesting phenomena. I have a story not unlike Oldtime Horn. My oldest son is an average football and basketball player. He played soccer two years and was the leading goal scorer on his team both years. His ability to go into a crowd with the ball and come out with it was very high level. After his second year of playing, he walked off the field after scoring 3 goals and said, “I am never playing that sport again.” He was 9 and three years later he continues to be just above average in football and basketball and when I ask him if he is sure he doesn’t want to play soccer again because he is so good at it, he says no way.

My youngest son got kicked out of his soccer league for beating up a kid and then threatening to beat up the entire opposing team if anyone said a word to him. I was going to pull him out anyway, obviously. But when the league called and said, “Maybe football would be a fit for him.” I couldn’t let it rest, so I responded, “That’s the problem with American soccer, you guys tell all the aggressive kids to go play football.”

And I think there is a lot of truth to that. Playing soccer in other countries is not considered soft, here we promote a culture of softness in the sport from age 3 and up. None of the aggressive kids want to be associated with that. The flopping, flailing and crying does nothing to help that situation either. We still have a long ways to go.

South Americans know soccer.

Truth is we don’t have the technical skill, depth or talent of the other top teams in the tournament. And it was pretty obvious early on. Watching Brazil and Argentina you can actually see why someone would like this game. Watching our “side” (see how much I’ve learned) is like watching Nebraska on offense against Iowa State

It has been very informative though—all of the sudden I understand Manu Ginobli. If I have to watch one more pussy fly through the air like Chuck Liddell took a baseball bat to the guys head, cry on the ground for ten minutes, get carried off on a stretcher and hop back into the game as soon as a foul is called I’m gonna puke.

Plus the officiating makes the NBA’s corrupt group look like mother

When a freak of athletic nature like Vince Young shows up on a world cup team for the US you will know we finally give a damn. I think not in my lifetime.

like mother TERESA oops

I don’t buy that the baseball and soccer talent pool overlap much, if at all. I view the two sports as mutually opposing in almost every way. Soccer is based on constant movement, at all times, by basically every player on the field except the two keepers. I’m hard pressed to find many instances in a game where more than a couple of baseball players are moving more than a couple feet at a time all at once.

Accepting that fact, it makes it easier for me to accept why people like baseball, even though I find it the single worst sport on the planet. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

The talent pools that could overlap very easily? DBs, wide receivers, running backs, point guards, and your occasional linebacker and small forward. Soccer requires players with great vision in traffic, the ability to predict where the ball (and other players) will go next, are constantly moving their feet. Tremendous fitness, elite quickness, and skills in the air pretty standard as well. Elusiveness, creativity, and finesse play a huge role. Depending on the position, and the need, a great deal of size can be required. Imagine an Earl Thomas, Aaron Williams, DJ Monroe, Jordan Shipley, DJ Augustin, Dogus Balbay, etc. on a soccer field.

Really where we fall short though, is cultural. For a variety of reasons, the only way that we will ever get better as a nation is exporting our talent at younger and younger ages. Creativity of the Messi’s / Kaka / Iniesta / Ronaldo / Robben / Sneijders of the world is developed a very young age, when these players are essentially playing for professional youth clubs around age 11. When our best players don’t start playing for a professional team (even a lowly MLS club) until their 20s, and then start developing in bigger European leagues until a few years later, they are selling themselves short. MLS will always be a feeder league at best, and not because of American interest in the sport, but because the $$$ is in Europe, and so is all of the competition.

A semifinal run (which was entirely doable, granted our easy group play, and relatively easy round of 16 and quarter final opponents) would have done absolute wonders for the sport in the states. Maybe over the next 4 years another Jozy will go play in Europe, gain a little success (which Jozy has not), and help give us a chance in 4 years. We need a new face for American soccer…as much as Landon Donovan has done for it, his time is about up.

Roach: I think the US offense was considerably better than that. They finished first in their group and ahead of England, say what you will about how the top 2 teams from that group did in knockout play but I think we’ll find that the Germans are an impressive lot.

If anything sunk the US team it was the defensive breakdowns that necessarily occurred early in every game. It was a matter of communication as it took a few early mistakes for the defense to all get on the same page. While they only put together about 50 minutes of really solid offensive play together against Ghana even then you could see that America was amongst the better scoring teams in the tournament.

Bartoncreek: That was a big deal for me as a kid when I moved back to Texas. Soccer was always my best sport but the culture didn’t really approve of it and always told me that soccer was for pussies and real men played football.
Now the flopping is pretty weak and I think mostly just represents a lack of respect for the sport but to anyone who watches it regularly it’s clear that soccer is not a game for pussies. It doesn’t feature the same career ending injuries of football but collisions and physical play are an accepted feature. I would love to see someone tell Vinnie Jones that he plays a sport for little girls but in America that impression of the sport has been fostered.

Of course, ultimately if soccer become a lucrative deal for young athletes here it would quickly cease to be a pansy sport. You see some similar weak moves from NBA players all the time and it hasn’t managed to stain the sport as soft.

Dutchie: I’m pretty confident that some of those athletes playing baseball could have shaped themselves into soccer players had they been trained in that sport early on instead of baseball. You see plenty of guys in the MLB with lateral and overall speed along (obviously) with great overall coordination.
Obviously baseball is a haven for guys like Ryan Howard and David Ortiz that would be useless in the movement based sports but it has it’s fair share of quick athletes as well.
My overall point though was that rather than plucking stars from the NFL and NBA where we as a nation love to see athletes, we could pluck them from baseball which has arguably too many athletes to go around and produces a product that, while popular, is less interesting to me personally.

Nickel-
the first part of your post was soooo good, then you had to go and change subjects. Stay on task my good man!

Tripps-
Thank you so very much for that. My feelings exactly.

While I find the sport itself mediocre, i enjoy the WC due to the amount of national pride the participants show. In that way to me it is like the olympics, I care every 4 years and then forget.

To the old guys who keep trying to sell baseball, good luck. 4 hr games with 10 min of action along with the fact that kids cant stay up late enough to watch the end is going to kill a generation of fans. The constant action of basketball along with the obvious athletic ability and the colossal marketing of its players (who for the most part are american) has led to a significant increase in the last 30 years. MLB is going to slowly fade away and they have no one to blame but themselves.

I agree with Dutchie.

Baseball is is genetically driven by a person’s fast twitch hand-eye coordination. The genes you inherit play a greater role in your potential success than just about any othermore, other than possibly weightlifiting/bodybuilding and gymnastics. If you do not possess the genetic potential to pick up the spin on a hard slider, adjust your swing, and hit the ball, no amount of training or instruction will make it so. You are either born with a good arm or not.

Genetics play a massive role in many sports, but for baseball the potential talent pool is much smaller because the specific athletic basic skill set necessary to succeed is so specific.

OTOH, basketball and football (i.e. guards, DB’s, RB’s) have nearly identical crossover genetic skill sets with soccer.

The thing that struck me about the US team in comparison to the German’s, Argentinian’s, Brazilian’s, and Dutch (i.e. the class of the tournament) is how much better their passing and vision on the attack. We have good enough athletes to compete, but the lack of technical skill that is brought on by intense training from an early age is simply not their.

“The thing that struck me about the US team in comparison to the German’s, Argentinian’s, Brazilian’s, and Dutch (i.e. the class of the tournament) is how much better their passing and vision on the attack. "

I actually thought we were pretty good there. I agree with Nickel in that our issues were defensive breakdowns. I disagree that we were one of the fastest teams out there. We seem like a small team with average speed but very organized with solid execution on the attack. No great finishers though.

Given that the NBA is completely worthless to me, I just wish we could get soccer to catch on in the inner cities. It’s not like whining about being fouled isn’t a part of basketball already.

The concern that a slab of concrete and a hoop is a lot easier to come by than a full soccer field is irrelevant. A slab of concrete with a rectangle painted/chalked on the wall isn’t any harder to come by than a slab of concrete with a hoop. It’s easier, in fact. Kids on the streets of Brazil aren’t growing up playing on full soccer fields.

YouTube

That just makes me want to play the favela level from COD2

We have exactly one player with the kind of athleticism that pretty much everyone who plays for Brazil has — Jozy Altidore. Trouble is, Jozy does not have anywhere near the technique to make his speed and strength tell.

I don’t know if any of y’all watched Brazil yesterday, but there team is composed of — Robinho aside — literal, physical giants. Juan, Maicon, Dani Alves, Luis Fabiano, Felipe Melo, and most of their other starters are easliy big, fast, and strong enough to play wide receiver at the D1 level right now — some of them in the NFL. On the US team, well, we didn’t have anyone other than Jozy (Gooch when he’s healthy) who has the speed/size combination to play D1 football.

There’s a theory that the heavyweight boxing division is devoid of talent because large African-American men play basketball or football instead. A corollary has it that Russian men who are very large have no alternatives to boxing, which is why they now dominate the division. The point is, $ drives sport choices. Not the direct $ the player can make so much as the $ inherent in the sport involved.

There will not be anytime soon that professional soccer in the US will offer an attractive alternative to inner-city athletes of the sort we typically see internationally. Should be noted that soccer was Hodges Mitchell’s first love though! Still, we have some good players who can improve the team, it’s just a matter of identifying them and getting them into training. And that costs $.

Dont worry ! Just give us two more generations of illegal immigration and we will be a topnotch soccer power.

I’ll preface this by saying that a lot of soccer players are incredibly athletic and talented.

But the sport is so damn wimpy!

Bartoncreek said basically what I wanted to say. Soccer is viewed and treated as a wimpy guy’s sport in the US. And let’s not kid ourselves, a vast majority of the soccer players are incredibly wimpy. Not too endearing to the majority of the American public.

Just look at Landon Donovan. Great player for sure, but about as far away from rugged as you can get. I guess that in itself isn’t the problem, because a lot of tennis players are like that too…but tennis players make a dozen incredible plays a match, whereas we witnessed maybe 3 or 4 from Donovan over an entire WC?

This wimpiness is very hard to overcome as a viewer. Playing soccer reluctantly in high school, I absolutey could not stand the lack of toughness displayed by most kids. It’s as if you took a snotty country club kid who has been pampered his whole life, then endowed him with great soccer skills. I know a lot of the best players in the world grew up poor, but watching them that’s what I keep seeing. Not to mention they are treated like professionals since before puberty. It’s so maddening to watch guys so clearly talented piss and moan and act like teenage girls.

I want my athletic heroes to be able to take a punch like a man and perservere through intense physicality. And soccer does not offer that.

And add that to all the other things that make soccer suck, and it’s just not worth it.

Is there any game more encouraging of cheating? Terrible officiating, constant complaining, constant diving, faking injuries, purposely wasting time. Even things such as moving the ball up 5 or 10 feet from where it went out of bounds…it is such an unpure sport. Or how about how the timeclock is used? Why should the clock run while the ball is out of bounds or while waiting for some player to get up because he’s injured? It’s completely retarded.

I think soccer players should be able to hit. Blend the rugby and soccer cultures together. America will never be good at soccer until this actually happens. I almost feel like our founding fathers won’t let it happen! Our American ethos is much too different for us to excel at a game played by such effeminate men.

There I said it.

Rocket, that is lovingly latent-homosexual post. And I like it.

A lot of the criticism soccer is getting here is pretty unfair.

Cheating? Do y’all follow the american sports? Cheating and cheap tactics are prevalent only in soccer? Steroids. Sypgate. Football coaches all cover their lips when they call plays. Many baseball players are accused of throwing intentionally at people, using too much protective equipment, going spikes up into 2nd base, etc.
Basketball has flopping, people taking dives to manipulate calls, and homecourt advantage as a means to influence referees is an accepted part of the game especially at the college level.

Anyone on the outside could come up with similar criticisms of the American sports. As far as soccer being wimpy, I’ve routinely seen players take gashes and cuts in this WC and resume play. Guys get kicked in the head and in the sack and collisions, tackles and takedowns are a common occurence.
Maybe you’ve seen wimpy soccer players but the sport is not soft.

Agreed, Nickel. Anyone who follows the commentary here – particularly around October – know how much, say, holding is tolerated on our football fields. The idea that soccer is singularly accepting/encouraging of gamesmanship or even outright cheating is pretty naive.

Rocket89, those wussy soccer players waste time but it sure is manly to kneel the ball at the end of a football game or concentrate on running plays so that clock will not stop. It’s also really tough and gritty when basketball players hold the ball at the end of the game as long as they can. I tell you what that is some competition!

Come on. When i think of weak I think of soccer. And that’s coming from a guy that really likes soccer. My dad is still a German national and so I try to keep a fairly international prrspective. But American males just value toughness more. European males especially just don’t value it as much. Therefore there will never be enough interest here to train up some of our better athletes.

The US just doesn’t currently have very good ball skills. They’re plenty fast. Watching the US was boring. Watching Germany or Brazil is actually interesting because they know what they are doing with the ball.

Nickel Rover-We’ve identified steroids as a problem and have taken measures to stop their use. Coaches covering their lips? Pitchers throwing at batters? Spikes up at 2nd base? What an indictment of American sports!!

Basketball has flopping yes…guess where that came from? European and South American influenced. Coincidently both soccer loving areas of the world. At least there’s real physical contact and guys are banging bodies and dunking on each other. Basketball sometimes seems crooked and has bad referring, but it’s not even close to what soccer does and has done in the past.

There are certain aspects of soccer that are tough, but telling me a player gets a gash hardly is convincing. The sport is about as soft as you can get.

CJD-There’s plenty of holding and grabbing in soccer too. Sure it happens in football, but it’s part of the game, just like soccer. All of the other stuff that makes soccer unappealing to a lot of people can’t be explained away because an offensive tackle gets away with a penalty sometimes.

Monahorns-You truly made me laugh. Soccer players spend 38.9 percent of a game wasting time on purpose but it’s clearly okay because a football team runs the clock out with one minute to go and a point guard dribbles out the last 20 seconds of a game. That’s like defending a glutton because someone else eats two Oreo’s.

Football and basketball teams both do a lot to spend the clock well before the end of a game. What about the intentional fouls at the end of every college basketball game that drags out the process and forces us to watch endless breaks and free throws?
What about holding, as was just mentioned earlier, and the frequent attempt by players to do what they are allowed to do to win.

You see the warts of soccer because you don’t already love it. Someone could very easily find a million things to dislike about basketball, football or baseball on the same grounds. If you don’t want to watch soccer that’s cool, but to argue that it requires no toughness and is consumed with cheating is just ignorance.

“We’ve identified steroids as a problem and have taken measures to stop their use. "

Nice to see Bud Selig reads BC.

Dutchie makes a good point. Why not just send the studs away to develop overseases or in say Brazil? All the European countries send their golfers to our golf academies/universities, most of them live here. Then Ryder Cup comes along and someone like Ty Tryon who has been living in the US for eight years decides to play for Ian Woosman against the US. I hate it, but if we could do it in soccer then that would be an acceptable trade IMO.

Huge golf fan here. Thanks for the post. I’m going to bookmark your blog and check back often.

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