Soccer Gold Cup - USA vs Mexico

[DFWJC]

To me, fan appeal has nothing at all to do with it. My original statement was, "The U.S. has more kids playing organized soccer then any other country in the world." That's true. If we are going to say that we are not good because we don't have the same level of interest or participation, then I think something has to give here. At some point, we have to stop leaning on the whole, "We're behind the curve" crutch. We have more then enough youth participation in the sport. We have more then enough facilities and access to facilities. We have more then enough coaching available. At some point, you have to look to the coaching and the desire of the players. Brazil has won more World Cups then any other country with 5. Italy has won 4.

Neither of those countries combined have as many children playing organized soccer as we do. We have somewhere between 8 and 10 million kids playing organized soccer annually. We have access to better everything so why the lack of success? We have thrown more money at Soccer in this country (excluding professional) then all other sports over the last 20 years. Why do countries like Brazil and Mexico have better teams? Could it be because they don't teach it in an organized manner, as we do? Could it be that they learn it as a game and are allowed to simply play it, which is much more fun then practicing it?

We're doing something wrong here. It's not that we don't have enough kids or enough players. It's not that we don't have the athletes. It's not that we don't have the facilities or even the coaching. We have more of all of those things. We're doing something wrong here and the longer we sell the myth that it's because Europe has more people or better players, the longer we are going to get are butts kicked.

Hey ABQ. I see your point. I did point out that we may be talking about two things not completely related....though i do think there is a relationship.
I really don't think the average american kid has a passion for soccer like kids in other countries....on average, we have a broader range of sports interests.

Still, your point is well taken.

 

[DFWJC]

could be as simple as their best athletes play soccer ours don't.

I really do think that is it for the most part. I just didn't state it as cleanly.

 

[Doomsday101]

I really do think that is it for the most part. I just didn't state it as cleanly.

I don't know if that is a hardcore fact it just seems to me the mosted talented athletes in the US are not on the soccer teams they are playing in the NFL and NBA

 

[Doomsday101]

I guess one fact that could help support my theory is the fact US women soccer is very good but much of that is do to limited oppertunity in other sports.

 

[MC KAos]

Not surprised that the world cup much like olympics draw very good rating. It happens every 4 years so it is a bigger deal even to those who are not big time soccer fans

However MLS have seen their ratings continue to drop even the championship


The TV ratings are in for the 2010 MLS Cup. And according to Sports Media Watch, the overnight TV rating was 0.5, the lowest overnight rating since at least the late 1990's.

The 0.5 TV rating was down 44% from last year's MLS Cup between Real Salt Lake and L.A. Galaxy. In the 2010 MLS Cup, Colorado Rapids defeated FC Dallas 2-1 in extra time in front of a not even sold-out crowd at Toronto's BMO Field. The 0.5 TV rating was down 28% from the 2008 MLS Cup between Columbus and New York.

According to Sports Media Watch, this is the fifth straight year, and the seventh time in eight years, that the MLS Cup has failed to draw at least a 1.0 overnight rating

http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com/mls-cup-overnight-tv-ratings-decline-44-from-last-year/10891

not surprising, but the MLS is quite terrible quality of play. id be more interested to see how epl games, la liga games, and champions league games, including the finals, do vs the other non NFL sports. My point is you cant compare apples to oranges. the best basketball, baseball, and hockey leagues are here, but MLS isnt even in the top 15 of soccer leagues in the world in terms of quality of play.

 

[MC KAos]

in fact, i bet mexican league games on univision get ratings close to if not top 5 in the country in terms of sports

 

[Cythim]

There are 204 NCAA DI men's soccer programs and 345 basketball programs. Conferences such as the Big 12 and SEC do not support men's soccer. Soccer still has low visibility beyond the youth level and many of the kids that start of playing soccer eventually switch sports. It is getting better and will continue to change with the generations. Some day it will pass hockey but I'm not sure if it can pass baseball or basketball.

 

[Doomsday101]

not surprising, but the MLS is quite terrible quality of play. id be more interested to see how epl games, la liga games, and champions league games, including the finals, do vs the other non NFL sports. My point is you cant compare apples to oranges. the best basketball, baseball, and hockey leagues are here, but MLS isnt even in the top 15 of soccer leagues in the world in terms of quality of play.

I would not know how good the MSL is I don't watch it and frankly know very few who do. I know many hardcore football, baseball and basketball fans I truly do not know many soccer fans.

Here in Houston because we have a very high Hispanic community there is an audience that pays close attention to it but by and large throughout the US sorry there is not a great audience out there.

Even the match between the US and Mexico was largely a Mexican crowd pulling for the Mexican team.

 

[ethiostar]

There is a difference between a comparison of how many kids play soccer, say below the ages of 12-15, and how many of them actually keep playing into their late teens and early twenties. I will also add that a lot of these kids who are playing soccer in the US are coached by parents (fathers mostly) who have never played the game, and in most cases, do not know much about the game at all. The kids play the game, for the most part, because it is a physical activity and a good way to get involved in a team sports and learn from that kind of organized activity. They are, in a lot of cases, are not really learning how to play soccer. Most don't follow any professional soccer team, US, Europe, international, etc... They don't watch the game when it is on TV or seek it out online. There is not a whole lot of passion for it. If you go to most other counties and ask any 10 year old who their favorite team is they will tell you in a heart beat. I doubt most 10 years olds who play soccer in the US can name any professional soccer team, US or otherwise. I'm not saying that alone predetermines anything but the intensity of engagement with the sport is just not the same.

 

[DFWJC]

There are 204 NCAA DI men's soccer programs and 345 basketball programs. Conferences such as the Big 12 and SEC do not support men's soccer. Soccer still has low visibility beyond the youth level and many of the kids that start of playing soccer eventually switch sports. It is getting better and will continue to change with the generations. Some day it will pass hockey but I'm not sure if it can pass baseball or basketball.

Good stuff.

 

[Doomsday101]

There are 204 NCAA DI men's soccer programs and 345 basketball programs. Conferences such as the Big 12 and SEC do not support men's soccer. Soccer still has low visibility beyond the youth level and many of the kids that start of playing soccer eventually switch sports. It is getting better and will continue to change with the generations. Some day it will pass hockey but I'm not sure if it can pass baseball or basketball.

True but they do support and have women soccer in the big 12.

I do think that is why we see US Women team have success on the international stage because we have some very talented women with fewer options in sports.

I would be curious to see how many NCAA women’s soccer programs there are.

 

[Cythim]

True but they do support and have women soccer in the big 12.

I do think that is why we see US Women team have success on the international stage because we have some very talented women with fewer options in sports.

I would be curious to see how many NCAA women’s soccer programs there are.

322 D1 programs for women. There are also something like 130ish pro/semi-pro men's soccer teams and 100ish women's in the U.S. The extremely low number for the men's side and the close ratio of men's to women's tells the story of our two programs.

 

[ethiostar]

True but they do support and have women soccer in the big 12.

I do think that is why we see US Women team have success on the international stage because we have some very talented women with fewer options in sports.

I would be curious to see how many NCAA women’s soccer programs there are.

I'm not sure about this but it might also have something to do with the level of competition overall. What I'm thinking about is how gender roles and gender expectations are defined in a lot of countries. I would guess that, generally speaking, the gender gap in the US is a lot narrower compared with most other counties. Which means that Women in the US are more free to pursue activities that have in the past been deemed to be the domain of men. I would imagine sports to be one of those domains. So, in other cultures, most women might not have the same societal acceptance if they were to be interested in sports. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they are discouraged from participating in most sports, as they might be considered to be not feminine. I don't know, I'm talking out of my *** for the most part here. I would have to do some research to see if there is much written about it. It does sound like a really good research topic and it won't surprise me if there is at lease a small body of literature out there on this.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

could be as simple as their best athletes play soccer ours don't.

Perhaps, but I still have a hard time believing that out of a pool of 10 million people, we can't field a team that is as athletically gifted. I think it's a mind set thing. I think that what we did with Basketball for year and years and what we do with Football still, the rest of the world does with Soccer. I honestly think that it's more of a mind thing with us. Seriously, you don't have to be supremely gifted athletically to play good tough defense. You have to have a certain amount of athletic ability but it's not like you have 4 center Mids or 4 wings playing full back positions. We stood around and ignored very basic principles on how to play the game against Mexico. What's more, the U.S. seems to make a habit of getting leads in big games and giving them up. It's not about the athletic quality that is playing the game IMO. It's something else.

Personally, I think we practice way too much and play way to structured. We don't have a lot of guys who just create on the field like you see in other countries. I think this comes from the fact that other countries DON'T play an organized style of soccer. They play open travel date type soccer. They don't play league schedule type soccer. This does two things IMO. It allows players the opportunity to develop a creative style of game. They see things on the field that our players don't. It's like Basketball. In the game of Basketball, if you can figure out a way to get to the basket, your going to be succesful. If you have nothing other then pick and roll, a team will defense you. The other thing it does is it allows you to enjoy the game much more. If you are always playing structured practice club style soccer, you get burned out. Lets face it, it's way more fun to play the game then it is to practice it all the time. In this Country, what you see is AYSO type soccer very early and then, a year or two after that, players that want to continue on seriously with Soccer get put onto club leagues and it becomes a situation in which you start reducing the pool of athletes you have to draw from. Basically, you reward those kids who show athletic ability earlier and exclude those who do not develop athletically until later. Soccer is really not a sport you can pick up at a club level and play if you have not been in it since the time you were a very young kid. This is not nearly as evident in the womens game because there are a lot more girls who start later and are exposed through HS soccer. Basically, they have the opportunity to bring in athletes that have not been excluded because of club soccer. Because club soccer is the way in which the majority of American soccer athletes are developed, you also exclude athletes who can not afford to play club soccer. It is an extremely expensive sport to play if you are part of one of these clubs and you basically exclude a very large majority of inner city kids who simply can not afford it. When these inner city kids look for a sport, they go to Baseball, Basketball or Football because they can still join those sports and develop their athletic ability and still afford it. With soccer, forget about it. If you try and compete against a kid who has been playing club soccer for 8 or 10 years, even though you may be a better athlete, your going to get your clock cleaned. This, IMO, is why we don't see superior athletes in American Soccer. It's not, IMO, the draw of the other sports over Soccer. If a kid starts playing any sport and they start having success in that sport, they are going to enjoy it because no matter what sport, people enjoy winning.

We have to think about how we are developing the game here in the U.S. IMO, having been around this sport for more then 15 years and watching how they play youth soccer, I believe it's how we are teaching the game and how the structure basically eliminates a huge segment of athletes right from the start. It also stunts creativity in the sport and basically burns people out.

Anyway, that's what I think.

 

[Doomsday101]

I'm not sure about this but it might also have something to do with the level of competition overall. What I'm thinking about is how gender roles and gender expectations are defined in a lot of countries. I would guess that, generally speaking, the gender gap in the US is a lot narrower compared with most other counties. Which means that Women in the US are more free to pursue activities that have in the past been deemed to be the domain of men. I would imagine sports to be one of those domains. So, in other cultures, most women might not have the same societal acceptance if they were to be interested in sports. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they are discouraged from participating in most sports, as they might be considered to be not feminine. I don't know, I'm talking out of my *** for the most part here. I would have to do some research to see if there is much written about it. It does sound like a really good research topic and it won't surprise me if there is at lease a small body of literature out there on this.

I think that is valid but then again there are many great women athletes would wide we see in events like the Olympic.

I do see limited opportunities for women sports here in the US in comparison to men’s sport. Yet we do see a high number of college programs that offer women soccer and much fewer that offer it to men and we see a US women’s team who are major players in the international stage.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

One of the things that hurts American Soccer, according to my Son, is that we send most of our best Soccer players off to college. In Europe or other countries, these players go to team sponsored leagues that feed into the pros, in much the same way we do Farm Teams in Baseball. It stunts their development.

 

[ethiostar]

I think that is valid but then again there are many great women athletes would wide we see in events like the Olympic.

I do see limited opportunities for women sports here in the US in comparison to men’s sport. Yet we do see a high number of college programs that offer women soccer and much fewer that offer it to men and we see a US women’s team who are major players in the international stage.

There is no doubt that there are great female athletes around the world and we do see some of them in the Olympics. However, I believe in most cases they are involved in sports that are not considered to be masculine in their cultures (i should have been much clearer about this in my earlier post). That is not to say there won't be any females in those sports because there will be but societal expectations and support will be drastically lacking. My country of birth, Ethiopia, is a very good example in this regard. Long distance running has been dominated by males and they have had great success historically. However, it is only in the last decade or two that female runners started to participate in the sport and gain societal support and have been dominant in the sport like their male counterparts. Also, while it is true that the trend is changing for female athletes for the better in this regard, the vast majority of females do not get the kind of encouragement or support from family, friends and their communities if they make it known that that is the path they would like to pursue.

Also, what is considered to be a masculine and feminine sport is going to differ a little or a lot from one culture to another. While soccer might be considered to be a more masculine sport in some parts of the world, the same might not be true in the US where football is the number 1 sport. So in a way it doesn't surprise me to know that women in the US have more opportunity to play soccer in college compared to men. Also, I think there are some political-economic factors that a university president has to consider. Part of that, i would imagine, has to be trying to make sure that athletic programs are available for both genders somewhat equitably. One way to do that is to make soccer available to female students in lieu of other sport programs that are only available to men. Again, i am largely making inferences and speculating here.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

This was a good game. But clearly the us team is overmatched and cant hang with Mexico right now. This really isnt a suprise tho, Riht now Mexico has the under 17 players who wont the world cup playing together and coming into their own. Chicharito, Dos Santos, Guardado, Barrera are heads above anything US put on the field yesterday. Dos Santos was doing anything he wanted whenever he wanted. His target was off yesterday he could've easily had 4 goals. His only goal was something amazing. I know alot of you dont watch soccer but wow what he did on that goal was amazing. One of the greatest goals of all time.

[YOUTUBE]6Roc2lf6Zek[/YOUTUBE]

Looks like the U.S. men could a use a little more Liz Lambert on the field against Mexico.

[youtube]2LPIUI_CY44[/youtube]

 

[ABQcowboyJR]

That goal had a nice touch on it, but its an atrocity that he even got the shot off. Wouldn't credit the goal as one of the best ever, but rather one of the worst defensive moments in US soccer history.

The club aspect of soccer hurts the sport more than anything else. You eliminate a huge pool of your athletes because they simply can't afford to play and get good coaching. High school soccer is a joke in this country, the coaching is absolutely terrible. The club approach does allow kids to get really good coaching, but is just too expensive to be successful on a national level.

As mentioned above, I do think that college soccer hurts the US on a national level too. MLS has started to bring around their own club teams to breed players. They need to do more and more of this. College soccer is not at a comparable level here, to the semi pro teams of other nations. If you can play at 17 in Europe, you better believe your gonna get paid to play and get better instead of going to college. Better competition in development, better players.

 

[joseephuss]

I don't know if there is one specific reason why soccer fails in the US. Fail meaning, having great success in the World Cup and sending a large number of players to the premier leagues of Europe.

Here are my reasons:

1. While youth soccer is big, there is a drop off in the teenage years. There are many local youth teams you can play for, but that number dwindles during the teenage years. And if you want to be a part of the high quality teams it is going to cost you and your family some money. If you ever look up the story of Clint Dempsey you see where his family had to pay a lot of money for him to play on a club team in Dallas. He had to commute back and forth from Nacogdoches. That doesn't happen in other countries. They have good competitive leagues for all ages. Those countries also go out and recruit the top talent and cover their expenses. Soccer can be a very cheap game to play, but the higher the quality the higher the cost. And when you have other options that are cheaper in those regards you lose some of your better athletes.

2. I think coaching in the U.S. is second tier at best. Spain and Germany have a ton of coaches that go to clinics and training to become better at their craft. I think the number of UEFA certified coaches in those two countries far surpasses that of other European countries. The majority of coaches in the U.S. aren't up to that standard.

3. Culture plays a part. It is not the only thing. Some countries have a culture of soccer, but still don't do great at the World Cup. Yet the teams that excel at the sport definitely have a soccer culture about them that the U.S. lacks and maybe always will. It is one thing to have a large population of kids playing in soccer leagues growing up. It is another thing to live and breath soccer. A kid may have a practice every Wednesday and a game every Saturday. What is he doing outside of that time? How does that compare to a kid growing up in one of the great soccer countries? I bet that those kids in the other countries do more things associated with soccer outside of the Wednesday practice and Saturday game than the kids in the U.S. They have been doing it a lot longer in those countries. You don't catch up with that overnight. Although soccer has grown quite a bit over the years, it has a long way to go to be a big part of the culture of the U.S.


I disagree that U.S. soccer is too structured with regards to practice as opposed to just going out and playing. Germany has always been known as very structured in their soccer. Italy plays a rather boring brand of soccer of defense, defense, defense and then counter. Brasil distorts the perception on how teams/countries prepare. They just play and have fun. At least that is the way it looks and it works for them. That is not how every country approaches the game.