Team USA Soccer

Crusader Husker said:
This is happening in many sports.  As,I see it, too many games and not enough skill development and training.  The life span that kids do sports has not changed in the last 40 years.  The difference is that kids start much earlier, so now they quit much earlier.

my two daughters have never played club sports.  Played 3 sports in HS.  Now play one of those sports in college.  We did rec leagues, but never club.
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Smart move!

Club sports have ruined soccer (I don't care about it at all), volleyball (you should see the s#!t the coach at my school puts up with and she has the best team in the state and maybe the midwest), and to some extent baseball.

Basketball seems like the only one that has come out okay with it and I am not sure why but for some reason it doesn't seem to ruin kids and/or high school teams.

 
AAU BB has issues, but not as bad as VB and soccer.

problem is, when you are paying money for club sports, coaches say what parents want to hear.  Not what they should hear.

threadjack and I will stop now.

 
So this kinda brings up the discussion of did we fire Jurgen too early? Wasn't he hired in 2011 to get US soccer competitive in a while not a short amount of time? Yes he lost 4-0 to Costa Rica and we were not looking good in WC qualifying but he still had US soccer on the rise. For a team that has never won a cup, we needed to be patient with him. 2017 was a little early in my opinion to fire him, if this was 2019 or 2020 it would have made a lot more sense. 

I also do not like how Arena refuses to get players out of other countries with US ties. Outside of a few MLS player our best bet is players form overseas and developing them. In fact, we have a great young goalie currently playing overseas named Ethan Horvath and he is only 22 years old. Jurgens son is someone else to watch out for in the future as he is only 20 years old and signed with a German team, but I do not know what type of competition they play against.

 
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Crusader Husker said:
I have seen club VB burn kids out and destroy HS VB.  I am talking about kids and HS programs.  Not the recruiting nightmare and money grab that AAU has become, ie. the Adidas scandel.
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I guess I see it from the opposite perspective. My sister was on a club team and that was the only reason why she made a D1 team due to my high school being historically terrible when it comes to vball talent. Yeah it's expensive and the tourneys are a huge money grab,  but there are so many girls across the country that play club and so many different teams that I think that clubs are actually better for college volleyball recruiting and the sport as a whole. 

Getting back to the original purpose of the thread, she also played select soccer when she was younger and I agree with the others that it was a joke. Costs were high and the product was terrible.

 
Husker2019 said:
I guess I see it from the opposite perspective. My sister was on a club team and that was the only reason why she made a D1 team due to my high school being historically terrible when it comes to vball talent. Yeah it's expensive and the tourneys are a huge money grab,  but there are so many girls across the country that play club and so many different teams that I think that clubs are actually better for college volleyball recruiting and the sport as a whole. 

Getting back to the original purpose of the thread, she also played select soccer when she was younger and I agree with the others that it was a joke. Costs were high and the product was terrible.
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You are right, my perspective is a little different.  I saw a girl, who now plays D-1, treat our HS badly.  She missed at least 1 big game a year for different reasons.  One was a concert.  Excuse was, it isn't my club team.  She was on a national team and played 12 months a year.  We had 5 girls recruited to college last year.  Only 2 are playing the rest are burned out.  This is also a bunch of girls who only play 1 sport a year.  The other issue is the kids who get cut.  "We spent $ 2,000 last year for club.  How did she get cut?"  I hear this stuff every year.  It has caused our coaches to keep way more kids than they should.  We have had similar issues with girls in club soccer.  We don't see it in girl's BB or any boys sports.

 
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HuskermanMike said:
So this kinda brings up the discussion of did we fire Jurgen too early? Wasn't he hired in 2011 to get US soccer competitive in a while not a short amount of time? Yes he lost 4-0 to Costa Rica and we were not looking good in WC qualifying but he still had US soccer on the rise. For a team that has never won a cup, we needed to be patient with him. 2017 was a little early in my opinion to fire him, if this was 2019 or 2020 it would have made a lot more sense. 

I also do not like how Arena refuses to get players out of other countries with US ties. Outside of a few MLS player our best bet is players form overseas and developing them. In fact, we have a great young goalie currently playing overseas named Ethan Horvath and he is only 22 years old. Jurgens son is someone else to watch out for in the future as he is only 20 years old and signed with a German team, but I do not know what type of competition they play against.
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Fired Jurgen too late IMO.  Each coach should be let go after a WC imo or things get stale.  By accounts the players hated him, as he would just throw together a formation the day of the game with minimal practice.

Arena wasn't the answer either, but I don't think that Jurgen would have had any better chance of getting us into the WC.  I mainly put it on the current team leaders (Bradley, Howard, etc) for not getting ready to play and giving a crap effort in a game that would determine their WC birth.

 
There is also a "lost generation" of US players currently in the 24-28 range.  Guys from that age range should be the core of the current team, but they are no where to be found.  That age range goes back to missing the last 2 Olympics.

Look at the age of our roster from these last 2 games:
GK - 38, 38, 33
D - 35, 32, 31, 30, 30 , 29, 28, 24
M - 32, 30, 30, 30 , 27, 22, 22, 19
F - 34, 34, 27, 24
 
Here are guys aged 24-28 with more than 10 caps:
Altidore, Wood, Yedlin, Brooks (who we could have used bigly last night), Agudelo, Zardes, Birnbaum, Johannsson, Carona, Chandler, Lichaj.
 
See http://americansoccernow.com/articles/the-missing-years-u-s-soccer-s-development-gap
 
DrunkOffPunch said:
Brooks is injured. Whatever happened to Julian Green?
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A healthy Brooks and Cameron should have been our #1 CBs.  Brooks being out hurt us in a big way.  And Arena's decision to not play Cameron, who starts weekly for a mid-table EPL team, is baffling.  But Arena loves Omar from his LAG days.

I believe Green is still bouncing around in the 2nd (or 3rd) division of the Bundisliga.

 
Crusader Husker said:
You are right, my perspective is a little different.  I saw a girl, who now plays D-1, treat our HS badly.  She missed at least 1 big game a year for different reasons.  One was a concert.  Excuse was, it isn't my club team.  She was on a national team and played 12 months a year.  We had 5 girls recruited to college last year.  Only 2 are playing the rest are burned out.  This is also a bunch of girls who only play 1 sport a year.  The other issue is the kids who get cut.  "We spent $ 2,000 last year for club.  How did she get cut?"  I hear this stuff every year.  It has caused our coaches to keep way more kids than they should.  We have had similar issues with girls in club soccer.  We don't see it in girl's BB or any boys sports.
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I could show you some emails that would make you roll your eyes from parents that "spent thousands on club VB and soccer" and they want to know why lil Amanda isn't starting on the HS team.

Also, AAU basketball is bad in terms of the recruiting but as far as high school goes, very few times does it interfere.  Like you, I looked at it from that point of view.

The Dude said:
At least Americans can skip fake caring about soccer this time around.
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This is so true.  I went with some friends to a bar to party for the USA/Germany game a few years back...It was tons of fun but it was clear that it was all about the party and not the game.

 
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