The "best kids" based on what criteria exactly ? I'm sure they would improve over time but there is no guarantee they'd be close to being the best. Natural talent and technical ability is very hard to predict and without those, the US has no chance of being a big footballing country.
How dominant USA would be in comparison to Brazil, France or Spain if their main sport is football?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
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If you are ignorant, of course.
Football is way bigger in the USA than you might think. It's just not very mainstream in Europe, so we hear very little about it outside of tidbits from our own stars who go there for a last hurrah.
In fact in terms of number participation, football is biggger in USA than: Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Finland combined, Russia, Brazil, India, Britain, etc.
The only country on the planet that has more active registered football players than the USA, is China.
The clubs in USA certainly have stadiums and infrastructure in place to afford them all the development comforts of their European counterparts.
It took European nations over 100 years of continious club development to get to where we are, MSL are going to catch up eventually, but the best players are currently developed in Europe and South America for whatever reason. Most likely it has to do with young talent development, something which countries like Brazil, Spain and to some extent Britain is especially good at
The US obsession with sports and sporting achievement will make them seriously fecking scary when they eventually embrace the game properly.
I think the US as a nation when it is committed to a sport it produces athletes with perfect combo of flair, athleticism and winning mentality and you just have to look at their basketballers to see that they have a huge volume of wiry agile and powerful sportsmen with shit tonnes of flair and vision.. if these guys were converted into football players (ie shorter players) - they would create some bad ass footballers.
Thing is they have that many sports to choose from in US that the guys who choose football end up being the least talented sports stars and tactically as well the US has been run by men with none of the flair you’d associate with American sports in general.
Culture is huge factor which trumps resources IMO.. Australia and USA have great athletes and great resources but none of their elite kids coming through will dream of playing football and thus if one elite kid does come through because he’s going to be competing against sub par talent during his development path and receive sub par coaching and it is a vicious cycle of failure in long run.
Thing is they have that many sports to choose from in US that the guys who choose football end up being the least talented sports stars and tactically as well the US has been run by men with none of the flair you’d associate with American sports in general.
Culture is huge factor which trumps resources IMO.. Australia and USA have great athletes and great resources but none of their elite kids coming through will dream of playing football and thus if one elite kid does come through because he’s going to be competing against sub par talent during his development path and receive sub par coaching and it is a vicious cycle of failure in long run.
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You mean that there are more registered players in the US. Because France have 2.1m registered players with a 65m population while the US have 4.2 with a population of 300m. Football is clearly bigger in France than it is in the US.
Actually USSR used to be a powerhouse european NT.
The correlation for success proposed in the book Soccernomics was between population size, GDP per capita and years playing international football. Their model didn't just count performance in international tournaments but all competitive international games. It's a correlation, not causation, so there are outliers. The big one was Brazil who were far more successful than they should be. My guess is that the strength of their love for the game over there coupled with their massive population meant that their lack of wealth didn't impact, as far as infrastructure goes, they do have a very good domestic league in which to develop talent.
As for Saudi Arabia, they are actually a young nation in international football terms. Their national side was only formed in 1956 but didn't compete in an international tournament until 1984. They don't really have infrastructure like Holland (compare their domestic leagues) and their football culture is a lot younger too so they are playing catch up to the European nations. That said, they are very successful in their region. One of the other big outliers was Iran who massively outperformed expectations, even more so than Brazil IIRC.
China's international football history has been fractured by politics. They did join FIFA early on but left in 1958 to rejoin in 1979. The country has never developed a proper football culture although the popularity is now growing. The Chinese governments drive to win the World Cup only really started in earnest a few years ago when they ordered massive investment in their domestic league to create that infrastructure to create a better national team. It could be that in 20 years time they are a major force.
For me that's the difference maker, simply based on the comparison with Rugby. France are probably the richest rugby nation when you consider the money put in the game but it's not the best, the bests are still the old nations like Wales and New Zealand, they have the expertise and do things slightly differently because of roughly a century of knowledge.
Agree. On a sporting basis they’re on a another level really. Personally I’d like to see the US smash it but I think their other sports Will always take priority. But I agree if all of a sudden if football did become their No1 sport they’d no doubt be up there challenging.
In Wales and New Zealand its the number one sport too, their passion for it is much greater than it is in England, for example. Over here Union is mostly played by a small faction of society.
But football isn't about athleticism, it is about technique and intelligence. In general, I think the American (sports) culture and football isn't a good fit. You can't approach it the way you approach American football or basketball. If you take a look at the most successful teams from both club and international football of the past you'll see that they are pretty underwhelming from an athletic perspective.
It ultimately comes down to footballing culture. Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, England, all those nations have a distinguishable philosophy. How would the philosophy of the US look like? I'd say similarly to England (emphasis on spectacle abd athleticism) which is probably the biggest underachiever in international football.
It's simply not that easy with football. As far as we know, the streets of poorer countries produce better players than the academies of the richest.
I think those those numbers came from this pdf in 2007 - https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9384_10704.pdf There are (were) some interesting things to take out of that.
Like you said, percentage wise there were less players there than in other countries per head of population. They only list the top 10 and it was mostly small countries without much football pedigree although Germany and Chile were doing excellently.
There were around 2/3rds the number of female registered players as there were male, which is unlike any other country. If they'd have had the same number of females playing that do, and then the same number of male players in proportion that Germany had, they'd be on over 10 million male players instead of 2.5m. Not that there's anything wrong with having a lot of female players, in fact it's good! Different split though, and we are talking about men's football primarily in this thread.
Football appears to be a kids thing in the US compared to elsewhere.
Elsewhere it looks like participation levels dropped in kids football between 2015-18, when this article was written - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/sports/world-cup/soccer-youth-decline.html[/spoiler]
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I totally agree and when you look at the US and its sports stars in fields such as boxing or basketball, you've got African Americans (just to use as one example) from the poorest parts of society who possess shit tonnes of technique and intelligence in their respective fields, with brilliant footwork and general co-ordination. These same guys if born in a culture which embraced football as the numero uno sport would be great footballers.
Like you correctly mentioned it is a culture thing... not a lack of talent or resource. Due to football not being the main sport in the USA, it is always going to lack the culture which produces top quality footballers.. as there will be leakage of talent into other sports, a lack of a top tier tactical philosophy or environment for the best youngsters (with technique, skill, mentality) to compete against each other etc.
Basketball is pretty popular in many countries in Europe, USA already has the competence they need and still rule the sport.
P.S. Im not american btw
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In New Zealand it's not by far, they roughly have the same amount of registered players in Rugby and Football, if you consider men and women. But from a media standpoint Rugby is easily the main sport. Now my point is that Rugby is big in France, mainly the southern part and the parameters that people use like money and infrastructures are significanlty higher than it is in these smaller countries but it changes nothing at the top because the others have an expertse that can't really be bought, it can but not to a point where it matches these older nations.
Tbh their culture of competition at younger ages probably wouldn't mix that well with football.
They got a bit of a shock at the women's u20 World Cup last year where they went out in the group stages and the final placings were
1. Japan
2. Spain
3. England
4. France
Tennis is as massified as Basketball, and USA already rules in Basketball.
And they had great tennis players in the past.
Most basketball players couldn't be top footballers, they're too tall and lanky. You have very few top level footballers around that height, Crouch standing out as a weird outlier but otherwise being 6ft8 or whatever is not going to benefit you in football most of the time, hence why Lacina Traore was a shithouse. The top sides aren't packing their teams with athletic giants. As for boxing the UK boxing scene is better than the US one right now, so the same could be said there.
I really don't look at many American sports and think 'yeah shit, if this guy had been brought up on football, he'd be amazing'. They prize big ol' Akinfenwaesque players who can smash hard, run hard, or are literal giants. Even their fecking boxers (aside from the odd one like Mayweather) are mostly athletic sluggers with no cardio who have a reputation for not being as good technique/strategy wise as their European counterparts right now.
I’m saying that there is a plethora of young Americans who would fall into the 5 ft 7-6ft 1 range who as youngsters would have prioritised sports such as baseball, American football and in particular basketball who could have made it as great footballers but pursued the American sports route and maybe failed due to lack of athleticism but it’s too late to turn back to soccer at that point. No one is saying LeBron would make it as a footballer but there’s plenty of shorter guys who may have failed to make the grade in NBA but have that intelligence and dexterity which would have equipped them well in football.
Every country has its cycles but I don’t think there’s any denying that US boxers at their best are different gravy if we are talking historically.
That’s a very good point. If the coaches are obsessed with winning they’ll revert to long ball tactics which is more effective at younger ages, instead of getting the kids to just concentrate on playing good football on the ground.
Thanks for that. Two small points, I wouldn't put that much importance on the amount of adults currently playing because they aren't the pool that you target, it's all about the amount of kids and teenagers that you can develop into top level players. And the reason why they don't have more adults is simply due to the fact that football isn't lucrative in the US, there is no point for older teenagers to push for a football career when there is next to no interesting prospect from a financial or even sport standpoint, particularly when the chances of making it are still small.I think those those numbers came from this pdf in 2007 - https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9384_10704.pdf There are (were) some interesting things to take out of that.
Like you said, percentage wise there were less players there than in other countries per head of population. They only list the top 10 and it was mostly small countries without much football pedigree although Germany and Chile were doing excellently.
There were around 2/3rds the number of female registered players as there were male, which is unlike any other country. If they'd have had the same number of females playing that do, and then the same number of male players in proportion that Germany had, they'd be on over 10 million male players instead of 2.5m. Not that there's anything wrong with having a lot of female players, in fact it's good! Different split though, and we are talking about men's football primarily in this thread.
Football appears to be a kids thing in the US compared to elsewhere.
3.9m youth players out of 4.2m total players leaves only 300,00 adults. Whereas Germany was 6.3m registered, 2.1 youth leaving 4.2m adults. France was 1.8m registered, 1m youth and 800k adults. England 1.5m total, 820k youth, 780k adults. It is ultimately adults who participate in World Cups etc. If they don't play then that's your talent pool reduced. Plus seeing as a lot of their youth were female compared to elsewhere maybe there adult leagues are too?
Elsewhere it looks like participation levels dropped in kids football between 2015-18, when this article was written - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/sports/world-cup/soccer-youth-decline.html[/spoiler]
It's not rare to hear or read that top MLB/NFL/NHL/NCAA/NBA athletes were pretty good football players, within the US context, but the reason they didn't pursue is that you are almost guaranteed to be a millionaire if you become a professional in any of the other sports. In fact it's not rare to here about athletes taking a financial decision and pick the sport that will guarantee them a better/easier future.
But like @Carolina Red said earlier in the thread, football at the highest level is extremely competitive and you need to dedicate yourself from a young age if you want to compete with the best and the American system is an hindrance because it is more about immediate results/trophies at youth level and they tend to actually develop professionals when they are young adults. What I mean by this is that at highschool and college level, americans aren't joking around, they are here to win titles for local glory, coaches aren't there to develop future professionals but to win at all costs, the development for professional level happens when the kids become professionals generally after 18 which in football is generally too late.
That is literally what I wrote. In terms of number, the USA is the worlds 2nd biggest football nation.
But what does percentage of capita have to do with how big a sport is? Surely the number of active participants dictate how big a sport is?
But if you want to go that route, Costa Rica is the biggest football nation on the planet with a whooping 27.2% of its population registered in the nations footballing assosciation.
My point is that football in the USA is a lot bigger than most people give it credit for. The sheer number of participants should easily have yielded some footballing superstars based on numbers alone, which was the argument I replied to. So clearly there are other factors that come to play here than just how many people play the game in a country.
This isn't true. They have had loads of good technical boxers. One thing guys like Mayweather, Ward and Hopkins etc excel at is just winning rounds, they're great at scoring and stopping the other guy from doing so.
I think they're boxing scene is probably at a historic low but they still have more fighters than the UK in the very elite bracket. The UK scene is strong at the moment though.
It is true in the heavyweight scene at least. They have some lighter weight boxers who are good technical boxers (although mayweather is retired now..) but technically in the upper dvisions the American boxers tend to follow the line of heavy hitter, not great technically and gasses easily.
Quality over quantity. The US is a much bigger country with a much higher population, so they'll always have more competitors.
True, that their 'own' sports will continue to take priority, but they have a huge base of athletes and many tend to play multiple sports for a long time. We will probably also see a decline in the popularity of the NFL as the permanent damages to the brain continues to be mapped. Perhaps football could take some of that interest.
I would be really interested to see how player development in football would work with the collegiate system in the US. Would they adopt a more European approach and let the clubs bring up players through their system, or would college 'soccer' become big?
The whole environment in India isn't suited to football. First thing is the weather. When the major part of the country has at least 35 C plus temperatures for around 8 months a year, playing a sport that involves running non stop for 90 minutes isn't very attractive.
Next the whole culture of India isn't sport friendly. People make a lot of hue and cry about India's success in cricket but its only been this decade where India has emerged as a real dominant and consistent force. We still don't produce enough quality cricketers in respect to our population, as parents don't encourage their kids to pursue sports. Before IPL, the only avenue to be really successful while playing cricket was to play for the national team. In a country of over a billion the odds are really against you. And this for a sport that is so popular in India, imagine the familial support you'll get for a niche sport like football.
People would much rather watch sports than actually go out in the heat and play them. That's why in the big cities at least, you'll find that the European leagues are very popular and many kids will play football in school or universities, but hardly any of them will have any aspirations or the support to pursue it professionally. And all this is before going into the infrastructure, which is horribly lacking to put it politely.
Maybe. We don't really know though, do we?
Other countries seem to manage having another main sport whilst being competitive at football. Shit, rugby dominates all of Wales and yet they produce far more talent (and multiple world class players which the US has failed to ever do) in football than the US can. And we're talking a tiny population to start with anyway.
I honestly think how shit the US are at football goes beyond the fact that a lot of athletes go elsewhere. Even it is the 5th/6th most popular sport or whatever, you'd still expect a country with the US population and infrastructure to produce the odd world class player, but it just doesn't happen and never has. I honestly think that the sporting culture is wrong with too much of a focus on power, athleticism etc and not enough focus on the technical basics. Even if it became the most popular sport overnight and US players started filing in to it, I think there would have to be a huge attitude shift from the top down in order to start producing world class teams.
England has struggled with similar problems, and our obsession with athleticism is nothing compared to the one going on in the US. We're systematically having to change the focus to one more based on producing technical players and that takes a lot of time and effort, and even then it's tough because the identity is still there at base levels and people will still always value passion/hard tackles/pace etc more than what they value in other more successful footballing nations. And England has a deep football culture and treats the sport like a religion.
Basically, combine that with the 'win at all costs' mentality (which plagued English youth level sport for years and held us back) and honestly I don't think you have a great recipe for a dominant U.S team at all. You'd need a big cultural shift. Would certainly improve and perhaps be a top 10 team with the odd world class player/a few world class ones in a 'golden generation', but not on the level of a Brazil, Spain, Germany etc.
You wrote that football was bigger in the US which is wrong, maybe you didn't meant to but you compared internal markets. And numbers by themselves yields nothing, how the kids are developed, the context of football in the US and how competitive their internal football scene is will determine the level of their prospects. It would also be interesting to see when they stop playing football, if I'm not mistaken for a large part it's a kids game, they stop in their early teenage in order to focus on other sports.
I agree with most of that - only thing I would disagree with is that the USA if we are talking about sports in a holistic sense creates a lot more technically gifted athletes than the U.K. Sure it has a resource advantage but it’s a lot more forward thinking than the U.K. if we are talking an all time contest and across various sports. Doesn’t mean it can’t have periods where it regresses but on the whole it’s one of the best sporting nations on the planet generally in terms of culture (excluding the resource aspect).
It needs to find a way to transfer some of that culture to football too.
Don’t get me wrong, we coach and develop technique and gameplay at the level I coach at, but yes... if you don’t get results while doing so, they’ll find someone else to do the job.
Looking at American football specifically. If you think of school sports like an academy, we’ve got a few levels...
D-Team or Developmental - middle schoolers (11-13). We want them to learn the basics technically and learn to execute a game plan. We also want them to learn to compete, so winning is important because they need to remain motivated to stay in the program as they transition from middle school to high school. Playing time is generally guaranteed unless the game is close.
Junior Varsity - mostly high school freshmen and sophomores with a few juniors (14-16) but you can see an 8th grader here if they’re very good. (We had an 8th grader as our JV quarterback last year who is our #1 this year who’s already got college scholarship offers). Mostly though, these guys either haven’t developed the technique necessary or aren’t physically developed enough yet to play at the next level. This level is about either putting finishing touches on kids who can develop into good Varsity players or for finding a place for your practice squad to get game time so they stay in the program. Winning at the JV level is nice but isn’t emphasized. Playing time is guaranteed.
Varsity - all high schoolers from freshmen to seniors (14-17) who we believe are developed enough to compete at that level. Technique development is still important but it is done with an emphasis on evaluating each kid’s ability to be the starter in their position that gives us the best chance to win. Playing time is not guaranteed and not winning will cost you your job.
They're not dominating hockey are they? Sure, hockey's not their biggest sport, but still. I'm sure the U.S can become a top team, but there's just too many countries focused on football to dominate it.
We’re ranked 4th in the world in men’s hockey and 1st in the world in women’s.
I tried to avoid that aspect of american sports because it's kind of controversial. To me one of the reason american sports are not a good indicator is due to how prevalent real time coaching and game planning is prevalent in american, they generally don't need players to actually think for themselves but memorize and execute game plans that have been striclty put forward, I believe that it creates a different type of athletes, more disciplined but less creative, less comfortable in chaos.
Now I know about your love for wrestling, things are different with the best teenagers being in the US team and are given an extremely solid technical base from a relatively young age, also creativity isn't stunted but encouraged?
It does? I mean, maybe in the past. But the UK focuses on different sports, perhaps sports that you're not really aware of? In sports like cycling, rowing etc the U.K produces some fantastic athletes. A number of the best boxers are currently British, many of which are technically excellent. Considering the massive population gap and the fact the US can invest more money in to sport, I really don't think the US is producing more technically gifted athletes.
The UK at the last 2 olympics finished 2nd and 3rd, for a country far smaller and with a far lower population than the US. 27 gold medals compared to the U.S and their 46, despite having about 1/5th of the population. I really don't think it's currently fair or accurate to suggest that US sport is far better than UK sport, not when considering the size of the two nations. It'd be like saying UK sport is superior to Australian sport when we have 3-4 times the population, it's just not fair.
If football was dominant in the United States their national team would have been a multiple world cup winner and MLS would compete UCL. Americans run everything including politics and sports like business. That's why they are so efficient as a State, Army, entertainment you name it.
They would have turned football in big brand business as early as 1950s. Super Bowl is the most expensive marketing event (per unit of time) globally if I remember correctly. Imagine if instead of Super Bowl day it would be MLS final match featuring Ronaldo for NYC on one side and Messi for LA Galaxy on the other? US market + billions of people watching globally. The sheer amount of money in that league would attract star players from South America and Europe. P
Plus domestic talents from University leagues, school training, etc. Americans have excellent bottom up infrastructure. Football equivalents of LeBron and Jordan would play in MLS only and for the national team.
Thank God, US lives on its own planet regarding sports))) On the other hand, a 600 hundred million European Union would have been forced to create its own MLS. And World Super Cup would have been hell of a match
They would have turned football in big brand business as early as 1950s. Super Bowl is the most expensive marketing event (per unit of time) globally if I remember correctly. Imagine if instead of Super Bowl day it would be MLS final match featuring Ronaldo for NYC on one side and Messi for LA Galaxy on the other? US market + billions of people watching globally. The sheer amount of money in that league would attract star players from South America and Europe. P
Plus domestic talents from University leagues, school training, etc. Americans have excellent bottom up infrastructure. Football equivalents of LeBron and Jordan would play in MLS only and for the national team.
Thank God, US lives on its own planet regarding sports))) On the other hand, a 600 hundred million European Union would have been forced to create its own MLS. And World Super Cup would have been hell of a match
Oh, that’s definitely true for American football. You don’t want kids out there doing their own thing because for a play to work you need everyone doing the correct job at the correct time. Now, in some plays (on offense or defense) you’ll have an “either this or that” decision but it is indeed mostly down to discipline and execution.
In more open ended sports like basketball though the need for rigid discipline to a “plan” isn’t as emphasized, so there is more room for creativity.
Yes, Wrestling is one of the sports where you actively foster creativity and the need for a gameplan isn’t that important. Now against some opponents we will gameplan for them based on tendencies that we know they have, but for the most part it is all about technical and strength/conditioning development physically and then also the mental ability to “chain wrestle” and creatively put moves together to win while being under a lot of stress from your opponent. Look at guys today like Zain Retherford or Bo Nickal or guys from the past like John Smith or Cael Sanderson and you’ll see folks who perfectly blend all 3 aspects.
So much of this just isn't true. And how fantastic the US is in terms of developing hype for the entertainment business has no bearing whatsoever on their ability to develop elite footballers.
Also, they don't run their army efficiently, at all. The budget is incredibly bloated with much of it dedicated to areas which don't really suit their modern goals. Not the thread for a discussion on that at all, but the idea that they're this mega efficient nation in all areas is so ridiculous it really does need to be challenged. They're obviously incredibly successful as a nation in many areas, but they also fall short/fail in many others.
This comes to mind ..