USA Belgium (Intl Friendly)

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OH HSKR FAN

Special Teams Player
Looks like the US is going to get beat again by another European country. Doubled up in your country . . . How long have we have been playing soccer in High Schools around the country? 30-40 years?

Wish the US was more competitive internationally . . .

 
OH HSKR FAN said:
Looks like the US is going to get beat again by another European country. Doubled up in your country . . . How long have we have been playing soccer in High Schools around the country? 30-40 years?

Wish the US was more competitive internationally . . .
Click to expand...

When the payroll for an entire MLS team is about the same as one average player in the Premiere League, this is exactly what you get. We have a huge talent pool of athletes in the US but they don't strive at a very young age to be professional soccer players like the rest of the world does. Guarantee you that someone like Jordan, Kobe or Lebron could have been great at it if they had lived and breathed the sport like they did hoops. In the US we have football, baseball, basketball, etc. The rest of the world, soccer is #1 and this is the problem we will always have.

 
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HSKR,

Your right. However look at the US population compared to the other European nations? We can't find 30 decent players? Is Klinsman the answer at coach? I don't know.

 
OH HSKR FAN said:
HSKR,

Your right. However look at the US population compared to the other European nations? We can't find 30 decent players? Is Klinsman the answer at coach? I don't know.
Click to expand...
The US could have a population of 10 billion and it wouldn't matter if all the kids growing up want to be Kobe, Tom Brady or A-Rod. Sure we have some high school soccer now and some college soccer but do you honestly think kids take it seriously that if they sacrifice everything they might get a $100K contract in the MLS? Or would they be better off getting drafted in the NFL or NBA for millions?

I know a lot of people hate Klinsmann as coach but tonight was all about being beat by better talent. Belgium only has a population of 11 million but 99% of the kids there dream of being a soccer player. Now imagine if Ohio with a similar population to that of Belgium and every top athlete's first interest from Ohio was soccer but the reality is it isn't.

If you really want it explained just look at England and their level of organization of soccer. Cities like New York would have at least a dozen professional teams. Omaha would probably have two themselves and Lincoln a team or two, professional that is. Grand Island would have one, Wahoo would even have a team. Now spread that across the whole state and country and get rid of college football, college basketball, the NFL, MLB, NBA and the NHL and then we may be on a level playing field to recruit the kids. That's how serious they take it and we don't.

For the US it may actually be easier to keep introducing our other sports over there to thin the talent pool out then to try to get our kids here moved over to soccer. Basketball seems to be doing that in Europe for example.

I guess to sum it up, soccer in the US when compared to most of the world is A ball compared to MLB. That's how far we still have to go. Can you find me a roster from A ball that will win the World Series?

 
I think it's more that the coverage soccer gets isn't good. Unless it's an international match or World Cup it doesn't get shown on the big channels to where people would know where to watch soccer at. So it gets relegated to the lesser sports channels that people might not know about. It's hard to compete when football coverage is year round now which is ridiculous.

 
USA! USA! USA! Yea, it was mostly Germany's second team but we needed a confidence booster like this big time.

 
Those last 20 minutes got pretty intense lol.

I don't even know when MLS season starts/ends. If they're doing it right it should be around May and just run through the summer, after the NFL draft dies down and the pro football/college football worlds are at a lull. But then, World Cups and Olympics also run during the summer.

 
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