You probably have a point with the rest, but this particular fact ignores a whole lot of intervening history. That “new kid on the block” feeling may be more of a perception of the American public that is just now starting to pay attention is probably a good point and we, as a soccer nation, should start looking at how to break into that top tier. The question is, do we have what it takes to keep our upward momentum or have we plateaued?
Not a single thing that you’ve said contradicts polar bear’s observation. He never once said that they were “closer to winning their game,” for one thing. He said that “the Swiss team did far better against superior opposition than the US did,” and anyone who watched both games would understand that this is a simple statement of fact.
Yes, the United States had an amazing opportunity to win the game right at the death, but the fact is that the Swiss stuck with the Argentinians for most of the game, had quite a few chances, and always looked like they were in the hunt. The Americans didn’t.
The Americans were clearly and comprehensively outplayed for the vast majority of their game, and had it not been for a superhuman performance by Tim Howard they could have been down by four or five goals by the end of 90 minutes. The Belgians had 38 shots, 27 of which were on target. Since 1966, only two teams have recorded more shots in a game than Belgium did yesterday. They had 19 corners. The US cleared the ball from Belgian attacks 70 times, more than any other World Cup game in the last 50 years. Howard’s 16 saves were the most recorded in a World Cup game since they started counting goalkeeper saves in 1966.
The Americans have plenty to be proud of. They played well for the whole tournament, they beat Ghana, they should have beaten Portugal, and they acquitted themselves well against one of the best teams in the world in their loss to Germany. Yesterday, they came up against a better team, and one that played exceptionally well. They were far from disgraced, even if they were outplayed by superior opposition.
I think the USA has enough people playing soccer and enough people playing soccer seriously to produce top-level international players, the biggest problem it faces is that the USA is a big country and the best players need to playing with and an aspiring soccer star might find it difficult to get that regular level of team mate/opposition to play with they need to fully develop.
That said (with the danger of descending into cliche) the USA has produced some very good goalkeepers. For my money, whilst Tim Howard’s club performances have only placed him as a good Premiership goalkeeper, the level of performance he has shown over the past 6 years when pulling on a US jersey (particularly in the 2009 Confederations Cup and this World Cup) make him the best international goalkeeper in that time period. Also Landon Donovan had the talent to be an absolute bona fide “World Class” player, but was thwarted by bad luck in terms of the German clubs he joined and his own lack of ambition to player for a top club (in World terms). Clint Dempsey I feel might have made it at a top (internationally speaking) club if he’d come over to the right club in a top league much earlier who could’ve ironed out his positional flaws.
At the moment though I don’t see that many exciting prospects on the USA’s horizon. Julian Green clearly has the possibility of making it at arguably the biggest club in the World, but as a player whose come from completely outside of the US soccer system doesn’t represent a wider trend.
I agree with what a German friend of mine mentioned… At the point you get out of the group stage, all the teams are very very good, dismissing them is not fair. And I think that these games, besides Colombia vs Uruguay, show that they were indeed very close, and a different day or slightly different luck could have changed most if not all the outcomes. Unlike some of the games in the group stage, they were not “gimme” games. Compare how many goals were made in many of the group stages vs here. And many of the goals were in extra time, they would’ve ended as ties if they were in the group stage.
Keith Olbermann on how to make soccer work in the United States. Nothing here is objectionable to non-Americans, I would think.
Soccer doesn’t get much exposure in the US.
No. It just means I’ve been watching Dempsey play long before the Cup started.
What does this have to do with anything? Players who dive are immune to injury? They are some sort of Supermen?
His career started long before June 2014. Trust me, Clint goes to ground quite easily.
I hate theatrics in sports and would have noticed it. So if he’s a diver then someone should throw some chocolate at him then as positive reinforcement. He done good. Both teams did a good job of reeling it in.
I agree with this, but I would say it’s because he is tall (6’1") but very skinny (170 lbs if that). I wouldn’t classify him as a diver.
I was impressed that he knew about “who ate all the pies”.
I don’t see what the big deal is that led to Olbermann’s typically unnecessary and short-sighted pontificating.
Soccer is unequivocally gaining in popularity in the USA. No, that doesn’t mean soccer will overtake the popularity of basketball, gridiron, baseball, or ice hockey. And that’s perfectly ok, it doesn’t need to. I for one, have little desire for that to happen. There’s plenty of room for a variety of sports and sports fans. I can’t stand watching golf or tennis, but, heck, there it is.
Soccer is popular enough in the USA that every World Cup match is broadcast live on a basic cable channel, gets decent domestic media coverage even for games that don’t include the home team, and it’s easy to find coverage of MLS, the UEFA Champion’s League, Premier League matches, and other top European leagues. Spanish-language cable covers the Mexican leagues and CONCACAF Champion’s League (which is covered domestically when MLS teams are in it as well). Really, there’s not much for a soccer fan to complain about.
Now, there’s the concern that the development of youth leagues lags behind the best in the world, and would be much better if soccer were more popular. I don’t think this is necessarily so. The MLS has done a great job of promoting youth development in the various team academies. One of USA’s standout young, substitute players this World Cup was DeAndre Yedlin, for example, who came up through the Seattle Sounders FC academy and is starting right back for the Sounders. I think our development of young talent is on a reasonable pace with or without an significant increase of soccer’s mainstream popularity. It’s sufficiently popular for this to happen already!
As we’re seeing more American players in the European clubs, many of them eventually return home to play in the MLS and work with the youth academies. And needless to say, their presence in the European clubs is inspiring in itself. The future for young talent is soccer in the USA is frankly excellent.
Maybe the USA will never be a World Cup power, at least in my lifetime, but you know what? I’m ok with that to, as much as I would enjoy it. The USA doesn’t have to be the best at everything! We aren’t already the best in the world in many things anyway, regardless of how many people are deluded in thinking we are.
But I can all but guarantee that our youth development has already improved sufficiently that the USA’s men’s soccer team will not be a patsy to be brushed away by the traditional powers in soccer again. And I don’t see that changing. The quality of soccer in America has been steadily improving, in youth leagues as well as the MLS. A World Cup victory for the USA in my lifetime is not out of the question.
Of course I hasten to mention that the USA is already the world’s great power in women’s soccer. Women’s soccer is fun to watch, shame that so many soccer fans dismiss it.
Dempsey is about the same size as Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, and Thomas Mueller. Nobody gives that excuse for any of those guys, they just call them divers.
I would disagree. The US has gone from, “not having come close to qualification in forever” to being consistently in the second round. More and more American soccer players have noted that they can make more money playing in the MLS then going overseas and more foreign players have noted that as well. Its only going to increase. Money will win out eventually, it always does.
Plus, there is the whole “richest country on the planet” issue. I don’t think Europeans quite appreciate how much money is placed into sports in the US, except for Real Madrid, Man U and perhaps Barcelona, I cannot think of any European football club which even approaches the supporting infrastructure of a N American sports franchise, hell even College athletics have some programmes which probably far exceed the the resources of most top level clubs in Europe.
You put all that together, I can easily see the US becoming the worlds dominant soccer (as we now must call it) power in a few decades, if these trends continue.
Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Barcelona were the Nos. 1-3, in that order, among the most valuable athletic teams in the world from any sport, according to Forbes (in 2013, haven’t seen 2014 numbers, yet.)
Nos 4-9 are Yankees, Cowboys, Patriots, Dodgers, Redskins, Giants, in that order.
Arsenal come in at no. 10. Also in the top 50 (which are mostly American football teams) are Bayern Munich (12th), AC Milan (37th), and Chelsea (40th).
By the way, No. 9 are the New York Giants. To be clear.
The New York Football Giants, for those oldsters among us. 
I think this is being overly defensive. And that’s one thing I’d like soccer fans to drop. Sometimes people on the outside have decent ideas. I think Olbermann’s insistence that we stop being “England-lite” is a good one. It makes people think of the sport as somewhat “outside” when people insist the field is really a ‘pitch’ and they aren’t uniforms, they are ‘kits’. I mean, it doesn’t particularly matter and pushing it appears to make soccer fandom seem like some sort of exclusive club.
He makes it sound like this is some sort of problem impeding soccer popularity. It isn’t. It’s a feature. Every sport has its own lingo. Nothing wrong with soccer having some as well. I don’t agree with looking down on someone who doesn’t use the lingo, but it’s not something I’ve noticed at all. Soccer fans are far more accommodating of newbies coming into the sport than Gridiron fans, in my experience, who will mock you for an idiot if you don’t understand some obscure corner of the rule book. (Incidentally, I understand American Football quite well and have long been an avid fan of college football (mainly, Pac-12). Something about having been in marching band for eight years in high school and college.)
I also think it’s completely ridiculous to complain that the lingo is bad because it doesn’t come from America (which isn’t entirely true). So what if the usage is characteristically British? That’s not intrinsically bad in any sense!
Anyway, Olbermann is a pompous blowhard as he always has been, spouting off on stuff he doesn’t really understand, and I say this as someone who mostly votes Democratic. Olbermann doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because he doesn’t really understand soccer fans.
I hardly think it’s words like “boot,” “pitch,” “touchline,” and “kit” that are keeping Americans from falling over themselves to become fans. That’s just dumb.
Indeed! But since the list is from 2013, I assumed no one would think it applied to the oldster Giants.
And I think if they had ‘played to their strengths’ of ‘organization and determination’ :rolleyes: what the hell does that even mean? - they would have been skinned alive with zero chance at making a game of it. None, zero, zilch. We already saw what happens when they ‘score early and defend’ - the game against Ghana was awful; the US didn’t play well at all and quite frankly were lucky to win. Watching that game, was anyone surprised when Ghana got the equalizer?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Klinsman knows a bit more about his team and the best game plan than you do. I suspect he knew quite well that by attacking they’d open themselves up to Belgium’s counter-attack, but I also think he decided that it was the best chance they had of winning, and that they could rely on their defense and Howard to do their jobs - and they did.
The Belgium match was the only match of the tournament where the US actually had *more *possession than their opponents (41% vs Ghana, 48% vs Portugal, a paltry 35% vs Germany, 53% vs Belgium).
Think about what the shots on goal numbers would have looked like if the US had played like they played against Ghana.
I thought it was a wildy entertaining match, all the more so because it was played in such good spirit. No diving, no flopping. Both teams played hard and fair, and it was a joy to watch. Sure, Belgium was clearly a notch ahead, but the US went out and played their game and played to win.
I read or heard somewhere that the ‘better team’ wins less often in football…er, soccer, than any other major sport. All the US could ask for is to put itself in position to win the game…and they did just that. All they could ask for is one miracle opportunity to win the game - and they had just that. The quarterfinals was there, right there, on Wondolowski’s right foot…and he missed. If this was one of the major US sports, he’s Webber, he’s Norwood, he’s ‘effin’ Buckner, he’s in Witness Protection.
And we’ll always wonder how the game would have turned out if Altidore had been fully available.
Likely because soccer has more ties than any other sport. If you throw ties away from all the sports, and compare only wins and losses, I’d bet that soccer would match the other sports much more closely.