****, that thing never even got TO the goalline I don't think, much less all the way across it.

No goal line technology in CONCACAF?

They barely have computers in Mexico man.

this is what happens when you bring in a scrub af status quo coach like Arena. he demands nothing from his players...hence the complete lack of effort consistently displayed by many key players during this nightmare qualification.

If they can't do goal line technology they need an official on the line.

me and my barber got HEATED recounting this atrocious qualifying run.

Do you have to pay to play in youth leagues/clubs around the world?

US can't compete in soccer because in the US the best athletes don't play soccer. In Brazil, Germany and England the kids that are great athletes do play soccer, in the US if you are a top athlete you are playing one of the big 3 sports, maybe hockey in the north. Also now kids are specializing in sports and playing 1 sport year round. It doesn't help that soccer season is the same as football season and if you are a big, strong, fast kid you are almost always on the football team.

How many Dominican and Cuban NFL players do you see? The reason is if you are a great athlete in those countries you play baseball, that's why there are so many latin major league players. The NHL is dominated by Canadians because in Canada the best athletes usually take up hockey as kids.

anyone else really feel like smashing in that extraordinarily wide nose of Bruce Arena right about now?!?!?

DA is less than 1% of sanctioned Youth Soccer.

chin up, bro. Hopefully you can thoroughly enjoy the WC with or without the us natty team

the usa draws from a player pool many of orders of magnitude higher than some qualifying teams and still much bigger than legit countries. getting weaker athletes isn't a good reason if it was the main reason. i don't think it is much of a factor anyway

Still going to watch every game. But gd this hurts.

I was in San Francisco when Ochoa and Chicharito first touched down in the United States to play Columbia in a friendly back in '10. There was a bus, this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Chicharito tried to feed it a carrot, while Ochoa was petting it. He thought it was a horse. This really happened. He tried to feed a bus a carrot, and now you're telling me their country has computers? I didn't know that!

Holy ****. I am embarrassed at how long and hard I laughed at that bluefox.

I'm not familiar but this sounds crazy

They use Nate Silver computer numbers not Vegas lines.

I’m sure you probably do in some but not to the extent that you do in the US. In most countries youth academies are run by professional clubs, of which there are thousands in any one country, who see the youth setup as an investment. Some/most of the DA clubs in the US are tuition free but there really aren’t that many considering how big the country is.

Yes, and the DA is one part of the entire pyramid which has the US National teams at the top and rec/grassroots soccer at the bottom. All of which are sanctioned by US Soccer whose ultimate goal is to get players to the National team.

So, while the DA was started to develop players for the youth national teams all of the leagues/clubs below it on the pyramid are supposed to funnel the best players to DA clubs.

Of course it's not free and you have to pay a membership fee/contribution but here (western europe) you can sign up your teenager kid to a youth club for low 3 figures per year so it's affordable to pretty much everyone. Some clubs may be more upscale (better facilities, better location, better structure) and more expensive than others but the price don't get outrageous

This argument is fallacious for many reasons.

First, no one as small as pro soccer players is playing US football or basketball. A big guy like Ronaldo is 6'1, which is too small to play point guard or anything other than cornerback at the pro level. The intersection of athletic skills between soccer, basketball and football is pretty low. Runts like Messi and Xavi just can't even dream of playing basketball or football. That big strong kid who makes a good linebacker generally is a clod with a ball at the feet.

Maybe tennis players could play soccer. Rafa Nadal started out in Real Madrid's youth team, and his uncle played on the Spanish national soccer team. But look at his thighs. That's a soccer build.

Second, consider the major soccer powers: Germany, Brazil, Italy, Spain, France, Argentina, and the best of the second tier, England. All but Germany are good in other sports as well. France, Spain, Italy, Argentina all are good in basketball. The second most important pro basketball league is Spain's (which brought us talents like Porzingis). France, Argentina, Italy, and even England are all good at rugby. France and England have important pro leagues. Cricket is bigger internationally than baseball, and England is the motherland of cricket. It's not true that all the good athletes in these countries (except maybe Germany that does seem to suck at everything else) play soccer.

The problem in the US is that people think soccer is about raw athleticism, when far more important are on the ball technical skills, crisp passing, and positional sense. Watch Spanish or Italian kids on the playground practicing controlling the ball receiving a pass and compare US kids running around in circles, and you'll see what the difference is. It's not that you have to have god shamgod's handles to make it as a pro soccer player anymore than you do to make it in the NBA, but the culture that produces guys with those handles produces Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook, and the cultures that produce the same in soccer produces Ronaldos, Neymar, Mbappe, Dybala, etc...

And di Maria, Aguero, Dybala etc... Even an old, broken down Mascherano is better than anything the US has ever hard. (They should just make Mascherano the coach now).

Any USA#1 WR or DB or RB could surely have been an elite soccerer. These guys are all 5'10" to 6'3" and blazing fast with elite quickness. And linebackers if they focused on soccer wouldn't have bulked up so much.

And that ignores the fact that during formative years the atheletes don't know how tall they will be. An eight year old doesn't know he's going to end up being three inches too short to be in the NBA

haha pretty good.


i hear that Juan Carlos Osorio is a candidate for the job. if you guys took him before the world cup, that would be great.

Julio Jones is 6'2, 220. No one playing pro soccer is sized like that. An extreme outlier is Ibra, who is around 6'4, 210 and is one of the biggest guys playing in Europe. Damn few pro soccer players weigh more than 180. Andres Iniesta is 5'7 about 150. Ronaldo might be 175. Messi around 160. No one in the NFL is close to that small. Basically none of the pro RBs, WRs have typical size for top tier soccer (all too bulky). They all almost certainly lack the aerobic fitness talent needed in soccer. Football is about power, balance, lateral quickness, but of a completely different kind than what is used in soccer. Floyd Mayweather looks more like and probably has closer to the athletic skills of a pro soccer player than most any football player I can think of.

This kind of thinking is part of why the US is so bad at soccer. The guys who are classically pigeonholed as athletes in the US are those who fit the football model. They aren't what you need in soccer. Skateboarders are a better population to look for soccer type athletes.