Serious question about American pro athletes v USMNT athletes

Cellar-Door · Jul 22, 2015

Never.
Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash are in the sport probably most conducive to a move to soccer. Both have played since they were kids. Neither is anywhere near even NASL talent. Soccer is incredibly difficult to learn late because of the level of proficiency with your feet needed. O-line and wrestling have many similarities in technique and physical skills, same for OF vs pitching. To be elite at soccer you need speed endurance and most of all tons of skill with your feet developed over many years.

URI · Jul 22, 2015

You...don't understand sports.

Titans Bastard · Jul 22, 2015

PaulinMyrBch said:
So my main statement has been this. Give me Revis, Sherman, Tavon, LeBron, Ocho, Geovani Bernard, Calvin Johnson, Russell Westbrook, Rondo, and Adrian Peterson with Gronk or Calvin Johnson in goal and we beat the US Mens team with 3 months practice, and win the World Cup in 2 years.

I have no idea how unreasonable I'm being but its been fun messing with them. Anyway one of them called me out and said, "Ask your Red Sox message board buddies and see what they say." You guys collectively carry more clout than the old man apparently.

So I ask you...never mind my list as I don't know if tall guys translate well to soccer. I'm pretty sure Tavon is Messi's size at least, so I figure he's a keeper. But take whatever US pro athletes you want from any sport. Take the 11 best suited for soccer and tell me the answer to these 2 questions.

With _________ practice, we beat the USMNT.
With _________ practice, we win the World Cup.

Listen to your kids.

They'd never beat the USMNT. Never, ever. They'd also never win the World Cup. Or even come close to qualifying. There's an idea out there that the reason why the US isn't among the world elite in soccer is because the athletes aren't good enough. This idea is misguided. Optimal athleticism for soccer does not look like optimal athleticism for football, basketball, or any other sport.

It's funny you mention Ocho, of all people.

PaulinMyrBch said:
And don't give me any crap about its too late, they have to start as kids BS. Lorenzo Cain didn't play baseball till high school. Stephen Neal wrestled in college, Tim Wakefield was an outfielder, etc.

It's too late. They have to start as kids. Seriously.

Titans Bastard · Jul 22, 2015

PaulinMyrBch said:
I do realize these guys are tremendous athletes. I can just tell by looking at them they aren't America's "most tremendous". What I see is that a defender doesn't seem to have or need the ball skills a forward has. So I figured guys who run backwards for a living (Revis, Sherman) would translate there pretty well. But I figured foot speed for someone like Tavon or Bernard would be a good start to get into a forwards skill set. I don't believe what I'm telling my kids. Just didn't figure replacing Beckerman would be that difficult. Celler, I take your word for it.

Defenders still need ball skills and it would be very unlikely that these guys would ever attain an even basic technical proficiency at the MLS level, to say nothing of the USMNT level. You didn't mention anything at all about their ability to read the game and think through a match, which is an enormously important component of the game and one that US fans (and even youth coaches, because they aren't good at teaching it) tend to ignore to their peril. These guys would be useless in that department.

It's a huge mistake to judge soccer talent with an NFL Combine mentality.

snowmanny · Jul 22, 2015

What you need is a really really big guy to play goalie. Someone so big he fills up the whole net.

Billy R Ford · Jul 22, 2015

Titans Bastard said:
Defenders still need ball skills and it would be very unlikely that these guys would ever attain an even basic technical proficiency at the MLS level, to say nothing of the USMNT level. You didn't mention anything at all about their ability to read the game and think through a match, which is an enormously important component of the game and one that US fans (and even youth coaches, because they aren't good at teaching it) tend to ignore to their peril. These guys would be useless in that department.

It's a huge mistake to judge soccer talent with an NFL Combine mentality.

Yeah, many Americans think our great athletes are going to other sports. On the other hand, I believe I once read (might've been on here, actually) that the stereotype of American soccer players in Europe for most of the '90s and '00s was that they were great athletes who had poor soccer brains and limited technical skills.

teddykgb · Jul 22, 2015

The thing you're not understanding about technical skills is that not only are they developed at a very young age but the absence of them puts blood in the water. A player with skills who realizes that the player who has the ball doesn't have skills will be swarmed and dispossessed so quickly their head will spin. When you're watching this on TV, you're seeing professionals and there's an inherent respect for the ball skills of people they're playing. They essentially know that if they rush the player in front of them, they'll probably look stupid. But if you put the players you're talking about with even like 10 years of practice in front of these guys, they'd sniff out their limited control and technique almost immediately and just swarm them. All the athleticism in the world can't help you when you've got two men on at full speed.

The best way to try to express this in other sports I can think of would be those videos of Kyrie showing up at pickup games. It's essentially the opposite, but Kyrie's ball skills are so outrageously good that he can do almost anything he wants in a pickup game. But when he's playing an NBA game against players of at least comparable quickness and skill, he becomes a much more normal player and most of the tricks go away and he has to work 300% harder to get offense.

Soccer's graveyard is literally filled to the brim with incredible athletes who lacked the knowledge and technique to play the game. Like pretty much every sport, talent evaluators often fall into the "you can't teach speed/size/etc" fallacy and ignore lack of actual skill and it always ends the same. You're essentially saying something like "It takes big muscles to hit home runs, so let's just get the strongest men in the world and give them a bat, they'll break Bonds' record"

Jnai · Jul 22, 2015

There are fringe sports where the premise is probably true. You could probably take a collection of the top US professional athletes, have them train for 5 years, and win medals in Olympic sailing, rowing, kayaking, whatever.

Soccer is absurdly different from those sports. It is played worldwide for obscene amounts of money.

Reardon's Beard · Jul 22, 2015

No. Just, no.

Saints Rest · Jul 22, 2015

I think of a couple examples of world-class athletes who failed to succeed in crossing over to other sports might help you see why one sport's skills don't necessarily translate to another's:
-- Michael Jordan
-- Renaldo Nehemiah

veritas · Jul 22, 2015

Similar analogies might be playing hockey or being a hitter in baseball. The fine motor skills needed to do these skills take years to develop and there's really nothing anyone does in other sports or in everyday life that can prepare you for them. Controlling a ball with your feet is really really hard to do. It's even harder to do when trying to figure out what the other 21 guys on the field are doing. Saints Rest' Jordan example is perfect. One of the best athletes of the last century, couldn't get out of AA baseball.

Lebron could practice playing hockey for a year and wouldn't be good enough to play for a college team. Same if Chara tried to play basketball. Sports are really hard.

Infield Infidel · Jul 22, 2015

Jnai said:
There are fringe sports where the premise is probably true. You could probably take a collection of the top US professional athletes, have them train for 5 years, and win medals in Olympic sailing, rowing, kayaking, whatever.

Soccer is absurdly different from those sports. It is played worldwide for obscene amounts of money.

A thing to consider is, as far as number of players is concerned, American football is a fringe sport. NFL and CFL combined, there are about 2000-2500 or so pros. So it isn't surprising that wrestlers or basketball players can switch quickly since there is a comparatively small amount of competition. There are hundreds of thousands of pro soccer players, so there's always someone ready take your spot. Scouts are everywhere too.

finnVT · Jul 22, 2015

Fewer women have the opportunity to play at a high level, with knowledgable instructors, state of the art training equipment and access to adequate practice facilities in developing countries, I'd assume. Especially at a young age.

Billy R Ford · Jul 22, 2015

Not just developing countries: organized women's soccer was effectively banned in England and Germany until the 1970s, as teams weren't allowed by the professional associations to let women use their facilities. Much of the rest of the world has been averse, bordering on hostile to women's soccer, while Title IX spurred the growth of it in the US. As a result, out of ~3 million youth female soccer players in the entire world, over half of them live in the US. You could say the US dominates women's soccer for the same reason the US dominates American football: we have by far the most players to choose from.

lowerB511 · Jul 22, 2015

You can't compare the USMNT to the USWNT. US Women dominate as there is very little competition. There were only 3 countries that had a shot a winning that world cup. About 20% of national associations around the world don't even have a womens team, and for those that do, they are lucky if they get any funding. FIFA allocates about 2-3% of their budget into developing women's soccer programs. The US isn't decades behind the rest of the world, as it is on the men's side.

The X Man Cometh · Jul 22, 2015

Titans Bastard said:
It's too late. They have to start as kids. Seriously.

This.
Soccer is a hugely more skill and development intensive game than, say, American football. You can take a Ziggy Ansah and get them drafted top 5 by the NFL, four years after picking up the sport. You can take a Joel Embiid and get them drafted top 5 by the NBA, four years after picking up the sport. Could you take a guy who is just a good athlete and make them an elite soccer player? The sport entails a lifetime of skill acquisition. I'd imagine tennis is similar. That is why the US, despite our sports culture, hasn't "gotten over the hump" in soccer, especially proportionally to other sports.

In football, you can look at a Ziggy Ansah and say, hey - you'd be good at this. In basketball, you can look at a Joel Embiid and say, hey - you should try basketball. But screening for truly world class soccer talent isn't so simple. The players have to be immersed in playing the game long before you can even begin judge their chances of making it to world-class heights.

Practically speaking, Americans don't play enough soccer to find and develop the kinds of talent the soccer powers do. But its not because "the best athletes" aren't playing. The guy who could be a great soccer player in another life could just as easily be LeBron as it could be Delonte West.

Kliq · Jul 22, 2015

Women's sports in general in the United States are much more prevalent than anywhere else, and it also helps that women's soccer, along with Tennis, is a glamor sport for female athletes. Even in developed, positively modern countries that are great at men's soccer, women's soccer is a fringe sport. Julie Foudy said on ESPN that while the US had 2 million girls playing soccer, France had 90,000 and that was a big improvement in recent years for them.

In my personal experience, and I imagine this varies, but it seemed like girls youth soccer was taken much more seriously than boy's. I played travel youth soccer through high school and my twin sister would as well. The girls games always had better coaching and more parents at games. In my 10 years or so playing youth, I had maybe 3 years or so of competent coaching, while my sister had some real quality coaches. In one instance my team's coach got suspended for the rest of the season, so my sisters coach took over our team because my mom asked him to, and he coached us all the way to MTOC.

nickandemmasuncle · Jul 23, 2015

PaulinMyrBch said:
What is the prevailing opinion as to why the women's team is better comparatively to the men's?

One other reason that I don't think has been mentioned -- on the men's side, if you disregard the early part of the 20th century (when soccer was actually somewhat popular in the US), we spent about 60 years not giving a shit about the sport, and as a result, the rest of the world got a decades-long head start on talent development / scouting / tactics / generally getting good at soccer while we did nothing. So at this point, we're trying to close that 60-year gap against virtually every country in the world.

No such thing on the women's side, as the US was one of the first countries to take women's soccer seriously.

AbbyNoho · Jul 23, 2015

People are (rightfully) saying "No way" to the idea that any of our professional athletes could spend a few months training and be soccer stars, but are you guys also saying you don't think the overall quality of US players would improve if all of our athletes weren't funneled into soccer from the time they are kids like they are in other countries?

I think if kids all played soccer and had no real professional athletic alternatives the United States would probably be a powerhouse on the international stage, if just by the fact that our population is so large there is a bigger chance of superstars.

Morgan's Magic Snowplow · Jul 23, 2015

Andrew said:
People are (rightfully) saying "No way" to the idea that any of our professional athletes could spend a few months training and be soccer stars, but are you guys also saying you don't think the overall quality of US players would improve if all of our athletes weren't funneled into soccer from the time they are kids like they are in other countries?

I think if kids all played soccer and had no real professional athletic alternatives the United States would probably be a powerhouse on the international stage, if just by the fact that our population is so large there is a bigger chance of superstars.

If everything else (coaching, youth soccer systems, status of pro soccer league) stayed constant, I don't think the quality would improve that much.

Our problem isn't that our athletes aren't good enough. It's that our players aren't trained and taught well enough, both technically and (especially) tactically.

SumnerH · Jul 23, 2015

Andrew said:
I think if kids all played soccer and had no real professional athletic alternatives the United States would probably be a powerhouse on the international stage, if just by the fact that our population is so large there is a bigger chance of superstars.

Kids do all play soccer more than any other sport in the US, don't they? It's the junior high+ (And especially pro) level where they fall away (basketball dominates in high school because it's considered more of a "real" sport but has involvement of both genders)..

And Michael Jordan is an excellent example of why the OP is nonsense.

Spacemans Bong · Jul 23, 2015

Technical coaching matters and the US isn't very good at it, because of reasons seen in this thread: we obsess over big, strong, fast guy who can't kick a ball straight and ignore little slow guy who plays with the ball like it's a fucking yo-yo. This is why the Netherlands has had one of the ten best teams in the world for over 40 years despite having 16 million people, because they give a shit about developing skills on the ball. I'm not saying size is irrelevant, but it's second to technical ability.

Obviously just by numbers we would get better if soccer was our only sport, but the real improvement would probably come from the US soccer pyramid having the money to mass import talented coaches -imagine a scenario where all of the world's best coaches in every discipline worked here because the money was so good.

The US doesn't have exclusive ownership of the world's greatest athletes anyway: every player in the NBA would have lose quite a bit of weight in order to play soccer, and this is primarily based on the fact we play lots of sports that the rest of the world kind of cares about, but not as much as soccer.

Titans Bastard · Jul 23, 2015

Andrew said:
People are (rightfully) saying "No way" to the idea that any of our professional athletes could spend a few months training and be soccer stars, but are you guys also saying you don't think the overall quality of US players would improve if all of our athletes weren't funneled into soccer from the time they are kids like they are in other countries?

I think if kids all played soccer and had no real professional athletic alternatives the United States would probably be a powerhouse on the international stage, if just by the fact that our population is so large there is a bigger chance of superstars.

It's always better to have more players in the pool, but as others are saying, improving coaching would have a far greater impact than expanding the pool.

Look at what Uruguay is doing with a population of 3.3m -- or about 200,000 fewer people than the Twin Cities metro area. It's about efficiency.

CoRP · Jul 23, 2015

URI said:
You...don't understand sports.

You didn't lock it right then and there because you knew the pile-on would be kinda fun.

coremiller · Jul 23, 2015

Soccer is a skill/technique game more than a pure athleticism game. I think the best analogy to skill development for soccer is something like tennis. There's a reason all the top tennis players started intensive training when they were young -- it's a muscle memory sport and you need an insane number of repetitions over years and years to develop that muscle memory. And it's very difficult to compensate for inferior technique with athleticism.

Something else to keep in mind is that, even in terms of athleticism, the physical requirements for soccer are totally different from other sports, so greatness in some other sport wouldn't necessarily translate. Most basketball players would be too top heavy, without the low center of gravity you need. Many of them don't have especially good feet and compensate with height and power -- think of how many basketball players struggle with proper footwork, even after years of training. Soccer players are skinny, most football players have frames built for power and would be carrying way too much bulk. Nor would basketball and football players be prepared for anything like the endurance/stamina soccer requires, where players regularly cover 6+ miles, much of it sprinting, in the course of a 90-minute match.

sodenj5 · Jul 23, 2015

I think one advantage other countries have over the U.S. are the youth systems are much more structured and kids at an early age are being coached at a high level on a near full time basis. The U.S. soccer system is making strides in their youth development, but it's still largely goverened by money. Kids that may be athletically gifted or interested in soccer but can't afford to play on the travel teams or join the youth soccer clubs in the U.S. will go unnoticed. I think other countries are much better at procuring and fostering talent at a young age comapred to the U.S.

BroodsSexton · Jul 23, 2015

I have to admit, it amuses me to think of Gronk with ball skills playing soccer.

Fred not Lynn · Jul 23, 2015

Let's look at Michael Jordan again, though. He didn't "fail" at baseball. He played a competent outfield, and hit above the Mendoza line in the high minors. That's actually pretty good - and he achieved that in part due to his base, raw athleticism (and also in part to having full access to any and every possible resource, and to having the luxury of not being worried that each slump could end with a meeting in the managers office and a bus ride home). Great athletes can pick up and be pretty darn good at any sport.

The problem is that the OP here is asking them to become the very best of the best. Could some of the talented athletes listed, over a 5 year period with the best coaches, and no worries about getting cut get good enough to play competent low to mid level pro soccer, get regular minutes and not be a gross liability on the field? I think that's legitimately possible.

Could they replace world class players who are generally expected to be a team in the top 8 to 16 in the world? No...

fletcherpost · Jul 23, 2015

You need to get the kids when they're young these days. Before they get sidetracked by other things kids do, or in the case of the USA, find other sports..or in the case of Scotland, find drugs, booze and wynchin. Scotland as everyone knows fell behind the rest of the world football wise. We lost at least a decade by not setting up Centres of Excellence and changing the way coaching was structured. Like Bonger says...physical fitness is important but time on the ball, and time working on technique is everything. A good question is: How did Messi become Messi? Or how did Maldini become Maldini?

What did it take for Messi to become the kid in the street you could never get the ball off (and there's lots of those kids) to being the face of the largest sport in the world? it took a huge amount of time and resources from a whole host of sources. Parents, coaches at all levels, medical staff, nutritionists, sports pychologists perhaps...more coaches...and so on. But he comes from a footballing nation, that can challenge for World Cups most of the time. there's a culture and infrastrucutre geared towards finding the best young talent. Then you have Barcelona...Barcelona have Scottish kids in their youth system. Valencia come to Glasgow once a year to do a football school and no doubt scout talent...if they come to Glasgow where else do they go? Point being...football is a global industry...a global culture. No stone left unturned for the big clubs and the big football nations.

Get them when they're young, really young. Six, seven years old, if they show promise...even in Scotland they're giving ten year olds a proper education whilst focusing on their football development in these schools of excellence that European nations have had for considerably longer. it won't be long before Scotland will have professionals breakign through that have come from these schools...but all it means is we'll be losing less ground than, say Holland, as opposed to making up ground.

For the USA to really contend they need to adopt an approach similar to all the other big nations. Cast a wide net, invest a shit tonne of cash, get kids into proper schools for talented footie playing kids, have lots of these schools all over. Have a tiered league set up where players can rise through the ranks or be picked up by the MLS sides and nurtured and developed and maybe loaned out to lower tier sides. And wages have to improve, there has to be financial incentives for athletes to play one sport over another. I think the USA is a big enough and rich enough country to get something like this done. But it depends on the people who run the sport, what's the ambition, what are the goals. How many kids who you can't get the ball of does it take to find one Messi, one Ronaldo, one Xavi?

The original question is a great one for sparking off discussion. And it makes me realize just how fuckin good Messi, Suarez and the likes actually are...we're talking real elite talent. To find and foster that talent is a huge job. But i was watching the LA Galaxy match the other day and then i watched DC Utd and i thought, football really has a chance in the USA.

Bailey10 · Jul 23, 2015

Soccer skills and technique is so specific that even world class athletes in other sports would not be able to preform at an elite level with years and years of training.

However, I have had this same argument with friends about rugby.

I started playing Rugby League while attending university abroad. Rugby League's rules are a bit simpler than Union and similar to American football where you have a limited number of "downs" before a turnover.

I've gotten into several arguments with friends that if you gave the best athletes in the NFL a couple months to train, they could beat the best Rugby League team in the world. Kicking would be a major weak point, but I argue there is such an overlap in skills between American football and rugby that the sheer athletic advantage of NFL athletes would carry them through.

GBA · Jul 23, 2015

Bailey10 said:
Soccer skills and technique is so specific that even world class athletes in other sports would not be able to preform at an elite level with years and years of training.

However, I have had this same argument with friends about rugby.

I started playing Rugby League while attending university abroad. Rugby League's rules are a bit simpler than Union and similar to American football where you have a limited number of "downs" before a turnover.

I've gotten into several arguments with friends that if you gave the best athletes in the NFL a couple months to train, they could beat the best Rugby League team in the world. Kicking would be a major weak point, but I argue there is such an overlap in skills between American football and rugby that the sheer athletic advantage of NFL athletes would carry them through.

Well that's sort of like claiming the Aussie national rugby team could take an xfl team given x amount of training. League rugby is definitely fringe based on the number of world wide participants.

In other words the pats aren't beating the all blacks in rugby no matter how many months of training. And rugby is far less of a "skill sport" than soccer.

Titans Bastard · Jul 23, 2015

There's a lot of talk about athleticism and technical skill in this thread, and not as much mention of how difficult it would be for these NBA types to develop the mental instincts and deep tactical understanding of the game necessary to succeed on a high level.

Which dovetails nicely with questions about what's wrong with American youth development.

sodenj5 · Jul 23, 2015

Another point, apart from just the money, is American Football is far and away the most popular sport in the US. One way to look at it is, how much better is the US at Football than other countries. It's not even close. You can take a team of UDFAs and mop the floor with a team of "all-stars" from any other nation.

Soccer is the world's most popular sport and pretty much the number 1 sport in every country that isn't the US. They've been doing it at a much higher level for a much, much longer time than the US has.

Also, someone upthread mentioned how the U.S. used to be known as a bunch of athletes that were bigger and stronger than everyone else but lacked any technical ability or tactical knowledge. The first thing that came to my mind was Jozy Altidore.

RIFan · Jul 23, 2015

fletcherpost said:
For the USA to really contend they need to adopt an approach similar to all the other big nations. Cast a wide net, invest a shit tonne of cash, get kids into proper schools for talented footie playing kids, have lots of these schools all over. Have a tiered league set up where players can rise through the ranks or be picked up by the MLS sides and nurtured and developed and maybe loaned out to lower tier sides. And wages have to improve, there has to be financial incentives for athletes to play one sport over another. I think the USA is a big enough and rich enough country to get something like this done. But it depends on the people who run the sport, what's the ambition, what are the goals. How many kids who you can't get the ball of does it take to find one Messi, one Ronaldo, one Xavi?

Serious question on this, what is the point of doing all that? So that 3-5 kids a year can come out of the filter and be among the best in the world? So the US can win an occasional World Cup? It all seems like a terrible waste of resources and it basically is subsidized by the 99.99% that never advance beyond a basic recreational league. I'm all for getting kids off the couch and participating in sports, but at some point the cost escalation for the casual participant is going to price out too many families. Youth sports are increasingly going off the rails through the push to stratify "talent" at earlier and earlier ages. There are too many kids (or parents) who lose interest in playing a game because they were passed over for the elite team at 8 and can't reconcile themselves to playing for a lower tier. This doesn't even get into those who force kids to specialize in a sport when they're 9 or 10 years old and miss out on the experience of playing lots of sports and finding one that really suits them.

(Not picking on Fletch here, just jumping off his point). Sorry for the tangent.

teddykgb · Jul 23, 2015

Titans Bastard said:
There's a lot of talk about athleticism and technical skill in this thread, and not as much mention of how difficult it would be for these NBA types to develop the mental instincts and deep tactical understanding of the game necessary to succeed on a high level.

Which dovetails nicely with questions about what's wrong with American youth development.

I don't agree with you here. Most of the fundamentals of each sport are the same. Passing triangles and defending space versus defending men, etc. NBA types would understand quite well the ideas behind what the movement instincts needed to play this game. I think NFL types would struggle much more, where there tends to be much more of an emphasis on running specific "plays" where movement is more dictated. A good NBA player understands the need for passing options and creating space for teammates to give you the ball or the need to occupy space or location in order to free up other space for teammates.

Jimy Hendrix · Jul 23, 2015

RIFan said:
Serious question on this, what is the point of doing all that? So that 3-5 kids a year can come out of the filter and be among the best in the world? So the US can win an occasional World Cup? It all seems like a terrible waste of resources and it basically is subsidized by the 99.99% that never advance beyond a basic recreational league. I'm all for getting kids off the couch and participating in sports, but at some point the cost escalation for the casual participant is going to price out too many families. Youth sports are increasingly going off the rails through the push to stratify "talent" at earlier and earlier ages. There are too many kids (or parents) who lose interest in playing a game because they were passed over for the elite team at 8 and can't reconcile themselves to playing for a lower tier. This doesn't even get into those who force kids to specialize in a sport when they're 9 or 10 years old and miss out on the experience of playing lots of sports and finding one that really suits them.

(Not picking on Fletch here, just jumping off his point). Sorry for the tangent.

I might be wrong on this, but my understanding is that the current U.S. youth soccer system is already very pay to play at youth levels higher than "kids run in a pack on a field" style town red leagues, and part of that large resource expenditure would theoretically go towards removing that barrier to allow the best potential players to play, not simply those who can best afford to pay to be on youth teams.

Shelterdog · Jul 23, 2015

Jnai said:
There are fringe sports where the premise is probably true. You could probably take a collection of the top US professional athletes, have them train for 5 years, and win medals in Olympic sailing, rowing, kayaking, whatever.

I'm not sure this is even true. Putting aside the mental aspect--a big part of being a successful guy in a niche sport is being driven to succeed without the money and fame and groupies and whatnot--some people just don't have the right build/genetics/whatever to succeed at particular sports. Olympic level rowers have very particular physiologies-in addition to having high lactate thresholds and all of that (and in addition to having backs that can put up with a huge volume of training) not just everybody can keep a lot of muscle mass when they're doing that much cardio. if you selected the right professional athletes for the right niche sports you might be able to do it, but I don't think it's generically true.

Also, the athletes we know would be very different athletes if they were playing and training for a different sport. Revis and Westbrook are explosive athletes in the NFL and NBA but would they be able to keep much of that explosiveness if they were 40 pounds lighter and running 7-9 miles in a game?

DJnVa · Jul 23, 2015

Jimy Hendrix said:
I might be wrong on this, but my understanding is that the current U.S. youth soccer system is already very pay to play at youth levels higher than "kids run in a pack on a field" style town red leagues, and part of that large resource expenditure would theoretically go towards removing that barrier to allow the best potential players to play, not simply those who can best afford to pay to be on youth teams.

This is exactly it. Although US soccer, led by Klinsmann, is pushing to change this.The Academy programs with direct links to the USSF now must not have a pay to play policy. This led Rush soccer to sever it's ties and, at least in our area, lose a number of kids.

But the free to play programs aren't everywhere, so there's still a lot of kids who's parents have money playing on teams they have no business on.

Titans Bastard · Jul 23, 2015

DrewDawg said:
This is exactly it. Although US soccer, led by Klinsmann, is pushing to change this.The Academy programs with direct links to the USSF now must not have a pay to play policy. This led Rush soccer to sever it's ties and, at least in our area, lose a number of kids.

But the free to play programs aren't everywhere, so there's still a lot of kids who's parents have money playing on teams they have no business on.

I think there's a USSDA requirement that clubs offer a set number of scholarships, but I'm pretty sure that every single non-MLS program in the Development Academy is still pay-to-play.

I am far from an expert on clubs in the mid-Atlantic, but my impression is that Virginia Rush got kicked out because they fared poorly and were basically judged as not being good enough for the level. Every year the USSF kicks out and invites a few clubs and they've been particularly aggressive in your region for some reason. McLean (Virginia) and Potomac (Maryland) have also gotten the boot. They forced a merger between two Richmond clubs and they've replaced the Baltimore Bays (who imploded when a key coach left) with a consortium of other Baltimore clubs. Bethesda-Olney has come in and done fairly well.

fletcherpost · Jul 23, 2015

RIFan said:
Serious question on this, what is the point of doing all that? So that 3-5 kids a year can come out of the filter and be among the best in the world? So the US can win an occasional World Cup? It all seems like a terrible waste of resources and it basically is subsidized by the 99.99% that never advance beyond a basic recreational league. I'm all for getting kids off the couch and participating in sports, but at some point the cost escalation for the casual participant is going to price out too many families. Youth sports are increasingly going off the rails through the push to stratify "talent" at earlier and earlier ages. There are too many kids (or parents) who lose interest in playing a game because they were passed over for the elite team at 8 and can't reconcile themselves to playing for a lower tier. This doesn't even get into those who force kids to specialize in a sport when they're 9 or 10 years old and miss out on the experience of playing lots of sports and finding one that really suits them.

(Not picking on Fletch here, just jumping off his point). Sorry for the tangent.

In Scotland the kids who go to these schools get a proper education too and there's a real focus on that aspect. Also the schools don't charge the kids or their families. So there's no detriment to their education or financial pressure on the families. And you're not spat out of the system at 8 years old. The SFA belatedly realized that there were less kids going through the ranks, so there was a participation issue. And of the kids who were going through the various youth systems ie Celtic Boys who i used to watch every week and they were shite) there was a general lack of skill and technique and too much emphasis on competing and winning. This was and is hurting the Scottish game. So after much research and oberservation of how things are done in Europe the SFA plumped for a model that borrows from same (the Dutch are always mentioned, as Bonger did upthread, they defy the numbers game, population wise they produce a relatively high percentage of top tier talent.)

I understand your concern regarding kids having their dreams shattered and so forth at a young age but that concern hasn't been raised over here...maybe cos Scots don't dream so much. Football is a working class sport in Europe. Perhaps there's a different demographic playing in the USA, more middle class, more delicate..more pressure to succeed. Ultimately, i support these schools of excellence because Scotland was falling behind in every aspect of the game. And it seems to be a generally held belief that you do have to get them whilst they are still young. But kids need to be nurtured and taught life skills too and to work hard and to have high but realistic expectations. I think that the benefits of someone coming out of that system regardless of if they make the pro leagues or not, outweight the supposed negatives of cost and emotional trauma - and asi i've already said, there's no cost to the parents in terms of fees. But your concerns are valid. And every country is different. You have to work with what you've got. But soccer culture in the USA is not the same as in england, Scotland, Brazil or Spain.

Here's a link to the SFAs home page on Regional performance Schools. http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/football.cfm?page=2644

And a link to the PDF that explains how they work in brief.

http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/resources/documents/Performance/PerformanceSchools/perf%202015%20new.pdf

DJnVa · Jul 23, 2015

Titans Bastard said:
I think there's a USSDA requirement that clubs offer a set number of scholarships, but I'm pretty sure that every single non-MLS program in the Development Academy is still pay-to-play.

I am far from an expert on clubs in the mid-Atlantic, but my impression is that Virginia Rush got kicked out because they fared poorly and were basically judged as not being good enough for the level. Every year the USSF kicks out and invites a few clubs and they've been particularly aggressive in your region for some reason. McLean (Virginia) and Potomac (Maryland) have also gotten the boot. They forced a merger between two Richmond clubs and they've replaced the Baltimore Bays (who imploded when a key coach left) with a consortium of other Baltimore clubs. Bethesda-Olney has come in and done fairly well.

Baltimore Celtic took some of the kids from the Baltimore Bays. My son's friend plays keeper for their U17 team which is in Tulsa right now playing for the national title. That club, although new, has 4 teams in the nationals.

I've heard various stories about Va Rush. An article last year, about the Rush kids returning to their HS teams said this:

Rush is losing its affiliation to the Academy organization after this season because the national program is trying to funnel the best talent onto fewer teams. Richmond combined its two Academy teams to form Richmond United, for example.

But Rush, the only Academy program in South Hampton Roads, competed with Beach FC for the area's top players.

"They wanted us to try a merger," Rush coach James Hoffman said. "We wanted to merge with the other predominant club in the area, but these efforts didn't come to fruition.

The word I heard from coaches and parents is that the USSF was pushing for no tuition and Beach FC, where my kid plays, wouldn't agree to that. They are making bank doing what they always did and had no incentive to change.

Who knows--I do know the Richmond Kickers poached one of the really good players from down here and he plays for them on the weekends at no charge but it's not for Richmond United. He plays for a Kickers team, but I would assume they are doing that as a farm team for the USSF program, so playing and practicing with them might get him visibility.

VB City FC plays in the NPSL and they are starting an Academy program. Boys started last year, girls this year, but it's rudimentary now and only operates in the summer. They explained that they the hope is eventually it would be a functioning year-round program with no tuition, but admitted that at this point, the club can't afford that, so it's like the other clubs--if you can pay, you can play.

EDIT: All that said, this is America, and we love our rankings and polls.

This site: https://home.gotsoccer.com/rankings.aspx has rankings all the way down to U11 teams.

Uh oh, my son's team just fell to 16th in the state: http://home.gotsoccer.com/rankings/results.aspx?Level=State&Gender=Boys&Age=17&Region=1&State=VA

It's crazy.

cjdmadcow · Jul 23, 2015

teddykgb said:
Soccer's graveyard is literally filled to the brim with incredible athletes who lacked the knowledge and technique to play the game. Like pretty much every sport, talent evaluators often fall into the "you can't teach speed/size/etc" fallacy and ignore lack of actual skill and it always ends the same. You're essentially saying something like "It takes big muscles to hit home runs, so let's just get the strongest men in the world and give them a bat, they'll break Bonds' record"

And here's why teddygb's argument is correct - Gabe Kapler. It don't work.

Morgan's Magic Snowplow · Jul 23, 2015

Titans Bastard said:
There's a lot of talk about athleticism and technical skill in this thread, and not as much mention of how difficult it would be for these NBA types to develop the mental instincts and deep tactical understanding of the game necessary to succeed on a high level.

100%. I was going to make a similar point earlier.

I think technical skill is sometimes overrated by soccer fans vis-a-vis instincts, movement, and soccer IQ. This is where Americans are probably furthest behind and, IMO, it's also the set of qualities that most differentiates good from great players at the highest level. Players like Iniesta or Ozil or Aguero are all technically brilliant. But the top leagues, especially Spain, are full of technically brilliant players who can do wizardly things with a soccer ball. Its not technical skill but movement, instincts, and soccer IQ that makes these players world class and several cuts above most others.

Serious question about American pro athletes v USMNT athletes

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