I’m 30 years old, so let’s say, somewhat optimistically, that I’ll see 12 more World Cups after this one. In your estimation, is the United States more likely than not to win at least one of those? Why or why not?
I think ‘No’. There is just not going to ever be enough interest in soccer as a sport for America to invest in what it takes to build a World Class program.
In fact, I would wager that even the MLS will die off before you become a grandparent.
It occurs to me that we’ll probably get different responses from Americans than from other nationalities. I should’ve bifurcated the poll.
Running some quick numbers, if the U.S. has a few years in which it’s a 10-1 underdog (or about 9% to win), that alone would get them about halfway to 50%. And, of course, if they manage to be one of the top two teams (say about 15% chance to win) even once, that alone about wrecks the odds on “No” (assuming a healthy string of 5% Cups surrounding it). So I’ll say yes, but barely.
I’m American.
No, we will probably not win a World Cup in our lifetime(I’m 31).
Not in my lifetime, I think. A good enough side to consistently get out of the group stages (and I’m jealous of that) but not to win the whole thing. There’s only a small number of teams that are good enough to do that, the usual suspects.
Eh, on second thought maybe it’s a No. The break-even point if the probability remained static is about 5.65% – that is, if they had the same chance to win every tournament, that chance would need to be about 5.65% before the U.S. team would be a favorite to win one out of twelve. This year, they were a little better than 1%, and that was *after *qualifying and getting a moderately favorable draw.
On the other hand, there are 300 million of us, and even if we don’t follow it closely as adults a surprisingly large percentage play in organized leagues as children.
I voted yes, but I think that may be overly optimistic. At the very least I think that the US will have good chances to win.
None the less the US has gone, in 20 years, from an Algeria level team that is lucky to qualify for the World Cup, to a Mexico level team that is expected to at least advance out of the group stage. I expect they will rise and reach the top tier of teams within the next 20 years. After that they’ll have at least five goes at it, and maybe quite a few more.
But there is always a bit of luck. And a lot of countries have had some damn fine sides that could never get it done.
I voted No, because I think it would require soccer to become one of the major sports in the US, and I just don’t see that happening. The game has certainly made great strides in the US. The national team is now solidly in the top 20 at least, and you have a respectable and apparently well-run domestic league, but it’s still a big step up from there to contesting the World Cup final. There are big football countries, steeped in the game, that have never won it, or even been in the final.
I think that people are somewhat foolish in their analysis of the World Cup and give it far too much merit. It, by and large, is hugely influenced by luck and in any single elimination tournament the odds of any one team eventually winning are pretty good. With sample sizes as small as they are it’s not really representative of a “World Class” team of organization. Soccer fundamentally involves a discouragingly large proportion of luck in it’s outcomes from game to game and when that is compounded by the low scores and single elimination format following the group stages it becomes a crap shoot.
So, based on that opinion, I say that yes the Americans are likely to win a World Cup in the next 50 years. I don’t particularly think that Soccer will take a greater place in American sporting culture nor do I think that our best athletes will ever choose soccer first, but we have the population and resources to essentially ensure ourselves of being in the World Cup every 4 years and therefore by sheer chance we’ll win one before long.
The history of the tournament doesn’t really bear that out. It is always won by one of the traditional powers, or the host nation if the host nation is particularly strong that year. Teams who were going through periods of strength, such as Hungary or the Netherlands, have been runners up several times, but you don’t really see teams come out of the blue and make it all the way to the final. I think you have to go back to 1950 to find an upset, when Uruguay won it, but I’m not sure that they weren’t a fancied team back then. All I know is that Brazil expected to win it on home soil.
If they keep getting guys who can’t jump (like today), they’re never going to win, ever.
I watched today, and they won like one header in 40 minutes of game time.
Uruguay x2
Italy x4
Germany x3
Brazil x5
England x1
Argentina x2
France x1
France and England both won while hosting. Uruguay’s last win was in 1950. Only four other teams have won. Seems like more than luck to me.
ETA: oh and a lot the above teams were also runner-ups on several occasions.
Oddly, in that other goal-scoring game (ice hockey) you have a lot more upsets; maybe it’s the goalies. Yet they play 7 game series, not single elimination. I posit that a goalie has less relevance to the outcome of a soccer match than he does in a hockey game-that’s mainly because soccer goalies are tested less often and it doesn’t require nearly the lightning-fast reflexes that being a hockey goalie does (corrolary is that the differences between the best and worst soccer goaltenders is less than it is for those in hockey). Idle speculation mode here, not attached to my hypothesis.
I voted no mainly because the best athletes don’t go into soccer in the US, while they often do in other countries. Imagine a soccer team consisting of (oh I don’t know) Kobe Bryant, Carl Crawford, Chris Johnson (2000 yard Titans RB), and Walter Dix (Bronze medalist in the 100m & 200m at Beijing). Until that changes (and it won’t), they’ll have to luck into it somehow.
That’s true, but the game that all those American children play in organized leagues bears little resemblance to world football. And IMO, because those children are never taught how to play the beautiful game, almost all of them lose interest in soccer by high school.
By then they’ve learned that American soccer is certainly not beautiful, or even interesting… and no more fun than “kick-the-can”. So they gravitate to baseball, basketball, American football, and other established sports that ARE played beautifully in the USA.
I voted yes, and I totally disagree with you on this point. Just 6 World Cups ago, in 1986 the US was so totally irrelevant in soccer that we hadn’t even qualified in 36 years. 6 World Cups later, we’re sitting here bitterly disappointed to have “only” made the Round of 16, which we’ve now done two of the last 3 times. When we hosted in 1994 we didn’t even have a domestic league - now Seattle averages about 35,000 a game. MLS will never be MLB or the NFL, but it doesn’t have to for us to become a world power. There are 300 million Americans, we have massive disposable income, and when we put money into something we eventually get good at it.
I fully expect us to make a serious run at the title when we next host the tournament, probably in 2022. By the time we host it again in, let’s say, 2050 or '54, we should be among the favorites. So no guarantees or anything, but yes - I think we’re more likely to win it than not.
It’s close either way.
I think a lot of people are sort of assuming that the US isn’t improving or won’t improve in the next 50 years. In 1990, the US hadn’t qualified for the WC in 40 years. They struggled to beat Trinidad and Tobago to make the WC. Today we lost, though had more and better scoring opportunities, in the round of 16 and are pissed about it.
Also, our best forward and midfielder were injured for the tournament. We also had two players that would have started, elect to play for other national teams. Eventually the Rossi’s will prefer to play for the US, once it’s not seen as a soccer backwater. Hell, will a little more forsight the US could have fielded a team of
----Jozy Altidore*–Guiseppe Rossi
-Clint Dempsey-Jermaine Jones-Michael Bradley-Landon Donovan
-Carlos Bocanedra-Neven Subotic-Brede Hangeland/Oguchi Onyewu-Steve Cherundolo
-------------------------------Tim Howard
*Vedad Ibisevic, if you’ll indulge me a bit. He only lived in the US for ~4 years, but the rest were all eligible to play for the US.
That team would probably be looked at similarly to Germany. Nobody would be shocked if they won the WC. It’d be an upset, sure, but not even close to the biggest.
MLS has higher attendance than both the NBA and NHL.
The Seattle Sounders averaged nearly 10,000 more per game than any team in the NHL or NBA in 2009 and were outdrawn by only 12/30 teams in MLB. The MLS had three teams average over 20K fans (NBA and NHL had 3 & 2 respectively), and over half the MLS averaged over 15,000.
Granted, the MLS has had numbers stacked in their favor lately. For one, NHL and NBA are limited by stadium size. Many MLS teams just rent out football stadiums. Consequently, MLS tickets are much cheaper. Also, expansion to Seattle and Toronto have been wildly successful.
But the MLS is getting “meat in the seat” to watch soccer, and that’s gotta count for something.
As for the OP: Even AFTER the Group Phase, right now Nate Silver has his favorite Brazil at almost 7-to-1.
I think that within that time frame the US will be a force on the world stage. But given that favorites still have such long odds, whether we’ll actually win one, I’m not sure.
I posit that being a soccer power means you qualify for every world cup. The teams listed above won because they had the most balls in the lottery because of the sheer number of times they qualified. I think there are very few nations who qualify regularly but never make the final game.
I think it’s safe to say that the US is now a nation that can be counted on to qualify every 4 years and once in the dance their number will come up soon by sheer force of numbers.
20 years ago, we weren’t even an Algeria level team. That was a team of college players.