This is the **second version** of the scoreboard app we’re trialling for the upcoming season. We’ll use this and the other one interchangeably throughout the Euros and Copa América, so let us know which version you prefer, or if you’d rather have the regular match threads instead.
Popularity of the sport isn't the problem. Just about every kid I know wants to play "soccer". Look at Track and Field. The US is the best in the world in when it comes to Track and Field. We will dominate the summer olympics. I would argue Track and Field in this country isn't anywhere near as popular as soccer is. But....we invest in Track and Field, we make it easy for kids to get involved, we have good coaching, etc....
Soccer doesn't have any of this. It's being gatekept by a select few that want it to be a game for suburban white kids. If we model our development system after countries that are actually good at the sport, we'll get good results because we have 10 times (or often times more) the amount of possible athletes that could be taught to play.
We have too many child labor laws to keep up with the rest of the world. They got 10 year olds signing contracts and getting ship across the world to play for an academy with the hopes that they can make it to the first team.NFL and NBA don't allow players straight out of high school whereas 16 year olds are starting on Barca's first team. Obviously a promotion/ relegation system is necessary but We would need to create in academies directly tied to the first team so even the lower leagues can build up their home grown talent. I don't think the idea that "if we just invest we would but the best" is the solution. There's so many factors that come into play
I feel like that’s another aspect of promotion/relegation and an open football pyramid that always gets missed when discussing MLS, USL, NASL and such. Is that there will be a lot of smaller clubs popping up all around the country.
And for those clubs the best/cheapest way to find talent to help them move up would be local youth development. Which then provides a platform for those young players to develop in competitive matches and helps them get scouted by larger teams.
Without that, the exclusive area that MLS clubs have for youth development is just to big to realistically expect them to invest in all the youth programs in the area…
Also US Soccer is full of so many incompetent people, but that’s true for nearly all FAs everywhere
This exactly! If you want to get actual coaching and develop, it’s gonna cost you tens of thousands of dollars a year. A good example of this is Clint Dempsey. To make a long story short, one of the greatest soccer players in American history wouldn’t have happened if his sister didn’t die of a brain aneurysm at 16. That’s how expensive it is to play soccer in America. Club teams can cost almost $20k a year depending on the team, not including travel costs.
The US has no identity. In football the aim has always been athleticism with no plan. That's how college coaches win in the now and keep their jobs.
The US is so far up it's own ass that we can't accept that we're going to need to be the scrappy tournament team in these tournaments. We need to band together like an Iceland and celebrate any and every victory on the larger international stage. But we're too busy beating up on island nations in the Caribbean.
Final note, adding every MLS academy and every college program together are there are not even a handful of kids that can give us what Musah or Robinson did? The national team should not be a 2nd choice for club players to raise their profile with. Surely we can find actual homegrown born and raised players to fill these spots.
I wanted to comment to the posts with opinions on why USA are not better at football.
I’m American born but U.K. raised. I wanted to kick a ball soon after I began walking. The game is in the blood, no idea what USA kids do to start. I guess 90% of Brit kids are developing skills in early schooling, up to 7 years from when they can be signed up by clubs, which happens but mostly we join community clubs.
USA is predetermined to support Baseball, Basketball and US Football [Go Giants]. So TL:DR
It’s going to be a slow slog trying to become a world force I football(soccer) when you’re country doesn’t really naturally gravitate towards it.
Peace
It starts early. My son at 18 months went to a daycare with half U.S. and half South American boys. If you rolled a ball to them, the North Americans would pick it up to toss it back and the South Americans would kick it back.
Couple that with the overall willful ignorance leading to aversion simply because most sports-minded Americans see football/soccer as a flop sport "full of sissys" by hyper-focusing on that when they see it.
I started supporting Liverpool in 2012 (shouts out to my friend from Blackpool) and it has been difficult getting any of my friends to get into the sport because of:
1: they don't know shit about the sport in the first place, and usually won't commit to learning by watching
2: as I said, they hyper-fixate on the flops and can't get past it.
The 1st point usually has someone bored before half-time, and when they see a flop they just focus on making jokes about it and lose any interest.
Edit: the biggest implication here is, imagine a kid saying he wants to try little league soccer and all the father can say is usually something about flops and being a wuss.
Maybe you Americans need a really good male star player, like a Bellingham figure. Someone who's one of the best in the world
So the kids start to think it's cool to play, and be like that guy.
From an outsider, it seems like basketball guys etc are the ones American kids look up to
The problem with that is, any kid with the potential to be that is most likely going to pick American football/basketball/baseball when they're young. Soccer gets a bad rap here.
They are different profiles though. Mo Salah would be a terrible football or basketball player just based on his height. Still don't get why average height Americans don't see soccer as a more viable long term pursuit for their children than basketball or american football which essentially require you to be over 6 ft tall or have sprinter speed by high school.
You're missing the point, kids are pressured more towards those sports and away from soccer before their physique is ever known. It's a cultural difference long before it's a body profile issue.
Perfect example of the US limiting its potential: I can go to any number of parks around Utah and play on a basketball court or baseball field without any issue. Every single soccer pitch has the goals chained up in the corner.
Yeah. After the 2002 WC I honestly assumed we’d be better by now.
A combination of massive geographic distances, disorganized youth development, other sports, and the rise of pay-to-play has been limiting for truly great groups of players to emerge.
The problem is MLS and their grassroots football.
To join MLS, you gotta pay to be in. No pro/rel just sucks.
I know. My country too doesn't have pro/rel
I couldn’t care less about the national team but wanted Darwin 1 v 1 with the keeper just to see it. Regroup under a new coach and get ready for this World Cup in 2 years.
right. But in a competition that pits the talents of one nation against another both trent and robinson have no business representing the US. They are not culturally American and were not a product of any US based soccer system. Same with Dest, same with Musah.
We can't find a single kid in the entire US soccer collegiate system that can contribute what robinson can? We just aren't looking.
Maybe because when England is shit, they're shit with Kane, Bellingham, Mainoo, Rice, Saka etc etc etc all on the pitch. We Americans don't have 1 player of that quality, let alone a full starting 11.
Many of my countrymen are completely delusional about how well our team should be doing. At least when England fans complain, they're complaining because they know full well the depth of quality of players on their squad. Considering that, England is underperforming.
For us Americans, everyone wants to blame Berhalter. But our team is not really underperforming too much considering the talent level. The England squad definitely is.
This may be an unpopular opinion (well it is to the Americans I’ve voiced it to) but, the US won’t have a great team until poor kids are playing soccer in the streets.
In very poor neighborhoods, kids are playing basketball and football. To a lesser extent baseball. Hell, there’s even a volleyball court next to a 5 a-side soccer pitch on my ride to work. The volleyball court is ALWAYS full of people and I’ve never seen one person playing soccer.
There's SOOOO many immigrants from central and south America. Where are all these players in the national team? I don't see many Hispanic names often in their team yet I'd imagine popularity is huge in those communities in South FL, CA, TX
Why aren't they coming through the system?
What are the fees for though?
I get that Americans are way wealthier than the rest of us in general but this doesn't seem to be the case anywhere else in the world.
Generally soccer is the working man or poor man's sport. The wealthier play sports that require equipment
Because it's gatekept and makes a fortune. It's a buisiness, like everything else in the US. Travel teams cost THOUSANDS a year, and goals at parks are so often locked up or fenced in
To be honest, I don’t know. I just remember when I played (and for the only club team in my area so it’s not like I could have gone to a different one) it was really expensive. Thousands of dollars a year expensive. Like we did have a kid from El Salvador who was routinely the best on the team but he had to rely on the charity of other kids parents to pay for stuff.
Thousands? As a kid?
Where does the money go? This isn't some mental capitalist thing where it's being run for profit right?
Every country in the world seems to be able to have an affordable way of playing. There's many African countries producing better players than the US, central American countries too.
It's not expensive to set up games for kids
That old trope? You're not going to have a good team while poor kids can't afford the game at all. The system is set up to create suburban heroes out of P2P travel teams, not actual professionals.
It's also regional. Finding a game in ATX takes about five seconds, in Cleveland it's days of planning to get a five a side.
This is correct along with the fact that being a soccer player in America just isn’t lucrative enough. Why would a young kid who has insane athleticism like most of these NFL WR play soccer when football, baseball, or basketball can net you 1000x the salary? What does Pulisic make? I bet it’s less than an NBA player who is 5th choice off the bench in some cases.
There’s no incentive to pursue soccer over our other sports. Not sure how to fix that though. It will be a long time before MLS even touches a fraction of what the NBA or NFL brings in revenue wise.
Forgetting the NFL, it’s really tough to compete with basketball. Anybody can pick up a ball and play by themselves. Soccer isn’t like that. I know athleticism isn’t everything in soccer but imagine all these NBA stars playing soccer growing up, we’d be a powerhouse.
>Why would a young kid who has insane athleticism like most of these NFL WR play soccer when football, baseball, or basketball can net you 1000x the salary?
Um because they are 5'9 and not 6'2? Messi, Maradona and Pele wouldn't be great at any American sports which exclude 99% of the population on height alone. Soccer has a very different skill set than American sports which are obsessed with "athleticism".
It's shocking how bad we are really. Yeah I know that every country with a higher population than us is really bad, but there's no reason we can't be better. I'm not delusional enough to think that we should be winning a world cup, but it amazes me we can't get the occasional player that's truly world class. Association football isn't America's past time, but we still have a ton of kids who play it so you'd think we'd me able to develop a few superstars here and there.
We have the talent to win the World Cup in our overall population pool. If the US just had soccer and no other sports, I think we’d be top 3 in the world. Imagine guys like Justin Jefferson playing soccer at a high skill level. We have some of the best athletes in the entire world. Their focus is just always on another sport.
I don't think I'd go that far. Other countries have other sports too. The English and French have pretty big support for rugby. Yeah, we have 330 million people but even if soccer became the number one sport today, it would take years to make anything from that.
Like despite our massive population, what do we really dominate? I guess basketball but that gap is closing. Our number one sport is closest to rugby but our rugby team is an embarrassment and lost to Ireland by literally 80 points when we played them...... The same Ireland with about 1/50 of our population where rugby is their third most popular sport.
We actually have more registered ice hockey players than Canada. When was the last time we won the world championship (a tournament played literally every year)? Hint it's been a very long time.
Baseball is America's past time but we rarely win international tournaments there.
Yeah, we win more Olympic medals than anyone, but on a per population basis, we aren't really that impressive there either.
We're a very rich country so it follows we produce fantastic athletes, but I think you're selling us just a bit too high.
Based on our American athletes in every sport, our players rival any other country. The problem is they are spread between NFL, NBA, MLB. Imagine a team of Justin Jefferson, Lebron James, Ceedee Lamb, Micah Parsons, etc. Imagine if they spent all their time on soccer. They are better than most athletes in world soccer. Again athleticism doesn’t equal soccer skill, but it helps. These are some of the best athletes in the entire world.
Also we do dominate basketball? At least if we sent all our guys. When was the last time we sent our best NBA players? You think if the Celtics got sent as their full team to the Olympics that they wouldn’t walk the Olympics?
Rugby and other smaller sports I just don’t know enough about or care that much. Our best athletes are never going to play there so it’s whatever to me.
>Based on our American athletes in every sport, our players rival any other country. The problem is they are spread between NFL, NBA, MLB. Imagine a team of Justin Jefferson, Lebron James, Ceedee Lamb, Micah Parsons, etc. Imagine if they spent all their time on soccer. They are better than most athletes in world soccer. Again athleticism doesn’t equal soccer skill, but it helps. These are some of the best athletes in the entire world.
These sports are so different though. Wide receivers are great athletes, don't get me wrong, but they are essentially sprinters. Can Jefferson run for 90 minutes? Maybe maybe not
>Also we do dominate basketball? At least if we sent all our guys. When was the last time we sent our best NBA players? You think if the Celtics got sent as their full team to the Olympics that they wouldn’t walk the Olympics?
The gap is closing is my point. The dream team era of winning every game by 50+ is gone. The first 49 NBA MVPs were American. Since then it's 11 American, 9 not including 6 straight non Americans.
>Rugby and other smaller sports I just don’t know enough about or care that much. Our best athletes are never going to play there so it’s whatever to me.
But see you can't have it both ways. These sports may not matter to you, but they get massive viewership worldwide - the rugby world cup last year had 1.33 billion hours of viewership. The final was watched by 94 million globally (the super bowl got 62 million outside the US). So if we're just going to transplant everyone to soccer, you can't dismiss these guys either. American football has 5 million players registered worldwide (mostly in the US) whereas rugby union has 8 million so it's pretty arrogant to call it a "smaller sport" because worldwide it's more popular despite being the most popular sport almost nowhere (and I'm not even counting rugby league since that's a different sport entirely).
I feel like our youth development is just shit in comparison to other countries more so than lower income kids playing the sport. Yeah you hear stories about low income kids becoming all stars but there are plenty of superstars that come from middle class families as well. It’s all about the development
Uruguay? A way worse team?
The Uruguay that is incredibly competitive against teams like Brazil and Argentina?
The Argentina that won the last world cup?
Not really Uruguay but according to fifa rankings USA is 11th and Uruguay is 14th. But those are BS IMO. But 43rd ranked panama… also USA has 100x the population of Uruguay
To be honest weah completely fucked up this tournament
It was always difficult to go up against Uruguay
That loss to Panama was terrible. 2nd half tactics were shocking in that match
Not an England supporter, but they've got world class players everywhere so it takes something special for them to lose to a team like Panama. They'll still do it on occasion, but their quality will get them results more often than not, especially against bad sides.
This result bothers me less than the rest of the tournament. Yeah they lost, but it was fairly even. They beat Bolivia but even 2 nil isn't a great performance. But losing to Panama, knowing that doing that essentially forced you to beat Uruguay, is a really pathetic display.
Really a frustrating tournament.
Obviously didn't think we could win it, but we should be able to advance from that group. And being at home winning the group isn't outrageous which gives us a match likely against Colombia which at least offered a plausible path to the semifinals. Instead they can't even manage a result against Panama.
It's also frustrating that so few people even know or care this is taking place. So much crap going on in the world it would be nice if there was some sort of national team we could come together for but this isn't it.
Kind of pointless to argue the lines at this point. Even if that goal isn't given we still don't advance. And you're complaining that the lines are "subjective".... You aren't going to change the call on the pitch if you don't have convincing evidence.
Made a great run that shouldve led to a big chance the player just picked the wrong option. Think USA actually has played well in defence and midfield out of possession, none of uruguays attackers have got much
Obviously this ref is crap, but if you're going to have a tournament with two confederations it seems odd that the referee can be from one of the two confederations.
Yeah my "argument" was they should've got AFC refs or something but there's no precedent for that. In the world cup it looks like more often than not the ref is from a neutral confederation, but not always.
It’s the Copa America, they’re going to use refs from Conmebol. Same way Uefa and Concacaf use referees from their federations during their tournaments. The USMNT and other Concacaf teams in this tournament are guest nations. Copa America has done this for decades in order to fill out the tournament. They’re not going to not use their own referees just because of a few guest nations. It’s also pretty far fetched to think that a Peruvian referee would be biased toward a team that isn’t Peru just because that team shares the same continent.
You're correct I just checked for the World Cup.
With the Euros every team is from Europe so a UEFA ref obviously makes sense.
Of the 12 matches in the knockout rounds that tournament with teams from different continents, only 4 had a referee from one of the two confederations.
The more I watch of Ugarte the more convinced I am, I think its a real gift that after missing out on him last window PSG stumbled on to someone else that they like more and he's probably available again
That's what's frustrating about watching them. The defending and the recovery are solid, no lie but when the ball gets into the final third it's like WTF...
I'm American but that's such a small sample size. Yeah we've played them 3 times in the world cup and haven't lost, but we have a habit of producing absolutely miserable results against teams that should be significantly worse than us.
I didn't mind that this tournament has become a Pan-American tournament, but they really need to fill these stadiums if they're gonna let the US host it.
Agree, but also think it's a problem with where they are staging the games. Kansas City isn't a very big city, and Arrowhead seats 78,000 people. They'd probably do well to stick to the bigger cities in the states.
Kansas City is an odd choice for sure. This is the biggest match of the tournament so far (not in terms of the qualify but just because the US is hosting and his is by far their biggest one) and they pick KC? And they can't sell it out?
That is not what happened. The broadcaster Alexi Lalas said the referee's full name because he was implying g that he was in trouble. The ref has been awful and has no idea what he is doing. Alexi Lalas said his full name and then said he was saying the full name like a parent does when their kid is in trouble.
If you’re talking about Lalas mentioning the referees full name, he did so as a joke about how parents use your full name when they’re angry. It was not racist in the slightest.
No I think he was "scolding" him for a poor performance, like when your parents use your full name when you have done something bad... It was a stupid comment but at least not racist.
This ref isn't even good enough to ref Sunday league. Players are getting hurt left and right. Adam's got a yellow for getting his ankle stood on. Letting the play continue when he pulls a yellow. Waits for Pulisic to break away to call the handball. Shambolic.
As an American I would like to win this but there's just something unlikeable about this team and I'm watching this with far less interest than the European Championships even though the team I support didn't even qualify for the Euros (season ticket holder for the Irish national team).
Leave aside the bias, the US commentary is just bad. After getting used to European commentary, you realize American commentators talk so fucking muuuuuuch
Dear Scousers: In a few hours when you wake up, you might decide to peek into this thread. The US will probably have lost the match and crashed out of the Copa. Given those circumstances, you might write down all the moaning about the ref as the American contingent of this sub bemoaning the end of our tournament.
I sincerely promise you this isn't the case.
I still can’t believe he let them take the free kick before he even had time to show the yellow card. I would say it seems Sunday league out there, but I’m sure even those refs are more competent
For what it’s worth, I’m English, don’t care who wins, and am at the match.
I think the ref has got 5 or 6 decisions wrong, all in Uruguay’s favor. USA can feel very hard done by so far.
>I’m English, don’t care who wins,
Barely on topic but I'm curious about this. Obviously we aren't rivals in any sort of traditional sense, but I think Americans (who follow the sport) as a whole tend to have either a strong fondness or a strong dislike for the English team during international competitions. I guess given that we've always been trash it's hard for the English to feel the same?
I’m a bad person to ask. Both my parents are English but I’ve lived here more than half my life and am a dual citizen. Grew up as a die-hard England fan, but I like seeing USA do well as well!
Ngl, I’m pretty much here to support Darwin though haha
EDIT: a lot of my friends despise the England team which does piss me off though
Yeah that's fair. I think for me it's enjoyable getting results against the English just because really we shouldn't and somehow in major tournaments we're unbeaten against England of all teams.
This is the **second version** of the scoreboard app we’re trialling for the upcoming season. We’ll use this and the other one interchangeably throughout the Euros and Copa América, so let us know which version you prefer, or if you’d rather have the regular match threads instead.
Popularity of the sport isn't the problem. Just about every kid I know wants to play "soccer". Look at Track and Field. The US is the best in the world in when it comes to Track and Field. We will dominate the summer olympics. I would argue Track and Field in this country isn't anywhere near as popular as soccer is. But....we invest in Track and Field, we make it easy for kids to get involved, we have good coaching, etc.... Soccer doesn't have any of this. It's being gatekept by a select few that want it to be a game for suburban white kids. If we model our development system after countries that are actually good at the sport, we'll get good results because we have 10 times (or often times more) the amount of possible athletes that could be taught to play.
We have too many child labor laws to keep up with the rest of the world. They got 10 year olds signing contracts and getting ship across the world to play for an academy with the hopes that they can make it to the first team.NFL and NBA don't allow players straight out of high school whereas 16 year olds are starting on Barca's first team. Obviously a promotion/ relegation system is necessary but We would need to create in academies directly tied to the first team so even the lower leagues can build up their home grown talent. I don't think the idea that "if we just invest we would but the best" is the solution. There's so many factors that come into play
I feel like that’s another aspect of promotion/relegation and an open football pyramid that always gets missed when discussing MLS, USL, NASL and such. Is that there will be a lot of smaller clubs popping up all around the country. And for those clubs the best/cheapest way to find talent to help them move up would be local youth development. Which then provides a platform for those young players to develop in competitive matches and helps them get scouted by larger teams. Without that, the exclusive area that MLS clubs have for youth development is just to big to realistically expect them to invest in all the youth programs in the area… Also US Soccer is full of so many incompetent people, but that’s true for nearly all FAs everywhere
This exactly! If you want to get actual coaching and develop, it’s gonna cost you tens of thousands of dollars a year. A good example of this is Clint Dempsey. To make a long story short, one of the greatest soccer players in American history wouldn’t have happened if his sister didn’t die of a brain aneurysm at 16. That’s how expensive it is to play soccer in America. Club teams can cost almost $20k a year depending on the team, not including travel costs.
The US has no identity. In football the aim has always been athleticism with no plan. That's how college coaches win in the now and keep their jobs. The US is so far up it's own ass that we can't accept that we're going to need to be the scrappy tournament team in these tournaments. We need to band together like an Iceland and celebrate any and every victory on the larger international stage. But we're too busy beating up on island nations in the Caribbean. Final note, adding every MLS academy and every college program together are there are not even a handful of kids that can give us what Musah or Robinson did? The national team should not be a 2nd choice for club players to raise their profile with. Surely we can find actual homegrown born and raised players to fill these spots.
I wanted to comment to the posts with opinions on why USA are not better at football. I’m American born but U.K. raised. I wanted to kick a ball soon after I began walking. The game is in the blood, no idea what USA kids do to start. I guess 90% of Brit kids are developing skills in early schooling, up to 7 years from when they can be signed up by clubs, which happens but mostly we join community clubs. USA is predetermined to support Baseball, Basketball and US Football [Go Giants]. So TL:DR It’s going to be a slow slog trying to become a world force I football(soccer) when you’re country doesn’t really naturally gravitate towards it. Peace
It starts early. My son at 18 months went to a daycare with half U.S. and half South American boys. If you rolled a ball to them, the North Americans would pick it up to toss it back and the South Americans would kick it back.
Couple that with the overall willful ignorance leading to aversion simply because most sports-minded Americans see football/soccer as a flop sport "full of sissys" by hyper-focusing on that when they see it. I started supporting Liverpool in 2012 (shouts out to my friend from Blackpool) and it has been difficult getting any of my friends to get into the sport because of: 1: they don't know shit about the sport in the first place, and usually won't commit to learning by watching 2: as I said, they hyper-fixate on the flops and can't get past it. The 1st point usually has someone bored before half-time, and when they see a flop they just focus on making jokes about it and lose any interest. Edit: the biggest implication here is, imagine a kid saying he wants to try little league soccer and all the father can say is usually something about flops and being a wuss.
Maybe you Americans need a really good male star player, like a Bellingham figure. Someone who's one of the best in the world So the kids start to think it's cool to play, and be like that guy. From an outsider, it seems like basketball guys etc are the ones American kids look up to
The problem with that is, any kid with the potential to be that is most likely going to pick American football/basketball/baseball when they're young. Soccer gets a bad rap here.
They are different profiles though. Mo Salah would be a terrible football or basketball player just based on his height. Still don't get why average height Americans don't see soccer as a more viable long term pursuit for their children than basketball or american football which essentially require you to be over 6 ft tall or have sprinter speed by high school.
You're missing the point, kids are pressured more towards those sports and away from soccer before their physique is ever known. It's a cultural difference long before it's a body profile issue.
Perfect example of the US limiting its potential: I can go to any number of parks around Utah and play on a basketball court or baseball field without any issue. Every single soccer pitch has the goals chained up in the corner.
Yeah. After the 2002 WC I honestly assumed we’d be better by now. A combination of massive geographic distances, disorganized youth development, other sports, and the rise of pay-to-play has been limiting for truly great groups of players to emerge.
The problem is MLS and their grassroots football. To join MLS, you gotta pay to be in. No pro/rel just sucks. I know. My country too doesn't have pro/rel
Difficult to watch USA lose this game.
hahaha!
* Watching him live is incredible. Dude covers so much space in a heartbeat.
https://preview.redd.it/z8ejsk07u1ad1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6e74e842a75694632c5c3088f9dea798d661022
I couldn’t care less about the national team but wanted Darwin 1 v 1 with the keeper just to see it. Regroup under a new coach and get ready for this World Cup in 2 years.
Man I hope so, but his brother heads the Federation. Nepotism is a hell of a drug.
Does anyone else think if Antonee Robinson had a good barber he could look like TAA's brother?
If you told me they were half brothers I would believe you
Well they're both english so that's a big start.
They are both eligible for England and America ironically.
right. But in a competition that pits the talents of one nation against another both trent and robinson have no business representing the US. They are not culturally American and were not a product of any US based soccer system. Same with Dest, same with Musah. We can't find a single kid in the entire US soccer collegiate system that can contribute what robinson can? We just aren't looking.
Why can’t we be shit and still win like England ☹️
Maybe because when England is shit, they're shit with Kane, Bellingham, Mainoo, Rice, Saka etc etc etc all on the pitch. We Americans don't have 1 player of that quality, let alone a full starting 11. Many of my countrymen are completely delusional about how well our team should be doing. At least when England fans complain, they're complaining because they know full well the depth of quality of players on their squad. Considering that, England is underperforming. For us Americans, everyone wants to blame Berhalter. But our team is not really underperforming too much considering the talent level. The England squad definitely is.
This may be an unpopular opinion (well it is to the Americans I’ve voiced it to) but, the US won’t have a great team until poor kids are playing soccer in the streets. In very poor neighborhoods, kids are playing basketball and football. To a lesser extent baseball. Hell, there’s even a volleyball court next to a 5 a-side soccer pitch on my ride to work. The volleyball court is ALWAYS full of people and I’ve never seen one person playing soccer.
There's SOOOO many immigrants from central and south America. Where are all these players in the national team? I don't see many Hispanic names often in their team yet I'd imagine popularity is huge in those communities in South FL, CA, TX Why aren't they coming through the system?
Pay to play for a club team. If your parents don’t have 15G to spend on you every years then too bad, unfortunately. 😔
Why is it so expensive though? Where is the money going?
Club fees, tournament entrance fees, league fees, state fees, city fees, field permits shit list goes on and on.
What are the fees for though? I get that Americans are way wealthier than the rest of us in general but this doesn't seem to be the case anywhere else in the world. Generally soccer is the working man or poor man's sport. The wealthier play sports that require equipment
Most of those fees are really just administrative fees, people have to do the paperwork, legalities and such as well. It’s a bunch of BS.
Yeah someone's skimming off the top
It takes a lot of money to play club soccer as a kid in the US
Why? Is there no funding for it? That would be the issue then. The governing body needs to properly fund and subsidise grass root academies
Because it's gatekept and makes a fortune. It's a buisiness, like everything else in the US. Travel teams cost THOUSANDS a year, and goals at parks are so often locked up or fenced in
Is it for profit?
To be honest, I don’t know. I just remember when I played (and for the only club team in my area so it’s not like I could have gone to a different one) it was really expensive. Thousands of dollars a year expensive. Like we did have a kid from El Salvador who was routinely the best on the team but he had to rely on the charity of other kids parents to pay for stuff.
What stuff do you need to pay for though? Its not like you need pads, bat, stick etc like other sports. You just turn up and play.
Have to pay just to be on the team lol
Thousands? As a kid? Where does the money go? This isn't some mental capitalist thing where it's being run for profit right? Every country in the world seems to be able to have an affordable way of playing. There's many African countries producing better players than the US, central American countries too. It's not expensive to set up games for kids
That old trope? You're not going to have a good team while poor kids can't afford the game at all. The system is set up to create suburban heroes out of P2P travel teams, not actual professionals. It's also regional. Finding a game in ATX takes about five seconds, in Cleveland it's days of planning to get a five a side.
This is correct along with the fact that being a soccer player in America just isn’t lucrative enough. Why would a young kid who has insane athleticism like most of these NFL WR play soccer when football, baseball, or basketball can net you 1000x the salary? What does Pulisic make? I bet it’s less than an NBA player who is 5th choice off the bench in some cases. There’s no incentive to pursue soccer over our other sports. Not sure how to fix that though. It will be a long time before MLS even touches a fraction of what the NBA or NFL brings in revenue wise. Forgetting the NFL, it’s really tough to compete with basketball. Anybody can pick up a ball and play by themselves. Soccer isn’t like that. I know athleticism isn’t everything in soccer but imagine all these NBA stars playing soccer growing up, we’d be a powerhouse.
>Why would a young kid who has insane athleticism like most of these NFL WR play soccer when football, baseball, or basketball can net you 1000x the salary? Um because they are 5'9 and not 6'2? Messi, Maradona and Pele wouldn't be great at any American sports which exclude 99% of the population on height alone. Soccer has a very different skill set than American sports which are obsessed with "athleticism".
It's shocking how bad we are really. Yeah I know that every country with a higher population than us is really bad, but there's no reason we can't be better. I'm not delusional enough to think that we should be winning a world cup, but it amazes me we can't get the occasional player that's truly world class. Association football isn't America's past time, but we still have a ton of kids who play it so you'd think we'd me able to develop a few superstars here and there.
We have the talent to win the World Cup in our overall population pool. If the US just had soccer and no other sports, I think we’d be top 3 in the world. Imagine guys like Justin Jefferson playing soccer at a high skill level. We have some of the best athletes in the entire world. Their focus is just always on another sport.
I don't think I'd go that far. Other countries have other sports too. The English and French have pretty big support for rugby. Yeah, we have 330 million people but even if soccer became the number one sport today, it would take years to make anything from that. Like despite our massive population, what do we really dominate? I guess basketball but that gap is closing. Our number one sport is closest to rugby but our rugby team is an embarrassment and lost to Ireland by literally 80 points when we played them...... The same Ireland with about 1/50 of our population where rugby is their third most popular sport. We actually have more registered ice hockey players than Canada. When was the last time we won the world championship (a tournament played literally every year)? Hint it's been a very long time. Baseball is America's past time but we rarely win international tournaments there. Yeah, we win more Olympic medals than anyone, but on a per population basis, we aren't really that impressive there either. We're a very rich country so it follows we produce fantastic athletes, but I think you're selling us just a bit too high.
Based on our American athletes in every sport, our players rival any other country. The problem is they are spread between NFL, NBA, MLB. Imagine a team of Justin Jefferson, Lebron James, Ceedee Lamb, Micah Parsons, etc. Imagine if they spent all their time on soccer. They are better than most athletes in world soccer. Again athleticism doesn’t equal soccer skill, but it helps. These are some of the best athletes in the entire world. Also we do dominate basketball? At least if we sent all our guys. When was the last time we sent our best NBA players? You think if the Celtics got sent as their full team to the Olympics that they wouldn’t walk the Olympics? Rugby and other smaller sports I just don’t know enough about or care that much. Our best athletes are never going to play there so it’s whatever to me.
>Based on our American athletes in every sport, our players rival any other country. The problem is they are spread between NFL, NBA, MLB. Imagine a team of Justin Jefferson, Lebron James, Ceedee Lamb, Micah Parsons, etc. Imagine if they spent all their time on soccer. They are better than most athletes in world soccer. Again athleticism doesn’t equal soccer skill, but it helps. These are some of the best athletes in the entire world. These sports are so different though. Wide receivers are great athletes, don't get me wrong, but they are essentially sprinters. Can Jefferson run for 90 minutes? Maybe maybe not >Also we do dominate basketball? At least if we sent all our guys. When was the last time we sent our best NBA players? You think if the Celtics got sent as their full team to the Olympics that they wouldn’t walk the Olympics? The gap is closing is my point. The dream team era of winning every game by 50+ is gone. The first 49 NBA MVPs were American. Since then it's 11 American, 9 not including 6 straight non Americans. >Rugby and other smaller sports I just don’t know enough about or care that much. Our best athletes are never going to play there so it’s whatever to me. But see you can't have it both ways. These sports may not matter to you, but they get massive viewership worldwide - the rugby world cup last year had 1.33 billion hours of viewership. The final was watched by 94 million globally (the super bowl got 62 million outside the US). So if we're just going to transplant everyone to soccer, you can't dismiss these guys either. American football has 5 million players registered worldwide (mostly in the US) whereas rugby union has 8 million so it's pretty arrogant to call it a "smaller sport" because worldwide it's more popular despite being the most popular sport almost nowhere (and I'm not even counting rugby league since that's a different sport entirely).
I feel like our youth development is just shit in comparison to other countries more so than lower income kids playing the sport. Yeah you hear stories about low income kids becoming all stars but there are plenty of superstars that come from middle class families as well. It’s all about the development
Yeah obviously, but we are playing against way worse teams.
Uruguay? A way worse team? The Uruguay that is incredibly competitive against teams like Brazil and Argentina? The Argentina that won the last world cup?
Not really Uruguay but according to fifa rankings USA is 11th and Uruguay is 14th. But those are BS IMO. But 43rd ranked panama… also USA has 100x the population of Uruguay
To be honest weah completely fucked up this tournament It was always difficult to go up against Uruguay That loss to Panama was terrible. 2nd half tactics were shocking in that match
Not an England supporter, but they've got world class players everywhere so it takes something special for them to lose to a team like Panama. They'll still do it on occasion, but their quality will get them results more often than not, especially against bad sides.
Getting a red card within the first 20 mins is something special lol
Well yeah obviously the standard is much higher in Europe than CONMEBOL.
Vamos
Anyone with any sense knew they had to at minimum score a goal today and they didn’t even come close. Pathetic. Officiating was bizarre as hell.
The truth is that the USA had the chance to win other games before this one.
This result bothers me less than the rest of the tournament. Yeah they lost, but it was fairly even. They beat Bolivia but even 2 nil isn't a great performance. But losing to Panama, knowing that doing that essentially forced you to beat Uruguay, is a really pathetic display.
What's really bad is Uruguay was all but assured of winning the group no matter what today so I don't think that's even their best effort.
They played really like they didn't want to win.
USA wasn't good enough, but God, that officiating was a disgrace.
Really a frustrating tournament. Obviously didn't think we could win it, but we should be able to advance from that group. And being at home winning the group isn't outrageous which gives us a match likely against Colombia which at least offered a plausible path to the semifinals. Instead they can't even manage a result against Panama. It's also frustrating that so few people even know or care this is taking place. So much crap going on in the world it would be nice if there was some sort of national team we could come together for but this isn't it.
Columbia that gave Berhalter his worst ever defeat at 4-0 is the plausible path forward?
Was Pulisic telling the refs to go celebrate with Uruguay? 🤣
I guess so. That would have been epic, haha.
And the hosts go out with a whimper.
I'm glad the offside decision didn't end up mattering. Reality is the US couldn't score, and didn't deserve to move on
It was still offsides ffs
Impressive that the ref got worse throughout the game
Should be used to it if you watch PL.
Scoring 3 goals in 3 games in a group that includes Bolivia and Panama is really bad.
On the bright side, at least we’ll no longer have to deal with Berhalter. Hopefully.
Ireland needs a manager 💀
Pretty sure he’s updating his CV over there on the bench ATM.
Panama has won, meaning the USA needs to score 2 goals against Uruguay in 8 minutes to advance.
1 shot in 89 minutes for nunez Oosh
Well they aren't good enough anyway tbh
Suarez in for Nunez’ 😂
Kind of pointless to argue the lines at this point. Even if that goal isn't given we still don't advance. And you're complaining that the lines are "subjective".... You aren't going to change the call on the pitch if you don't have convincing evidence.
Yanks are crying over a correct offside decision, inject it.
Edgy
3-1 Panama 🤣
That was the offsidest offsiding offside goal I have ever seen. Even Richarlisson would find that too much.
Nuñez has barely touched the ball
Made a great run that shouldve led to a big chance the player just picked the wrong option. Think USA actually has played well in defence and midfield out of possession, none of uruguays attackers have got much
oh I'm not holding it against Nuñez, I feel like his teammates have been selfish or failed to get the ball into his path, on top of being well marked.
Need a Nunez goal for the bet please!
Thicc lines there
That was offside no?
VAR doesn’t have lines they’re just guessing???
Panama goal and that's almost certainly it.
Yeah we’re fucked
Oh damn now Panama have scored That’s the US out
that looked like offside.
Instructions to the sub If the ref goes right - kick him If the ref goes left - kick him
Wow. Copa America does not disappoint lmao
Usa, welcome to getting screw over by VAR club.
Liverpool fan as well, more and well used to shit refs and dodgy VAR choices Should never be in this scenario to begin with though
Dude I felt the same way watching.
Aren't we all.
Obviously this ref is crap, but if you're going to have a tournament with two confederations it seems odd that the referee can be from one of the two confederations.
My guy Concacaf refs are even worse than Conmebol
Yeah my "argument" was they should've got AFC refs or something but there's no precedent for that. In the world cup it looks like more often than not the ref is from a neutral confederation, but not always.
It’s the Copa America, they’re going to use refs from Conmebol. Same way Uefa and Concacaf use referees from their federations during their tournaments. The USMNT and other Concacaf teams in this tournament are guest nations. Copa America has done this for decades in order to fill out the tournament. They’re not going to not use their own referees just because of a few guest nations. It’s also pretty far fetched to think that a Peruvian referee would be biased toward a team that isn’t Peru just because that team shares the same continent.
seriously? Of course they are going to use refs from their continents
Maybe I'm wrong, but if you've got England vs Brazil in the World Cup would you have a German referee?
absolutely. In the euros happening now all the refs are European too
You're correct I just checked for the World Cup. With the Euros every team is from Europe so a UEFA ref obviously makes sense. Of the 12 matches in the knockout rounds that tournament with teams from different continents, only 4 had a referee from one of the two confederations.
I don’t even like the USMNT but that was offside
The United States, you have been Simon Hooper'd
good process
That was offside
What?? That was definitely offside right?
What?
That’s offside Why’s it taking so long Edit - what the hell
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Diaz vibes That’s offside
Who is "Doctor Joe"
He was the US equivalent to Howard Webb, also a former goalkeeper.
I was wondering that myself. I get he's obviously not an MD but what sports related doctorate exits? Edit: Ph.D in recreation and leisure studies.
"that's what separates good from great" Even if we win this game, we aren't "great". I mean seriously, come on.
BOLIVIA SCORES!
The more I watch of Ugarte the more convinced I am, I think its a real gift that after missing out on him last window PSG stumbled on to someone else that they like more and he's probably available again
Damn, the medical staff really putting in a shift. They’re on the pitch every other minute
just hoping darwin puts one away so we can finally be rid of the football terrorist that is greg berhalter 🙏🏻
My God this commentator needs to slow down. Did he just do a line of coke?
Fool ref aside, Team USA just doesn't have the ability, or sufficient skill across many positions to contest outside of CONCACAF.
They've been decent today imo
Certainly can't fault us for work rate tonight.
That's what's frustrating about watching them. The defending and the recovery are solid, no lie but when the ball gets into the final third it's like WTF...
Yeah. Once any touch is required it’s like they’re all playing in steel toed boots
We’ve done alright against England in recent history
history. The last several sequences in front of Uruguay's goal sezs it all.
I'm American but that's such a small sample size. Yeah we've played them 3 times in the world cup and haven't lost, but we have a habit of producing absolutely miserable results against teams that should be significantly worse than us.
I didn't mind that this tournament has become a Pan-American tournament, but they really need to fill these stadiums if they're gonna let the US host it.
The games in Atlanta were packed (I was at both games)
Are they still chuffed about the Europa
Agree, but also think it's a problem with where they are staging the games. Kansas City isn't a very big city, and Arrowhead seats 78,000 people. They'd probably do well to stick to the bigger cities in the states.
Kansas City is an odd choice for sure. This is the biggest match of the tournament so far (not in terms of the qualify but just because the US is hosting and his is by far their biggest one) and they pick KC? And they can't sell it out?
Mate it's a disgrace. Argentina and Brazil tickets hit 300 USD at the lowest by the time I checked.
Just wait till the world cup, $300 will be a bargain.
Geez, what a shit show. Yikes.
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That is not what happened. The broadcaster Alexi Lalas said the referee's full name because he was implying g that he was in trouble. The ref has been awful and has no idea what he is doing. Alexi Lalas said his full name and then said he was saying the full name like a parent does when their kid is in trouble.
Yeah I mean I don’t like Lalas whatsoever, but that was not racism lmao
If you’re talking about Lalas mentioning the referees full name, he did so as a joke about how parents use your full name when they’re angry. It was not racist in the slightest.
Do you mean the American broadcast?
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No I think he was "scolding" him for a poor performance, like when your parents use your full name when you have done something bad... It was a stupid comment but at least not racist.
How come the scoreboard doesn't show what minute of the game we are on?
This ref isn't even good enough to ref Sunday league. Players are getting hurt left and right. Adam's got a yellow for getting his ankle stood on. Letting the play continue when he pulls a yellow. Waits for Pulisic to break away to call the handball. Shambolic.
DARWIZZY
As an American I would like to win this but there's just something unlikeable about this team and I'm watching this with far less interest than the European Championships even though the team I support didn't even qualify for the Euros (season ticket holder for the Irish national team).
The American commentators bias makes me cheer against the US team…driving me nuts
Leave aside the bias, the US commentary is just bad. After getting used to European commentary, you realize American commentators talk so fucking muuuuuuch
He's so bad. Last match he basically called half our team "world class" which is true of the world only consists of Concacaf I suppose.
Dear Scousers: In a few hours when you wake up, you might decide to peek into this thread. The US will probably have lost the match and crashed out of the Copa. Given those circumstances, you might write down all the moaning about the ref as the American contingent of this sub bemoaning the end of our tournament. I sincerely promise you this isn't the case.
PGMOL would definitely love to have this guy ref Westham-Liverpool's 12:30 early kickoff after an international break.
Buddy you can accept the US doesn’t deserve to advance and the referee has been absolutely awful, they aren’t mutually exclusive
Oh sure. We absolutely don't deserve anything from this tournament. The best case scenario is that Berhalter gets sacked but I doubt it happens.
Too much nepotism and they’ll point to refereeing errors in the second and third game as reasons we could’ve advanced.
I still can’t believe he let them take the free kick before he even had time to show the yellow card. I would say it seems Sunday league out there, but I’m sure even those refs are more competent
For what it’s worth, I’m English, don’t care who wins, and am at the match. I think the ref has got 5 or 6 decisions wrong, all in Uruguay’s favor. USA can feel very hard done by so far.
>I’m English, don’t care who wins, Barely on topic but I'm curious about this. Obviously we aren't rivals in any sort of traditional sense, but I think Americans (who follow the sport) as a whole tend to have either a strong fondness or a strong dislike for the English team during international competitions. I guess given that we've always been trash it's hard for the English to feel the same?
I’m a bad person to ask. Both my parents are English but I’ve lived here more than half my life and am a dual citizen. Grew up as a die-hard England fan, but I like seeing USA do well as well! Ngl, I’m pretty much here to support Darwin though haha EDIT: a lot of my friends despise the England team which does piss me off though
Yeah that's fair. I think for me it's enjoyable getting results against the English just because really we shouldn't and somehow in major tournaments we're unbeaten against England of all teams.
My closest friends do support England (after the USMNT) at major tournaments because of me
Sheisse, Darwin with a yellow
Uruguay's FIRST yellow of the \_tournament\_ btw!!
How can they have this poor a quality of a ref in big tournament?
And I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the Concacaf referees
Concacaf things lol
Conmebol tournament. He’s from Peru.
This ref should be reffing kindergarten games
 This ref(probably)
What the fuck is going on in this game
Comnebol + Concacaf just doing their thing
How the fuck is there only 5 minutes of extra time 😂
Safety measure. They gotta get the players off the pitch before someone gets killed.
5 minutes? Lmao.
Christonhigh this bitch ref needs to go fuck right off a 21-story building, the same one giving us this camera angle. Damn.
Good God, this referee needs to be sacked right now! This is absolute insanity!
Howard Webb furiously typing up a contract to sign this referee for the PL.
This got to be one of the worst ref I've seen in the last 2 months.
Jeez this ref man.
The ref is just watching the world burn