OT: USA Fails to qualify for world cup

[j4remi]

This is frustrating but the rebuild and restructuring of youth development is already under way. Pulisic is the first one to fly through the new system but U-17 team is the most promising we've had since Donovan, Beasley and the gang came up. I hope it pays dividends five years from now but I'm confident that we'll be in a good place a decade from now. This loss could be brutal but I also think it might be a catalyst to even more aggressive moves toward growth and development. I want a team like Belgium (if memory serves) had last World Cup with a gang of youth. With our defense never developing any consistency, this result isn't a shock to me...painful but not a shock. But hopefully this opens up opportunities to fully shift and focus on the next generation because the most promising players of the last group kinda flopped imo (talking Bradley and altidore mainly).

https://www.theringer.com/2017/10/5/16425234/usmnt-u17-world-cup-josh-sargent-tim-weah-andrew-carleton

Results aren’t the point—not exactly, anyway. The U-17 World Cup is about the future, about seeing and being seen. Every major club—and many minor ones, too—will have scouts at the games, hoping to find talent to fill their ranks. And the American team, paired in a group with India, Ghana (always freaking Ghana), and Colombia, will draw a fair number of those talent-seeking men. “The U-17 team, it’s not a secret that it’s one of the best American teams ever,” says Sebastian Dremmler, Bayern Munich’s head coach of international programs who oversees the German giant’s efforts in the U.S. “Of course, all European teams are looking with two eyes on the U.S. team to see what happens.”

The red, white, and blue might go out in the group stage or they might win the damn thing. (Head coach John Hackworth, heading to his fourth U-17 World Cup as either the head coach or an assistant, says anything less than a quarterfinal appearance would be a disappointment.) Regardless of where the Americans end up, the quality and depth of this U.S. team—Hackworth and his staff brought in more than 100 kids for training sessions during this two-year cycle, significantly more than in the past—is nearly unprecedented. The efforts put into youth development over the last decade are finally starting to produce results on a mass scale. This American squad is arguably closer to the best teams in the tournament in terms of raw talent than ever before —and it might be worse than every American team that comes after it.

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[LordCovington33]

Australia plays Honduras now? Aussie football has been rapidly declining since 2006, but we should beat them?

[DrCoach]

Trini Stand Up!

[seren]

I am very disappointed. I was hoping to watch the US games with my son who just recently started playing soccer.

I don't want to go into conspiracy but this kinda saved the team to go to Russia during very weird times and the public having some unpleasant conversations about current political climate surrounding both countries' leadership.

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[JXL]

Complete restructuring of the US Soccer committee and roster construction of younger players instead of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard (both expired about 3-4 years ago) should be a start.

[ZKnicks]

Now the U.S. Team will have to rebuild....like the Knicks should do.

Yeah lots of older players on USA. Feel bad for some of those guys like Dempsey and Howard. Not the way I wanted them to go out. Now to rebuild around Pulisic and hopefully a more creative coach.

Agreed!
Last night was disappointing on so many levels.
Pulisic is the truth and I hope they realize it is time to build around him and our youth.

Really hope Peru gets in. Wife is Peruvian and a soccer fanatic, at least my boys will get to see one of their parents home countries play in the World Cup.

[Brazilian Knick]

Sad the USA Team didn't make it to the World Cup.

Brazil has a good young core and is one of the candidates to win the World Cup. But it won't be easy. There are at least 3 or 4 teams stronger than us now. Germany, for example, did a great job in their rebuilding and they can be considered a better team than Brazil now.

[MaseInYourFace]

Complete restructuring of the US Soccer committee and roster construction of younger players instead of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard (both expired about 3-4 years ago) should be a start.

I think Howard was a bit past his prime but Dempsey even up to last night has been one of their better players.

[ZKnicks]

Sad the USA Team didn't make it to the World Cup.

Brazil has a good young core and is one of the candidates to win the World Cup. But it won't be easy. There are at least 3 or 4 teams stronger than us now. Germany, for example, did a great job in their rebuilding and they can be considered a better team than Brazil now.

Not going to pretend that I am an expert in soccer by any means, but I watched part of the Germany game the other day (vs Azerbaijan) and they impressed the hell out of me.
Talk about a well oiled machine...geez.

[NoLayupRule]

Gulati and Arena should be fired before midnight and anyone 28-29 or older should be exiled. Need new leadership and a commitment to build through young players. 2022 is a long ways away. Ugh.

Arena should never have been brought back

he was always terrible

conservative, unimaginative, uninspired play basically built around counter attacking and trying to steal a run against play


Klinsman should never have been let go. he was excellent for USA soccer

terrible

[3toheadmelo]

Trini Stand Up!

Watch on YouTube

weyyyy

[el13adnino]

How is nobody talking about the goal that wasn’t that eliminated USA

[Knicksfan1992]

They're are a ton of systemic issues with why we struggle at soccer that I'm sure other smart posters will touch on as I'm too tired to go through it but hopefully This is a wake up call for US soccer to change things up. We have some really good players coming through the ranks now and MLS academies are becoming more prevalent and viable. It's going to be a while but we'll get there eventually. Hiring Arena was 2 steps backwards and he should be fired before he even gets off the plane and Klinsmann should still be in charge of youth development. Find a younger more forward looking coach (maybe a Tab Ramos for example) and lets sink or swim with the young pups next cycle. Pulisic is the real deal btw. Could become the US's first legitimate top 30-50 player in the world.

I could go down that path and break it down but Im going to sit this one out, partner. Flawed by hindering the growth of players, I dealt with it on the youth scale, its ugly. Hopefully it changes so our best talents arent forced to go overseas to develop in youth programs/academies. I saw some of the most talented players here in the states get neutered and fall victim to nonsense coaching.

Lemme rant, cause I've seen you drop knowledge with soccer and we share a lot of similar beliefs in bball too...

I played D1, ODP state, reached the regional pool in Colorado Springs. One of my best friends was a lottery pick in the MLS. He salvaged his career by dipping out to brazil to go play in their well known youth academy (forgot the name). He got no playing time on my premiere club team cause he didnt fit systematic play the coach wanted. That wasnt even ODP or D1....club, he rode the bench. Let that sink in, its our system in a nutshell. Seen it on both coasts since I lived on both as a youth. Seen and played against the best of the best in the tristate area and out here in cali. Coaching, development of players and not giving kids the freedom to express their talents is a huge downfall.

Theres more and Im sure you have a better pulse on the current, but this is just what I saw which cultivated what essentially we're seeing now.

EDIT--I'll keep my eye out for Pulisic, maybe he'll spark an interest for me to watch a little.

Yep you hear horror stories like yours from a ton of people involved with US Soccer at a young age. It would take me truly pages and pages to really delve into why American can't compete on the big stage in soccer. One of the biggest reasons we over achieved throughout the 00's was because we had some sort of identity in the NT. We were going to work harder and be fitter/more athletic then every team we played (which I think is somewhat of the direction America should be headed in but just with more skill attached to it). Right now we have no direction. Gulati (the USSF president who will be fired hopefully in the coming days) got his hands on things and seemed like he wanted an overhaul from top to bottom when he hired Klinsmann. Problem is Gulati is an economics guy and putting in Klinsmann directives would hurt his pockets so he went half-azz with it and eventually fired Klinsmann for a re-tread with no future vision like Arena and well like we've seen with the Knicks a half-azz rebuild gets you results like these...

Point being the USSF has no clue how to develop it's key age group of 8-13 year olds and pay for play has significantly limited the kids who we are picking from for our youth national teams. No other major sport costs as much to play at a high level at the youth stage as soccer does which is absolutely absurd given the cost of equipment of soccer compared to football, hockey, etc. It's an absolute joke. Look no further than Clint Dempsey for a perfect example of how pay for play severely limits the NT. Clint who is arguably the greatest player ever to don the stars and stripes almost never was a thing because he was from an extremely poor family in a town a few hours from Houston, TX. His sister was older and a budding tennis prospect for whom his parents had to muster up enough cash to get tennis lessons. This left Clint unable to play big club soccer because his parents couldn't afford the trips to Houston for him to play. Unfortunately, his sister died tragically, however, his parents were then able to provide high level soccer for Clint in his teenage years (after learning how to play against grown men/former central/south American professionals in Nacogdoches, TX) by being able to get the cash to drive like 2-3 hours to Houston every weekend which got him just enough exposure at the end of his adolescent years to get him 1 d1 scholarship offer to Furman and the rest is history. Now US Soccer has come a long way from that, but it's still not good enough. Point being how many poor kids have the family structure and discipline to fight through all that adversity just to play soccer in a country that doesn't value it? For every Clint Dempsey there's probably 100,000 kids who don't even think to play soccer or don't have the means to because US Soccer's reach just isn't there in many poorer areas.

MLS has helped big time now requiring fully funded academies for all of it's franchises which really helps develop talent from 14-18 an age group that also was being swept to the side previously and as J4remi pointed out earlier we're starting to see the fruits of that labor with the U-17s now who have probably the most talented group in US history and tons of players who European clubs are noticing and plucking at a young age which only helps us. Ironically though MLS has probably helped our main competition in central America more by providing those players an opportunity to play in a big money league with less foreign restrictions than the Mexican, Brazilian, and Argentinian leagues have which came to fruition last night when Panama and Honduras had all goal scorers from MLS.

This is where US Soccer has to step up and realize that relying on MLS to do their dirty work for them will get us no where. If there's one silver lining to this is that this will finally produce enough outrage from the TV companies, casual fans, and sports pundits to finally induce some change because this is truly a disastrous result and an embarrassment for us on the world stage. USSF needs to take initiative and start to take recruitment seriously and stop catering to only the upper class. I'm not even close to getting to all of the points I think need to be addressed but I have to end it here because I have an actual job to do that doesn't involve breaking down the details of why the Men's team sucks

[Knicksfan1992]

Gulati and Arena should be fired before midnight and anyone 28-29 or older should be exiled. Need new leadership and a commitment to build through young players. 2022 is a long ways away. Ugh.

Arena should never have been brought back

he was always terrible

conservative, unimaginative, uninspired play basically built around counter attacking and trying to steal a run against play


Klinsman should never have been let go. he was excellent for USA soccer

terrible

Yeah pretty much. Very short sighted to bring Arena in who was basically coaching for now and has no pulse on what has to be done to grow US Soccer for the next few decades. Klinsmann dug his own grave in a way and had his own faults, but he shouldn't have been extradited the way he was because his work in revamping the youth system was the first real progress being made on that side of things in a long time.

[don't panac]

watched the game last night in disbelief.
what a pathetic performance.

no ideas, no urgency, no results.

shameful.

this not only affects the entire movement. Hopefully it will spur a complete rebuild, with 2022 in mind and mostly ignoring concacaf if not as training grounds. their sight should be trained straight on the world cup.

I also fear it will adversely impact how much of the world cup they will be showing.

[Knicksfan1992]

How is nobody talking about the goal that wasn’t that eliminated USA

Because we have to be done making excuses for these guys when they screw up. There's no reason to lose to T&T period. Nevermind on a night that your world cup lives are at stake. This is the best thing that could have happened tbh. It will force everyone to wake up

[don't panac]

How is nobody talking about the goal that wasn’t that eliminated USA

because
a) it wasn't that goal that eliminated us (at that point we were still through), but the next one
b) it would have not mattered if they played as they could and should have
b) it just is another excuse

if you cannot even tie with a Trinidad and Tobago team who have nothing to play for other than pride (with all respect for T&T), in a do-or-die game, then i guess you don't belong to the world cup.

T&T have barely more the 1 Million inhabitants.
Panama has a around 4, costa rica 5, honduras 9.
US have more than 320, with money, infrastructure and ten of millions of kids playing it.
it's mindboggling.

[j4remi]

How is nobody talking about the goal that wasn’t that eliminated USA

because
a) it wasn't that goal that eliminated us (at that point we were still through), but the next one
b) it would have not mattered if they played as they could and should have
b) it just is another excuse

if you cannot even tie with a Trinidad and Tobago team who have nothing to play for other than pride (with all respect for T&T), in a do-or-die game, then i guess you don't belong to the world cup.

T&T have barely more the 1 Million inhabitants.
Panama has a around 4, costa rica 5, honduras 9.
US have more than 320, with money, infrastructure and ten of millions of kids playing it.
it's mindboggling.

Everywhere else, if you're a promising young soccer player than you get brought into scholarship programs and receive great training. In the US system, if you're a promising young soccer player, you also need bundles of money to receive elite training. So while we've got 320 million people, there are probably a huge chunk of promising young players that only learn from some teammates father in a rec league because their parents can't afford the costs of club soccer in the states.

[don't panac]

Sad the USA Team didn't make it to the World Cup.

Brazil has a good young core and is one of the candidates to win the World Cup. But it won't be easy. There are at least 3 or 4 teams stronger than us now. Germany, for example, did a great job in their rebuilding and they can be considered a better team than Brazil now.

no offense, but Germany have been done with their 'rebuild' (if we can call it so) more than a decade ago (circa 2004), and even then they never had a significant dip in performance in the world cup:
2002:finalist, 2006:third, 2010:third, 2014: champions (dismantling brazil on the way)
in fact, i don't think they ever not qualified, or even not made out of the group stage in WC.

the last big tournament where they did poorly was euro 2004, where they were eliminated at the group stage.
they are also current holders of the Confederation Cup and were semi-finalist in the last euro. And won every single game in the WC qualifier campaign

so yeah, they can be considered a better team than anyone right now.

that said, i agree that brazil, along with germany, argentina, portugal, spain, france and maybe belgium seem to be the main candidates for winning the WC

[don't panac]

How is nobody talking about the goal that wasn’t that eliminated USA

because
a) it wasn't that goal that eliminated us (at that point we were still through), but the next one
b) it would have not mattered if they played as they could and should have
b) it just is another excuse

if you cannot even tie with a Trinidad and Tobago team who have nothing to play for other than pride (with all respect for T&T), in a do-or-die game, then i guess you don't belong to the world cup.

T&T have barely more the 1 Million inhabitants.
Panama has a around 4, costa rica 5, honduras 9.
US have more than 320, with money, infrastructure and ten of millions of kids playing it.
it's mindboggling.

Everywhere else, if you're a promising young soccer player than you get brought into scholarship programs and receive great training. In the US system, if you're a promising young soccer player, you also need bundles of money to receive elite training. So while we've got 320 million people, there are probably a huge chunk of promising young players that only learn from some teammates father in a rec league because their parents can't afford the costs of club soccer in the states.

agreed.
that's why it is mindboggling. there is no reason why it should be this way, especially because it s not the same way in any other sports (except maybe tennis)
i have been coaching my kids soccer teams several years, and i have come across my share of really talented kids.
none of them (that i know of) moved on to even attempting a career in soccer, even though some of them would try the basketball/baseball/football route, where their chance to succeed there would have been way lower (given their comparative skill level).