Yes, a lot of the NBA or NFL or MLB players MIGHT become soccer pros if they had concentrated on soccer, still doesn't mean the team itself would be any better or win any World Cups. You can't just project that as fact, it's only a possibility.
OT: The USWNT equal pay thing
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
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I never quite understood this idea just based on the size of many of the players in these leagues. The talent is often based on size, speed, and strength and the positions are so specialized in the NFL and I just can't see many 6'6"+ guys excelling on the soccer field. You're right, there might be some guys who would be great soccer players, but I don't think it's as simple as what many make it out to be.
1) It’s not a “divine right”. The point was that the US gets a miserable return on the investment.
2) Are you sure the former members of the Indian team feel that way or do you just like making l up garbage? Lalas and Twellman are extremely vocal for good reason. They have the information, experience and exposure. They’ve been there.
3) Add the population of the Netherlands to Curaçao and you have 17m people. I can find 17m people in 3 counties in the US...
The US can be good at everything. Maybe not the best, but we can be highly competitive. The failure of the US to make the World Cup after generations of youth growing up w/ soccer and billions invested in soccer infrastructure both public and private is an embarrassment. If you can’t see what failure is I can’t help you.
I remember after I was out of high school, playing summer and pick up basketball, with guys that played D2 and D1 football and a couple that actually played in the NFL, and being able to defeat some of them and compete with all of them, they where far superior athletes compared to me, it didn't automatically make them better in every single sport. But yeah, sure, I could see LeBron maybe be a good goal keeper with his length and athleticism, but who's to say he'd be good as a field player having to use his feet?
I am sure you could find an excellent goalie or two from the huge allotment of potential athletes with some height.
Then choose from the thousands of defensive backs, wide receivers, running backs, outfielders, short stops, point guards, and shooting guards that play D1 or pro sports to play in the pitch.
Exactly, the US can be good, CAN being the real issue, no guarantee though. But who is making this investment you speak of? Soccer clubs? Parents? Pro teams? USA Soccer? The infrastructure is just disjointed, for profit individual clubs, many with parent coaches, lots of schools and I know not all the coaches there are trained either. It's not like there is a big coordinated investment behind youth development, is there?
The USA already has developed multiple world class, EPL/Europe level GKs without the basketball or football players, Tim Howard, Brad Guzan these gays have played a decade in Europe, the new kid Zach Steffen is going to England to play too, USA is great at developing GKs already.
As for the field players, there's no guarantee being good at fielding grounders or catching footballs and shooting jump shots will translate into soccer skills-even then, maybe they won't beat out the kids that don't play football, baseball or basketball- that's not a given, I don't get how you assume that it's a given, it's really a maybe. And even if they are good enough to be soccer pros, still doesn't mean the team will be better than Spain or England or Germany or Brazil or whoever?
You're right. I'm not disappointed they're playing those sports, though, because I find them a lot more fun to watch.
Yes, actually there is. Operating in a coordinated trickledown its called the USSF, MLS, USL, NCAA, AAU Soccer, American High Schools and youth programs. The MLS and USL teams all have highly experienced and organized feeder system programs that develop talent. It’s not like soccer is some also ran sport in America.
You can try to make excuses all you want but the facts don’t support you. Go to an FC Cincinnati game, a Seattle Sounders game, Portland Timber or even a Crew game sometime and tell me soccer doesn’t matter in the US! We have a serious fan base and it just gets bigger every year. There’s no shortage of resources, talent or fan support for US soccer. The USMNT is a poorly run club right now that needs to be addressed.
Does it really matter, they have a structure and a plan and so far it's not working to make them a top tier championship contender, so what? And really it's not that bad, SMF did make a good analogy, they are like Pitt, ranked 30th out of 211 teams, worldwide. That's pretty respectable considering that probably 70% of Americans claim to hate the sport. We had like a 15 year period without even a real pro league! They've built it up pretty well, considering they where a team that missed TEN STRAIGHT WORLD CUPS! 1952-1992. At least they are respectable for the most part and sometimes pull off a decent upset.
If you put me in charge of US Soccer, I'd go to a high level AAU basketball tournament at the youngest age.....like 8 year olds. Pick out the 20 most athletic kids, offer to move them to IMG Academy where US Soccer has their Youth Development program, give them free schooling and coaching until age 18 and guarantee them a college scholarship even if they end up sucking. However, the plan would be to forego college and sell their rights to a Euro team.
If you want the US to be good at soccer, you need to think WAY outside the box like SMF does. Having suburban kids pay money to play and hoping some US Army guys impregnate German women is not the right plan for long-term success.
BTW, the odds of the offspring of an African American US Army member and a German woman making it to the USMNT is astronomically high. I'd love to see a study done on that.
Send that offspring to a euro academy. It’s the only way. Until UEFA allows it, we won’t be producing elite players.
Because they're men and men's soccer dominates internationally. So, the men bring in the bare minimum of what you'd expect a men's team to bring in from a men's soccer TV deal and men's soccer prize money. The pool of international money allocated to men's soccer is larger than the women's pool, so the men's small slice of the big pie is still larger than the women's larger slice of the smaller pie.
As I said, though, proportionally you're looking at the US Women bringing in far more money to US Soccer than women in other countries bring in relative to their counterparts. This is both because A) the women in the US are marketable and actually matter and B) the men's team is more or less worthless. This isn't Brazil or Spain where the women are respectable but the men are appointment viewing who are international draws.
US Soccer is in a significantly better position than it otherwise would be because of the women. It's indisputable.
But there are a bunch of data out there showing that is not true. The womens team makes more
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/us-womens-soccer-games-now-generate-more-revenue-than-mens.html
I was under the impression that this was for things like ticket sales -- not the TV money or prize money that gets paid out separately to the men's teams.
That could be wrong, but I thought the women sold more tickets and merchandise and branding type stuff while the men made up their difference with their cut of TV/tournament money.
Regardless -- I largely agree with your point. The women matter nationally and internationally. The men don't. The numbers bear that out. If you take Christian Pulisic off the men's team, their ticket sales will be unchanged -- the people watching the US men's team are either diehards or people who are stoked to watch their country's C team play us in a friendly. They'll be there regardless.
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This line of thinking is why we got Julian Green and is also why any study done would probably be heavily biased (thanks, Jurgen).
Yea, that's ticket sales. The women brought in a mere $900,000 more than the men over a 3 year period. When you factor in the global revenue the men bring in (for being the Boston College of the ACC so to speak), it's not even close. The men's team generates far more revenue.
The men’s team doesn’t really “generate” the revenue, but yeah the men’s game pays out a lot more.
They could cut the men’s pay to what the women get and there’d be no change in how much money gets brought in by the men and largely no change to their results.
Wow. I watched the first ten minutes or however long it was before the lightening delay. They looked great and actually were entertaining. They should have had 4 goals during that time but the Jamaican goalkeeper was unreal. I fell asleep long before the game resumed. What time did it end? I missed two Pulisic goals which is disappointing.
Sunday should be a really fun day for both avid and casual soccer fans in the US. Women in the World Cup final in the AM, Men in the Gold Cup final in the PM.
The delay lasted over an hour and a half. They restarted at 11:20 our time (10:20 local time). The funny thing is that when they delayed the game in the first place there was no lightning visible around the stadium, but it was "in the area" and was coming that way. Literally 30 seconds before they restarted the game there was a huge lightning strike visible right outside the stadium. John Stone and Stu Holden were both worried they were going to have to delay the game again. Then shortly after they restarted they saw another strike right outside the stadium. And it happened again a third time later in the second half. So they stopped the game because lightning might be coming, but when lightning was actually there they keep playing.
As to the game, you saw the way the US dominated before the delay. After the delay it was mostly a 50/50 affair. The US would have a good stretch of play, then Jamaica would have a good stretch, then the US, and so on. Neither team could string together a long stretch of dominant play like the US did at the beginning. Overall the US had the better of play and I think the final score was a pretty fair reflection of the game play.
LOL, so you think looking for needles in haystacks is the answer? 8 year olds at basketball games? You seem to assume that whoever is playing basketball is a better athlete and there's no basis for that. You know in a country of 300 million people, the 20 8 year olds you select might go do that and in the end still get beaten out by suburban white boys from the local pay travel team. you might end up paying college tuition for 20 kids who might not even be good enough to play college soccer. And you also assume that parents are going to give their kids away and not raise them and send them away to IMG? And I get the feeling you assume also that all 20 should be black?
