OT: Improving American Soccer
Thoughts?
A catcher collision happens probably once every 20 games. At most.
If you think Pepe got ejected for trash talk then you totally missed the game.
I mostly disagree with the "elite athlete" meme. How many elite college basketball players have taken up football and become pros or even All-pros? Their size and strength translates easily. That would never happen in soccer. Of course elite athleticism helps in any sport but in soccer, bigger, faster, stronger doesn't neccessarily mean better. At the youth level, you only need to be big or strong (or both) to be good at football, and tall to be good at basketball. Not so with soccer. It's a fluid, continuous game of spacing, passing, moving and shooting carried out on an enormous space way bigger than baskteball and wider than football. Throw in the no hands rule, and the complexity of game is orders of magnitude above that of the tightly parametered football and basketball. This means a great player must master an enormous catalogue of technical skills (every body part, every situation) to move himself and ball effectively through that much space, but also develop a vision for the game and situational awareness to quickly make tactical decisions during an continously changing, fluid and non-stop game situation. This full suite of skills and fully-developed in-game awareness, vision and strategy takes a long time to develop and, unlike other sport's, its required by every player on the field. By contrast a football player can drill the same plays and techniques for his position over and over til its second nature. Not saying there is no thinking in football or that it's easy to learn proper technique - but the division of labor can make certain positions more about execution and being the right size/mentality than anything else.
Just look at the first touch, ball control and passing decisions made by individual players on the US and compare that to a world class time like Portugal, Germany, Spain, Netherlands etc. Most of their players are not stronger or faster or more atheltic, but they have undoubtedably better skills which enables better tactical execution. Passes are crisp to players feet or head, or to space, the ball sticks to the receiving player like glue no matter how it was received, and typically the first touch already has their body and the ball in the right position for their next move whether its a shot, a pass, shielding a defender or moving into space with the ball. They don't have to slow down (at least not much) when receiving the ball on the run. Their body doesn't telegraph their next move. They are calm and composed on the ball (a result of confidence in their ball skills and field vision) and never spaz out. US players are not quite at that level - the closest we have is Bradley, Johnson and the others who play in Europe, but they aren't elite. Generally our lack of technical skill leads to turnovers from poorly controlled balls or from passes made with poor vision.
I have no conclusion to this ramble, but I think US soccer will continue to improve as these aforementioned skills are taught better and at a younger age in the slowly growing and improving youth system in the US. We defintely have the demographics to produce a quality squad.
Meta: Can you be Off-Topic in an Off-Topic thread?
OT: The death of American Football is being highly exaggerated. Football has been in trouble before, and has adapted in response. The game we know today is a much different game than it was 100+ years ago. Much of that was due to safety issues.
It happened before and it will happen again. The game will change and adapt. It is too popular to just vanish. Will it look different? Yes. Just like it looks different than it did 100+ years ago.
Agreed, which is why I try to say football won't be around "as we know it" in 50 years.
It's actually kinda cool to think how it might evolve. But, I do think that evolution will involve a big decrease in the physicality of the sport.
Plus pro teams like the Giants, Raiders, Packers, etc are major part of the American sports scene and culture. Football may sleep for a time when it comes to that, but I don't see it dying for any reason.
What will it look like?
Here is an interesting mental exercise: Rather than taking the current version of the game and thinking how it can be made safe, take a version of the game that is safe - flag football - and think: how icould be made more interesting and still safe?
Could you introduce some form of blocking, running with the ball, and tackling that does not introduce today's pile-driver concussion risk?
A lot of good points (backed up with some objective data, experience and good analogy).Might I suggest another observation. Consider International Rugby which is closer to American Football than futbol.
Is it a team sport? Yes. Does it involve tackling, kicking and running? Yes. Does early training matter? Yes. Does it lead to specialization with very large players playing in the scrum and smaller faster players as backs? Yes. Is the US an international rugby power? No.
The elements of the games are quite similar so one can see that nearly everything that has been suggested as a culprit is a factor. There is no professional rugby league. There is no tradition of playing rugby in the schools or as an amateur sport. But if one looks just at the physical skills necessary to be a power the US could do it - we are already producing the athletes who could dominate that sport - Jake Long types in the scrum, Bo Jackson types as backs. Quite simply rugby is not a game that is played in the USA and while the raw talent base is there, it will never take off without some sort of rugby culture developing, just as American Football won't take off in the countries which play rugby.
So could soccer take off here? Yes, by this measure, there are already a wide pool of players who play it from childhood. The problem is that we are competing against national teams where soccer has been the equivalent of MLB+NFL+NBA+NHL for over a century.Is it insurmountable? Patience (never a modern US trait) is what is needed - look at what the women accomplished - I know that there isn't the same height of competition but it shows that given time and consistent support numbers will tell - If the US goes deep into the tourney we might see the benefits in about 10-20 years. Frankly I think there is a better chance of me seeing a US NMST in into the quarter final round of the World Cup than the UM winning the MNC again.
Are you aware that the U.S. made the quarterfinals in the 2002 World Cup? We also were a extra-time goal away from doing it again in 2010.
Step 2: Give 6 points for each "goal"
Step 3: Widen the net to 160 ft. and no height restriction
Step 4: Replace shin guards with full body armor.
Step 5: Rename the sport "football" like they call it in the rest of the world.
If you want to see how a nation takes that next step, look at Belgium... They are (arguably) the latest nation to join the world's elites. Grantland did a great story on them earlier this year and how over the course of the last decade they went from no-names to getting a top 8 seed in this year's World Cup... It's a bit lengthy, but if you're interested in the topic, it's a good read.
Not really the same. Belgium has a long history in soccer, and has generally outpunched its weight as a country of only 10 million - it qualified for every World Cup from 1982 to 2002 (coming out of Europe no less) and reached the seminfinals in 1986.
That article is a bit overdramatic. Belgium just happened to hit a dry spell and miss out on qualification in 2006 and '10. Qualfying for the WC out of Europe is tough; there are always a few quality teams that miss out. France and Portgual nearly did this time around.
While yes, there are large differences in terms of national importance of soccer and the size of the nation, I think the comparison holds more weight than you believe.
Realistically, it's not possible to be a world-class soccer nation while almost always conceiding possession. So because of that, Belgium needed changed their style of play, and they started developing their youth players differently. Youth games were played on small fields, fewer players on the field, with lots of touches for all the players. Belgian youth players will not see a full-size field until U-13, and even then club teams are forced to play a 4-4-3 and sweepers are banned. They realized that by placing more emphasis on creating technically skilled players as oppose to winning youth games, they would produce more world-class players and the results would eventually trickle up to the highest level (this was called the G-A-G Plan, for those who didn't read the article).
Now, how does that relate to the United States? Like others have already said, the US is never going to have that soccer-dominant culture that many other countries have where kids of all economic levels will play unorganized soccer from sun up to sun down. Yet, the US is trying to make this move to a creative, attacking style and is going to need creative, highly-skilled players to do so. Realistically, you aren't going to be able to replace the infrastructure of "organized" youth soccer for that of soccer acadamies. So the best way to produce world class players with high techinical abilities is to force these youth teams to do the same thing Belgium did: smaller fields, less players on the field, and (when they reach U-13) forcing clubs to play wide-open games. That will result in more touches for all players, learning how to play in tight spaces, and eventually, very creative, attacking players.
The problem is going to be getting all the youth coaches on board with the plan. The Belgian G-A-G plan was unpopular among youth clubs in Belgium, it would be extremely unpopular with youth clubs here in the States. Our culture's emphasis on winning plays against us here... I know this far too well. I grew up playing soccer in that culture, and now coach in it at the high school level. My father coaches at a well-known youth club here in SE Michigan (rhymes with 'Shmardar'), and if another club team thinks they have a shot at beating his team by playing little Johnny 20 yards off the back line, then their coach is going to do it for a variety of reasons (not having to hear from losing parents, doesn't care about developing players, just wants to win...). The only way you're going to fully change that culture is by mandating it from the top down and forcing the officials to make the teams play that 4-3-3 by handing out yellow cards to players that are consistently dropping too far back and not joining the line.
Again, this is never going to happen, but the question was how do you improve American soccer. And without a soccer-dominant culture or blowing up the entire infrastucture of American soccer to date, that change would speed up the USA's eventual rise to the world's soccer elites two or three times over (all in my opinion, of course).
tl;dnr: Smaller fields, fewer players on the field, and lots and lots of touches will create the highly-skilled youth players that the US will eventually need.
Until our top atheletes stop playing football and basketball, soccer (futbol) in the States will be a botton teir sport professionally.