2018 World Cup running thread

Still the maddest I ever made my soccer-loving editor at the time was in '98 when Iran skunked the US and I suggested the back page headline "Not So Great Satan."

 

I wish he could explain what he does better, or chose to explain it, whichever it is. I'd love to read A Sense of Where You Are but about Messi. Every story about him is some version of David Foster Wallace's piece about Tracey Austin.

 

Missing out on a chance to face the world's best in a competitive environment is not a good thing -- those opportunities don't come around very often. The silver lining to this large pile of awfulness is the chance it lights a fire under certain highly-compensated individuals, but even then I don't know that I would be overly optimistic. The USSF has tried large-scale, long-term planning before. Project 2010 began in 1998 with the "Q-Report" from Carlos Queiroz and Dan Gaspar, which you can read here. That $50 million program resulted in Generation Adidas, the U-17 residency camp in Bradenton, and not a whole lot else. Klinsmann was hired to bring in new ideas and reform the whole US soccer system as technical director, but the USSF erred by making him the head coach, too, and thus staking his continued employment as much on short-term results as lasting reforms.

There are deeply-rooted, complicated problems getting in the way of US soccer realizing its full potential. Part of it is actually an outgrowth of something positive -- MLS has grown to the point where the best interests of the league and its clubs are not necessarily in lock-step with those of the national team (i.e. big-ticket Americans coming home for good money instead of staying overseas). There are also long-running issues such as the turf wars and fight for political control between MLS/SUM, women's soccer, and youth soccer blocs; the pay-to-play culture within youth soccer and subsequent marginalization of less well-to-do groups (particularly Latinx); patchwork networks of scouting and talent development; how (and whether) to integrate college soccer into the larger ecosystem; and large parts of the country's populace that are suspicious of, if not hostile to, soccer in this country. Untangling that web of competing interests and creating a coherent national strategy would be a challenging full-time job for a whole committee, let alone one or two people who also have to worry about getting results on the field. Just as Freddy Adu was never going to carry the US men to greatness on his own, single reforms like pro/rel or removing the salary cap are not a silver bullet that will fix what ails US soccer. It's going to take slow, maybe generational change.

 

There was an outfit that came through my town the past couple of summers offering people (particularly Latinos) a chance to compete in front of MLS, MX and college scouts. Something tells me the people turning out for this are more interested in getting into Mexico than anything involved in the US.

 

USSF should concentrate their scouting efforts on the NBA G-League

 

That’s fucking gold!

 

I figure you go with an approach where US Soccer develops a 40-man or 50-man roster and whatever coach is there in a particular year picks his team from that.
I don't know if most soccer coaches feel they need to be distant from the players and not communicate with them, or we just hear about the ones that do it after they're sacked.

 

Booze or that white powder smudged on the glass in front of him?

 

Is this a serious suggestion or not? I can't tell.

 

It's a joke.
The was a thread some months back about how no athletes play soccer here, and they should just recruit basketball players for better athletes.

 

At my paper, I wanted to use "Allah does it to The Great Satan again," but thought better of it.

 

Ha! The color guy dropped a we when referring to Mexico and caught himself