I do not intend this to be soccer bashing; if that is all you want to read about soccer, you will probably be disappointed.
I am not – - nor do I aspire to be – - one of the “soccer poets” who is certain that someday soon the American sporting public will come around to the thinking of the rest of the world and embrace soccer at the expense of other US sports. If that is all you want to read about soccer, you will be disappointed.
I am going to try to be analytical here about the game and the US place in that game in a world perspective knowing full well that I will invite the wrath of soccer-lovers and soccer-haters. C’est la guerre.
The United States was the most populous nation represented in the past World Cup tournament. Therefore, one would think that with the largest pool of potential talent to select from, it should have been one of the powerhouse teams in the tournament. It was not. Yes, the US did win their group. In addition, yes, the US was the only group winner to leave the tournament in the “Round of Sixteen”.
After watching about a half dozen games in the first tranche of group play, it was clear to me that the US was not going to win the World Cup any more than Japan or Ghana were going to win the World Cup. They proved themselves good enough to make it to this tournament but they are not/were not an elite squad. That is the view without putting on rose-colored glasses or from the vantage point that soccer has so little scoring that all it takes is one lucky break to win any game any time…
Following the exit of the US team, there were reports that the head of the US Soccer Federation – - a man named Sunil Gulati whom I could not pick out of a lineup with the Dixie Chicks – - said that he would take some time to ponder the future of Bob Bradley as the coach of the US National Team. That is probably one of Mr. Gulati’s prerogatives based on his office. It also conveniently deflects from him and his organization the scrutiny as to why with the largest pool of talent to choose from the US team sent to South Africa was talent-deficient.
After the loss to Ghana that sent the US team home, Gulati held a lengthy news conference and buried in the midst of it was this comment:
“The missed opportunity [not being able to play another game or two] is partly a chance to get to the quarters and the matchup with Uruguay, but it’s also a missed opportunity to stay in the American public’s eyes for another four, five, six days, maybe 10 days, when interest is at an all-time high.”
Let us analyze that for what it is. He puts the burden of keeping soccer in the public’s eyes on the US National Team in an event that happens once every four years. Excuse me, but if that is not one of the prime objectives of the US Soccer Federation, then what the Hell does that organization do for a living between now and 2014 in Brazil? I had never heard or read the name Sunil Gulati until reports on that news conference; I cannot recall the last time I read something about a creative initiative on the part of the US Soccer Federation to do anything other than to maintain its existence and its hegemony over US soccer. If anyone wants to hand out rotten tomatoes to a group of folks who do not keep soccer in the public’s eyes and who miss opportunities to do so, allow me to suggest that the biggest bushel basket of rotten tomatoes ought to go to Sunil Gulati’s office – - wherever the Hell that is.
In that same news conference, Mr. Gulati seemed for a moment to happen upon a significant challenge for US soccer when he said:
“The expectations have to be realistic. The players that are representing the U.S. are not players at Arsenal and Inter [Milan] and Real Madrid and Barcelona and Chelsea and Manchester United and so on. The players we were playing against in some of these situations are.”
Ah yes, there is the crux of the problem as to why the US made the World Cup tournament, struggled to make it to the knockout round and then made its early exit. The “missed opportunity” Mr. Gulati referenced is part and parcel of the problem that the United States does not develop great soccer players from its large and diverse gene pool. Now, ask yourself this question:
Who has the responsibility to develop soccer players in the US?
If you answered, “The coach of the US National Team”, you probably do not have sufficient brainpower to master the mathematical concepts needed to run a soccer scoreboard. Player development and the promotion/maintenance of the development programs is the purview of the … US … Soccer … Federation.
From these comments, I fear that Mr. Gulati is living in a delusion. He recognizes that the longer the US stays in the World Cup tournament the more positive exposure the team and the sport gets in the eyes of the US sporting public. He also recognizes that the US National Team is not on a par – - talent-wise – - with other squads. What he does not do is to connect those dots and see that the problem with all this lies within the organization that he directs.
Mr. Gulati. Mr. Sunil Gulati. Please pick up the white courtesy clue phone to receive one. Mr. Gulati…
Here are some of the problems that the US Soccer Federation faces. The problem with the listing I am about to present is that these are the same problems that the US Soccer Federation has faced for the last 50 years and so far there has been only marginal change in status. Translation: The US Soccer Federation has been a feckless body for multiple decades…
1. Name a single population center in the US where the following situation obtains:
The high school football and basketball coaches have to prowl the sidelines of soccer pitches all over their districts to beg the best athletes to play football or basketball in addition to soccer.
The answer is that this happens nowhere…
2. Youth soccer – the activity that soccer poets always point to as evidence of the growth of interest in the sport and the basis for future US dominance on the world stage – has been co-opted by yuppie-like parents who have turned it into a feelgood exercise where everyone gets a trophy and there are no winners and losers. That is not how Lionel Messi, Kaka, Wayne Rooney and Miroslav Klose “came up” in the game.
3. Many of the prominent soccer teams (clubs to use the world parlance) have their own soccer academies for youth as young as 8 years old where kids go to learn skills first and then to play games. These soccer academies also provide academic tutors in many circumstances. But the main difference between the world and the US is that in other countries, the kids are learning soccer skills from top teachers of those skills while US kids are running around playing soccer games that are “organized” only in the sense that chronological adults have scheduled the games and gotten the players to and from the venue at the appointed hour.
4. At precisely the age when the best foreign players show that they are good enough to play at the professional club level, many of the best US soccer players head off to college. Believe me, I am a full-blown advocate of higher education; I have no quarrel with kids getting real educations to set them up for the rest of their lives. However, from the perspective of putting top teams on the world stage, four years of college soccer in the US are nowhere near as developmentally positive as playing on a club level professional team. Nevertheless, that is the “career arc” for many of the players who came up through the US youth soccer system.
I do not pretend to have sufficient insight to state with confidence that these are the only problems for the US Soccer Federation to solve should they truly care about making the US a world power in soccer – - as opposed to raising money to pay their own salaries first and then letting the chips fall where they may every four years. However, I think the US National Team is apt to “miss another opportunity” in Brazil in 2014 and in wherever in 2018 and 2022 if the US Soccer Federation does not change a few fundamental ways that it goes about its business.
We are at the point in a four-year cycle where the soccer poets point to survey data and predict an explosion of soccer interest in the US. This is the time when those folks will say – - correctly – - that more kids in the US under the age of 12 play soccer than play baseball. Those data have been reported for at least the last decade; I have little doubt that the data are correct. The problem is twofold:
1. Huge increases in youth participation have yet to link in any direct way to huge increases in soccer interest in the country in terms of game attendance or television ratings. Yes, I do know about the FOX Soccer Channel; I watch it on my cable system. Its ratings are about what the ratings are for Versus; its ratings are not nearly as good as The Food Channel.
2. The vast majority of those kids playing youth soccer are not being taught skills by accomplished teachers of soccer skills. They are being bused about to play games instead. When the cream of that crop gets to the world stage, they will be talent-deficient not because of some genetic flaws but because their developmental time has favored game playing over skill teaching.
The US Soccer Federation and Sunil Gulati can fire Bob Bradley or retain him. It is their prerogative and I have no quarrel with that. The problem is that that if they fire him – - or even if they retain him – - they will announce that this is a key element in their long-range plan to move the US forward in the rankings of world soccer.
That is what they will assert.
What it will really be is irrelevant.
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…