And even fewer can then blow said lead… 
In the end the US just needs better players, and more of them. The back line in this tournament was nowhere near good enough, and neither was the finishing of the strikers. Mid-field was surprisingly effective to my only-slightly-educated eyes (Feilhaber, Edu, and Bradley in particular - the fact that two of those failed to start the final match is disconcerting).
Ever is a bit strong. Brazil didn’t make a World Cup final between 1970 and 1994 (not inclusive), although they had one very good team in the middle of that stretch.
Is “lately” acceptable?
Lately is better.
From your list, all IMHO, and with everybody healthy: (On that list, BTW, Egypt is ranked ahead of the U.S.—the same Egypt that got annihilated at the Confed. Cup—just to give a sense of the list’s value)
Definitely better than the U.S. P(U.S. Wins)<0.4
Uruguay (had us losing to them after a tie/PK win with Ghana. Then Bradley started Clark…)
Chile (beautiful attacking soccer. Pity a third of their team couldn’t play against Brazil.)
Maybe better than the U.S. P(U.S. Wins)(0.4<P<.6)
Serbia, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Switzerland (especially with the way the U.S. fails to finish chances), Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, Denmark, Norway.
As far as Mexico goes recently, when both teams send their “A” personnel, Mexico gets beaten like a gong anywhere outside of Azteca. This year’s squad, when the coach isn’t playing Blanco, is pretty good though. (Not to say I wouldn’t love a lot of the Mexican players on the U.S. side. If they had Dos Santos, the U.S.'d probably still be alive in the tourney)
Oh, and why will the Cup come to the U.S. again in '18 or '22. Snarky Kong hit it: Cold hard cash. Same reason that Dubai or Qatar will have a shot at it. (Though in that case, when would the tourney happen and how would that fit in with everyone’s domestic league schedule? Can’t see them playing in Qatar in July…) I’m very surprised that China hasn’t put in a bid yet. Though isn’t one of the requirements that the host have (or promise to put in) a domestic soccer league? Though all of the “the U.S. just needs to siphon off 1/10 of its athletes”-type arguments work a lot better for China, with a base pop of ~4x the U.S. Look at the giant strides the Chinese track and field teams have made recently.
Finally, I could be screwing up the calcs, but the winning probability needed for the U.S. to have a 50/50 chance of winning at least one cup in 12 separate tourneys is around 0.0562, or 1/17.8 What did the U.S. go off at to win it all? 75/1 or something like that? Given those probabilities, and the fact that the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal still haven’t won it all, I voted no in the poll.
That is indeed the elephant in the room for those arguments; if China continues to become more prosperous, and focuses on football, they could eclipse anyone. Ditto if India continues to grow economically and gets interested.
The way I figure it is - at least in the modern era - you need a minimum 50 million population in which football/soccer is the dominant sport. That gives you an adequate pyramid.
Then you have to get lucky and have one or two extra-talented individuals, including a striker.
The you need a tournament mentality and a world-class manager.
The USA can do all of that, not soon but it’s doable.
India is interested. The truth is, Indians just aren’t very athletically inclined. India is only good at cricket and hockey, and has a larger population than just about every other competitor combined in each of those sports.
India has a relatively well-supported domestic league, and better infrastructure than, say, Liberia - but Liberia was able to turn out a George Weah while India has only managed a Baichung Bhutia.
India isn’t even among the top 15 teams in the Asian Football Conference - meaning it lags behind such football powers as Thailand, Uzbekistan and even Bahrain, which has less than 1,000,000 inhabitants.
The population of the Netherlands is 16 million. Chile’s is 17 million. Uruguay’s, 3.5 million. Portugal, 11 million. Hell, Argentina just barely breaks the 40 million mark.
Exactly.
Um… all of those countries are World Cup contenders, and none have 50 million inhabitants.
Chile and Uruguay aren’t even close to WC contenders.
Uruguay’ll make the semi’s, but only because they got to play South Korea and Ghana. I wouldn’t be shocked if Ghana won anyway. They barely beat Costa Rica in the playoff.
Chile… meh. They finished second in CONMEBOL qualifying, but that’s only because Argentina couldn’t get it’s shit together.
Holland and Portugal are both alright, but I think we’re going to see the former get stomped by Brazil. Portugal’s about to be out, and they’d have been the underdogs in every game for the rest of the tournament had they beat Spain.
Yes, Argentina are legit contenders though.
40 million seems a better cut-off than 50 (Spain’s population is 45 million), with only the Netherlands IMO really punching above their weight among current teams.
Ghana’s population is 23 million.
A result is a result.
The point is not whether Holland gets stomped by Brazil (which is doubtful). It’s that the Dutch have already made a World Cup final, and the Portuguese finished fourth last time around.
What does Ghana’s population matter? I’m claiming Uruguay will have trouble with a team that’s not even close to being a contender.
Was the US a legit WC contender after beating Spain and going up 2-0 on Brazil?
Well, a result is a result, and none of those teams had them, right?
Anyway, Holland was in the finals 32 years ago. Why not bring Hungary up while you’re at it? Wasn’t Sweden in the finals in the 50?
You know South Korea finished 4th in 2002 right? Turkey was 3rd. Both of which had absolutely nothing to do with them winning the WC or being contenders.
I would also like to chuckle gently to myself at the suggestion that the confederations cup is a serious competition.
Yes, the US beat Spain in the confederations cup, and led against Brazil. I guarantee neither country really gave a monkies.
Like “Le Tournoi” in 1997, a similar dress rehearsal tournament for the World Cup in France the next year. That tournament was actually won by England, over powerhouses France, Italy and Brazil, but almost nobody in England even remembers it. It was just a friendly tournament to make sure that the stadiums and infrastructure were going to be up to the job.
I’m not sure that population size or even resources means a lot in football (soccer). Consider Russia - huge population, a country that does play football and yet their team never gets anywhere.
Resources - consider Brazil. Their kids learn their skills kicking cans around the street. There’s lots of countries that have more money and resources than Brazil - all the european countries - and yet it doesn’t seem to give them an edge over Brazil.
I heard an (English) guy on the radio talking about when he tried to set up a soccer school in the US. He was quite pessimistic because they seemed to want to send him 16/17 year olds to train but you need to get them at 11/12. Different mentality.
The US has definitely improved a lot but all they’ve done is reach the middle rank. The jump from there to the top rank is a much bigger jump. It’s not like there’s a straight line going gradually upwards as you improve. The line goes suddenly to a much sharper upward incline once you get to the top echelons.
To go from the middle rank to the top rank you need to have kids who live and die football, playing it constantly in their spare time not just at school organised events. You need a proper league for them to go into where they can get fame and fortune so they have an incentive. You need to have some big teams the kids can dream of playing for. You need proper training facilities and talent scouts who spot talented youngsters at an early age (11/12).
Without all that I fear the US is fated to never rise above the middle rank. Which is a shame because it gets boring when the same teams win the World Cup every time.
The players for both teams both directly refute you.
I’m not saying it was the most important tournament for them, but I do think they were all trying to win.
You don’t think so? You don’t think Spain wanted to have the record for longest unbeaten streak and most wins in a row?
That’s really beside the point. The point is that the best team doesn’t always win. If you disagree with that, then I don’t know what to say.
The argument isn’t that they can’t, the argument is that they probably won’t.
We’ve heard a lot about how the US has gone from “who?” to a solid second-ranker with the potential to upset even the best teams in 20 years. I pointed out that South Korea - whose record in recent World Cups is at least equal to the USA’s - had done much the same thing over much the same period and was told “South Korea isn’t the USA”. Well, no - but they have 50 million people, a strong and growing economy and the soccer culture the US doesn’t (as yet). If Spain can do it, why can’t they? Come to that, why can’t Russia, Turkey, Nigeria, South Africa or other big countries where soccer is popular?
The top table is getting more crowded. As the mighty Algerians proved to both England and the US, there is no such thing as a gimme game in the World Cup any more. The days when the elite teams only needed to worry about each other and their own mistakes are fading. One bet I would make is that well within 50 years there will be new names on the Cup and some of them will come from outside Pot 1.
The US might be one of them. But look at it this way - suppose that soccer takes off as a major sport in the US in the next ten years (which is certainly possible, but a long way from certain). Suppose the success of the sport in the US brings forth a flow of talented US players in the next ten (since most football academies start from age 8 or younger, it’s hard to see how it can be faster). That gets us to 2030, with another 7 or 8 World Cups in the time frame. To have a 50/50 chance of winning one of them, the US would need to be about an 11-1 chance in each tournament - which would put them in the 5 or 6 most likely countries (unless the expansion of the sport means we are no longer talking about a top 8-10 but a top 15-20, in which case the US would have to be in the top 2 or 3).
So if soccer in the US develops as well as can be hoped, the US team develops as well as can be hoped, the US is a top-table competitor at every World Cup from 2030 to 2060 - the odds of actually winning the thing are 50-50. I can think of a lot of ways things may not turn out so well for the US, very few ways it could turn out better.