Alas and alack!
Post by Carl Jacobs
Another failure of the US Men’s National Team in the World Cup.
Sure, the USMNT found a way to slink out of Group by beating Iran and scratching out a couple of draws. That’s not nothing but there was nothing impressive about this measure of success. The USMNT only managed three goals in four matches, and only one against a quality opponent. So let’s cue the inevitable quadrennial post-mortem and investigate.
American soccer has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
The Head CoachThe head coach is always the first to be blamed and so Gregg Berhalter undoubtedly will no longer be the head coach in the very near future. There were significant complaints about his insistence on imposing his system on the team when the team didn’t really have the time to become proficient at it. There were also concerns about his perhaps “less than optimal” roster decisions - especially his association with MLS and the potential influence of MLS to use the USMNT team as a marketing platform for MLS. All in the past now, though. Berhalter will soon be gone.
No Pro/Rel
No Pro/Rel
There is no Pro/Rel in the US. There will never be Pro/Rel in the US. The US is too big. The soccer culture is too weak. The soccer infrastructure does not exist. The money is just not there. And at the top of the soccer pyramid (as it were) is that closed league called MLS occupying all the soccer space and consuming all the soccer oxygen in the US. That doesn’t stop the quixotic campaign to install Pro/Rel on the theory of “Let 100 flowers bloom” if only enough magic unicorn dust can be applied. Pro/Rel, it is said, would allow for the instant flourishing of hundreds of soccer clubs all over the nation - each with an incentive to become the best to move up the pyramid. Who would pay for this? Those non-existent local soccer fans? Those illegal solidarity payments? The best answer you will get is “If you build it, they will come.”
Pay to Play
Pay to Play
It’s expensive to play soccer in the US. Parents will pay (literally) thousands of dollars a year for a kid to participate in one of the best travel leagues. They do this in hopes that little Tyler will land a college scholarship. Scholarship players come from the major travel leagues. It’s not like football and basketball where scholarship players come from high school. In fact, leagues generally prevent their players from participating in high school soccer to prevent them from learning “bad habits”. This means that soccer in the US tends to be dominated by upper middle class families who have the money to invest in Tyler’s future. And they see it as an investment. It’s not about playing and it sure isn’t about a Pro Soccer career. It is about financing college. League soccer is a multi-billion dollar industry in the US predicated on selling this dream to parents. What about all those working class kids who come from organic soccer cultures rooted in Central or South America? They can’t fund the industry. Unless Tyler’s Mom pays the money, there won’t be a league - and by extension no industry either. Tyler’s Mom isn’t going to pay to watch Tyler sit on his butt while immigrant kids from Mexico play themselves into a scholarship or a career. Again, it’s the same question. Where does the money come from to finance the sport?
The True Answer
The True Answer
These issues and others will be trotted out again (and again and again) to explain US soccer failures. They are examined because they offer at least some sort of path for redress. But the true answer sits at the nexus of all three. In the US, soccer is the sport that Moms want their kids to play and not kids themselves. It is the sport that kids join a league to play. Kids don’t don’t dribble the ball back and forth to school. They don’t play pick-up games after school in the street. They don’t develop an organic connection to the game. They don’t develop the skill, the intuition, the vision that is necessary to compete at a high level. Instead, they are stamped out like industrial parts. They have no ability to adjust, to adapt, to innovate in real time. Until an actual soccer culture develops in the US, there is no way to fix this. So we talk about the usual suspects instead. Because that at least allows us to discuss something that can be called a solution.
It’s OK. As long as we beat England, that’s really all that matters.
It’s OK. As long as we beat England, that’s really all that matters.
With so many South Americans I'm surprised that football isn't bigger in USA.
ReplyDeleteThat’s an interesting point. I suspect it has something to do with the family and social environment in which Latin American immigrants to the U.S. find themselves bringing up their kids. Kicking a ball around on the nearest available patch of grass or sand was the natural activity for his dad to join in every day after school when he was a kid back home in Peru or Paraguay, but not for today’s younger generation growing up in California or Illinois. Also, there are other popular heroes now that a young boy might be inclined to pick as a role model, in addition to the local equivalent of Lionel Messi or Neymar Jr.
DeleteI think you did beat England on the night morally speaking! The US looked the livelier of the 2 teams. Pulasic (a committed Christian, by the way) caught my attention overall. But here is my 5-point plan for making sure you never lose a world cup ever again:
ReplyDelete1. Get that Megan woman to run the team. Compulsary pink hair will scare the opposition.
2. Rename it The World Series, i.e. only America takes part in it.
3. Make it more like WWF. Every play is worked out beforehand.
4. The world's greatest players often come from the slummiest neighbourhoods, so encourage large US cities to degenerate still further.
5. Quotas for players from S. American backgrounds - Ivy League colleges have been practising this sort of thing for years.
See you in 2026!
@ GD
ReplyDelete"I think you did beat England on the night morally speaking!"
🤬
Just trying to encourage the chap, HJ. It must be a bleak life over there in the colonies with no Association Football tradtion to give one a sense of pride.
DeleteTrue. But don't inflate their egos too much!
DeleteEngland better beat France, that's all. You guys are carrying the responsibility for (what in England vaguely approximates) the English-speaking world
ReplyDeleteAh, but countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland are also through, and their educated types tend to speak better English than we do these days. (Btw, Jack is from a place called Essex, and in case you didn't know that's our equivalent of the US's Noo Joysee accent... I myself am scarcely any better).
DeleteA tough call. Incidentally, Jack thought the USA and French were allies. Without their navy, you'd never have gained Independence.
DeleteI guess this is cold comfort, but isn’t the record for the women’s soccer team rather better?
ReplyDeleteAlso, it is your bounden duty to leave us at least a couple of games that we can enjoy without you Yanks interfering and winning. At the moment, there are 2 Olympics sports that I can think of which are blissfully US-free – the name of one game is a sin in football, and I believe Margaret Thatcher was captain of her school team for the second.
Yes, should they ever become a force in the game, they'll want to change the rules.
DeleteWell, it's a fact that the clock should count down and not up
DeleteIn football and rugby a 90 minute game doesn't last 3 hours with endless stopping, starting and wholesale changes of players!
DeleteIt's the 21st Century, Jack. We have this thing called a "clock" now. We don't need to maintain stoppage time in the referee's head anymore. He can just stop the game clock instead. And then, you know, restart it - like he does on the field anyways.
DeleteAnd time limits typically expire at zero. So counting down is natural when addressing a time limit. See? Think of it as positive influence as opposed to obsolete tradition
Right Angle
DeleteI think US women's soccer is better because the rest of the world doesn't take women's soccer so seriously. I expect that advantage to diminish with time
Carl, "added time" covers for time lost due to substitutions, yellow and red cards, injury to players, arguments with the referee, delays due to video assistant checks and time wasting. Plus, we can't have goals recorde, for e.g., in minus15 mins as opposed to the 75th minute!
DeleteIt's good to have posts like this that teach us about foreign cultures. I didn't know that the USMNT (United States Mutant Ninja Turtles) existed until now.
ReplyDeleteWhat, pray, is a pro/rel?
Promotion/Relegation. Soccer is typically organized into an hierarchy of leagues. At the end of a season, the best (typically two) clubs from a lower level league are promoted to the next higher level. The worst (typically two) clubs are relegated to the next lower level. The idea is to punish failure and reward success. This was a uniquely European solution to the high density glut of soccer clubs in a given area all competing for the same spots. It has become received dogma among soccer cultists that Pro/Rel is essential to Soccer.
DeleteIn 2020 the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled the FIFA was not required to force MLS to implement Pro/Rel. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Is it any wonder? FIFA is a corrupt organisation.
DeleteWhat does FIFAs corruption have to do with CAS?
DeleteAnd besides which, the Court was right. A contrary ruling would have been unenforceable and would have been crushed in a lawsuit. FIFA could have done nothing but expel the US from FIFA and who wants that?
Not FIFA - they've an eye on the potential money! It's always about the money.
Delete@ 雲水 - "What, pray, is a pro/rel?"
ReplyDeleteJack had to look that one up. It's "promotion/relegation" between football teams. It requires a network of local football clubs in tiered leagues regularly competing against one another.
Wut? I am 100% convinced the phrase "Pro/Rel" originated in the UK. I mean, you Brits shorten everything. There is hardly a noun in existence that you haven't abbreviated. It's like a whole second vocabulary. When was the last time you said "umbrella" instead of "brolly"?
DeleteI had to look that up as well. Since the age of 8 or 9, if not earlier, I have been familiar with the terms “promotion” and “relegation” used separately, each in its own context, but I’m pretty sure I have never seen them paired in that way to form a compound word, neither in their full polysyllabic dignity nor sawn off to form a snappy acronym.
Delete@ Carl
DeleteNope - never heard of it before your article. And Brits are entitled to change our language as we choose. The Yanks are not permitted to attempt to colonise us!
I've never heard that abbreviation before and, as everybody knows, I'm considered something of an authority on all things football.
DeleteOf course! Japan are about to play Croatia for a place in the quarter finals. So, get your football shirt on, tune in, and wave the flag!
DeleteIt's not colonization, Jack. It's positive influence.
Delete@Ray English both thrives and suffers from being an open-source language. This is certainly the first time I have heard "Pro/Rel", and so far I'm not liking it.
DeleteCarl is right that Brits shorten words (and Aussies who are really working clas Brits with lots of money and melanoma shorten them and put 'o' on the end) while Americans lengthen them: 'use' becomes 'utilization', 'transport' becomes 'transportation' and dustnan becomes 'sanitation engineer'. Why do American moms love soccer? Because girls play it or in the hope their sons won't play gridiron?
Delete@ HJ
DeleteUnfortunately, I had a (totally redundant) rehearsal for this concert I've been roped into. Otherwise, I would have been imbibing in the public house and casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the referee's parentage, which I understand is the done thing.
You're a natural! I think you would get to enjoy it.
Delete@ 雲水
DeleteIt is.
But don't forget the singing of abusive songs!
Oh, and the beer is for throwing in the air when one's team scores a goal (i.e., hitting the ball into the opponents net).