“Trust me, the last thing most of the world wants is for the US to become a consistent world power in soccer.”
ROFL
It’s the world game. Nobody who plays it believes that the FIFA World Cup shouldn’t be won by the best national team at that time. Be that Brazil, Holland, Ivory Coast or North Korea.
The interests rooting for soccer to remain a minority sport in the USA are predominantly American.
People want Americans to care about and spend money on soccer, but to remain no better than a middle power.
You mean this and this?
Well I must have missed the chaos caused by all those other countries winning the international competitions at your ‘best’ sports. Is the fear that the US might never win the WBC keeping a lot of you up in the middle of the night?
Let’s just entertain the hypothetical here. Say US wins the World Cup. Do you think the Brazilians will go, “Oh no! We’ll obviously never win this thing again!”? Do you think it’d make a huge difference next time to the winning chances of a country with a less prestigious World Cup history, say Switzerland?
So if the US doesn’t do as well as expected this time, well that’s just because everyone’s conspiring against us to keep us down! They are afraid of what might happen; you know, if we actually cared and start putting some effort in. And of course then they’d have no chance!
:dubious: Insufferable indeed.
btw, American football is not a real international sport. The clue is in the name.
(I kid. here.)
First things first, I’m not American.
Secondly, the WBC isn’t well respected in the baseball community.
Thirdly, losing the FIBA world championships has sent American basketball into a minor panic in the past.
Yes, the US is viewed differently internationally than Switzerland, certainly in athletics. I would think that’s obvious.
Turkey only played one good team the entire tournament (Brazil) and lost to them twice. The refs blatantly cheated for Korea in that tournament. Go spend 15 minutes on youtube watching them against Italy.
Yes, they did very well to win their group, and then beat Spain on penalties.
So, I disagree that either Turkey or Korea looked like contenders. Hell, Germany didn’t even look like contenders and they were in the final.
I’m really not sure this is true:D I personally don’t even see them in the second round (go Slovenia!!), but I think it’s almost unthinkable they’ll win the whole thing. There is probably a group of 7-8 countries that have a reasonable chance of beating each other when they play well (Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, England, France, Italy, do I dare say the Netherlands) and all of these would be expected to beat the US* - I would even say there is an intermediate bracket with Portugal, Ivory Coast and some others - when they play in the knock out stages. Off course it’s always possible there is an upset, but 3 or 4 times in a row would be a really big (and unlikely) surprise.
Yes, they can. Are they going to? No.
But if they did play out of their skins and pull off what could at least be called “a bit of a shock!”, although I’d be sick as a parrot for my own team, I’d be over the moon and 110% happy for your team and its fans to finally win a competition in a popular sport that other countries take part in.
France is a great footballing nation. USA, …, not so much, for the time being, anyway. I’m pretty certain I’ll see the USA win the competition before I reach 50 (i.e. in the next 25 years).
And by people, presumably you mean “nobody”, and by care, presumably mean “gives a shit”?
I’d be very surprised if the US made it into the quarter finals and shocked to see it go past it. Of course it is possible for the US to win, but extremely unlikely this year. I agree with the doper that said 2026 as the earliest possible date, 2022 maybe. Right now the US has a solid, competent team, but that’s not good enough when competing at this level. It takes time to develop a good enough pool of players but, as long as the sport keeps growing, I think the US will get there eventually.
All that being said, I’ll be rooting for the US as long as they don’t play against Brasil (which I don’t think can happen before the final match).
Actually, any two teams from different groups can potentially meet by the semi-final stage. Admittedly, for USA vs. Brazil it would require either the US to win their group or Brazil not to. Not to mention the small matter of getting to the semi-final at all.
Greece were given odds of 150-1 before Euro 2004, yet they still managed to win. It wouldn’t be a huge shock for one of the less established teams to make it to the final. That’s the nature of football and the knockout format. Defend solidy, and you always have a chance of nicking a goal somewhere and winning outright, or at least drawing and making it to the lottery of penalties. In football, a relatively large number of results go against the form-book, because it’s a low-scoring game, and a single moment of skill or fortune can decide a match.
Well, ok, is there an international baseball competition that is more respected? You can’t use baseball as an example of an international sport that the US has won in if you don’t even have a competition to participate in!
Yes, that is obvious. It also has nothing to do with the point I was making, which is that from the POV of e.g. Switzerland, it makes little difference whether US is a world power in football or not. There are already a dozen countries with better teams than theirs, so what’s one more?
But irrelevant to the US baseball community, which considers itself the best in the world regardless.
Because if the US decided to put its resources into becoming a world soccer power, they could. Switzerland is probably at its maximum effort towards becoming a soccer power.
Well yeah, but the question is, why would anybody give a shit if the USA became a world “soccer power”, or not? Nobody cares. We just don’t think about America that much, and it’s not as if there’s already a shortage of countries that can feasibly win a world cup any year, anyway.
No, they can’t. They shouldn’t even be in South Africa to begin with.l
Yep, or you could lose to North Korea in the final and the symbolism could send shock waves around the world. 
Very, very unlikely. But it’d be cool if we did!
Anyone know if Obama’s going to go there for any part of the festivities?
One advantage the US has is that it’s pretty straightforward for them to qualify for the WC. That builds up squad experience and confidence when guys are going to their second or third competition.
There’s really no call for a comment like that Švejk. They earned their right, just like 30 other teams (29, really - Ireland should be there).
If history is a guide, it will take a long time for the US to win a world cup. While underdogs have often made it to the semis, the number of teams which have reached the finals is remarkably small. In the last 40 years it’s been just six countries: Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Germany, France and the Netherlands, i.e. consistently strong football teams. What this suggests is that the big football nations have a serious advantage in the final couple of rounds of the world cup. Possibly this is because the pressure is so huge, teams with a lesser pedigree are over-awed by the occasion especially when they come up against strong teams.
The US has a decent team, about as good as some the teams which have made it to the semis but going all the way is probably beyond their grasp until they can raise their game a few notches which will take at least a decade or two. Even if they reach that level they may have to wait a long time. After all England has never reached a final since 66 and the Netherlands has never won.