USMNT Thread: Wandering in the Wilderness

[Woz]

21 hours ago, PAW said:

5. Improve scouting system.  Need to hire way more scouts, so many good players get over looked because of how big the country is and how many different leagues there are.  The current USMNT youth setup is completely political.

One thing I've always wondered: why isn't this crowd-sourced? There's got to be a way to say "hey, this kid may not be on some fancy travel team, but he's got skills?" Or "yeah, he was overlooked because he was smaller, but he's kept at it and has now grown?"

[Woz]

21 hours ago, PAW said:

6. College soccer needs to move to year round.  3 months a year at 18-22 is disastrous.  Plenty of players in Europe break through at that age where we just fall further behind.

I kind of assume we need to let the college players go. If you want to play NCAA, okay then, that's nice, but if you want to do this professionally, you're going to have to skip that (unless you are a tremendous talent).

[SalvadorsDeli]

2 hours ago, amac said:

Think the part I'm still most baffled by is Arena. You expect him to come in and be level-headed/pragmatic with the squad we have considering his experience and the the criticisms of Klinsmann. Tactically we were just atrocious

Bruce let his inferiority complex get the best of him. This became way too much about him wanting to prove that Bruce Arena is a big boy coach and Americans are exceptional, always making comments about how as an American he can learn more from Gregg Popovich than Pep Guardiola, even yesterday using his postgame presser to make the same smug comments about how US Soccer is still doing everything right. It impacted his coaching, made him cocky, made him do incredibly dumb things tactically just because he wanted to prove that he can be different and unique and interesting. 

It seemed like he was more interested in fighting the ghost of Jurgen Klinsmann than he actually was in coaching the team. 

[rcon14]

13 hours ago, BaltimoreTerp said:

Bruce let his inferiority complex get the best of him. This became way too much about him wanting to prove that Bruce Arena is a big boy coach and Americans are exceptional, always making comments about how as an American he can learn more from Gregg Popovich than Pep Guardiola, even yesterday using his postgame presser to make the same smug comments about how US Soccer is still doing everything right. It impacted his coaching, made him cocky, made him do incredibly dumb things tactically just because he wanted to prove that he can be different and unique and interesting. 

It seemed like he was more interested in fighting the ghost of Jurgen Klinsmann than he actually was in coaching the team. 

Europeans literally have full dossiers of tactical preparation and somehow US Soccer is like 'nope, we're right.'

[Buc Ball]

On 12/10/2017 at 12:05 AM, Imarobot said:

Yup, and it is ridiculous. Soccer is kind of a rich kids sport in the US.

So does this apply at any level? If you took your kid to play for a local team, would you be expected to pay that much?

It's absolutely incredible to me that there's such a huge barrier to entry in a sport which you basically need a ball and not much else.

[Buc Ball]

On 12/10/2017 at 4:13 AM, Woz said:

I kind of assume we need to let the college players go. If you want to play NCAA, okay then, that's nice, but if you want to do this professionally, you're going to have to skip that (unless you are a tremendous talent).

I think this where the US system falls down. For things like football, which is predominately a gym sport, that's fine. Thing is, you only really get better at soccer by playing in games. Practice sessions can help, working on conditioning can help, but you can't replicate what you learn from playing a game.

If the season for college guys is literally 3 months then there's a huge issue. Why can a regional college league not be played weekly, throughout the academic year? If you want to have playoffs and such, have them towards the end of the academic year with the winners of the regional leagues, but players won't improve if they are playing competitively for only 3 months of the year.

Do the professional teams have youth academies that will train kids from a relatively young age? What's the path from a kid starting out playing soccer at say 5 years old to the MLS? Is there one?

[PAW]

10 minutes ago, Buc Ball said:

So does this apply at any level? If you took your kid to play for a local team, would you be expected to pay that much?

It's absolutely incredible to me that there's such a huge barrier to entry in a sport which you basically need a ball and not much else.

If you want to play competitively, yes.  Most clubs will have 3-5 teams per age group and once you get past the 1st or 2nd team the level is awful yet the price is the same.

The only way to pay less (maybe $100 or so) is rec soccer (no athleticism, skill, etc.) which is awful. 

[PAW]

2 minutes ago, Buc Ball said:

Do the professional teams have youth academies that will train kids from a relatively young age? What's the path from a kid starting out playing soccer at say 5 years old to the MLS? Is there one?

No.  U13/U14 was the lowest (although I think they just added a U12 academy division).

[Buc Ball]

1 minute ago, PAW said:

If you want to play competitively, yes.  Most clubs will have 3-5 teams per age group and once you get past the 1st or 2nd team the level is awful yet the price is the same.

The only way to pay less (maybe $100 or so) is rec soccer (no athleticism, skill, etc.) which is awful. 

That's incredible. In the UK you'd expect to pay up to £5 per week to play for a team. That would cover venue hire for training, venue hire for games, referee hire and money into the club. The clubs would generally hold fundraisers throughout the year if they were looking to buy anything major, such as new strips/ funds for your Easter weekend tournament in the Netherlands, for example.

So for that £250, you'd expect two training sessions per week and about 30 games per year across league and cup competitions. That amount was fairly standard across clubs in my area regardless of the level of the leagues - everyone was using the same facilities and coaches were generally all volunteers.

It sounds like the issue is the size of the clubs and the focus on performance at a low level diluting the number of teams in the area. That makes you go further to play different teams and rather than having a 20 team league in the area, you have 4 clubs with 5 teams who all play in different competitions.

[SalvadorsDeli]

Jermaine Jones dropping some truth bombs. Worth listening to, lot going on but the general point he's making is that he thinks too many American soccer players with the option to do more take the easy way out by sticking in MLS where they don't have to fight for their places or generally push themselves. Specifically calls out Jordan Morris on it, among others. 

Edited October 14, 2017 by BaltimoreTerp

[RaykwonDaChef]

Yea, as a fan - I try not to criticism the players for doing it, because they are only human and in the end they will do what is best for themselves. However I heavily blame the Administration and Coaches for allowing it to happen. They are the real ones to blame. 

[PAW]

Morris isn't good enough technically to succeed in Europe.

[amac]

USSF to hire a caretaker within 10 days. Tab Ramos would make sense but some in the media saying he may not want it as an interim gig.

Within MLS I would guess the long term names tossed around- Tata Martino, Oscar Pareja, Peter Vermes, Caleb Porter, Jesse Marsch, Patrick Vieira, Greg Vanney 

Pretty underwhelming aside from Tata.  Pareja or Vieira would probably be the next best of that bunch

Edited October 14, 2017 by amac

[RaykwonDaChef]

2 hours ago, amac said:

USSF to hire a caretaker within 10 days. Tab Ramos would make sense but some in the media saying he may not want it as an interim gig.

Within MLS I would guess the long term names tossed around- Tata Martino, Oscar Pareja, Peter Vermes, Caleb Porter, Jesse Marsch, Patrick Vieira, Greg Vanney 

Pretty underwhelming aside from Tata.  Pareja or Vieira would probably be the next best of that bunch

I would assume more than likely not going to get a wonderful coach until after the World Cup. Unless a Club Manager has been interested in trying the cycle of one, and wanted to get his name in a year early when less competition for jobs. 

Osorio would be awesome. Mexican fans hate him for some reason. 

If only Bielsa spoke english. 

[Jetfan66]

2 foreign names have shown interest in the USMNT job, Sam Allardyce and Laurent Blanc. I'm not sure if the USSF would go for another foreign name so soon after Jurgen but these are 2 high profile names.