Rendered at 20:50:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
SamBam 24 minutes ago [-]
I don't think the article really tried to answer the question, though maybe that wasn't its intent and the author was genuinely asking.
I think an answer would need to look at the difference in how kids and teens play soccer in the US vs other countries.
In the US soccer is mostly a younger kids' sport, and is generally highly structured, with kids playing on teams once or twice a week. Compare to Europe, where many boys are playing once or twice every day, in an unstructured format, during recess and after school.
Starting from a young age, Europeans who show talent are getting drafted into soccer academies before they're 10, greatly increasing the amount of competitive play. But this is on top of the everyday soccer they're playing.
For a US kid, soccer is typically "pay to play." A local league costs money. A private high school with a good program costs money. In Europe, beyond (again) the continuous unstructured play, the academies and farm teams are free.
Finally, a good European player doesn't necessarily head to college. They may be playing for a serious club team at 18 or 19.
Meanwhile, a gifted US soccer player heads to college (maybe on a scholarship but maybe not--again, pay to play), plays for the varsity team a few times a week during the season, and four years later might get on one of the relatively few club teams.
otherme123 4 minutes ago [-]
> Finally, a good European player doesn't necessarily head to college. They may be playing for a serious club team at 18 or 19.
My guess is that less than 5% of european soccer players ever set a foot in College, at least in the biggest Leagues (UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany). I only know two: Lampard and Iniesta. There might be a few more, but they are oddities.
If anything, a good player and good student usually has to make a choice at 18 years old: "am I good enough to bet my future on being a pro player and delay/abandon the College, or do I give up on being pro and focus on studying?"
drewmate 6 minutes ago [-]
The same is basically true for most other sports in the US too, and yet there are still high-level Americans. Certainly baseball (which other countries do still play in a limited fashion), hockey and football. With football we are undisputed world champs for the last 60 years! Joking aside, there is no doubt that high-level NFL players are seriously talented and their whole sport revolves around structured practices and weekly games.
Basketball might be closest to the USA’s soccer – lots of unstructured play and selection to schools and academies at a young age, but historically the pay to play travel circuit plays a big deal there too, and American basketball players are no doubt internationally competitive.
I don’t have an answer either, I just think that the way we play soccer isn’t limiting the best potential players. I just think the best potential players are choosing to play other sports.
dh2022 6 minutes ago [-]
+1. Want to add that in Europe promising players drafted by clubs by age of 10 already get soccer equipment and some token money ($50 / week), practice every day after school and transportation to out of town games is on the club’s bus. In the US at that age parents pay for the equipment, and drive their kids to every game-including out of town. And because US is so large these are long drives.
harrall 10 minutes ago [-]
The US has also strangely invented a lot of sports (Americans football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse, skateboarding, snowboarding, and so on).
Soccer has major competition in the US.
Because these sports started in America too, America usually dominates them.
hawaiianbrah 16 minutes ago [-]
I believe most of what you said, but no college varsity player is playing only a few times a week. Even the lowest division of NCAA teams would have practice or matches 5-6 times a week in season.
hibikir 4 minutes ago [-]
Sure, but as far as the people that are going to be professional, and good enough to play for a national team, you'd already be playing in the top levels of soccer by 19. Lamine Yamal was playing for the A team in Barcelona when he was barely 16, and was a starter in Spain's eurocup win at 17. More "normal" players, likePedri and Messi, played their first minutes for Barcelona at 17.
So if you even smell a college varsity team, you are already in the slow track. It's really rare to find a star that wasn't at least in a farm team at 15. I have a friend that was already there at 10, and his ceiling was just starter in a low tier team in La Liga.
haunter 37 minutes ago [-]
I know it's an American article but I think it's far more interesting that 4 out of the 5 most populous countries (China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia), representing 3.3 billion people and 40% of the Earth’s population, has a combined total of 2 appearances at the World Cup (1938 Indonesia as Dutch East Indies and 2002 China). It’s a huge untapped market and not that people don’t love or care about football in those countries either.
Meanwhile relatively small countries like Uruguay, Portugal, and Croatia has a long history of great teams and producing insane talents.
vinni2 29 minutes ago [-]
I can’t speak for other countries but in India cricket eclipses all other sports and drains talent. But soccer is gaining popularity recently but still long way to go.
PaulHoule 5 minutes ago [-]
Field Hockey is huge in India too. (Thing is India is so big that anything that is big in India is big globally!)
shevy-java 26 minutes ago [-]
If you think about it, India and China already have other very popular sports. Soccer is kind of somewhat of a niche there.
Croatia is really in Europe and Europe was always solid on soccer. Same with Portugal. Uruguay is more interesting, but Brasil was always happy with soccer, as was Argentina. It is much easier to establish soccer in South America than in North America. Canadians much prefer ice hockey.
Tade0 7 minutes ago [-]
> Uruguay is more interesting, but Brasil was always happy with soccer, as was Argentina.
Back in high school, due to a dearth of places to play and ubiquitous NO BALL GAMES signs we would joke that surely it must be entirely flipped in Brazil, and the elderly there scold the youth for not playing ball at any given moment.
hackerbeat 46 minutes ago [-]
Didn't read the post, but the problem is that in most top soccer countries, soccer is the number one sport, light-years ahead of everything else. In the US, several other sports are more popular, which drains the talent pool. Kids grow up immersed in soccer culture in places like Brazil, Argentina, Germany or Spain in a way that simply isn't as common in the US.
cogogo 13 minutes ago [-]
I think that is a contributor to the problem but the real problem is we do not yet know how to develop talent consistently in the US. FC Barcelona is easily the world reference recruiting kids around 7-8 years old and building them mentally, physically and tactically into incredible players. Something like half or more of their current roster came through la masía at some point. And something like half the Spain world cup roster plays for Barcelona.
There are soccer academies in the US but it is still relatively new and we do not have a great development model yet. Youth academies are also fairly antithetical to how talent pipelines work for the established US sports.
harrall 43 seconds ago [-]
I mean you could say that baseball academies in Brazil aren’t good yet either.
It’s just that Brazil currently doesn’t care about baseball that much and baseball first has to become popular, except they already have soccer plus even basketball is growing quicker.
In America, soccer has to first become popular but there are so many other sports that people currently care about more.
cortesoft 36 minutes ago [-]
I get this argument, and it is probably partially right, but is soccer really competing for the same athletes as basketball and American football? Basketball players are mostly too tall for soccer (other than goalie), and a majority of football players are way bigger than great soccer players. Baseball and hockey might compete for the same athletes, but a huge percentage of baseball and hockey players also come from other countries.
LeifCarrotson 14 minutes ago [-]
Those genetic requirements come into play at elite levels, but you need to start young, when those differences are less obvious.
You need to look at what sports an eight-year-old is playing in the backyard, what sports his Dad is excited about on the TV.
An agile, fast, coordinated kid who's coachable and wants to train hard but is going to grow up to be 5' 8" is not going to make the NFL or the NBA, but if they've got the athleticism to play in the World Cup... well, in the US that kid will be the point guard on the local high school basketball team and also play safety and wide receiver on the football team.
In India, they'd be a cricket star.
microtonal 11 minutes ago [-]
The difference in sports culture leads to almost no talent getting wasted.
I grew up in a European (Holland) country and as boys we'd play soccer all the time, during school on the schoolyard, after school, in the evening and the vast majority of boys in my class joined the local soccer team (me included). Even though we were a local team in a small village, scouts of slightly more important teams would sometimes come to our matches.
Basically, because soccer is so ingrained in our culture, virtually all boys play soccer at some point. That combined with all the clubs that play at different levels, and the scouting network, virtually no talent is missed.
Put differently, when a new Cruyff or Robben is born, there is a high probability that he will be found.
Women's soccer is really a different story. It has only started to take off in recent years and at least as many girls seem to play hockey.
Of course, it should be said that the only sport that really matters is Korfbal/Korfball :).
mattnewton 4 minutes ago [-]
I think it is less about competing for athletes and more about competing for national attention (in the form of sports viewership that turns into money and school programs).
cweld510 21 minutes ago [-]
It definitely is at the youth level. I don’t think any football or basketball pros could be soccer stars, but absolutely there are kids who are star point guards on their youth basketball team but top out at 5’8”, or football players who never make it past high school but could have been great at soccer.
bad_haircut72 22 minutes ago [-]
Kids who are good at sport excel at it all throughout school years, then once they hit college age the smaller ones dont make it further in American football any more - but they still spent their childhood playing it. In e.g. Uraguay its probably opposite, the naturally heavy guys cant compete at top level soccer (Im guessing) and fall out of professional sports
vasco 21 minutes ago [-]
For national teams you only need to consider outlier athletes not averages. And many of the most top athletes at sport A would do very well at sport B. If a country funnels 100% of kids into a single sport, every single genetically gifted athlete will be put through the same selection process. Imagine every single physically gifted kid going to tryouts of the same sport. That's Portugal.
RugnirViking 47 minutes ago [-]
a country can only be so good at so many sports of this type. Every american playing basketball, or baseball, or american football, or ice hockey, is one not playing football. You have to understand that for many countries, the dream path, the default one, for a very athletic young person who is interested in team sports is soccer, from the age of 6 or younger. The entire structure above that branches outward based on this huge intake of talented children, with vast institutions of professional coaches, academies, and huge amounts of training and game time with other talented people, no matter where in the country they live.
Learning to play well heavily depends on exposure to an appropriate level of play that challenges and stretches young athletes. If they get to a level thats too challenging, they aren't picked for match day, don't play, and wash out. If they stay at a level that isn't challenging enough, they learn bad habits that won't work against much stronger players. Thus, even those few americans that do play a lot at home struggle to make the jump to play against teams from outside, because the level of competition overseas is so much stronger. This is why for many many years, everyone on the mens football team played and lived in europe (and usually grew up there in these academies, too). The only way to develop players at home is if you can convince enough of these highly skilled players and coaches to move to the US long enough to play against the developing players, so they can hone their craft in a way that actually works against the best in the business.
This also explains why the women's game doesnt see the same problem, becuase that massive infrastructure in europe and the rest of the americas doesnt (or rather, didnt) exist to the same degree for young girls.
PaulHoule 8 minutes ago [-]
I think the rest of the world is rapidly catching up whent it comes to girls.
talktalkmake 43 minutes ago [-]
In the UK, soccer is a working-class sport, which installs a larger proportional base of enthusiasm among the public (and has done for more than 150 years). In the US soccer is a middle-class distraction from the sports that receive a lot more attention and investment. That compounds.
radiator 10 minutes ago [-]
I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.
waltfy 45 minutes ago [-]
Not American. Don’t live in US. The outside impression I get is that the game simply isn’t one of the kids’ default street sports.
JackFr 27 minutes ago [-]
The SEC (Southeastern Conference) arguably the leader in football, basketball, baseball and softball and apart from those sponsors 18 other sports. They do not sponsor soccer.
As long as that’s case I’ll have trouble believing we’re gonna be great.
Soccer is like the metric system of sports. Everyone else uses it. It makes sense and we should like it, but we’re culturally suspicious of it.
tracerbulletx 20 minutes ago [-]
The is probably the most significant reason. The top athletes are pulled into other sports which have higher cultural status and financial rewards.
lukan 17 minutes ago [-]
"Soccer is like the metric system of sports."
No. Not at all. It doesn't make any more sense to chase a ball to kick it just with feet, than to chase it protected hands allowed or to chase it using only hands to touch it.
Different sports.
(I am from europe and did play, but think soccer is highly overrated. Unlike the metric system that actually has a clear logic behind it and makes handling scientific numbers more easy)
thrill 18 minutes ago [-]
He asks if it's an MLS problem but doesn't dig into the poor management decisions that persist at the MLS level, and though he does touch on the lack of relegation, and he doesn't touch at all on the US Soccer Federation's consistently poor choices for USMNT head coach. We're presently stuck with a guy who praises the players getting into constant on-field fights and each manager constantly makes nepotistic selections for team slots who are under-performers yet constantly praised, or even worse this year, who seem to be chosen for their unfocused non-game-enhancing aggression. That sort of mis-focus might work if playing in leagues where that is the norm, but world-class players and teams play with technique, and the rough play BS lasts as long as the officials allow it and doesn't win in the long term, which is where you have to aim to win championships. It's arguable if we'd even be in the Cup this time if we weren't hosting, and I'll be surprised if we get out of the group stage this time.
gen2brain 6 minutes ago [-]
That is because you call it "soccer"?
analog31 39 minutes ago [-]
I remember when in grad school, there were two casual sports leagues for the grad students: Softball and soccer.
The best softball teams were the MBA and law students, who were mostly American.
But physics absolutely mopped up in soccer.
TZubiri 17 minutes ago [-]
I think it's that the US follows a red ocean strategy. They don't compete on saturated markets, they'd rather make their own markets and be in a market of one, like NFL.
shevy-java 27 minutes ago [-]
I remember they were not that bad, some years ago. But sports is already heavily covered in the USA: basket ball, american football and so forth. Establishing a new sport is harder in such an environment.
grougnax 41 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
28304283409234 43 minutes ago [-]
What are you talking about? They've been world champ repeatedly.
The qualifier is literally the sub-headline and is mentioned several times in the article.
josuepeq 24 minutes ago [-]
My problem is I can’t stay interested for long.
Yes, it’s possible that it’s a “me” problem.
90 minutes of kicking the ball back and forth across the pitch that feels too large for the task at hand, occasionally scoring, only to end up with what amounts to a pretty low scoring game. It’s just hard to watch, it seems to move so much slower than I can handle.
If it works for others, that’s awesome; any sport that has the potential to bring many people together is a great thing.
rdtsc 20 minutes ago [-]
> The United States is not exactly lacking in athletic prowess, as our women’s team and our success in other sports show.
That's one of the answers: it's seen as a "women's" sport mostly. In school boys play football and girls play soccer in rough general terms. And because football, basketball, baseball is already there there just isn't much demand for another "ball" sport to care about so to speak.
PaulHoule 10 minutes ago [-]
It's funny, at Cornell I think the men play soccer better than the woman unequivocally but at Ithaca College the men play a very physical but stupid game whereas the women play a much smarter game when it comes to controlling the space.
A men's and women's sport that can be played with the same facilities is an economic plus -- college soccer is a great way to have fun supporting your school. It's a very different situation than field hockey, which is almost exclusively a woman's sport in the US although it is a huge men's sport in India and many other countries.
hawaiianbrah 13 minutes ago [-]
> That's one of the answers: it's seen as a "women's" sport mostly. In school boys play football and girls play soccer in rough general terms.
I’ve never heard that, in fact there are more boys who play in America than girls.
bananamogul 42 minutes ago [-]
Because we have 4 other sports that originated in the Americas: basketball, gridiron football, hockey, and baseball.
If you like soccer, perhaps you'd like to try our faster, more kinetic version, called hockey. It's the same sport (goals and such), and you get to watch it in air-conditioned comfort.
Or if you still like the "players are fragile" model of soccer but want more goals, we also have basketball. It's the same sport, and you get to watch it in air-conditioned comfort.
Or we have two other sports that are totally different.
Football and hockey require a serious gear/facility commitment, but baseball and basketball don't, so there's something for everyone.
cortesoft 33 minutes ago [-]
Basketball players are almost a completely separate population from soccer players. The shortest basketball player would almost be too tall for soccer.
RugnirViking 16 minutes ago [-]
"too tall for soccer" is something of a weird statement, given the large advantage height gives in the game. Even at high levels, some teams' strategy resvolves around having a couple tall guys (and many other teams keep tall guys to deal with those same strategies). It of course isn't everything, given the need for stamina, sprinting, and strength, which are hard to have all at once in a tall person. But its not uncommon for defenders and some strikers to be 6'8" or upward - average height in the premier league is 6'1" and creeping upward each year
reenorap 19 minutes ago [-]
The insane level of flopping with no dignity or shame, and the insane level of allowing this to happen without any penalties is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t watch soccer. Those in charge WANT soccer players to flop but I don’t understand why. It’s dishonorable and weak but the sport does nothing to stop it.
Another reason is that the best American athletes will go to the sport that pays the most and soccer is on the bottom of that list.
halJordan 13 minutes ago [-]
Gamesmanship in soccer is not more egregious than in say basketball. If you look at the nonsense ronnie coleman did in his day you wouldn't be complaining about soccer players
I think an answer would need to look at the difference in how kids and teens play soccer in the US vs other countries.
In the US soccer is mostly a younger kids' sport, and is generally highly structured, with kids playing on teams once or twice a week. Compare to Europe, where many boys are playing once or twice every day, in an unstructured format, during recess and after school.
Starting from a young age, Europeans who show talent are getting drafted into soccer academies before they're 10, greatly increasing the amount of competitive play. But this is on top of the everyday soccer they're playing.
For a US kid, soccer is typically "pay to play." A local league costs money. A private high school with a good program costs money. In Europe, beyond (again) the continuous unstructured play, the academies and farm teams are free.
Finally, a good European player doesn't necessarily head to college. They may be playing for a serious club team at 18 or 19.
Meanwhile, a gifted US soccer player heads to college (maybe on a scholarship but maybe not--again, pay to play), plays for the varsity team a few times a week during the season, and four years later might get on one of the relatively few club teams.
My guess is that less than 5% of european soccer players ever set a foot in College, at least in the biggest Leagues (UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany). I only know two: Lampard and Iniesta. There might be a few more, but they are oddities.
If anything, a good player and good student usually has to make a choice at 18 years old: "am I good enough to bet my future on being a pro player and delay/abandon the College, or do I give up on being pro and focus on studying?"
Basketball might be closest to the USA’s soccer – lots of unstructured play and selection to schools and academies at a young age, but historically the pay to play travel circuit plays a big deal there too, and American basketball players are no doubt internationally competitive.
I don’t have an answer either, I just think that the way we play soccer isn’t limiting the best potential players. I just think the best potential players are choosing to play other sports.
Soccer has major competition in the US.
Because these sports started in America too, America usually dominates them.
So if you even smell a college varsity team, you are already in the slow track. It's really rare to find a star that wasn't at least in a farm team at 15. I have a friend that was already there at 10, and his ceiling was just starter in a low tier team in La Liga.
Meanwhile relatively small countries like Uruguay, Portugal, and Croatia has a long history of great teams and producing insane talents.
Croatia is really in Europe and Europe was always solid on soccer. Same with Portugal. Uruguay is more interesting, but Brasil was always happy with soccer, as was Argentina. It is much easier to establish soccer in South America than in North America. Canadians much prefer ice hockey.
Back in high school, due to a dearth of places to play and ubiquitous NO BALL GAMES signs we would joke that surely it must be entirely flipped in Brazil, and the elderly there scold the youth for not playing ball at any given moment.
There are soccer academies in the US but it is still relatively new and we do not have a great development model yet. Youth academies are also fairly antithetical to how talent pipelines work for the established US sports.
It’s just that Brazil currently doesn’t care about baseball that much and baseball first has to become popular, except they already have soccer plus even basketball is growing quicker.
In America, soccer has to first become popular but there are so many other sports that people currently care about more.
You need to look at what sports an eight-year-old is playing in the backyard, what sports his Dad is excited about on the TV.
An agile, fast, coordinated kid who's coachable and wants to train hard but is going to grow up to be 5' 8" is not going to make the NFL or the NBA, but if they've got the athleticism to play in the World Cup... well, in the US that kid will be the point guard on the local high school basketball team and also play safety and wide receiver on the football team.
In India, they'd be a cricket star.
I grew up in a European (Holland) country and as boys we'd play soccer all the time, during school on the schoolyard, after school, in the evening and the vast majority of boys in my class joined the local soccer team (me included). Even though we were a local team in a small village, scouts of slightly more important teams would sometimes come to our matches.
Basically, because soccer is so ingrained in our culture, virtually all boys play soccer at some point. That combined with all the clubs that play at different levels, and the scouting network, virtually no talent is missed.
Put differently, when a new Cruyff or Robben is born, there is a high probability that he will be found.
Women's soccer is really a different story. It has only started to take off in recent years and at least as many girls seem to play hockey.
Of course, it should be said that the only sport that really matters is Korfbal/Korfball :).
Learning to play well heavily depends on exposure to an appropriate level of play that challenges and stretches young athletes. If they get to a level thats too challenging, they aren't picked for match day, don't play, and wash out. If they stay at a level that isn't challenging enough, they learn bad habits that won't work against much stronger players. Thus, even those few americans that do play a lot at home struggle to make the jump to play against teams from outside, because the level of competition overseas is so much stronger. This is why for many many years, everyone on the mens football team played and lived in europe (and usually grew up there in these academies, too). The only way to develop players at home is if you can convince enough of these highly skilled players and coaches to move to the US long enough to play against the developing players, so they can hone their craft in a way that actually works against the best in the business.
This also explains why the women's game doesnt see the same problem, becuase that massive infrastructure in europe and the rest of the americas doesnt (or rather, didnt) exist to the same degree for young girls.
As long as that’s case I’ll have trouble believing we’re gonna be great.
Soccer is like the metric system of sports. Everyone else uses it. It makes sense and we should like it, but we’re culturally suspicious of it.
No. Not at all. It doesn't make any more sense to chase a ball to kick it just with feet, than to chase it protected hands allowed or to chase it using only hands to touch it.
Different sports.
(I am from europe and did play, but think soccer is highly overrated. Unlike the metric system that actually has a clear logic behind it and makes handling scientific numbers more easy)
The best softball teams were the MBA and law students, who were mostly American.
But physics absolutely mopped up in soccer.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/21/sport/uswnt-success-histo...
Yes, it’s possible that it’s a “me” problem.
90 minutes of kicking the ball back and forth across the pitch that feels too large for the task at hand, occasionally scoring, only to end up with what amounts to a pretty low scoring game. It’s just hard to watch, it seems to move so much slower than I can handle.
If it works for others, that’s awesome; any sport that has the potential to bring many people together is a great thing.
That's one of the answers: it's seen as a "women's" sport mostly. In school boys play football and girls play soccer in rough general terms. And because football, basketball, baseball is already there there just isn't much demand for another "ball" sport to care about so to speak.
A men's and women's sport that can be played with the same facilities is an economic plus -- college soccer is a great way to have fun supporting your school. It's a very different situation than field hockey, which is almost exclusively a woman's sport in the US although it is a huge men's sport in India and many other countries.
I’ve never heard that, in fact there are more boys who play in America than girls.
If you like soccer, perhaps you'd like to try our faster, more kinetic version, called hockey. It's the same sport (goals and such), and you get to watch it in air-conditioned comfort.
Or if you still like the "players are fragile" model of soccer but want more goals, we also have basketball. It's the same sport, and you get to watch it in air-conditioned comfort.
Or we have two other sports that are totally different.
Football and hockey require a serious gear/facility commitment, but baseball and basketball don't, so there's something for everyone.
Another reason is that the best American athletes will go to the sport that pays the most and soccer is on the bottom of that list.