Soccer in America: Enough of the Excuses

Ask any average American, who likes soccer, what he or she believes are the reasons as to why the USA is not a soccer superpower on the man's game, and you will more often than not hear the same answers:

"Here in the USA we have so many competing sports that there is no sufficient talent left over for soccer", or

"in South America and Europe kids start playing this game when they are born", or yet

"Most kids in the US play soccer until it's time to go to college, then the interest in the sport just dilutes because each one goes on their own separate direction".

So, let's play some devil's advocate and examine each one of these statements, and see if they are indeed valid or just a naive perception of reality.

Well, let's assume that there in fact are too many competing sports in the US. That may indeed be the case; however, the United States has a population of over 300 million people, and that's five times the number of people in Italy, a country that won the world cup four times, and that's almost ten times the population of Argentina and Uruguay combined. Both of these countries have won the World Cup twice.

Moreover, and still just for argument sake, let's say that 75 percent of the entire USA population were completely uninterested in the sport of soccer. In this case, we would still be left with a pool of over 70 million people interested in the sport, which is a number larger than the entire population of Italy,and way larger than the populations of argentina and uruguay combined.

As a matter of fact, uruguay itself presents a very serious challenge to the competing sports theory, since its population is barely over 3 million. No, that's no a typo, three million. That is 3 times less than the population of New York City, and yet, somehow, if one looks at the soccer track record of the USA vs Uruguay the disparity is evident, in favor of the uruguayans.

Again, these numbers are a serious debunking argument against the competing sports theory. But if the numbers are not convincing enough, let's remember that the US Women's Soccer team happens to be a highly successful soccer team in the world stage, and yet the women are all subject to all the same conditions and pressures from all the many competing sports. So, this argument is just not convincing enough.

The other two explanations, or excuses if you will, are not that much harder to debunk either. The whole notion that european kids are born playing soccer is just not true. Having lived in Germany for three years, I have had the opportunity to closely observe the routine of young soccer players in that country, and I can safely say that Kids in Germany, Holland, France play as much soccer as any american kid who is involved with the sport. They do two or three practices per week and a game or two during the weekend. That's their routine, and it is very similar to our kid's routine as well.

So the whole misconception that we are playing less than the europeans while growing up is just plain incorrect. That may not be the case if we compare ourselves to Brazil perhaps, where the obsession with soccer is beyond normal, but then again no other country is quite like Brazil when it comes to soccer obsession, not even the european countries or any other south american country for that matter.

Moreover, the idea that because one goes to college their interest on any given sport disappears is just plain absurd, and that does not even deserve a discussion at all.

So, what if these are not the issues, then what is ? Well, since the problem is not with our youth or their interest in the game, and if the problems are not related to the number of people available and willing to play soccer, then by elimination we must ask ourselves: Could the problem with the culture and mentality of our soccer at the adult level. Should we take a better look at our coaches, clubs and soccer federation ?

Are we opening a can of worms ? Perhaps, but one must ask the inevitable questions as to why do we not import a top notch foreign coaches to lead the US team, like so many other countries do ? South Africa, the host for the 2010 World Cup has hired Carlos Alberto Parreira, a brazilian coach who lead Brazil to win the 1994 USA World Cup. Are we that arrogant that we can not accept a foreigner coaching and leading our US team ?

Why do we favor athleticism over foot skill and creativity (like they do in Brazil, the most successful soccer nation on earth) ?. Why do our players skip games with the national team to attend league games ? like Landon Donovan did recently when he missed a friendly match against Denmark to attend a league game. This is unheard of in other successful soccer cultures, where people treat a call to the national team almost as a religious duty. Why doesn't our US team play consistently together with their same key players more frequently ?

On a more fundamental level, If we need answers for our lack of consistent productivity, let's start by stop using our youth as an excuse, and let's look at ourselves in the mirror and do an honest assessment of our soccer culture at the adult level and start asking questions from the 'soccer politicians' and administrators. Let's ask them why we do not invest on mechanisms to increase salaries for professional players. Let's challenge them with favoring flair and creativity over athleticism at the youth level, rather than using mechanical and predictable tactics - what a friend of mine calls soccer on crack, where all you see is running and long balls for headers -. Let's stop fielding our teams with track stars and instead start pulling skilled players into the mix.

And finally, let's open the doors of our clubs to talented youth who do not have the means to pay for expansive clubs and who lear to play on the streets, just like the Ronaldo's and Robinho's. Guess what ! they exist here in america too, but they just do not make it up the ladder. Let's create scholarship-like mechanisms for them to have access to our teams. Nowadays,to play in the USA, unless you have a lot of money, you simply do not make it into the big teams, because the whole system feeds off of clubs and colleges, which only take in the financially favored. There is no room for the illiterate or the less favored ones. No room for the Pele-like players, who may be extremely talented but will never be able to showcase their skills because they can not pay for college or pay to be on a club and be seen on a soccer field by all the so called professional coaches.

In conclusion, it has been too long blaming the youth, making excuses about other sports to justify what is truly a problem with the league administrators and soccer politicians, who have created an impenetrable system and monopoly that favors and ethernalizes a style of a game without imagination and creativity, and a system that does not allow for the truly talented to shine through and climb the ranks, unless they have some dollars in their pocket..

It's time to wake up and look at what the real problems are. In this case thou, the problems are not at the root as one would expect. Our kids and fantastic and very talented and there are literally millions of them playing soccer all across this country and many of them are as talent as any brazilian kid and they play as much as any european kids. So, let's stop blaming them and let's work on where the real problems are: the branches. The system, the leagues, the clubs and the coaches and administrators. The problem is with a system and the people who run it and the adult professional level, and until this is addressed head on, the USA will continue to be a mediocre team at best, with a few sporadic spikes of sucess perhaps, but a team that may be the best at CONCACAF but will never the best in world. That is not enough for a country that holds their athletes in all other sports to the highest standards.