K just stayed up till 2 watching the replay. Played out like an incredibly cheesy Lifetime movie. USA! USA! USA! Also, Hope Solo is just stupid hot.
My favourite example is Uruguay, 3.5mill people but 4th in WC and 18 in FIFA ranking. These kids grow up playing ball and live it, you don't need a big population to be good.
In the US, there are lot of choices outside of soccer. Poor kids play football and basketball because they believe that's the way to college and money. Think of all the kids that run 4.2 forties that go to Blinn, that don't make it to the pros. If we could have diverted them to soccer, we would be a power house in Soccer just like we are in almost every other team sport we focus on.
This is an awesome post.....and I know kids that are dominant at 8-10 years old, and then their parents have to shell out $5000 per year to be on a travel soccer club, and most of them just go...nah, screw it.... Meanwhile all their friends are playing baseball, football and basketball and you see it on TV, and they start to gravitate away from soccer. We could be competetive in soccer as a nation, check that, we could be elite as a country, but until it gets on TV all the time, and there is some serious $$$$ to be made, it won't happen here in the states. DD
I don't follow the MLS, but I do recall reading that most MLS teams have their own youth academies these days, which should lead to the death of college soccer. So the US is changing the way it develops its players, just don't know how good the academies are or how they are structured.
Uruguay is the exception to the rule, hardly the norm. Your post should read "my favorite and only example is Uruguay" Sorry but population plays a huge part in athletics. The sheer size of America is a major if not the reason that we are good at sports compared to other western countries. If USA were say the same size as Canada in population, they'd be about as good as them in sports.
Each team does it differently as far as how early they start. It's definitely a good start to catch up to the way the rest of the world has done it for years. I wish it were available to me when I was a kid.
All of the MLS teams have some sort of youth system now, but I think there is only one with a true academy system where the kids train daily and live in dorms and are schooled by the team. With Houston's setup the kids still spend most of their time with their club teams. Also, a lot of the scouting is still at clubs, which means they are still a barrier. There are benefits though, the kids that do well with the academy team are brought in to train with the full team at times and they've set up some tours to foreign countries for they're youth teams. Houston has signed four players that took part in their youth system already, three of them still went to college before signing, but one was signed straight from high school. By that logic USA should be able to beat Canada in hockey pretty easily, right? The fact that in other countries soccer is a huge part of the culture is why they can produce better players. There may be a ton of kids playing soccer here, but they play once a week with a practice or two thrown in for a few months of the year and are coached by whichever dad was willing to volunteer. In other countries kids play every day year round, and when they join leagues they're coached by guys that grew up playing every day year round and understand the game.
I think it's also about your heroes growing up. Kids that grows up playing little league soccer are unlikely to have their heroes growing up being major soccer stars. Training players and allowing their skills to develop is not the same as picking the best athletes and push them into soccer. Based on population, look at the major population countries (China, India, etc.) I hardly see their soccer teams doing much damage likely because of what's available to them. In Europe, the players that are exceptional at a young age pretty much have a free ride and were competing at an "all or nothing" level since they are kids. Their survival on the program depends on their competition level. Kids can easily lose their spots to other kids and that would be the end of it. The basics of the European game were mentally drilled in their heads at those ages as well. Brazil's heroes came in a different style. It's about the beautiful futbol for them and style >> results in more instances than not. Their schools and "academies" are more than likely funded by Europe of all places. They push the stars and then as a teen, gets sold to European clubs; where the money comes back to develop more stars. In the US, it just really doesn't pay to be great in soccer. I remembered looking through MLS rosters and pay rates, and noted that in Houston alone, the highest player for the Dynamo is being paid less than $250,000 a year. Anyone know Darnell Jenkins of the Texans?!? Most people probably don't and he's making $350k+ to be practice squad material. Internationally, these players are paid very nicely with huge signing bonuses. The good camps are generally baseball, basketball, football camps as opposed to soccer camps. I would think that those 12-13 years of childhood would very much be affected by this.
You bring up some good points. I think this could change with soccer getting more exposure. Now we have FSC and GolTV that are dedicated to soccer, and ESPN is showing it more and more. In poorer countries like Brazil playing professionally is the only way out of poverty for a lot of kids. Ochocinco has come out and said that his favorite sport to play is soccer, but in high school he had to make a choice between it and football. In the end it was an easy choice because football was were the money was. And as an example of the Dynamo youth system giving opportunities to kids, this weekend the Dynamo reserves played against the Monterrey U20 team. 17 year old Fernando Piña started in goal, and two or three other academy players were brought in during the second half. Piña shines with Dynamo Reserves
This is just wrong dude, don't start the arrogant tone if you don't know anything about the topic. Netherlands #2 in the world, 16mil. Spain is #1 and has 46mil, that's nothing compared to big countries. Portugal is #7 with 10.5mil. Croatia #8 with 4.5mil. Norway #11 with 5mil. #14 Ivory Coast. The top30 are stacked with countries under 10mil that are above Russia, France, USA, China, Japan,...Lookup the populations of the top countries, your theory is flawed and not true. We're talking about soccer here, don't come up with other athletics that don't have anything to do with the culture of the majority of countries. And the last phrase about Canada is silly, DrLudicrous pointed it out well.
I agree with you in general that there is a strong correlation between population size and success in sports, but there are more examples. From the top of my head: Netherlands (again and again) Denmark (1992 European Champion) Greece (2004 European Champion) Even Argentina at 40 million is not the hugest country, and they have always been a threat and have won the world cup twice. It's a mix of culture/passion for the sport, tradition of talent scouting, strength of the professional league in the country, economic strength and population size.
I don't know anything about soccer and don't have an argument on either side of the fence... but this post was a buurrn... just wanted to add that... lol
Just to go further: Croatia is #8 with 4.5mil, won handball olympics and world championships multiple times, basketball 2nd and two times 3rd at world cup, won Wimbledon. Serbia has 7.5mil and has pretty much won anything in different sports. I listed many other teams that are very successful in soccer but have a small population, I didn't even include Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, , Paraguay, Scandinavian or Eastern-European teams. Saying population is the major factor is wrong, examples of big countries that are mediocre at soccer: China, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Arab countries, Nigeria, Japan, almost all Asian and African countries. Realist, your theory is simply wrong and not backed by facts at all, soccer is all about culture, spirit and history.
I'm actually a little excited about the game this morning. 2 hours to kick off. I've never been excited to watch a women's game before. Even in 99 when they were in the finals, I don't really remember watching it except catching the shoot out. GO USA!
Not a big soccer fan, but I find the women's game more exciting. Maybe its because there is more contact.
Whuuuuuuut. :grin: No way, women's football is way slower, bad passing, tons of shots from 30m, no good combinations over 90min. More contact? BS. Ever watched Premier League?
