Well in case you missed it, we got to see 11 Bodie Millers on grass today in the World Cup. In 270 minutes the US team managed to find the inside of the other team's goal once. Pathetic.
Well given that soccer fandom in the USA just barely exceeds the WNBA fandom, I doubt if there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth over this..
8) Actually, the soccer community is massive. Its probably larger than hockey and basketball combined. Youth soccer is played on a scale similar to Little League and Pony Leage baseball in every state of the union. What it doesn't have is a credible pro league that kids aspire to reach. American soccer kids dream of the day they can play in the Premiership or the Bundesliga: not the MLS. There are no passionate traditions here either. This sport basically got off the ground in an organized way here in the United States in the 1960's... A long time ago, my late pal Mario Pinchiera, who used to play for Colo-Colo in Chile, explained to me how soccer would develop in the United States. He said that we would develop goalies first, because Americans already had the skills of hands and eyes from other sports to play goalie. He also said that it would take decades to develop the other skills and the last one and most difficult to develop would be the strikers: the goal scorers. I was thinking of his words today, as I put two statistics together: in all three WC games combined, the United States managed only FOUR shots on goal... not four per game; four total shots in all three games combined, connecting on one of them. Compare this with Brazil, who defeated Japan 4-1 today. The Brazilieros fired 25 shots at the Japanese goalie, who had a fabulous game, but finally wilted under the pressure... Most of the hard development work has now been done, but we're not going to beat the Brazils and Argentina's of the world until we can get off at least 10 real shots PER GAME. According to Mario, that's the kind of offense it will take and we just don't have that yet... ....................JO'Co
JO'Co I agree with your analysis. I always look at individual skills. In the past 20 yrs. we've really improved on trapping and passing. But the true individual skills that allow a player to keep the ball in traffic are not yet developed. Mistakes on offense might cost you a chance at scoring, a mistake on defense is deadly. Reyna's mistake was unforgivable. BTW nice to see the game decided on a questionalbe penalty kick called by a Euro ref. It completely changed the tenor of the game in the second half. Still the US had chances but often shot high. As I used to tell my players, "no one ever shot under the goal." We never should have been beaten so badly by the Chech Republic. That set the tone for the whole tourney by the US.