As many have duly noted in this discussion, the sample size of U.S. playing competitive international matches against top class competition is small. As such, in a discussion about the U.S., the Confederations Cup data points shouldn’t be casually dismissed with a chuckle to oneself.
In this World Cup, the way things broke for the U.S. (advancing from the group and avoiding Germany/Argentina in its part of the draw) was fairly unlikely. Given this draw, the U.S. probably could have made the semifinals in this World Cup. The two back-to-back results from 2009 suggest that it’s not farfetched to say that the U.S. could have beaten its potential opponents once it got to the semifinals.
If my math is correct, this left the U.S. chances of winning this tournament at “pretty farfetched”. I posit that there isn’t a whole bunch of difference between “pretty farfetched” and “possible”, especially when prognosticating 50 years into the future. And here in America, anything’s possible. QED
(P.S. I voted no on the poll question. But I wanted to vote yes.)
“This new generation” has been around for… well, at least a generation. For 30 years we in the USA have heard: “Well, we may not be that good at soccer now, but ALL of our children play it every Saturday.* Just wait until they grow up! Soccer will be huge in America and we will become a top world power!!!”
And then, almost every one of those, “*Billions *of American children play youth soccer!!!111” has proceeded to grow up and…
…not consistently watch world soccer games, not play serious soccer as an adult , not understand soccer, not care a whiff about soccer.
A few people, over the years, have of course become half-way decent players (yet, other than a few goalkeepers, not really world-class). That’s the only reason we are able to do as well as we do with our primitive “boot the ball forward as hard as you can and hope Jozy (or whomever) doesn’t fuck up his first touch this time or maybe gets fouled” philosophy of soccer.
Yes, we’ve gotten a lot better over many, many decades. But getting to the potential World Cup winners’ level will take a lot longer, if it ever happens at all.
*But, never during the week (except for enforced team practices), or in pick-up games in the parks.
Meh, on a neutral site or doing home-home series I think the US would come out just about even.
And that doesn’t really matter. Uruguay and Chile are doing about the best they can hope for. They’re the people that’ve grown up playing golf all their lives. Shoot some decent games, but aren’t ready for the tour. The USA is Tiger Woods* if he just picked up a club later in life. He’d be rough around the edges, not shoot that great, but man, the potential.
Who’s more likely to get on the PGA tour?
*Analogy not necessarily accurate. Don’t nitpick it, you get the idea.
And yes, it’s different now than in the 70s. There are actual Americans in the pro leagues now. There are children of former MLS players in MLS. There are professional youth development systems. There are soccer stadiums, not teams renting out giant football stadiums (the Sounders do, but they do very well). It’s certainly not going to happen overnight, or next world cup, or the one after, but the US is definitely getting better, and at faster pace than Chile and Uruguay.
Still have no idea, and nobody really does, if the US will have a 50% chance of winning in my lifetime. It’ll fun to find out though.
I’m sure the Brazil players take out their confederation cup medals every night and lovingly stroke them as they dream of past glory.
The point was that winning a game in a minor warm-up tournament is no reliable indicator of the quality of a team, neither present nor future. Want an example? I am from Northern Ireland. In the last few years, we have beaten both England and Spain in competitive, vital, qualifying games. Did that mean we were close to breaking into that “elite” group. Of course it didnt.
There is nothing wrong with holding good results up as a sign of progress. But its silly to win a glorified friendly and use it as a basis for saying ; “The two back-to-back results from 2009 suggest that it’s not far fetched to say that the U.S. could have beaten its potential opponents once it got to the semifinals”.
Beat these teams when it counts. As it stands you still cant beat Slovenia, England or Ghana when it counts, so to suggest you are about to become a major player in world football is, premature, to say the least.
As an Argentinian, I must say this, nobody here cares and most don’t know about the confederation cup, if asked most would qualify it as a “Copa de Leche”, or milk cup, meaning some absolutely unimportant tournament.
Important tournaments in order of importance:
World Cup.
Copa America.
Olympics (and this only because we won it a couple of times recently, Brazilians and other would prolly disagree).
Haha, I’m sure that the Italians do the same with their World Cup medals too.
Since this is apparently in response to me, where did I suggest that the US is about to become a major player in world football? I voted no in the poll AND I said that it was “pretty farfetched” to have predicted the U.S. to win this tournament.
I agree that the Confederations Cup does not have the prestige that some other tournaments have. However, having watched the games in the 2009 version, it was clear that the players and coaches genuinely cared–particularly Spain, who, as someone else mentioned, were on their record streaks of 15 wins and 35 unbeaten games at the time. Your example compares apples to oranges: Northern Ireland beat England and Spain in qualifiers at home about a year apart (and got crushed a number of times in between)–find me a tournament where this is relevant. The U.S. beat first-choice Spain and almost beat first-choice Brazil FOUR DAYS LATER ON A NEUTRAL FIELD. Doesn’t this sound a little bit like what a team in the semifinals of this World Cup will have to do?
Anyway, here’s the last four FIFA tournaments the USMNT has entered.
2002 WC:
In group stage, beat Portugal (3-2), drew against host South Korea (1-1), lost to Poland (1-3). Beat Mexico in the Round of 16 (2-0), and lost to Germany in the quarterfinal (1-0), which could have turned out differently had an obvious German hand-ball at the goal-line been called.
2006 WC:
In group stage, drew against eventual winners Italy (1-1) with 9 men against 10, lost to Czech Republic (0-3) and to Ghana (1-2).
2009 Confederations Cup:
In group stage, lost to Italy (1-3) and Brazil (0-3), and beat Egypt (3-0). In the knockout stage, beat Spain (2-0) and nearly beat Brazil (2-3).
2010 WC:
In group stage, drew with England (1-1) and Slovenia (2-2) (probably would have won the latter had a phantom foul on a US goal not been called), beat Algeria (1-0). Lost to Ghana (1-2) in the Round of 16.
In 8 games against teams who were clearly favored against them (Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain, England), the U.S. have gotten 2 wins and 2 draws. In the other 9 games, the US have gotten only 3 wins and 2 draws, yet they’ve managed to advance out of group stage three out of four tournaments.
That record tells me that the stumbling block for the U.S. in terms of winning a World Cup is beating teams that they are approximately even with or better than, like you’ve said. To me, this is a more easily fixable problem to have than being unable to beat the top teams. Given USMNT’s recent tournament record, it’s reasonable to say that if they can consistently bring the same level of performance that they do against the top teams, then they are capable of winning a World Cup, particularly when they are the host. Granted, their chances are small enough that it’s not likely this will happen in the next 50 years, but it’s entirely possible.
Three world cups and a confederations cup. I like it.
How can you say this? “consistently bring the same level of performance that they do against the top teams”. From your post, You have beaten ONE top team when it mattered, Portugal in 2002. (No, the confederation cup does not count, it simply doesnt). Yeah, just you concentrate on beating those average teams, the better teams won’t be a problem for you.
How can you say this? “Northern Ireland beat England and Spain in qualifiers at home about a year apart (and got crushed a number of times in between)–find me a tournament where this is relevant.”. What, so the mickey mouse confederations cup is relevant, but European qualifiers for major (proper) tournaments is not relevant?
Look, I have no problems with the US team, fair play to them. And of course they can win the world cup in the next 50 years, anybody can. Its just that it seems a lot of you have the basics of the game, but miss a lot of the intricacies. Its like this talk of, “if the US makes 50% of the future tournaments, and attracts 72.5% of immigrant children in the age range appropriate to maximising the soccer potential of the yadda yadda”. Seriously, what the fuck? I know US sports lend themselves to statistics, but soccer has a different culture, and thats what has to change in America before it will seriously compete. Less win/loss records and more jumpers for goalposts.
(btw, no, the original post was not directed at you. I thought the quote might have given that away :))
I doubt I’ll live to see the U.S. win the World Cup, but I think this part here is spot on. I’m 28 and my experience playing soccer epitomizes, I think, that of people in my age group. We all grew up playing and enjoying the game, but to us it was just another game that we had fun playing, like tag or something. There wasn’t any sense of soccer as a sport - we had no exposure to professional leagues, good coaches, etc. As a result, like most of my friends, when I reached high school age I forgot about soccer in favor of the traditional American sports.
Contrast that to today’s young soccer players. There is a generation of coaching and youth development infrastructure in place that continues to improve as MLS gets its act together. People in the US can watch 20+ matches every weekend from around the world. Most large metro areas have an MLS team. The big Euro clubs tour here every summer. Just about everyone knows the star players. In short, today’s kids play soccer in a much different atmosphere than those growing up even a few years ago. I think that as a result of that the typical picture of the sport in the US, with kids giving up the game as they get older, is going to fall by the wayside.
I’m not saying that American Messis and Ronaldos are just around the corner, but I do think that the U.S.'s huge participation combined with the changes outlined above will result in an improvement in the American player pool within the next decade or so.
Never made a claim anywhere close to this, thanks for the completely unheeded condescensio though.
I never made that claim either. In fact I brought up the Spain result to refute the idea that one result means anything
The US did beat Slovenia and the ref took it away. The US outplayed Ghana too. It’s wrong to say that the US can’t beat Ghana. They didn’t, huge difference.
(In your response that quoted Snarky_Kong, you also quoted my statement “The two back-to-back results from 2009 suggest that it’s not far fetched to say that the U.S. could have beaten its potential opponents once it got to the semifinals” without attributing it to me, which implies that somehow Snarky_Kong wrote this. I was not sure why you did so.)
If you refuse to acknowledge the distinction between a FIFA tournament and Euro qualifying when we’re specifically talking about the ability of the US to win a FIFA tournament and dismiss the Confederations Cup results without presenting any evidence that the teams who participated were not giving full effort, then I guess we can’t have a rational discussion. All the best to you.
Absolutely not. I want to piggyback on **Death of Rats’ **response:
I don’t think it’s so much a lack of interest than a lack of interest of playing. More precisely, there are too many other athletic distractions in the U.S. and most of our would-be talented soccer players are instead playing baseball, football (our variety), basketball and hockey (to name the most popular). Perpetually dominant national teams like Brazil have a much bigger pool of soccer talent because they live in a country which doesn’t have nearly as many other options and certainly not on a scale as in the U.S.
I put it around 20% for the US to win a World Cup in the next 12 tournaments. If they are 75-1 shots, they’d have around a 15% chance if my calculations are correct. I can see them maybe getting to 50-1, which gives around a 22% chance. I don’t see them as a world-class team at all though.
Could things change? Maybe, but things could change both ways, really. There were indoor soccer leagues when I was younger that dried up. Wasn’t there an outdoor domestic league in the 1970s? Even if MLS is getting numbers now, there’s no reason to believe that it means anything for its continued health, or that (looking at England) a domestic league means anything with respect to the national team. The team might be getting a bit better, but I don’t think that there’s nearly the same level of support and development for them that there is in other countries, nor do I see that changing.
You misunderstood his point. He said that the US soccer team is lilly-white compared to major US athletic sports. Which is it, clearly. Compared to an NBA or NFL team, the US soccer team (and all MLS teams) are a sea of white.
That this lilly-whiteness could be considered “diverse” compared to the major powers in world soccer isn’t relevant to the original point, which was that soccer wasn’t getting to draw from the entire pool of Americans.
I’ll grant that it’s not hockey-white, but it’s every bit as lilly white as was suggested.
No, I didn’t. The relevant part of the quote is as follows:
That’s the part I was addressing. There are only a handful of teams around the world or Europe that have anywhere near the level of diversity our teams does. I don’t see how you can look at a team where at least 4 of 11 starters are Black, and a few others are Hispanic, and say they seem lily white. Moreover, roughly 35% of the Men’s National Team is Black. In baseball, that number was 8.4% (in 2006). Yes, as you mentioned, the percentages are higher in basketball and football, but I think that is more of an anomaly. Blacks in soccer may be underrepresented compared the NFL or NBA, but not relative to athletics as a whole. Most sports teams are majority White. You are just comparing them to the 2 sports that fit your example.
The Dutch team is currently quite white, but if an alien had touched down in the 80s or 90s you’d have a tough time explaining to him why more than half of them were black.
That’s too far. The NBA and NFL aren’t majority black for any anomalous reason. They are majority black because those are the sports that African Americans care about. More specifically, in the context of sports, American blacks care about basketball. Those who aren’t good enough to make it to the NBA play football instead, where the pay is lower, contracts aren’t guaranteed, there’s a much higher risk of serious injury, and there is much more emphasis on the team over the individual.
There was far more scoring back in the day, meaning that maybe it wasn’t about luck before but it is much moreso about luck nowadays. Witness this year’s finalists, for example.
How are this year’s finalists about luck? Spain are the European champions and one of the strongest teams in the world. The Netherlands is another top-tier team which won every single game to qualify for the World Cup. This world cup like the last ten or more confirms that it is exceedingly difficult for second-tier teams to even reach the final of the world cup. They will often reach the semis like Uruguay this time but that’s where their run invariably ends.
Here are the finalists from 1970 -2006:
Brazil Italy
West Germany Netherlands
Argentina Netherlands
Italy West Germany
Argentina West Germany
Germany Argentina
Brazil Italy
France Brazil
Brazil Germany
Italy France