Joe, as a Chilean lifelong fútbol (and baseball and football) fan, I can tell you it's not easy to develop a "football sorcerer". Many nations struggle with that. The closest Chile has had to a player with that level of talent, universally recognized as one of the tops of the game, was Elias Figueroa and he was a defensive back, and that was 40 years ago, for a nation that proud themselves of finishing 3th in a WC (1962) and winning 2 Copa Americas (1 in the US). Even Argentina is looking for the next Maradona for as long as I can remember, Messi being just the last in a long series of names (tho I consider Messi one of the GOATs without even comparing him with El Diego). Messi himself was not the product of Argentina's soccer development. He moved to Spain when he was 12, and was trained by Barcelona's farm system (The Spain's WC squad this year is mostly composed of Barcelona's farm players). So it takes a lot to produce great players, both financially and structurally (having great formative tournaments and competition), and a great deal of luck. Unless, of course, you are Brazil.
I *might* watch soccer if they would ever STOP THE FERSHLUGGINER CLOCK when there's nothing happening. I understand that you want to keep the game moving; that's fine. I was having lunch at a brewpub the other day, and they had a match on the TV. TWICE the refs had to stop play while they checked the video to see if a penalty should be called. Did they stop the clock? NOPE! So, if I get the rules correctly, that meant the referee got to add an arbitrary amount of "Stoppage Time" after the 90 minutes of official game time ran out. You don't need to do it for every little thing, but when there are clearly situations where play has been stopped for a significant amount of time, STOP THE CLOCK.
Next time you're watching American football at that brewpub, you'll notice that every time you look up, there will be a commercial on. In fact, if they have 15 televisions with 5 baseball games, 5 football games and 5 soccer games, then each time you look up there will be 10 commercials and 5 soccer games. Please be really, really careful what you wish for.
As you said, they just add it to the end. And in the WC, they've been adding A LOT, much more than usual. They appear to be really trying to make sure 90 actual minutes are played. Most soccer fans develop a feel for how much stoppage time there'll be and I'm usually pretty accurate. But in this WC I keep thinking something like "3 minutes" and it's like 7.
I believe in NCAA they stop it whenever play stops and there's no added time.
While it’s true that Ali was vastly underrated before his matches with Liston, your recollection is not really accurate. Ali was largely still viewed as the light heavyweight who won Gold in the Rome Olympics. It’s important to remember that few people actually saw boxing matches as it was prior to Showtime, HBO, ESPN and other outlets that covered boxing.
Ali was a couple inches taller and his shoulders were much broader than expected. But Liston was more heavily muscled and powerful. Liston was also well known for his ability to take a punch. Ali’s ability to take a punch, and frankly his courage, was questioned before his bouts with Frazier and Foreman.
It was Ali’s remarkable footwork and hand speed that defeated Liston. He was to boxing as Jim Brown was to football, Wilt to basketball, and Bobby Orr to hockey. An athlete who defied anyone’s idea or limitations of what could be accomplished athletically. He was also more of an individual than anyone before or after.
I don't think Kane is a sorcerer. He has been difficult to characterize throughout his career. He doesn't have exceptional pace, power, or size. I think he does have incredible anticipation and immaculate control of his body. I think my favorite Kane goal of all-time is this sprawling effort against Leicester a few years ago where he was tripped and falling in front of the ball, but still managed while going down to swing his leg at the ball and direct it into the corner. His understanding of space is perfect, which makes him as good a play-maker dropping deep and setting runners free behind the defense is as good if not better than his goal scoring.
I guess it is just tenacity and bloody simple-mindedness that separates Kane from so many others, and that that is a quality American players ought to be able to duplicate.
Exactly. In fact, Kane to me almost seems a bit clumsy at times, but he has a fantastic ability to find the space and pace to poach goals and crush dreams. Which he nearly did to us in 90+ minute.
Kane lives to score. Full Stop.
Our ‘strikers’ are happy to create chances.
No, the object of the game IS to score goals. It’s someone who is selfish and predatory, bit of an asshole when it comes to taking chances and demanding service. We don’t have that player.
I think the lack of interest in soccer in the USA is that we didn't invent it. Baseball? Popular. We invented it. Basketball? Popular. We invented it. Football? Popular. We invented it and took the name for ourselves, and we dismissed the other "futbol" to the slang term "soccer."
Hockey? Not as popular. We didn't invent it. Tennis? Not as popular, we didn't invent it. Rugby? Lacrosse? Soccer? Same story.
We beat Europe in all the wars, we get to do our own thing now. They get to beat us at a few of their favorite sports, and everyone is happy.
Not so sure about football. It evolved out of rugby, which the Brits invented. (Also the term soccer originated there, although they don't like to admit it now.)
Yes, and baseball evolved out of cricket. I have heard that basketball evolved out of soccer as well. The point is we invented these sports as they are today, got extremely good at them, and then more or less abandoned the sports from which they evolved.
The result is that athletes who may be good at soccer are encouraged to play other sports, or they do play soccer their whole lives but rarely encounter any truly good coaching, so they get jobs and play on local rec leagues.
I grew up playing street pickup futbol (along with every kind of baseball game) and I've been a fan all my life. A 0-0 tie is the worst and I've never been in a conversation where people praise it. Now, not all 0-0 games are equal but it is pure BS to glorify them
There are so many nil-nil games in the group stage because draws earn a point. Teams aren't incentivized to win--or at least take the chances necessary to score which could open them up to a loss. The other story of the Iran game will be how a draw would be fine for them so the can just play defense all game, not needing to score and only wanting to prevent being scored on.
The obvious rule change is to keep awarding a point for a draw, but no points for a nil-nil one.
I think maybe another reason in this particular WC is that unlike the usual summer WC, teams only had a few days to practice together before the tournament started.
although football (aka soccer) is known worldwide as 'the beautiful game', and i do enjoy it immensely,, it can be quite boring at times, especially in scoreless draws; maybe that's why that one World Cup announcer (i think he was from Mexico, and seem to remember the year as 2010) would scream a quite lengthy & exaggerated "Gooooooooooooooooooal!" every time someone actually scored! Joe, i realize your audience rather necessitates a very US-centric angle on your World Cup posts, would love to see something on Spain's 7-0 shellacking of Costa Rica, or the 2 major upsets so far (involving Germany and Argentina, in Messi's last gasp!)- Spain's victory was historic, nearly 1,000 passes to Costa Rica's 140+, and only the 2nd time even in the Cup that a team managed NO shots whatsoever on goal (the only other time? also hapless Costa Rica!) now Germany faces the uphill battle of needing at least a point against the aforementioned Spain lest they crash out of the competition w/o emerging from Group stage!
I loved the Simpsons spoof on soccer with the American commentator being so bored with the action and the Mexican announcer watching the same action was so animated. Of course it was an exaggeration but still spot on i felt.
"When will the United States develop a world class attacker?"
When some of the nation's Michael Jordans and LeBron Jameses go into soccer for their careers. To be clear, I'm not saying Jordan or James, specifically, would have been world-class soccer players, I have no idea. But our athletic geniuses end up largely in the NBA and NFL, which makes it hard for a "sorcerer," as you put it, or an athletic genius as I put it, to end up on the US men's team. Whereas, soccer seems to land a lot more of our greatest female athletes, so the US women's team has had magical performers.
I know almost nothing about soccer, but fwiw I've always thought Allen Iverson would have been a phenomenal soccer player. Maybe Kevin Garnett as a goaltender.
Agree with your point, but Jordan and James would be goalies. The guys we need for strikers are wide receivers in the NFL. If the US front line was Tyreek Hill, Justin Jefferson, and Ja’maar Chase, we’d be in business.
There’s way more to being a competent striker than being fast. The youth ranks are full of guys that can run fast.
Usain Bolt played briefly as a striker in the Australian League. He was terrible because he couldn’t control the ball. His first touch was so brutal that he’d give the ball away every time he received a pass.
Absolutely. My point was that if Tyreek Hill chose to play soccer at a young age instead of football I’m guessing he would have been a world class soccer player because he is such an amazing athlete, with not only the speed but the coordination and competitive edge it takes to develop world class skills. He just chose to learn how to be a wide receiver rather than a striker. There are a lot of fast wide receivers that don’t make it to the NFL, too. But our best athletes choose football or basketball. That’s just the way it is.
That’s not really it, though. Our best basketball or football athletes are not the same athletes as our best potential soccer athletes. These sports aren’t interchangeable like that.
LeBron James and Michael Jordan would be awful soccer players. Maybe they could be goalkeepers, but they’re too big to be outfield players because their center of gravity would be really high and they’d get pushed off the ball.
I mean one of the greatest players of all time was a 5’5” Argentinian with crazy fast feet. Maradona proves more than anyone that size and strength aren’t the end all be all in soccer.
My god can we please put this incredibly tired trope to bed? There is virtually no relevant overlap in the kind of bodies that play in the NBA or NFL and high-level soccer: Leo Messi would have been a terrible player in those sports. The guys who play for the USMNT are incredible athletes in their own rights, our issues are much more at the youth level in terms of pay-to-play.
What "trope?" The fact is, the US' best male athletes don't play soccer. If you don't think that's *at all* relevant, I think you're being incredibly silly. I never said all NBA/NFL players would be great soccer players (in fact, I specifically noted that I wasn't saying Jordan or James would necessarily be world class soccer players because it's unknowable) nor did I suggest that only the exact type of athletes who excel in the NBA or NFL are needed in soccer. But those with "athletic genius" are rare in every sport and are simply rare, period. The chances of an American of that sort ending up in soccer is much smaller than in other countries, because soccer is not a priority in this country like it is in other countries.
If you want to say there are other factors at play too, I wouldn't doubt it. But saying "It doesn't matter AT ALL that the vast majority of America's best male athletes don't even look at soccer" seems like being willfully obtuse.
Also, regarding "overlap of body types," I'm sure you're intelligent enough to understand that athletes develop their bodies for the sport they're playing and that there's a range of body types even within sports. Steph Curry doesn't resemble LeBron James at all.
You state as fact that the best American athletes don't play soccer, with zero evidence to support it. I reject that premise - it might once have been true that kids were not exposed to soccer but that isn't true any more - the bigger issue is that many potentially talented players don't get coaching or skills training because high-level American youth soccer is still dominated by the pay-to-play model.
Also Steph Curry is still pretty damn tall - just doesn't seem that way in the NBA context.
I never said Curry wasn't "tall," just that there's a wide range of body types. Chris Paul is 6', which is above average height for the general population, but hardly "too tall" for soccer.
I state as my opinion based on the relative priority of soccer in our society, the money you can make in the major sports in this country, the marketability and exposure of the major sports, etc. That's all evidence, just not proof. You literally have no evidence, having nothing to say to the contrary except "Nuh uh."
And kids have been "exposed" to soccer for decades. When I was growing up in the 1980s, soccer was by far the most common kids' sport. Of course, a lot of that is location- and affluence-dependent. But even where it was a popular kids' sport, the interest dwindled by junior high/middle school.
It's cool if you disagree with me, but calling it a "tired trope" is going to require more than "Nuh uh." At least, if you want to be convincing. I think you have your head in the sand if you think basketball, football and even baseball being more popular has zero effect on the lack of what Joe was talking about: athletic geniuses. Remember, he wasn't saying (and I wasn't saying) that the USMNT doesn't have high-level athletes--he was asking where the athletic *geniuses* were. The booming popularity of other sports and the general societal lack of interest in soccer suggests that they're in other sports.
I think we might be talking past each other here. I dispute the notion that our nation's potential great soccer players are instead playing other sports, particularly at an elite/pro level - I would say instead that we have struggled to fully develop the skills and abilities in our young players, which isn't because they're not good enough as athletes. We love to believe that the so-called "athletic geniuses" would be great at other sports but for the most part they simply wouldn't - they require far different technical skills. Sure, maybe a few young people who would have made great soccer players are never exposed to the sport, but as you yourself said, it's one of, if not the, most popular youth sports. The institutions that have existed for young soccer players here are centered around the wealthier parts of society, which is why many (but not all) of the best young players on the USMNT did not really come up in that system.
Also, to claim that the reason that young people stop playing soccer is because they can't make enough money doing it is silly on multiple fronts - many of the best paid athletes in the world are male soccer players, and it's not as if we have a bunch of people in the NBA, MLB, NFL, or wherever who talk about how great they were as youth soccer players but they had to follow the money to those other sports.
Finally - soccer is the fastest-growing major sport in America in terms of interest, especially among younger people, so I really don't know what your final sentence is intending to prove.
Perhaps we are talking past each other. There are high level athletes in men's soccer, but in order to have a good chance to find "soccer geniuses," considering they're so rare, you need most of your athletically-inclined kids and young adults to focus on it. Other countries have that, because soccer is the passion. I think you're being a little overly literal, maybe based on me mentioning Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I'm not saying that specifically the greatest players of basketball or football were our missing "great soccer players." I'm saying that not only those players but many, many others dedicated their lives at an early age to other sports. It may well not be Michael Jordan who could have been our '90s global soccer superstar. It may have been a college basketball player who washed out without even reaching the NBA--but because he focused on basketball in high school and college and never really gave soccer a chance, we (as a society) never identified him. Or maybe it was a 5'6'' utility baseball player who could never hit a curveball. Or maybe...
To me, it's common sense that when a huge percentage of your athletes aren't focused on soccer, you're going to do much worse at finding your "soccer genius" than nations who's athletes mostly DO focus on soccer. It's not like there's a magical sorting hat that tells us at birth who can become a soccer genius...if the person who could be one never bothers with soccer, you'll never find him.
Love reading your soccer columns. Maybe it’s because I don’t know soccer very well either. Or maybe you’re just that good of a writer. Yeah, it’s definitely the latter.
Man i don't follow golf or tennis, or NASCAR or a bunch of other things Joe writes about. But he is a beautiful story teller. I picked up his book on Nicklaus and Watson just because he is such a great wordsmith. I love his stories about life in general too. His stories about his dad and baseball or chess especially.
McCarthy is 100% correct about the rather shocking lack of yellows for England (they're still without one for this tournament; that's honestly really damn hard to do, especially with the amount of tactical fouls they employ). The ref yesterday... not the best.
I actually thought he was very good overall. As opposed to a lot of WC refs calling way too many fouls and handing out too many yellow cards. And crazy extra time.
Remember US was on 4 yellows so we were the ones worried about suspensions in G3.
The thing I'll say about a 0-0 draw is that to enjoy soccer you need to appreciate acts of beauty and skill which almost come off, which in the end don't amount to a tangible, quantifiable result. I think this is a generally good way to think about life, and while not every 0-0 draw contains much beauty or skill, this one did.
As far as I can tell, the whole thing where we’re supposed to appreciate the austere beauty of 0-0 draws is American pretension--actual soccer-mad countries want to see goals. Nick Hornby says in Fever Pitch that a good game needs as many goals as possible. Of course not all 0-0 games are equal--they can be taut and exciting or dull and lifeless--but a taut 2-2 game is just more fun than a taut 0-0 game.
Arsene Wenger (I think) has proposed that a player be deemed onside if any part of his body is onside, rather than offside if any part is offside. I think that would help a lot, would in effect give the attacking player an extra step to beat the defense.
Just a simple change of the offside rule, where you were allowed to have an arm and/or leg behind the last defender, but not both. Sooo many goals disallowed for borderline offsides it’s crazy.
FIFA could change this rule tomorrow. They already made this ridiculous change where the flag stays down on offside until end of play, resulting in a lot of wasted challenges and effort and sometimes goals when if the flag had just gone up at the point of the infraction, it would have stopped play. I have yet to see an example of a goal scored after a delayed offside and I watch a LOT of soccer.
This is a stupid rule change by FIFA and makes MLB look like Mensa.
OMG, like that beautiful goal by Brazil waved off after a lengthy review where the player judged offside was 3 plays back from goal and yet no flag goes up. This awful awful application of a rule by FIFA is now killing games. Literally can’t celebrate anything until the entire buildup in play is checked frame by frame. Why even bother with assistant Referee and giving them a flag to wave 5 minutes after the fact.
I love soccer but this is just killing the game. I just turned off Brazil game because this is a travesty.
Just wait until the US Scores against Iran and it is waved off by a millimeter 3 moves back.
I read that the penalty kick is too big a swing in the game (US - Wales), on every PK that isn't also a red card, the defending team could choose a red card instead of the penalty kick.
Excellent footy column by our erstwhile soccer savant.
We don’t even need a world class striker as so many seem to think. We need a guy like McBride or Dempsey or even Clint Mathis, who lives to score and only dreams of glory and triumphal knee-slides into the corner flag.
Pepi, sorry, he had one coming out weekend of glory against the lower lights of CONCACAF and nada after. Maybe some consistency and maturity and he will be 23 and me in 26.
Please Allah, try something different on the corner kicks against Iran. My forehead literally can’t take another display like that.
Joe, as a Chilean lifelong fútbol (and baseball and football) fan, I can tell you it's not easy to develop a "football sorcerer". Many nations struggle with that. The closest Chile has had to a player with that level of talent, universally recognized as one of the tops of the game, was Elias Figueroa and he was a defensive back, and that was 40 years ago, for a nation that proud themselves of finishing 3th in a WC (1962) and winning 2 Copa Americas (1 in the US). Even Argentina is looking for the next Maradona for as long as I can remember, Messi being just the last in a long series of names (tho I consider Messi one of the GOATs without even comparing him with El Diego). Messi himself was not the product of Argentina's soccer development. He moved to Spain when he was 12, and was trained by Barcelona's farm system (The Spain's WC squad this year is mostly composed of Barcelona's farm players). So it takes a lot to produce great players, both financially and structurally (having great formative tournaments and competition), and a great deal of luck. Unless, of course, you are Brazil.
I *might* watch soccer if they would ever STOP THE FERSHLUGGINER CLOCK when there's nothing happening. I understand that you want to keep the game moving; that's fine. I was having lunch at a brewpub the other day, and they had a match on the TV. TWICE the refs had to stop play while they checked the video to see if a penalty should be called. Did they stop the clock? NOPE! So, if I get the rules correctly, that meant the referee got to add an arbitrary amount of "Stoppage Time" after the 90 minutes of official game time ran out. You don't need to do it for every little thing, but when there are clearly situations where play has been stopped for a significant amount of time, STOP THE CLOCK.
Next time you're watching American football at that brewpub, you'll notice that every time you look up, there will be a commercial on. In fact, if they have 15 televisions with 5 baseball games, 5 football games and 5 soccer games, then each time you look up there will be 10 commercials and 5 soccer games. Please be really, really careful what you wish for.
As you said, they just add it to the end. And in the WC, they've been adding A LOT, much more than usual. They appear to be really trying to make sure 90 actual minutes are played. Most soccer fans develop a feel for how much stoppage time there'll be and I'm usually pretty accurate. But in this WC I keep thinking something like "3 minutes" and it's like 7.
I believe in NCAA they stop it whenever play stops and there's no added time.
While it’s true that Ali was vastly underrated before his matches with Liston, your recollection is not really accurate. Ali was largely still viewed as the light heavyweight who won Gold in the Rome Olympics. It’s important to remember that few people actually saw boxing matches as it was prior to Showtime, HBO, ESPN and other outlets that covered boxing.
Ali was a couple inches taller and his shoulders were much broader than expected. But Liston was more heavily muscled and powerful. Liston was also well known for his ability to take a punch. Ali’s ability to take a punch, and frankly his courage, was questioned before his bouts with Frazier and Foreman.
It was Ali’s remarkable footwork and hand speed that defeated Liston. He was to boxing as Jim Brown was to football, Wilt to basketball, and Bobby Orr to hockey. An athlete who defied anyone’s idea or limitations of what could be accomplished athletically. He was also more of an individual than anyone before or after.
I don't think Kane is a sorcerer. He has been difficult to characterize throughout his career. He doesn't have exceptional pace, power, or size. I think he does have incredible anticipation and immaculate control of his body. I think my favorite Kane goal of all-time is this sprawling effort against Leicester a few years ago where he was tripped and falling in front of the ball, but still managed while going down to swing his leg at the ball and direct it into the corner. His understanding of space is perfect, which makes him as good a play-maker dropping deep and setting runners free behind the defense is as good if not better than his goal scoring.
I guess it is just tenacity and bloody simple-mindedness that separates Kane from so many others, and that that is a quality American players ought to be able to duplicate.
Exactly. In fact, Kane to me almost seems a bit clumsy at times, but he has a fantastic ability to find the space and pace to poach goals and crush dreams. Which he nearly did to us in 90+ minute.
Kane lives to score. Full Stop.
Our ‘strikers’ are happy to create chances.
No, the object of the game IS to score goals. It’s someone who is selfish and predatory, bit of an asshole when it comes to taking chances and demanding service. We don’t have that player.
I think the lack of interest in soccer in the USA is that we didn't invent it. Baseball? Popular. We invented it. Basketball? Popular. We invented it. Football? Popular. We invented it and took the name for ourselves, and we dismissed the other "futbol" to the slang term "soccer."
Hockey? Not as popular. We didn't invent it. Tennis? Not as popular, we didn't invent it. Rugby? Lacrosse? Soccer? Same story.
We beat Europe in all the wars, we get to do our own thing now. They get to beat us at a few of their favorite sports, and everyone is happy.
Not so sure about football. It evolved out of rugby, which the Brits invented. (Also the term soccer originated there, although they don't like to admit it now.)
Yes, and baseball evolved out of cricket. I have heard that basketball evolved out of soccer as well. The point is we invented these sports as they are today, got extremely good at them, and then more or less abandoned the sports from which they evolved.
The result is that athletes who may be good at soccer are encouraged to play other sports, or they do play soccer their whole lives but rarely encounter any truly good coaching, so they get jobs and play on local rec leagues.
I grew up playing street pickup futbol (along with every kind of baseball game) and I've been a fan all my life. A 0-0 tie is the worst and I've never been in a conversation where people praise it. Now, not all 0-0 games are equal but it is pure BS to glorify them
Exactly
I think because the US plays an open, offensive style is the reason they've never had a nil-nil draw - win or lose, better to go for it.
There are so many nil-nil games in the group stage because draws earn a point. Teams aren't incentivized to win--or at least take the chances necessary to score which could open them up to a loss. The other story of the Iran game will be how a draw would be fine for them so the can just play defense all game, not needing to score and only wanting to prevent being scored on.
The obvious rule change is to keep awarding a point for a draw, but no points for a nil-nil one.
I think maybe another reason in this particular WC is that unlike the usual summer WC, teams only had a few days to practice together before the tournament started.
although football (aka soccer) is known worldwide as 'the beautiful game', and i do enjoy it immensely,, it can be quite boring at times, especially in scoreless draws; maybe that's why that one World Cup announcer (i think he was from Mexico, and seem to remember the year as 2010) would scream a quite lengthy & exaggerated "Gooooooooooooooooooal!" every time someone actually scored! Joe, i realize your audience rather necessitates a very US-centric angle on your World Cup posts, would love to see something on Spain's 7-0 shellacking of Costa Rica, or the 2 major upsets so far (involving Germany and Argentina, in Messi's last gasp!)- Spain's victory was historic, nearly 1,000 passes to Costa Rica's 140+, and only the 2nd time even in the Cup that a team managed NO shots whatsoever on goal (the only other time? also hapless Costa Rica!) now Germany faces the uphill battle of needing at least a point against the aforementioned Spain lest they crash out of the competition w/o emerging from Group stage!
Think the announcer you're referring to is Andres Cantor. He's actually Argentinian. Or Argentinian-American-- he moved to California as a teen.
thanks for the correction, i only recall he was Latino! but i certainly remember his fervent yell whenever a goal was scored!
I loved the Simpsons spoof on soccer with the American commentator being so bored with the action and the Mexican announcer watching the same action was so animated. Of course it was an exaggeration but still spot on i felt.
the Simpsons were so often spot on in whatever they skewered, in an exaggerated way, of course
"When will the United States develop a world class attacker?"
When some of the nation's Michael Jordans and LeBron Jameses go into soccer for their careers. To be clear, I'm not saying Jordan or James, specifically, would have been world-class soccer players, I have no idea. But our athletic geniuses end up largely in the NBA and NFL, which makes it hard for a "sorcerer," as you put it, or an athletic genius as I put it, to end up on the US men's team. Whereas, soccer seems to land a lot more of our greatest female athletes, so the US women's team has had magical performers.
I know almost nothing about soccer, but fwiw I've always thought Allen Iverson would have been a phenomenal soccer player. Maybe Kevin Garnett as a goaltender.
Agree with your point, but Jordan and James would be goalies. The guys we need for strikers are wide receivers in the NFL. If the US front line was Tyreek Hill, Justin Jefferson, and Ja’maar Chase, we’d be in business.
There’s way more to being a competent striker than being fast. The youth ranks are full of guys that can run fast.
Usain Bolt played briefly as a striker in the Australian League. He was terrible because he couldn’t control the ball. His first touch was so brutal that he’d give the ball away every time he received a pass.
Absolutely. My point was that if Tyreek Hill chose to play soccer at a young age instead of football I’m guessing he would have been a world class soccer player because he is such an amazing athlete, with not only the speed but the coordination and competitive edge it takes to develop world class skills. He just chose to learn how to be a wide receiver rather than a striker. There are a lot of fast wide receivers that don’t make it to the NFL, too. But our best athletes choose football or basketball. That’s just the way it is.
Or baseball
Exactly, our bed athletes follow the money, of course, why wouldn't they?
That’s not really it, though. Our best basketball or football athletes are not the same athletes as our best potential soccer athletes. These sports aren’t interchangeable like that.
Agree, it's more baseball on my mind. Hard for great young athletes to turn down baseball dollars for soccer pennies
LeBron James and Michael Jordan would be awful soccer players. Maybe they could be goalkeepers, but they’re too big to be outfield players because their center of gravity would be really high and they’d get pushed off the ball.
I mean one of the greatest players of all time was a 5’5” Argentinian with crazy fast feet. Maradona proves more than anyone that size and strength aren’t the end all be all in soccer.
My god can we please put this incredibly tired trope to bed? There is virtually no relevant overlap in the kind of bodies that play in the NBA or NFL and high-level soccer: Leo Messi would have been a terrible player in those sports. The guys who play for the USMNT are incredible athletes in their own rights, our issues are much more at the youth level in terms of pay-to-play.
What "trope?" The fact is, the US' best male athletes don't play soccer. If you don't think that's *at all* relevant, I think you're being incredibly silly. I never said all NBA/NFL players would be great soccer players (in fact, I specifically noted that I wasn't saying Jordan or James would necessarily be world class soccer players because it's unknowable) nor did I suggest that only the exact type of athletes who excel in the NBA or NFL are needed in soccer. But those with "athletic genius" are rare in every sport and are simply rare, period. The chances of an American of that sort ending up in soccer is much smaller than in other countries, because soccer is not a priority in this country like it is in other countries.
If you want to say there are other factors at play too, I wouldn't doubt it. But saying "It doesn't matter AT ALL that the vast majority of America's best male athletes don't even look at soccer" seems like being willfully obtuse.
Also, regarding "overlap of body types," I'm sure you're intelligent enough to understand that athletes develop their bodies for the sport they're playing and that there's a range of body types even within sports. Steph Curry doesn't resemble LeBron James at all.
You state as fact that the best American athletes don't play soccer, with zero evidence to support it. I reject that premise - it might once have been true that kids were not exposed to soccer but that isn't true any more - the bigger issue is that many potentially talented players don't get coaching or skills training because high-level American youth soccer is still dominated by the pay-to-play model.
Also Steph Curry is still pretty damn tall - just doesn't seem that way in the NBA context.
I never said Curry wasn't "tall," just that there's a wide range of body types. Chris Paul is 6', which is above average height for the general population, but hardly "too tall" for soccer.
I state as my opinion based on the relative priority of soccer in our society, the money you can make in the major sports in this country, the marketability and exposure of the major sports, etc. That's all evidence, just not proof. You literally have no evidence, having nothing to say to the contrary except "Nuh uh."
And kids have been "exposed" to soccer for decades. When I was growing up in the 1980s, soccer was by far the most common kids' sport. Of course, a lot of that is location- and affluence-dependent. But even where it was a popular kids' sport, the interest dwindled by junior high/middle school.
It's cool if you disagree with me, but calling it a "tired trope" is going to require more than "Nuh uh." At least, if you want to be convincing. I think you have your head in the sand if you think basketball, football and even baseball being more popular has zero effect on the lack of what Joe was talking about: athletic geniuses. Remember, he wasn't saying (and I wasn't saying) that the USMNT doesn't have high-level athletes--he was asking where the athletic *geniuses* were. The booming popularity of other sports and the general societal lack of interest in soccer suggests that they're in other sports.
I think we might be talking past each other here. I dispute the notion that our nation's potential great soccer players are instead playing other sports, particularly at an elite/pro level - I would say instead that we have struggled to fully develop the skills and abilities in our young players, which isn't because they're not good enough as athletes. We love to believe that the so-called "athletic geniuses" would be great at other sports but for the most part they simply wouldn't - they require far different technical skills. Sure, maybe a few young people who would have made great soccer players are never exposed to the sport, but as you yourself said, it's one of, if not the, most popular youth sports. The institutions that have existed for young soccer players here are centered around the wealthier parts of society, which is why many (but not all) of the best young players on the USMNT did not really come up in that system.
Also, to claim that the reason that young people stop playing soccer is because they can't make enough money doing it is silly on multiple fronts - many of the best paid athletes in the world are male soccer players, and it's not as if we have a bunch of people in the NBA, MLB, NFL, or wherever who talk about how great they were as youth soccer players but they had to follow the money to those other sports.
Finally - soccer is the fastest-growing major sport in America in terms of interest, especially among younger people, so I really don't know what your final sentence is intending to prove.
Perhaps we are talking past each other. There are high level athletes in men's soccer, but in order to have a good chance to find "soccer geniuses," considering they're so rare, you need most of your athletically-inclined kids and young adults to focus on it. Other countries have that, because soccer is the passion. I think you're being a little overly literal, maybe based on me mentioning Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I'm not saying that specifically the greatest players of basketball or football were our missing "great soccer players." I'm saying that not only those players but many, many others dedicated their lives at an early age to other sports. It may well not be Michael Jordan who could have been our '90s global soccer superstar. It may have been a college basketball player who washed out without even reaching the NBA--but because he focused on basketball in high school and college and never really gave soccer a chance, we (as a society) never identified him. Or maybe it was a 5'6'' utility baseball player who could never hit a curveball. Or maybe...
To me, it's common sense that when a huge percentage of your athletes aren't focused on soccer, you're going to do much worse at finding your "soccer genius" than nations who's athletes mostly DO focus on soccer. It's not like there's a magical sorting hat that tells us at birth who can become a soccer genius...if the person who could be one never bothers with soccer, you'll never find him.
Love reading your soccer columns. Maybe it’s because I don’t know soccer very well either. Or maybe you’re just that good of a writer. Yeah, it’s definitely the latter.
Man i don't follow golf or tennis, or NASCAR or a bunch of other things Joe writes about. But he is a beautiful story teller. I picked up his book on Nicklaus and Watson just because he is such a great wordsmith. I love his stories about life in general too. His stories about his dad and baseball or chess especially.
Ha I feel the same. I’m a super casual soccer fan, and Joe’s just putting into words what I’ve been thinking about the World Cup.
McCarthy is 100% correct about the rather shocking lack of yellows for England (they're still without one for this tournament; that's honestly really damn hard to do, especially with the amount of tactical fouls they employ). The ref yesterday... not the best.
I actually thought he was very good overall. As opposed to a lot of WC refs calling way too many fouls and handing out too many yellow cards. And crazy extra time.
Remember US was on 4 yellows so we were the ones worried about suspensions in G3.
anybody who doesn't suspect that many refs at the Cup are as corrupt as FIFA itself has not been paying attention to history...
The thing I'll say about a 0-0 draw is that to enjoy soccer you need to appreciate acts of beauty and skill which almost come off, which in the end don't amount to a tangible, quantifiable result. I think this is a generally good way to think about life, and while not every 0-0 draw contains much beauty or skill, this one did.
Okay, I'm stealing that. Bravo.
As far as I can tell, the whole thing where we’re supposed to appreciate the austere beauty of 0-0 draws is American pretension--actual soccer-mad countries want to see goals. Nick Hornby says in Fever Pitch that a good game needs as many goals as possible. Of course not all 0-0 games are equal--they can be taut and exciting or dull and lifeless--but a taut 2-2 game is just more fun than a taut 0-0 game.
Exactly, lots of casual fans are turned off by 0-0 games, but even the most fervent fans love 3-3 games.
Which is why the rules should be changed until the over under is around six, instead of two as it is now.
Like. What changes?
Arsene Wenger (I think) has proposed that a player be deemed onside if any part of his body is onside, rather than offside if any part is offside. I think that would help a lot, would in effect give the attacking player an extra step to beat the defense.
Exactly. Turn the rule around and it would revolutionize the game.
Great suggestion
Just a simple change of the offside rule, where you were allowed to have an arm and/or leg behind the last defender, but not both. Sooo many goals disallowed for borderline offsides it’s crazy.
FIFA could change this rule tomorrow. They already made this ridiculous change where the flag stays down on offside until end of play, resulting in a lot of wasted challenges and effort and sometimes goals when if the flag had just gone up at the point of the infraction, it would have stopped play. I have yet to see an example of a goal scored after a delayed offside and I watch a LOT of soccer.
This is a stupid rule change by FIFA and makes MLB look like Mensa.
OMG, like that beautiful goal by Brazil waved off after a lengthy review where the player judged offside was 3 plays back from goal and yet no flag goes up. This awful awful application of a rule by FIFA is now killing games. Literally can’t celebrate anything until the entire buildup in play is checked frame by frame. Why even bother with assistant Referee and giving them a flag to wave 5 minutes after the fact.
I love soccer but this is just killing the game. I just turned off Brazil game because this is a travesty.
Just wait until the US Scores against Iran and it is waved off by a millimeter 3 moves back.
Soccer needs more scoring, so FIFA adds technology to reduce it.
Excellent comment
After coaching soccer for 15 years, I think the simplest is bigger nets, will compensate for the huge increase in the size of the keepers.
Smaller goalie box?
30 yd offside line, sort of like hockey?
I read that the penalty kick is too big a swing in the game (US - Wales), on every PK that isn't also a red card, the defending team could choose a red card instead of the penalty kick.
Good ideas!
With bigger nets there would be no need for keepers on penalty kicks from the spot. It’ll never happen.
Couldn’t you just move the spot farther from the net?
Exactly
Love the Jim Croce reference :D
Excellent footy column by our erstwhile soccer savant.
We don’t even need a world class striker as so many seem to think. We need a guy like McBride or Dempsey or even Clint Mathis, who lives to score and only dreams of glory and triumphal knee-slides into the corner flag.
Pepi, sorry, he had one coming out weekend of glory against the lower lights of CONCACAF and nada after. Maybe some consistency and maturity and he will be 23 and me in 26.
Please Allah, try something different on the corner kicks against Iran. My forehead literally can’t take another display like that.
If you think Clint Mathis would help this team...
Yeah thus the ‘even’. Not sure The Mohawk would be the answer either at this point.