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We still just don't have the talent or depth of other countries. We are starting an MLS GK and a 40 year old CB. We have some solid guys but not one single world class player. Our best player is constantly injured and can only succeed in leagues like Italy, but has been out of form for a long time. Robinson is good but plays for Fulham. McKinney has been good for Juve, but that is not the Juve of old. The margin of error is small and, damn, we had a number of errors tonight. Belgium is mediocre compared to top European teams but can still bring Doku off the bench. Spain would have destroyed us and will likely beat Belgium by 2 goals.

The distractions of Balogun didn't help. Belgium came out motivated. They have been extremely average this tournament and we frankly deserve this whooping.

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If this is what we think right now - and I think much of it has value - what are the Germans to make of losing to a team that lost 1-4 to this clearly-flawed U.S. squad?

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The 2007 ND-UCLA game was a once in a lifetime experience, I hope

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"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

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This WC now feeling like a 3 week condensed version of ND's season in 2012.

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With the difference that it was like we got exposed by the fourth ranked team in the SEC.

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We thought we were pretty good but wow, we're we wrong. So many mistakes last night and they clearly don't have the talent. With a country as big as ours and soccer hopefully getting more popular, I hope we're going to improve, but it feels like we're back to where were, which isn't good.

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I was there that night, so I don't say it lightly. Tonight was 90 minutes of the clock striking zero, loudly and mercilessly. So it goes.

I agree with what you've posted, but I'm too gutted to break down tactics or point fingers right now, and I haven't the stomach or the wherewithal to even touch the absurdity of the past few days.

For whatever it's worth, though, this team did give us three perfect games. That's 270 minutes (plus stoppage time) of joyous, borderline perfect football, where it felt like our wildest dreams might not be quite so wild after all. Perhaps it was all a mirage, but I will always love this team for that.

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That game was over the moment it was announced. The talent differential dictated the result.

Belgium played well, they're a good team, but USMNT played like absolute garbage last night. It's possible that we would have had some weaknesses exposed even if we had played well, but we'll never know because we completely shat the bed. Basically nobody played up to their best level of the tournament, and many had their worst showings. We might have been better off playing with 10 than having Ream on the field, and Freese's mistake was middle school level.

Again, this isn't to say that we beat ourselves, and if we had only played Michigan football we would have won. It is to say that when you play as badly as we did you never give yourself a chance to win a game that, at least on paper, was gettable with only a modicum of luck.

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That's what I get for taking the time to debate if it's been 3 weeks or 4 weeks, then checking the calendar, then forgetting what I was doing and taking a de-hydration break.

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I am a very fairweather and infrequent watcher and have not played soccer since 1st grade recess, so I don't know what goes into it.

1) how can the on-ball skill deficit be so wide? At this point we have kids dedicating 100% of their free time to the game by the million. Is it just that the country is too big and dispersed so the talent kind of romps over local competition? We just looked so clumsy compared to Belgium

2) is Ream seriously one of the two best defensemen (apologies, probably the wrong term) in America? Dude was struggling with even basic tasks. Are there a bunch of politics that go into roster construction?

3) what are the Cliff's notes on Belgium's strategem of working the ball back to the goalkeeper so regularly. Was the idea to stretch out our formation/win the ball at midfield with superior skill?

I'll hang up and listen

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I think tonight’s loss was mental, not physical.

Ball skills are much better than years ago. This remains the most professionally accomplished set of American players ever. Dest, Pulisic, and Robinson are all better players than they played tonight. Tactics hurt, especially in the midfield. Poch changed it at halftime, it felt like an equalizer was coming, and then Freese barfed.

Robinson was playing like the best left back in the Prem before his injuries. He was getting praise from Guardiola.

The inability to develop a top-notch goalkeeper has been a problem. There are young guys in the wings, but we shall see.

I think being the host actually hurt player assessment. No struggle to qualify.

The youth system is a mess, and much of the problem is the pay-to-play and a lack of quality coaches.

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But that all feels right. It felt like the moment was too big for them - as a team, not necessarily each individual - and that they continued to expect that things that worked against lesser teams would work here. Belgium, meanwhile, with both individual players and the team as whole having greater competitive games over time knew where to be and had experienced what the US was throwing at them.

For example, the number of times the US tried to let the ball go and think another guy would get it only to see it intercepted by Belgium felt (and again, I don't have stats or stuff) like more than the total number of times it happened in the previous four games. Same with some of the flick passes. And defensive sloppiness was immediately taken advantage of where in the average CONCACAF game it would go by with no adverse effects and in an MLS game it might wind up with a good result.

Klinsmann was not wrong in focusing on players staying in Europe and getting experience there. MLS and CONCACAF are just not good enough.

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The 2007 ND-UCLA game was a once in a lifetime experience, I hope

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That is, our best athletes go into football/basketball? I never really bought that notion - we have more than enough top tier athletes to go around - but I don't really know

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I don't buy the argument that Lebron James would be an amazing soccer player. But I do believe that the 1000s of kids who dream, work and train to be Lebron James could develop into a handful of great soccer players if they had been directed that way.

I also think this will not change until there is money to motivate families to push their kids that way.

The world's story of soccer being the path out of the slums, that is basketball and football in the US.

Could college soccer be restructured to leverage existing fanbases and infrastructure? Maybe - but where would the money come from? No one is going to pay for soccer that isn't the "best in the world" in the US.

I think the only way is to get MLS to a top 4 leagues in the world with the associated revenue. Highlight the stories of local kids getting paid to play MLS, or transfer fees to bigger clubs. USA will only embrace soccer when it is successful in fame and money.

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The top list of prospects in basketball these days is filled with the sons of former pros, and from firsthand knowledge we know the success rate in football, too. At least at the moment, as I mentioned to hobbs, it hasn't impacted results.

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According to current science, the bulk of someone's athletic ability is traceable to their mother. Obviously doesn't hurt to have a pro dad, but I would imagine the access and knowledge and money they provide can be just as valuable along the way. Regardless, I think it pokes a hole in the "will and want" stuff.

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Firstly, sports pick players as much as players pick sports. You look at something like arm length and body composition, and certain sports just are off the table unless a kid is just truly one of one. For example, studies have shown you can make a fast kid faster, but a slow kid is not gonna catch up.

Second, the general story is a decline in total youth sports participation, particularly in contact sports and when you reach high school. There's concussion and CTE fears, which soccer should be poised to capitalize on, and although I bemoan the specialization push for the general populace, it is not clear to me that Euro soccer elite have a different story to tell there.

What I see, personally, is not a lack of athleticism but a lack of game knowledge, vision and technique that I have to attribute to a failure in coaching and development, or maybe just interest. Every summer weekend I see very good athletes get absolutely smoked by kids who are years younger but understand a game better even though they are four inches shorter and a step or two slower.

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I'm on the record here as a soccer philistine who thinks it's boring, but even I can tell a distinct difference between the Belgian "one, two three and the ball's where we want it to be" and the labored US probing. It's crazy to watch as someone who has no background. They just know space and motion on the pitch in a pre-cognitive way that seems like magic to me.

I mentioned basketball in my last post, but in that game which I know how to play, I can appreciate motion with and without the ball. Even at the NBA level there is often a distinct difference between teams in ball movement and game sense even in the playoffs, but it doesn't work as the trump card it seems to in soccer. Anthony Edwards can make consistenly mediocre passing reads, but still beat Jokic in a series. Talent, tactics, or effort seem to play a bigger role.

Another aspect of my critique of soccer from earlier is repeated frustration at seeing the US just get toyed with by advanced teams. It's very clear they're playing a game I, and seemingly our players, don't understand. It makes me want to stamp my feet in frustration.

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and quite a few of them have Champions League experience. This means that, in their regular jobs, they routinely play in and against systems vastly more complex than anything you will ever see at the World Cup.

For all of this program's many problems, there is no knowledge gap here--the days of us fielding a team of soccer neophytes are long past.

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last night. He started with the tactics and formation that had gotten them 3 wins. Belgium had 4 games of tape, plus the experience of the earlier friendly. They countered the tactics.

For whatever reasons, Poch seemed to do little to adapt until halftime. After half, he adapted, and it might have been working. But then Richards, Freese, and Ream did the keystone cops routine, and the team folded.

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There's little doubt that the youth sports industrial complex prices out potential players and thus drains the talent pool. It's entirely possible that we lose potential footballers to other sports, but impossible to quantify the issue.

This canard starts getting silly when it presumes that pure athleticism is what we're missing or the essential virtue of great players. If it were all about athletic ability, Adama Traore would be Lionel Messi.

Where it gets really silly is when people start scouring NBA rosters in search of power forwards who'd make good number 9s.

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major US sports, the financial incentives are enormously different.

But should we be able to find a pool of like 100 players who are elite athletes and committed to soccer and who can fuel our national team programs? I'd think so.

I don't know the backgrounds of ANY of our players (other than the dynamic that we are starting a handful of guys who are in the pool for other countries but aren't good enough for those teams). But I will say that I think there is something to the notion that a decent number of US-born football and basketball players -- to say nothing of the Latino baseball players -- who come from little or nothing and who have a gigantic chip on their shoulder as a result.

US soccer seems, speaking broadly, to be a "rich kid" sport. And it seems like the for-profit club system described at length below reinforces that notion. I believe there is something to the notion that those types of kids are going to have a little less motivation or edge or whatever.

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it seems to be a combination of a.) our best athletes are playing basketball and football, and b.) the cost barrier to the best training/coaching is very high. Of course, many of our best athletes can't afford that cost even if they did want to concentrate on soccer.

As a result, you get either guys raised overseas or good athletes who come from families who can afford it, but whose ceiling are lower. It reminds me of football recruiting in the pre IMG-type school days, where guys coming from rich Texas championship programs get passed over for rawer guys coming from Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. The Texas kids were maxed out, and unlikely to get much better. Money can only take you so far.

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Not good enough, but…

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How many of the top 8 nations have "travel soccer" running rampant (or travel sports in general completely destroying all youth sports) like it is in America?

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Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

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But as a parent with multiple kids in the youth sports industrial complex, my sense is that development in Europe is focused on merit, with pro teams investing money on talented kids they believe have a chance to succeed. In the US, the focus is on generating profits for the private clubs and leagues.

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We essentially price out a number of potential good players, especially minority kids. European countries have academies, while Brazil, Urugay, and especially Paris (the one main exception in Europe) produce incredible talent from their inner cities. Paris produced 54 players in this WC, the vast majority being immigrant kids who played on the streets.

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I guess show companies or whoever pay for those top tier squads, though. Wouldn't that be possible in the US? The almost total lack of an endorsement market seems crazy for something that must be a 9 or 10 figure annual market

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Kobe grew up in Italy and he personally credited european academies for teaching him basic fundamentals & developing a "core" that allowed him to become a truly great player.

He HATED, LOATHED, & DESPISED AAU basketball and AAU culture in general. Kobe thought AAU ball ruined basketball in the states because they focused on things that had nothing to do with basketball development (showcase games, personal highlights, individualism).

Google link below to Kobe on AAU. Feel free to read how scathing he was about it.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kobe+bryant+on+aau+basketball

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but the USA just won its eighth straight U17 FIBA championship yesterday, blowing out Serbia in the championship game. Euros definitely produce elite players, but I think there is still evidence our basketball system produces more strength in depth.

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I'm not well versed enough about the MLS academies, but there only seem to be a few that are decent. Pulisic, Reyna, and some others went to Europe as teenagers. We just don't have the infrastructure or market to match AAU. I'm not sure if there is $ for shoe companies.

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My youngest (14) has a good friend who has been living in Croatia the past two years (playing soccer).

And he had the option of staying put and playing for one of the better (I think?) MLS academies (Chicago Fire FC)

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It's likely that we do well in spite of AAU, and could generate even more talent if we used a different model.

It's interesting to consider what we'd see if youth players had access to Steve Kerr or Gregg Popvich instead of some AAU rando. Toss in actual practice focused on skill building instead of traveling around and playing 10 games a week.

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I see a lot of assumptions around what makes academies superior to travel (many of which I intuitively share) but I’ve never seen a side by side programmatic comparison. I tend to think the most impactful difference is just quality of coaching, but I could be wrong and that could solely be downstream of money management.

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You are probably right about coaching...but the issue is most really good coaching takes place at elite travel clubs, which cost a lot of money. So, it's a chicken-or-the-egg debate.

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My oldest was in travel baseball RIGHT as we were hitting that inflection point.

At first, everyone was in the public league and the absolute best dozen or so kids in town also played on the local travel team.

A couple years later, our town’s travel program had 3 teams, 2 of which were full time, so those kids had to drop out of the public league (and it established the public league as “less-than”, which hurt participation even more)

By his 8th grade year, there was one public league team in our town; which had to travel 10+ miles to a different city for every game. We were doing weeknights in, like, Homer Glen or Lockport.

A couple of years later; most towns have a half dozen travel teams and NO public leagues.

We went from a cheap and convenient fun option for everyone (with truly exceptional players being singled out for additional high level play), to a wildly expensive league with 1/3 as many kids participating and everyone else frozen out.

It’s such a recent development that even current MLB guys think it’s alien.

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You'll have no argument from me that the increasing for-profit and private equity influence for the broader US public has been a tremendous net negative.

However, Balogun was in the Arsenal academy by the time he was eight years old and I'm sure the majority of players have similar stories. That's why I hope to find the nitty gritty details, because at a meta level for the elite they track fairly together -- it's the wider public that is left the most superficially behind.

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But I do think there is a uniqueness to soccer that you don't find in a number of traditional "American" sports, namely football and basketball.

Acquiring skills and tools at a young age in soccer offer a competitive advantage over the life of a player. In football or basketball, there are biological forces that take over and being the fastest at 8 YO or even 8th grade won't matter come your junior season. Basketball too. Growing 6 inches your sophomore year can change a trajectory.

Baseball is a little different, but we tend to Americanize development similarly across all sports.

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We live within 10 miles of 3 soccer clubs. Each club has 2-3 teams per age group. Some of the kids on the lowest team are lacking basic skills but the club needs to fill the team so instead of just having two teams, they keep the third team.

Tryouts ended a month ago and one of the local clubs said "Hey, we still have spots open"

Some of the older teams are carrying 17-18 kids for 11 v 11 with unlimited subs.

The travel soccer in certain areas is just watered down.

and MLS Next and MLS Next 2 are just things clubs do to get more people to tryout but if the top 30 kids who tryout aren't ubertalented, you have a club whose number 2 team is playing other club's #1 team and getting routed each week.

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but that extra team will sometimes get a real mediocre head coach. A guy who was probably ok being an assistant but no, he was told they needed another head coach or those extra 15-18 kids would be cut.

At least I was able to get a few players ready to make comp this season. So the upside is later bloomers do get a chance they might not have had otherwise. But yeah, getting our butts kicked last season by less diluted teams wasn't super fun.

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You don't have to listen to much or many European sport podcasts to hear people whining about the blazers ruining everything in the interest of lining their pockets.

My main guesses of the differentiators:

1. Poor integration of sports into primary and secondary schools.
2. A bigger, more capitalist-minded country allowing for more intensive travel and "showcase" culture.
3. Self-perpetuating problem of fewer elite coaches producing fewer elite coaches to replace them.
4. Lack of civic connections and monetary support between clubs and cities/towns/regions, let alone state and national governments.
5. "Original sin" of tying college cost to athletic prowess, encouraging the development of individual skills versus team vision.

The asterisk is that I'm coming at this from being involved in and trying to grow a much smaller sport (worldwide, let alone in the US). But I will say that the times I have been in trainings with European academy officials have been a stark lesson in the gaps.

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It truly sucks.

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But the one cultural aspect I've seen described, that seems accurate on its face, is that most of youth sports development in the US cares about creating winning teams, whereas youth sports development in other countries cares about creating elite players (that will eventually contribute on pro/national teams).

I think there are a variety of other issues, but it's that cultural divide that means there's not a motivation to change.

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My son played a couple years of AAU basketball, and that was what I noticed. The coaches were mediocre and sometimes indifferent, and they rarely practiced because they played so many games.

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So this is a warning from Tocqueville, is it? Can't buy the right stuff, has to be grown

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1. Most of our best players grew up in other countries, who emphasize these fundamentals of ball handling. If they were better, they'd be playing for their home countries. Balogun, Tillman, Robinson, Dest, etc. are not good enough to play for the countries they grew up in.

2. Unfortunately, yes. The US, for whatever reason, has not produced a decent CB in a long time. Richards is probably the one exception.

3. Courtouis is one of the best keepers in the world. They are essentially recycling to move it to the other side of the field to keep the defense moving. The idea is to move the ball from one side of the field to the other to make the defense work and open space.

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Amazing that the rest of the world caught us in basketball before we caught up in soccer

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caught up in basketball is the same reason the US lags in soccer. The academy model is superior to the patchwork system of development in the US. Not to mention that the overall focus of development for European youth sports is fundamentals, tactics, game IQ, etc.

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This was like watching my grandsons rec team and saying “ah well, they’re nice kids doing their best” and “he’s gonna need a hug and a juice box”.

But I guess more is expected from these guys. Coach got mad and kicked the juice boxes.

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian

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UEFA = SEC

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About soccer. It's pretty apt. CONCACAF is basically the Mountain West

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As of a week ago.

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"Somewhere in Middle America"

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Won some World Cups a long time ago.

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7-6 seems all to close to the US team going 3-2 and being heralded as a success.

I don't know much about soccer but it seems like the US being ranked around 16 is about right.

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"Somewhere in Middle America"

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It was fine, and fun to win the 3 games in the manner they did. But a quarterfinal berth was always the “success” line.

Plus, CONCACAF can’t be the Big 10 of soccer. That feels like CONMEBOL.

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Or Denmark?

Edit: following my own Big 10 rule above: Chile.

I think that makes Rutgers to be Bolivia.

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