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XyrlocShammypants posted:Nirwad he was, in a convoluted manner, speaking about international soccer leagues (the Premiere League) and how even that is probably lower than NHL viewership. Or maybe he meant MLS? I don't know, I am pretty sure when you combine canadian and US viewership MLS is smoked by NHL so it wouldn't make sense I was referring to Liga MX, which draws 1-1.5million views a week in the US, similar to the NHL. The Premier League aside from Big Six derbies draws like half the NHL's audience. My point has forever and always been that structure only takes you so far if the underlying demand isn't there. And it isn't, here, or else the leagues that are "doing things right" would actually be doing well enough that a domestic league that could take that audience could sustain the spending that would be required to take that audience. You can only spend money you're not making on competing with other clubs for "good players" for so long, that's one reason why the NASL blew up in the first place, and it's also why sugar daddies in the lower leagues in Europe are a rotating cast of charlatans leaving chaos and ruin in their wake. Except in Europe there's enough of a fanbase to quickly resurrect those local clubs when the investors they chase in the Red Queen's Race to compete fiercely for talent and get promoted instead get tired of losing money and gently caress off. Does that happen with such regularity here? God I said I would avoid the soccer Internet for a while after the US went down in flames but CLEARLY I COULDN'T STOP MYSELF.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:58
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The whole system of American soccer needs a complete rethink, and it's not going to happen until the money marks collapse. Introduce relegation and allow those baby teams to grow naturally. The Original 96 teams are varying levels of mediocre oligarchy - LA didn't win because it bought all the best players, they won because Robbie Keane treated MLS defenses like toys. Can I tell you guys something hilarious? DC put all its chips on Audi Field coinciding with a World Cup bump in attendance. This was going to be the catapult. And let's be honest - my home team is the perfect example of institutional rot in American soccer. The first dynasty became a blueprint - invest in South Americans with a steady paycheck. And when that dried up, they went to an academy that produced two major talents in Bill Hamid and Andy Najar. Now it's pay for play that lets Barron Trump pretend he's just a regular boy. A stadium that hums with energy when given a chance reduced to literal rubble and rust. And the hope is to Flip This Franchise on a promise of bargain basement internationals and 30something MLS vets. They spent DP money on Paul Arriola on the idea of "hey look, a USMNT player!" And boy oh boy, did that just lose it's loving luster. American soccer can succeed if it becomes a sporting competition instead of an exhibition in okayness. That's the trick. Give everyone a reason to adapt or die. A lot of these awful business models based on "we're all there is, Love it or leave it" will wither on the vine. It's time.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:59
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I was going to post that fancy, almost exactly that, how DC is basically symbolic of the poo poo we're in right now, but you nailed it. Take a look at the poo poo we have to deal with in MLS and American soccer generally. Columbus Crew have a roster of Higuain and a bunch of lovely garbage trash that no one on Earth cares about. DC United has Bill Hamid and no one cares about him. Many of us wish he actually takes a job with a team overseas and stops wasting his time here. Probably 90-95% of MLS fans couldn't name a player on Philly or Vancouver right now. That's the state of MLS. Garbage on top of garbage on top of why the gently caress is Jeff Larentowicz still playing. But hey, people should be willing to spend money to watch Colorados amazing lineup of Aigner (who?) Ford (who?) Burling (Who?) Saeid (who?) Serna (who?) Azira (who?) play Shammypants fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 06:07
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Dallan Invictus posted:I was referring to Liga MX, which draws 1-1.5million views a week in the US, similar to the NHL. The Premier League aside from Big Six derbies draws like half the NHL's audience. That's pretty good ratings for a league in a country most of the viewers have never been to (or could likely point to on a map). Especially for early morning TV. Imagine if some of those players played for the team in their city. Dallan Invictus posted:You can only spend money you're not making on competing with other clubs for "good players" for so long, that's one reason why the NASL blew up in the first place, and it's also why sugar daddies in the lower leagues in Europe are a rotating cast of charlatans leaving chaos and ruin in their wake. Except in Europe there's enough of a fanbase to quickly resurrect those local clubs when the investors they chase in the Red Queen's Race to compete fiercely for talent and get promoted instead get tired of losing money and gently caress off. If you're not willing to spend money, don't buy a professional sports team. I don't think the league is in danger of a billionaire coming in and outspending the top EPL teams. But it wouldn't hurt to have a few owners come in and spend some money to actually build a quality team that maybe people would like to watch play. I'm not arguing that the MLS should be competing with the top leagues right now. But I do think it should be at least on par with some of the second or third tier European leagues (Dutch, Portuguese). The league is not focused on quality of play, it's focused on expansion fees. When MLS sat down to come up with ideas to increase ratings, adding talent wasn't on the agenda. Adding cameras to locker rooms and putting microphones on coaches were.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:21
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Like, we talk about whether the quality of the league has stagnated or not. I legitimately can't tell, because I've had eight and a half years of Ben Olsen soccer, which is the worst quality possible. I see other teams as a legitimate breath of fresh air - Kansas City's long passing game, Jersey's high-tempo press, Atlanta's excellent mix of tempo and flair, Portland's offensive wizardry...there's good teams out there, and all of that is colored by seeing them play against a team that's spent nearly a decade in the backpass-hustle-heart-and-individual-effort style. And because there's no consequences for lacking ambition, we have this melange of teams that can simply exist for their own sake. Our story is an old one, and it lacks no connection to today or tomorrow. The stories of the newer teams are more vibrant and vital, and they should absolutely take the vanguard of what American soccer can be. But instead, we have half a dozen zombie teams with zombie legacies and no real reason to grow. When that sense of need to adapt dies, so does a team, or a league, or a sport.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:23
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The reason I'm so vocally in favour of expansion is specifically because the expansion teams are actually trying whereas DC and the Revs and plenty of the other 96 teams are, well, special. If MLS is going to exist, you change it through its owners. So bring on more Blanks and fewer Krafts and keep showing what soccer in America CAN be, and meanwhile DC or NE and all the other sick old men can exist until someone with money realises they can do it better and buys them out like the league did to the Vergaras. Bad soccer is better than even worse soccer, and absolutely better than no soccer, and nobody should pretend that the answer to "adapt or die" is always going to be "adapt". Sometimes you die and nobody replaces you for fifteen years. This has happened before and it can again. I have no particular desire to relegate them into oblivion because I don't think their hypothetical replacements would be any better on the quality standpoint, let alone on the financial stability point. There aren't quite enough people that are actually willing to spend nine figures ANYWHERE in soccer in America, whether that's investing in shared infrastructure through franchise fees or doing poo poo relatively on their own, that I think any of you are being reasonable to be picky. Where is Silva's equivalent of the WHL or ABA? Where are all these people chomping at the bit to spend large amounts of money on soccer in America but just hate the idea of doing so in MLS? If quality is the reason nobody should watch, well, you need money to get quality, and unlike in the 1950s, these days you're competing for that money with much better foreign product. How do you win that competition with Organic Local Growth in deeply hostile soil? But hey, you guys do you. I think you're wrong but this isn't my ball (but if TFC parachutes into the CPL and wins thirty straight titles after you guys storm New York and put Garber's head on a pike then I will resent you fucks forever). Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 06:25
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The problem with expansion is that it's the business model for the other teams in the league. The older teams don't give a poo poo about winning or making the league better because there is risk involved in that. They just want to convince some dummy billionaire that MLS is ready to breakthrough in the near future and to fork over a giant expansion fee. It's a ponzi scheme where you constantly have to bring in new expansion money to satisfy existing owners and breathe life into the league.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:32
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Moving this text to keep up
Shammypants fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 06:33
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I think the issue of bad owners not willing to improve their team because they're making money is more of an American issue than just MLS. The other North American leagues have terrible owners who pick terrible general managers who in turn pick terrible players and put a terrible product on the field/court/rink. The difference is that MLS doesn't have legacy or history to rely on for a fan base. It's not entrenched in our society as much as we'd like it to be, but it's not like pulling up the roots and planting a new seed is going to bear any better fruit. The key is USSF regulation. The loss to T&T should be a wake up call to the USSF to get their affairs in order, because  is flying out the window. I've use the term 'laissez-faire soccernomics' to describe the lack of uniformity in American soccer before, as the people who should be regulating leagues are afraid of getting sued by people with more money than them. The good news is there is an election coming up for USSF President, and there are actual challengers this time! Sunil Gulati's Time may be up in February if he doesn't bring change.
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Oct 11, 2017 07:17
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XyrlocShammypants posted:Real talk, there are maybe only a few teams in this league with players that could/should brace a Jersey from the team store. Did autocorrect screw you here with "brace"? I've read this sentence like twenty times and I can only half-figure out what you're trying to say. all-Rush mixtape posted:I've use the term 'laissez-faire soccernomics' to describe the lack of uniformity in American soccer before, as the people who should be regulating leagues are afraid of getting sued by people with more money than them. The good news is there is an election coming up for USSF President, and there are actual challengers this time! Sunil Gulati's Time may be up in February if he doesn't bring change. I agree that that is the good news and that laissez-fair soccernomics is Not The Answer. The bad news is that I genuinely expect (more out of professional instinct plus a lot of thinking about the ChampionsWorld lawsuit's result, really: IAAL but I am not an expert in antitrust or sports law in general) that a more muscular USSF might well lose an antitrust suit and, unlike baseball or to a lesser extent the NFL, they don't have that societal entrenchment to depend on to entice the courts to play nice for the love of the game. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 07:40
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Maybe it's time to rethink professional soccer in America? Perhaps a full table and promotion relegation is in order? gently caress parity.
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Oct 11, 2017 08:42
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Lord knows I hate the way MLS is run, and I wholeheartedly agree with every criticism that's been leveled at the league over the past several hours, but I can't help but think it's still produced a much more talented player pool than we had 10 or 15 years ago. I look at the team that just lost to T&T and I still believe, on an individual level, there is WAY more talent there than we've seen in the past. And yet, the team itself is god awful. Remember when the US outran every other team in the world? And at least made an attempt at being organized and pressing? And was expected to score on drat near every set piece? What the heck happened to that team? I blame Klinsmann. Regardless, MLS needs to be blown up so we can start anew with a league that isn't run in a totally asinine manner. The fans, the stadiums, the players, and the few good owners aren't going to disappear just because MLS does, we'll be fine. The Premier League is an ocean away and on at 7am and still curb stomps MLS in the ratings, the audience is obviously there. Also, the fact that MLS still makes a big deal out of the college draft is hilarious. Literally the only time college soccer is relevant on a national stage is when Taters tweets me to let me know Will Bruin has scored.
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Oct 11, 2017 12:33
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Here's my take: the MLS should focus on being a functional poo poo league first before even thinking about being good and producing domestic talents. Start from the ground up.
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Oct 11, 2017 13:19
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Nah it's not that deep or talented. You could run through most of the league quickly to see see entire rosters are garbage, there are teams with a few, select talented players and then a big drop for the rest or teams with no bench at all. Piling onto the league a bit more, what the league has gotten better at overall is pretending. Coaches are better at dressing up like good coaches in good leagues. Supporters are getting better at pretending to be the homegrown and old school supporters we've come to romanticize elsewhere. Stadiums are built on the cheap, with low capacity and never fill. Players sport haircuts of foreign league players and we've mimicked pre and post game rituals of other leagues. However what happens in between all of that on the pitch is really not much better than 2007. If things were so good and teams so deep and talented right now then teams wouldn't be wildly moving up and down the ranks and entire divisions taking turns being utter garbage. We wouldn't be recalling our players from overseas in a desperate bid to sell jerseys for Colorado (Howard) or toronto (bradley). No, it's all an illusion for the purposes of creating MLS.com articles about how this league is a "top ten" league now and how some player somewhere agrees (maybe it's Henry or Rooney this time). Yet sales are not rising as expected nor viewership and in title matches has declined or stagnated for years overall. With no World Cup the boost isn't going to come and we will see additional suffering rather than real growth. Shammypants fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 13:31
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Niwrad posted:If you're not willing to spend money, don't buy a professional sports team. I don't think the league is in danger of a billionaire coming in and outspending the top EPL teams. But it wouldn't hurt to have a few owners come in and spend some money to actually build a quality team that maybe people would like to watch play. Again, nobody is going to come in and operate a team at a huge loss just because it makes for better quality of play. Nobody is going to do that. It's not going to happen. Not enough people here care. That's the problem. It would be wonderful to see a bunch of successful business people buy teams and stock them with great talent but those people got successful by not being loving idiots (most of the time anyway), and they're not going to piss away a bunch of their money for the good of US Soccer. It's not going to happen. This isn't the rest of the world where billionaires are willing to operate at a loss because prestige or whatever. Nobody here gives a gently caress and there's literally no personal incentive whatsoever in the United States, fiscally or reputation wise, for someone with a bunch of money to pour a bunch of it into an MLS team. If they operate at a huge loss but win the MLS Cup, it would mean virtually nothing. This is without even acknowledging the history of talent which has come back to MLS from good leagues and regressed horribly because of it. Even if you're willing to spend, good luck getting anyone promising to poo poo their future down the drain to help us save American soccer or whatever. Honestly, the most effective way to fix this is getting our best young players away from our dogshit domestic league and into the top European leagues. Get more good young people out of this country as quickly as possible and into overseas academies. Build success over there and improve the quality of the USMNT that way. If you improve the quality of the USMNT, you will increase the level to which people care here, then you can start figuring out how to revamp everything here from the ground up to be more successful. But as things stand, the United States is so far behind even average countries in the rest of the world in terms of player development that your quickest avenue to success is putting your players into those established systems as quickly as possible and leveraging their successes to create more interest. Truther Vandross fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 13:51
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We are getting billionaires doing just that it's just that we're getting the dumb as poo poo billionaires or ones that care very little and not the ones we need. Thohir, al Mubarak, Li, the combined ownership of LAFC, and even Da Silva is worth 600 million. Arthur Blank is another and probably the only competent billionaire or near billionaire running a team.
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Oct 11, 2017 13:57
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XyrlocShammypants posted:We are getting billionaires doing just that it's just that we're getting the dumb as poo poo billionaires or ones that care very little and not the ones we need. Thohir, al Mubarak, Li, the combined ownership of LAFC, and even Da Silva is worth 600 million. Arthur Blank is another and probably the only competent billionaire or near billionaire running a team. There's a reason we're getting the dumb as poo poo billionaires and not the intelligent ones
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Oct 11, 2017 14:08
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can we agree to look on the bright side; at least jozy and bradley won't be taking a flight to australia during the MLS Cup playoffs
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Oct 11, 2017 14:23
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wicka posted:I blame Klinsmann. You’d be wrong here. He wasn’t perfect but he had a plan that was cut way short. I’d blame Gulati and the US Soccer board before I blamed the first head coach with an actual idea of what US Soccer can change to get better.
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Oct 11, 2017 14:28
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I like going to (SKC) MLS games. They're affordable, and fun, and the on field product is just fine for what it is. MLS is not going to be a world class league any time soon. That shouldn't even be on anyone's radar right now. The good news is, you don't need to be a world class league to be financially solvent, entertaining, and a good thing. See: lots of leagues around the world. The biggest problem I see with the MLS is the asinine roster restrictions. They cause teams to stupidly overpay for red blooded American boys, and discourage teams from bringing in foreign talent on cheaper contracts that are actually better than heroic Americans. SKC has two such players on the roster right now: Ilie and Gerso. Both were cheap acquisitions from top league/low table European teams, which SHOULD be just about the sweet spot for the MLS. There are a TON of these guys up on bosmans every year...but MLS teams can't go after them, because 1) they're not red blooded American boys, and 2) all their available salary money is tied up in mediocre aging DPs anyway. Reduce the roster restrictions. Get rid of the favoritism for the best American players - make them earn their money where they can get it. Concentrate on finding and developing talented but underappreciated players, let the money made from selling them on be a reliable revenue stream. Stop this nonsense where two guys get paid millions, and everyone else makes less than I do. Young American players don't need to go abroad for the sake of going abroad. Academy-style development programs here should work just fine. We can even include some provisions for subsidizing their higher education, ala Canadian major junior hockey...but stop using the NCAA as the main feeder league for the MLS. The draft is stupid, the roster restrictions are stupid, and they're the things that are killing MLS and the USMNT right now.
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Oct 11, 2017 14:36
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[quote="“Dirk Pitt”" post="“477270697”"] You’d be wrong here. He wasn’t perfect but he had a plan that was cut way short. I’d blame Gulati and the US Soccer board before I blamed the first head coach with an actual idea of what US Soccer can change to get better. [/quote] This result is the ultimate redemption of Jurgen. The guy was right and everyone around him was wrong
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Oct 11, 2017 14:42
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Dirk Pitt posted:You’d be wrong here. He wasn’t perfect but he had a plan that was cut way short. Klinsmann’s plan was moronic because he tried to force our players to play a style they weren’t yet capable of. He needed to start that development from the ground up, not the top down. He never should’ve been manager, he should’ve been given some kind of executive position. wicka fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 14:53
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Dirk Pitt posted:You’d be wrong here. He wasn’t perfect but he had a plan that was cut way short. Lord knows I disagree with like 90% of every wicka post but he's right about that. (but the draft is basically MLS' appendix, it's not important or septic enough to be killing the league but at least it gets eyes on your occasional Jack Harrison types that fell through various cracks here or elsewhere). If Klinsmann wanted time to implement His Plan, he should have stuck to being a technical director (where he did have good ideas, and which is usually a long-view role) and not tried to coach. And Gulati should have seen past the Big Euro Name and actually looked into who was behind what limited success Klinsmann found as a manager in Germany, not to mention picking someone else as the desperation hire after Klinsmann ran out of time. And Arena should have stayed in LA instead of thinking he could ride to the national team's rescue (though honestly who knows if he could have saved the Galaxy this season), or at the very least rotated his squad for the last game. Hell, if he had done THAT, the rest of your squad could almost certainly at least have tied loving Trinidad and this thread wouldn't be on fire. Yesterday had many fathers and it came down to inches in the end. Perhaps it shouldn't have ever been in that situation. But again I point to the fact that frankly, the bottom half of the hex is better than it used to be and better than you all imagine it to be (take it from a fan of one of the teams they beat to get here). This shouldn't be a cakewalk for you anymore. I can't believe anyone is simultaneously arguing that US soccer culture should Punish Failure More Harshly but also fiercely defending the head coach that abjectly lost the first two games of the Hex after failing miserably at the 2015 Gold Cup (something which could have gotten him fired on his own in a country that cared about the continental tournament). 
Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 15:16
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Dallan Invictus posted:I can't believe anyone is simultaneously arguing that US soccer culture should Punish Failure More Harshly but also fiercely defending the head coach that abjectly lost the first two games of the Hex after failing miserably at the 2015 Gold Cup (something which could have gotten him fired on his own in a country that cared about the continental tournament). Multiple people have said he was a bad coach but his criticism of how bad the youth/league system is in the US was correct.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:21
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Feels Villeneuve posted:Multiple people have said he was a bad coach but his criticism of how bad the youth/league system is in the US was correct. Which is why I suppose I should be blaming Gulati for hiring him as the head coach to begin with, when he would've been more suited for a big-picture role. Replace Gulati with Peter Wilt, I will never complain about anything ever again.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:27
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The USA will never be good until they stop treating youth football as a revenue stream, a hobby/status symbol almost exclusively for upper-middle class kids. You can't produce large numbers of international quality players without a grassroots game, and it's only the sheer size of the country's population that has kept them generally competitive for 20 years. The college system is utterly hosed too, literally changing the rules for seemingly no reason other than to try and create a walled garden for the NCAA MLS' structure has a lot about it that I'm not sure will ever be healthy for the sport, but it's the combination of the above 2 things that strangles the talent pool long before MLS comes onto the radar. also lmao forever
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Oct 11, 2017 15:39
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Getting rich white Americans to be okay with associating with the poors is the answer to like every American problem, including this one, and good luck fixing that.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:45
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Everyone is poor now, problem solved.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:46
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Babby Thatcher posted:The USA will never be good until they stop treating youth football as a revenue stream, a hobby/status symbol almost exclusively for upper-middle class kids. You can't produce large numbers of international quality players without a grassroots game, and it's only the sheer size of the country's population that has kept them generally competitive for 20 years. Pretty much all of this (even the lmaos, but quietly and passive-aggressively as is the song of my people). I am more agnostic about MLS' structure (I mostly see it as a reaction to the level of demand for pro soccer in the US in the last 20-30 years, and a means to get rich people to invest large amounts of money in the sport despite that weak demand by clamping down on their downside risk) but it's not the problem, the domestic talent pool is the problem. If MLS actually faced competition for more domestic talent because the academies, youth teams and even colleges produced more players worth poaching, a lot of its roster restrictions would be untenable because they couldn't reliably suppress salaries anymore, so those of you who hate them might well be happy in the end. (the domestic quota might well go as a consequence but it is tangential to the problem and frankly I don't mind it existing nor that the CPL will have one). Some of this is already happening but it needs to happen in more places. More professional teams spending on dev can make that happen (which is another key reason I favour expansion, considering that I don't believe MLSHQ's claims of losing money and I accordingly don't believe the Ponzi scheme claims), but what the USSF can do directly is, say, put some of that surplus into making coaching training and youth teams less expensive through various means (and for gently caress's sake, allow the payment of solidarity fees at least and/or training compensation - and it's not MLS opposing that, it's the USSF and the player's union in the latter case. MLS handles solidarity fees claims just fine for the Canadian teams). Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 15:52
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I honestly don't know what youth soccer is like in other countries, but now i'm pretty curious. It was pretty fun for me as a kid, I played at the highest skill level available locally until I lost interest. Parents were generally cool, it wasn't that expensive, and it seems now like a good developmental environment. cut to today, it seems absolutely awful to me as a new "competitive" soccer parent. Like, why are 9 year olds traveling to different states to play in 3 day long tournaments? is your 9 year old so good at soccer that he can't find sufficient quality competition in your hometown? also, why am I paying over $100 a month for prepubescent soccer? why do people think you can tell who is going to be good at soccer when you're 9?
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Oct 11, 2017 15:54
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bewbies posted:I honestly don't know what youth soccer is like in other countries, but now i'm pretty curious. It was pretty fun for me as a kid, I played at the highest skill level available locally until I lost interest. Parents were generally cool, it wasn't that expensive, and it seems now like a good developmental environment. Youth soccer is a money making scheme, not a development process in the US, and to be fair every other country. The few extraordinary talents who actually make it fuel that. There's a .0018% chance of making it as a professional athlete across all sports. The difference in the US and other countries is the structure, mostly that the US has none. Marcus Rashford has been a Manchester United "player" since he was five, Lionel Messi has been a Barcelona "player" since he was 12. The biggest detriment to US Soccer in my opinion is the high school and college game. The emphasis on technique and tactics stagnates and the quality of play drops off a cliff. NCAA soccer's level of play is shockingly bad and if I were talking to a kid who was high school age and had the ability to be a pro soccer player I'd tell him to skip the NCAA entirely and go on trials at European clubs and get into their setups.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:08
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bewbies posted:I honestly don't know what youth soccer is like in other countries, but now i'm pretty curious. It was pretty fun for me as a kid, I played at the highest skill level available locally until I lost interest. Parents were generally cool, it wasn't that expensive, and it seems now like a good developmental environment. It's all marketing. People learned to take advantage of rich people's superiority complexes. If you travel far and/or charge more, it makes them feel a part of something more important and exclusive than an effective structure would. The entire system is designed for profit and to make parents feel like their kid is better than someone else's because of how much they shell out for worthless tournaments and club teams. This is obviously all anecdotal but I grew up in the Tidewater region of Virginia and there was so much dumb awful club soccer born of rich people's kids not making teams that it was ridiculous. The stench of entitlement in US Soccer comes from the foundation and dumbass parents who think every failure their child encounters is attributable to some action of a third party.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:09
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Shrapnig posted:I were talking to a kid who was high school age and had the ability to be a pro soccer player I'd tell him to skip the NCAA entirely and go on trials at European clubs and get into their setups. this is a good idea in theory but actually doing it is an absolutely huge ask for anybody, let alone your average 15 year old american kid. pulisic found himself in pretty much the ideal situation (good club, parental support, etc) and it was still almost too much for him deal with. if he'd been only slightly less poised/mature/intelligent etc as a 15/16 year old he would've been back in the US grinding away with the U-17 team and looking to be the star right winger at cornell or some poo poo. point being, there's no earthly reason why pro clubs here couldn't use the same approach as european clubs do. they might even end up making money on the deal...sell a quality player to a european club and fund your youth system for a decade!
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Oct 11, 2017 16:26
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Shrapnig posted:The biggest detriment to US Soccer in my opinion is the high school and college game. The emphasis on technique and tactics stagnates and the quality of play drops off a cliff. NCAA soccer's level of play is shockingly bad and if I were talking to a kid who was high school age and had the ability to be a pro soccer player I'd tell him to skip the NCAA entirely and go on trials at European clubs and get into their setups. I agree with this but bewbies is right that "just go to Europe" cannot be a large-scale answer. Honestly it is fixable though (at least in high school - the NCAA is a huge obstacle but on the other hand they barely care about soccer so maybe they can be pushed to behave or at least nudged out of the picture). There's nothing inherent to high schools that means they can train decent football or basketball players but not soccer players, it's about the coaches that are available to one sport vs. the other. Part of that is about the relative status of the sports in America but there are still levers here for the federation. Subsidise good coaching training, make it more accessible and cheaper. Costs for secondary and post-secondary schools will go down, costs for youth teams will go down, the former at least will pass it on to the kids even if the latter don't, and either way you get more kids in more places seeing good coaching. I don't think the demand is currently there for as many professional teams as it would take to do this all on their own all across the country, but USSF can do out of necessity some of what the NFL and NBA do out of laziness.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:39
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bewbies posted:point being, there's no earthly reason why pro clubs here couldn't use the same approach as european clubs do. they might even end up making money on the deal...sell a quality player to a european club and fund your youth system for a decade! The fact that MLS is a Ponzi/Pyramid scheme doesn't really incentivize the clubs to really push youth talent because they then have to share the profits with everyone else. Most if not all MLS clubs now have a youth structure but it's very much the part-time, go to high school/college, play with us on the weekends approach that doesn't work on the international stage and doesn't develop players technically. The biggest failure of US soccer is that they don't develop players who are technically gifted. Obviously there are the rare exceptions, we can go back to players like Claudio Reyna or John Harkes, and through to Dempsey or Donovan(and even that's a stretch since he spent a couple years in a European youth setup) but don't think for a second that US Soccer had anything to do with the type of player Christian Pulisic has the potential to be.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:41
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First, None of the US or MLS academies right now are any good. As far as I am concerned they are again a front or an illusion to make us seem like we're trying to be competitive globally. We aren't. Second, making this about rich or spoiled people is pretty stupid. The same can be said for other sports like hockey or golf or tennis or whatever but we produce good players in those sports. The issue isn't rich or poor, spoiled or not but serious about being competitive or not. Not just competitive for winning stupid high school or college trophies but to become a professional player. It doesn't feel to me that players are trying to be the best they can to one day be scouted professionally in lower age group soccer. It absolutely feels that way in lower age group baseball, football, hockey and basketball. It somewhat feels like that only on the "under-xx USMNT" squads but barely but by that point kids are already 16-21 years old and just getting nods professionally or internationally (i.e. way later than other countries)
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Oct 11, 2017 16:47
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[quote="“Dallan Invictus”" post="“477274187”"] I agree with this but bewbies is right that “just go to Europe” cannot be a large-scale answer. Honestly it is fixable though (at least in high school - the NCAA is a huge obstacle but on the other hand they barely care about soccer so maybe they can be pushed to behave or at least nudged out of the picture). There’s nothing inherent to high schools that means they can train decent football or basketball players but not soccer players, it’s about the coaches that are available to one sport vs. the other. Part of that is about the relative status of the sports in America but there are still levers here for the federation. Subsidise good coaching training, make it more accessible and cheaper. [/quote] It's a weird situation in US soccer where professional coaching is almost uniformly a disaster and low quality and at the college ranks there is the illusion of decent coaching because 7 schools get all the good players and win by virtue of beating scrubs. It's a serious problem that we're turning to ex-mls players as coaches when they are not competent, since we can't attract good coaches in our major league. At he higher levels, that is college and MLS, coaching is a disaster and training isn't going to help the likes of Sasha at UMD or Olsen/Yallop/etc
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Oct 11, 2017 16:53
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Shrapnig posted:The fact that MLS is a Ponzi/Pyramid scheme doesn't really incentivize the clubs to really push youth talent because they then have to share the profits with everyone else well yes, this is sort of the heart of the problem. that and the NCAA taking over player development during a player's most important developmental years. I still think that even with the MLS being what it is there isn't any reason an academy approach couldn't work here. Maybe it takes the form of regional academies run by the MLS that aren't necessarily affiliated with teams, but still get the most talented players out of their local "select travel elite" squads/high school teams and into a serious professional training environment. that'd at least fit with the MLS's vision of weird sports communism. XyrlocShammypants posted:The issue isn't rich or poor, spoiled or not but serious about being competitive or not. I have no idea why you'd think that talented young soccer players in the US aren't serious about the sport. the problem isn't their desire to be good, the problem is that there isn't anywhere they can go on this continent to become good.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:55
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[quote="“bewbies”" post="“477274670”"] I have no idea why you’d think that talented young soccer players in the US aren’t serious about the sport. the problem isn’t their desire to be good, the problem is that there isn’t anywhere they can go on this continent to become good. [/quote] Interacting with top soccer players at a top ranked soccer school, listening to players who came from lower levels of play in other countries in interviews or TV segments like those on GolTV or Bein . Again you're right they have no where to go but there are so many more problems. A lot of people think making chump change in MLS isn't worth it when even a normal job pays more or offers more security or grad school is a better option. How many players have retired or skipped the draft to go to school or passed on the draft for medical school or to go to another sport something like that? It's not simply there is no where to go it's just that there are better places to go then there for their life. When I look at our under-XX squads it doesn't look or feel like the youth squads of other leagues. It just doesn't. It doesn't feel competitive to be great and play for high end teams but simply to achieve goals within those levels of play (ie the major goal is to win the NCAA championship rather than to become a pro player). It looks and feels like 2 or so guys who stand out a bit barely and the rest are straight up anonymous. It's really just a feeling like how I feel DC United isn't serious about rebuilding but just wants to flip the team for profit after building the stadium at a buzzard point. Shammypants fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 17:10
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XyrlocShammypants posted:Second, making this about rich or spoiled people is pretty stupid. The same can be said for other sports like hockey or golf or tennis or whatever but we produce good players in those sports. The issue isn't rich or poor, spoiled or not but serious about being competitive or not. Not just competitive for winning stupid high school or college trophies but to become a professional player. It doesn't feel to me that players are trying to be the best they can to one day be scouted professionally in lower age group soccer. It absolutely feels that way in lower age group baseball, football, hockey and basketball. It somewhat feels like that only on the "under-xx USMNT" squads but barely but by that point kids are already 16-21 years old and just getting nods professionally or internationally (i.e. way later than other countries) And they're not trying to be the best they can be because a system exists which is set up to make them feel like they're already plenty good enough when they aren't. American tennis, especially on the men's side, suffers from the same bullshit where people would rather find someone shameless enough to tell them their kid is great in exchange for checks than actually put their kid through the grinder to be great. American sports are designed to lead kids to believe that if you win whatever given thing you are participating in, then you are good enough. Men's juniors in tennis have had plenty of successful Americans who never go anywhere because they get conditioned to believe that simply winning those tournaments is good enough. The focus is entirely on winning and winning young leads to a lack of development here because you end up surrounded by people that tell you you're great because you've won rather than continuing to strengthen whatever weaknesses you display. And a large part of that is parents desperate to say "my kid is already winning all of this poo poo. he is so great already" instead of "he won this juniors tournament but he still needs to focus on his serve" or whatever. It's much harder to get away with that mindset in sports where the United States already have a track record of developmental successes because they're constantly competing against kids who ARE elite in their sports.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:03
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