I’m not a soccer fan. Never have been. I watch my son’s soccer games, and I watch some of the World Cup every four years, but it’s not my cup of tea.
That said, I didn’t start this thread to rip on the game. I’ve done that plenty of times already. But one thing I predicted BEFORE the Wold CUp (as I do before just about every World Cup) is that when the U.S. team inevitably lost to a much better team from Europe or South America, NOBODY would be calling in to Colin Cowherd, Mike and Mike or Jay Mohr the next day snarling “Klinsman is an idiot” or “Those damn American players were useless” or “This team hasn’t gotten any better in 20 years!!!”
And I was right. Nobody HAS been ripping the U.S. team. On the contrary, the few fans I’ve heard on sports talk radio who showed any interest in the World Cup at all were all sweetness and light, saying how proud they were of the team for going so far and playing so well.
AGAIN, I’m not a soccer fan. If the opinions I express now are way off the mark, by all means correct me. But here’s how it seems to me:
The United States team went 1-2-1. That is NOT something to be particularly proud of. Tim Howard played brilliantly, but the rest of the team didn’t impress me at all. I believe the Germans COUILD have beaten us 4-0 if they’d been really trying. And, minus an incredible effort by Tim Howard, the Belgians SHOULD have.
IF this were the first time the U.S. team had made the final 16, I suppose that would be cause for some small national pride. But it’s NOT the first time! We’ve been here before. It looks to me as if the team has, at best, plateaued. Overall, it may NOT be any better than earlier squads.
So, I ask serious soccer fans:
Should American fans be proud of the U.S. team, or should they be way past the point of cheering for moral victories?
Should American media commentators be cheerleadiers for the U.S. team, or should they be more skeptical?
Do you think the U.S. soccer team really IS notably better than in years past?
Will fans/media in the U.S. ever start getting as angry at underachieviing American soccer stars as they do, say, when a LeBron James or a Peyton Manning disappears in a big championship game?
I agree with pretty much all of your opening paragraph! I was saying all day yesterday (and even after we lost) it makes me mad that one is going to stand up and say “This is bullshit, we should have done better and we have no excuse to lose all the time” So to your quesitons:
Yes and no. We should be proud that we never gave up in any of our games, and that we showed a lot of heart. We should be proud that we made it as far as we did because, let’s face it, a lot of teams didn’t.
MUCH more skeptical. Why didn’t we win? Because we did the same thing we do literally every 4 years: Have ZERO possession, can’t make a pass to save our lives, play shitty and then kinda-sorta pull it out of our asses at the end of the match. Clearly we have a good team, clearly we did last tourney, why can’t we ever break through? Klinsy needs some blame. What happened to this offensive/attacking style he was supposed to bring? Why did it result in 80 min of desperate defense, 8 minutes of passable offense, and then 2 minutes of dominating attacks?
I honestly can’t answer this because I’m too young to remember the Alexi lalas, Casey Keller years.
You can be proud of them or not as suits your taste, but the simple fact is that United States soccer players are not, individually or as a group, anywhere near as talented as the players on a large handful of other nations’ teams, so the US isn’t gonna beat those teams very often. A win against Ghana, a draw with Portugal and losses to Germany and Belgium are not remotely underachieving results, because those teams are all better teams than the US, except for Ghana, who is about as good as the US.
That’s really all there is to it; the response was mostly positive because a thrilling but ultimately decisive loss in the knockout round to an incredibly talented Belgian side was a positive result for a team of this caliber. If you’re a fan of Holy Cross basketball, you don’t call your team an underachiever if it gets into the NCAA tournament and then loses to a #1 seed, because they aren’t underachieving.
Neither did the US. We’re not a great soccer nation. We’re not LeBron James. We’re JR Smith. It takes a frankly fairly arrogant attitude toward the whole competition to have any pretension toward a better result in the World Cup being a fair or expected one.
In a nutshell, I completely agree. This has always been the US style of play. The recent teams have tightened up their consistency a bit so we are at least competing as a below-average team that needs to be handled seriously, but we still only beat high-level teams by relying on exploiting broken plays and emergent opportunities. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the US win a game with deliberate structured play.
This year’s world cup at least shows us as consistently competitive and deserve to qualify for cup play, but in no way top-tier. Going forward, making the 16 round should be an expectation of the US team, but going further will be a fluke unless they stop relying on “scramble ball” as a strategy.
What Chitwood said. Serious fans know that we didn’t underachieve at all, at least as a team. As a country we’ve been underachieving in this sport forever.
There’s nothing for a fan to get mad at. There are huge, deep developmental problems that need to be addressed and, to be truthful, may never be solved. Serious fans understand this.
You summarized most of my feelings about the USMNT quite nicely with this post.
This is basically the first time I can remember the US (mostly) playing all the way to the final whistle and I love seeing that kind of heart. Unfortunately, we are still awful in the opening 15-20. For as long as I have been watching the US play internationally (past 20 years or so) we struggle in the opening minutes. It takes us a while to settle down and play our game but even that has improved a bit.
Personally, I have no interest in listening to 4-year fan commentators complain about the US when they really don’t watch enough games to see all of our moving parts being put into place. The past WCQ was the first time that I can remember actually hearing limited analysis on our style and play so maybe that will change soon. Criticism from the hardcore commentators, however, would be welcome. There are definitely some issues that still need to be addressed but I trust Klinsmann to work on those.
US Soccer has gotten notably better but like Sir T-Cups said, we have a big issue with maintaining possession against even comparable teams. Going forward I would like to see the US generate more offensive opportunities instead of just hoping for an opponent mistake and using that chance to counter.
We still have a way(s) to go before US fans/media are justified in getting angry at our performance. Don’t get me wrong, that Belgium game broke my heart but we were lucky to even take it that game into extra time.
I generally agree we didn’t really underachieve, top 16 but not top 8 isn’t bad for us, but I was frustrated with how we did it. So much bad play. So many bad passes. So little possession. It was ugly. And I certainly do think Klinsmann should be roundly criticized for it. Couple of points for consideration:
Jozy going out seemed to really kill our attack and possession game. Not a lot you can do about the injury, but we seemed to have no backup plan.
Our midfield was mostly just bad, with Michael Bradley, the most important piece, being the worst. Passing was often abysmal and once we resorted to a defend and counter style, Bradley is just not suited for that at all. Donovan would have been a great option here, but he was left at home for still unknown reasons considering the lesser talented players that were chosen.
In general, the guys often just seemed worn out, like their body wasn’t doing what they wanted it to. Fitness was supposed to be a point of strength for this team coming in and instead it just looked like our guys were overworked. Overtrained? Who knows.
A number of new guys were brought in at the last minute or at least given elevated status over guys who had been playing together the last few years while others were moved to new positions. National team players only get to play together a few times a year as it is and sticking in a bunch of new guys and expecting it to just work was pretty naive. This likely contributed to a lot of the chemistry issues around passing and attacking.
Klinsmann decided to cut the roster before seeing the results of the warm-ups. We didn’t look that great in the warm-ups, either, and adjustments could have been made. Instead we were hamstrung.
So yeah, I think there’s a lot of criticism to be levied at Klinsmann for decisions that could have seen our team perform better, but the results we did get and his personal charm is probably going to keep him protected from any serious challenging of his authority. And realistically, there’s only so much progress we can make until we start playing more of the top level teams in competitive tournaments regularly. Hopefully the Copa America Centenario will help out in that regard.
I’d agree that Klinsmann did some good things, but there is plenty of critique him for. Especially considering when he came in he indicated that we wouldn’t be playing a bunkering style anymore. Of course that’s exactly what we did do.
This was a far more defensive team than the US team in the Gold Cup last year or in Qualifying. Now, granted, the competition wasn’t as good, but one doesn’t have to go from attacking and flowing soccer to super bunkering in one fell swoop. There aren’t just two options!
The US team played very nicely against Portugal. Portugal is a quality side - why wasn’t that our strategy against Germany or Belgium?
The lack of a Plan B when Altidore went down was just unacceptable. Altidore is not a world class striker and to pin your offensive game plan (people have said we bunkered due to Altidore going down) on him being around just seemed silly. Playing Michael Bradley in an attacking MF role, a decision seemingly made right before the WC (after Donovan was cut) when that isn’t his normal position also seemed silly.
However, saying that, the US team made it out of the “Group of Death” and fought well. So they did a good job and for the first time ever the US team made it to the Round of 16 two WC’s in a row. If that’s our new normal (advance past the Group Stage at least), that’s a good place to be.
US fans should be proud of the team. Few pundits had the US advancing out of the group stage. They finally beat Ghana, and they should have beaten Portugal. They then lost close games to arguably two of the best five teams in the world. I’d say that is reason for pride.
I think that comparing this year’s WC to past WCs needs a closer look.
In 2002, the US surprised Portugal by going up 3-0. They gamely hung on for the win 3-2. They then tied hosts South Korea, not a particularly great side. Needing only a result against a reeling Poland, they shit the bed, losing badly 3-1. Luckily, Portugal lost to South Korea, so the US advanced. They then met Mexico, a team they are very familiar with, and they won. They then lost a close match to eventual runner-up Germany.
In 2006, they sucked big time finishing bottom of their group. They lost badly to the Czech Republic, tied Italy in a red card fest, and got eliminated by Ghana. Italy is historically good, Czech Rep and Ghana, not so much.
In 2010, they squeaked out of group stage. They continued their bad habit of giving up goals in the first 15 minutes to England and Slovenia. They then bested Algeria with a goal in extra time to finish first in the group. The tie against England said as much about the underachieving England team as it did about the quality of the US. The struggles against Slovenia and Algeria, two teams that rarely scare top teams, said more about the moribund state of the US team. They end up against a Ghana team that they should be favored against, instead they give up a goal in the first 5 minutes. They gamely tie it, but give up an OT goal in the first 3 minutes. Both of those goals were on horrific defensive breakdowns.
So this year, they get ahead of Ghana early, and somehow win it. They gave up a bad early goal to Portugal, but got the lead before yakking it up late. They played Germany and Belgium tough. All of those sides are pretty good, which can’t be said of all of the previous WC teams that the US played.
See above. I think that last year’s Gold Cup was a showcase for US improvement. They fielded a mostly B team and won it all. Usually when a US B team goes out there, they can lose to almost anyone. It showed me that the US depth is getting quite good. In the past, if an Altidore quality starter went down, the drop off in quality would have been huge. This year, they rejiggerd things and still competed very well. They still lack the technical skill required to have consistent ball control, but I think that US development at the younger levels is finally figuring that out.
I don’t really care if US fans complain about the US side.
So I’m finally getting around to watching the Round of 16 game between Germany and Algeria and recalling how the US played against Germany, I am a bit disappointed. We are not a worse side than Algeria (definitely not a worse side), but they played far, far, far better against Germany than we did.
Given that, I’m skeptical of the idea that team underacheived – we finished right about where we were expected to, no better but no worse. We weren’t especially lucky (group draw, injuries), and we still held our place as a mid-rank power. Given that we were pretty much a non-entity just 15-20 years ago, I’m fine with that.
A few years ago, people were calling for my favorite college football team to fire their head coach. After all, he was 0-3 in bowl games, and they expected better.
Those people were idiots, because they were ignoring the fact that those were the program’s first three bowl games in its history, and that real sustained levels of success in college football – like in international sports – is something that takes time. It’s about facilities and funding and building the fanbase and getting a national profile and about recruiting successive generations of players, each a little bit better than the last. That coach had cleaned up a fairly toxic program, raised academic standards, built a new stadium and first-class player facilities, got them on national TV, etc. When the team reached the top ten last year, it was “suddenly” … but it had also been the outcome of a decade of steady progression, even though that progression was only sometimes reflected in the W-L.
Just looking at the W-L in a single season or tournament is missing the bigger and more important picture about the direction of the program. The TV ratings and the huge crowds watching together and the huge in-person support … those things count, too, as part of “building the program,” and the results on those counts was very good.
If they’ve still never gotten past the round of 16 after 2022, then I’ll get aggravated. I have a long-term bet that the US will win a world cup before 2040. I’m still okay with that.
I consider myself a highly serious person in most respects, as do most of my co-workers, so I guess I’ll do.
I wouldn’t go as far as “proud”. “Understanding” would be better, and probably “reasonably satisfied because it’s probably never going to get much better than this”.
I’d much prefer it that they take a more objective, nuanced take, but let’s face it, ESPN is the big dog and anything as loaded with baggage as the World Cup is going to have more than its share of jingoism. At least it’s nowhere near as bad as the Olympics.
No. Other than the times they completely melted down or didn’t make it all, I saw the exact same thing I saw every other time: Show flashes of brilliance, raise hopes, make way too may critical blunders, never catch a break when they need it (they hit the post something like 275 times in the Iran game), barely squeak out of the opening round, and then completely run out of gas and limp out. I remind you that they’ve been past the 2nd round ONCE, and that’s starting to look like a fluke.
I seriously doubt it will happen in my lifetime, and frankly, I’m fine with that. I find it outrageous that players who’ve accomplished as much as Peyton Manning and LeBron James can still get blasted so much. As far as I’m concerned, once he gets that first ring, the discussion is over. Forever. Hey, if could do it for Trent Dilfer… Anyway, convincing the American media or fandom that heaping scathing criticism on our soccer team is going to accomplish anything is going to be a really tough sell. I don’t like the lovefest they’ve gotten (too much pat-on-the-back good-effort-kiddo bordering on patronizing), but I’ll take excessive love over excessive hatred any day.
All that said, I don’t think we have anything to celebrate until we see at least another trip to the quarterfinals. Again, 2nd round is been-there-done-that territory, and a team doesn’t have to be all that good to get that far. You can bet that Mexico isn’t the least bit warm and fuzzy over the 6th straight exit in that round. And until our team can go further, no one has any right to expect American sports fans to give any more of damn. Right now the level of enthusiasm I’ve seen is just right for a squad forever mired in mediocrity.
You want us to care more, win more. Until then, status quo rules.
I’ll second the notion, much as it pains me, that this may be the peak result we can hope for for the next several decades. Until our kids come out of the womb with soccer on the brain like they do in the power countries, I’m afraid that we don’t love it enough early enough to develop the technical skills necessary to do more than pull the occasional upset.
Tactics and conditioning will only get you so far without world class ball handling skills. The exposure to big time footy that we now get will help us improve to an extent but it’s not the full immersion into the sport – almost to the exclusion of others – that kids get elsewhere.
The main issue is that soccer, in some sense, gets the leftovers from the other big 3 American sports. As long as our very best athletes are playing football, baseball and basketball, our national team is always going to underachieve.
That’s not to say that the guys on our team aren’t phenomenal athletes- they are. But numbers tell the tale better than anything else- a soccer team of a nation of 300-plus million people was beaten by teams from nations of 60 million and 11 million, and drew against a team from a nation of 10 million people. Assuming that athletic talent is distributed the same across populations, the US should have something like 5x the pool of talented athletes to choose from than Germany, and 30x that of Portugal. And I’m sure we do, but the majority of those athletes end up playing in the NFL, NBA or MLB. (put another way, guys like Emmitt Smith or a Johnny Manziel might have made terrific soccer players, but are football players instead)
I think they’re all remarkable athletes though maybe not in the American sense of strength and speed (hope I’m not repeating myself, I’m in a vigorous discussion on another board as well). The US squad is plenty athletic enough, though I think we were actually out-physicaled in the Ghana game. Those guys won all the air balls, it seemed.
But, yes, our talent pool to choose from is more along the lines of a nation one tenth our size, the massive numbers of youth players notwithstanding. And then we compound the problem by having a way less than first rate developmental system of the potential elites.
Brazil and Argentina are powerhouses because they grow their own, but that’s not the way the European powers succeed. France and Belgium aren’t fielding teams of 23 guys named Pierre and Jean-Paul whose grandparents worked as cheesemakers: they rely heavily on players with dual citizenship, and/or players who pursue citizenship after they’ve already come to the country as teenagers to pursue their professional careers. Pierre and Jean-Paul might play for the team, but more likely they’ll be fans, and create the economic incentives for young players with options to relocate to France, develop their games under French-sponsored tutelage, and maybe choose to play for a country that isn’t necessarily where they grew up.
The hope of American soccer is not that kids named Cooper and Aiden are going to emerge from suburban playgrounds and conquer the world; it’s that Cooper and Aiden will be MLS/USMNT fans, and the US will be more and more competitive in the international talent market. 20 years ago, Julian Green would have never picked the US over Germany. In 2014, that was a viable option.
That’s why the watch parties and the TV ratings are a big deal: if the sport keeps growing in popularity, the players will be there eventually. We have the money, and we’re a honking big country that people love to emigrate to. If Soccer moves from being something like the ninth-most popular sport here to, say #4, we’ll be a powerhouse.
I noticed that the United States was the last team to get knocked out in the round of 16. Was this just a coincidence or was the schedule set up so they would be likely to be playing in the final game of the round? I imagine the organizers must have be aware that American interest in the series would decline after the American team was eliminated.
It was just a coincidence, as the US was drawn into one of the later groups.
It seems the USA (and probably most other countries too) obviously want their teams to be very strong, but also really like underdogs. Probably the two most famous US international teams are the 1980 hockey team and the first dream team. So you get this kind of conflict - it’s great to see the USMNT conducting themselves well, playing with pride and energy, and challenging the big powers. But it’d be nice if the USMNT could just wipe the floor with 'em too.
I don’t know about that in the US; people sure enjoyed watching the 1992 Olympic basketball “Dream Team” absolutely and completely crush all their opposition by an average of 44 points.
