How dominant USA would be in comparison to Brazil, France or Spain if their main sport is football?

Conor

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We'll have to wait and see whether that last feature (experience playing international football) is as big of a factor as is claimed. It may explain the correlation but will it be accurate predicting the success of China and India and the US in the future?

I think what grates me about this question is that it can be reframed as, "if the US tried they'd be number 1, they just don't want to". That sounds so douchey (for lack of a better word). And this is coming from an American.
I don't get your argument, none of the things you've said make sense in the context of the thread title(that football was the main sport of the US). The minnows you've mentioned are all football crazy countries, and just because they've been successful in the past, it doesn't mean that if one of the most populated countries in the world put their main focus in football, and had millions of kids playing football as their sport from the age of 4/5, they somehow wouldn't be a dominant force?

I don't understand how anyone can come to the conclusion that the US wouldn't be a powerhouse if football was the most played sport, it has both the numbers and ethnic diversity to find natural talent purely from a statistical perspective, and the wealth to set up a good coaching structure(this is all within the hypothetical context of the country having taken football on as the no. 1 sport of course).
 

Zehner

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Best. By far. If they dedicated their high school/college farming system towards soccer - Europeans/South American street footballers would have no chance
That's a bold statement. So far, the streets of poorer countries have produced the best players in history. The academies of comparably rich countries with great infratructure like Germany or England are great at consistently producing world class players but the real geniuses tend to come from South America and are shaped by street football. Guys like Ronaldo Lima, Messi, Maradona, Ronaldinho, Neymar etc. aren't academy products. Even Zidane, although European, was a street footballer.
 

billybee99

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This has always been an annoying question.

Greatness at football is not correlated to population size or money. And thank feck for that.

A majority of our sports originated here, and we have a huge lead on the rest of the world with regards to them, or the world views these sports as secondary to the main one which is football. Using our dominance in basketball for example to imply that if our main sport was football, we'd be top, is absurd.
It's no more annoying than some of your stupid posts. It is a fact that a country with a lot of people playing a particular sport will, on average, produce better players. Yes there are exceptions like a Roger Federer and others but if the USA had the LeBron's of the world and the Tiger Woods and the Tom Bradys and Michael Phelps playing "soccer", of course they would be a dominant, if not the dominant country in football.
 

adexkola

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It's no more annoying than some of your stupid posts. It is a fact that a country with a lot of people playing a particular sport will, on average, produce better players. Yes there are exceptions like a Roger Federer and others but if the USA had the LeBron's of the world and the Tiger Woods and the Tom Bradys and Michael Phelps playing "soccer", of course they would be a dominant, if not the dominant country in football.
The feck is your problem?

And how the feck does dominance in swimming and basketball and football where you throw the ball instead of kick it, translate to being brilliant at a sport like football, where physical dominance isn't as important as technical ability on the ball?

You know what? Don't answer that. Just jog on and don't reply, cause I won't see it.
 

Tyrion

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I think they'd be hamstrung by being so detached from the rest of the footballing world. European clubs effectively swap coaches and ideas over the years which would help them tactically imo as they'd be benefitting from dozens of entirely different cultures and approaches.

Stands to reason that a big population to choose players from and lots of money and infrastructure will lend itself to success.
True but football is reasonably popular in China and they hardly exist football wise. Netherlands and Uruguay are on the opposite end of the scale.
 

adexkola

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I don't get your argument, none of the things you've said make sense in the context of the thread title(that football was the main sport of the US). The minnows you've mentioned are all football crazy countries, and just because they've been successful in the past, it doesn't mean that if one of the most populated countries in the world put their main focus in football, and had millions of kids playing football as their sport from the age of 4/5, they somehow wouldn't be a dominant force?

I don't understand how anyone can come to the conclusion that the US wouldn't be a powerhouse if football was the most played sport, it has both the numbers and ethnic diversity to find natural talent purely from a statistical perspective, and the wealth to set up a good coaching structure(this is all within the hypothetical context of the country having taken football on as the no. 1 sport of course).
I don't think it's that simple, no. This is based on an article from the NYTimes, but over 2 million kids from 6 to 12 play football in the US, as of last year. There is work to be done regarding better youth development and creating better pipelines than the NCAA system, but even with that in place, I don't view US dominance of football as a foregone conclusion. How many kids do you need playing the game to field a world class team 20 years down the line? Smaller countries have done it with much less resources.
 
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Needham

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Big power geography works against cohesion. Russia, India, China, the US, Canada -none will ever succeed because of their sheer size.
And please don't use Brazil as a counter example. Brazil is actually a highly regionalised country. It is divided into 12 countrylet sized districts called Banditeros.
Each Banditero is fiercely proud of its history and indigenous traditions. (They even fought a war in the 80s over tin, sugar, and who owned the copyright to a blind folk singer's back catalogue.)
When it comes to football, Brazilians play as much against each other as with each other, hence they rarely pass the ball. In good years like 1958 and 1970, the mix can work quite well.
But as we saw against Germany when they hosted the World Cup, when it goes wrong, it's highly comical.
 

Castia

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They would be a top side no doubt. The infrastructure within the US would be next level.

Imagine what their club league would be like if it was the main sport in the US.....every club owned by a multi-billionaire attracting players from around the globe. Probably be the top league in world football.
 

Castia

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Big power geography works against cohesion. Russia, India, China, the US, Canada -none will ever succeed because of their sheer size.
And please don't use Brazil as a counter example. Brazil is actually a highly regionalised country. It is divided into 12 countrylet sized districts called Banditeros.
Each Banditero is fiercely proud of its history and indigenous traditions. (They even fought a war in the 80s over tin, sugar, and who owned the copyright to a blind folk singer's back catalogue.)
When it comes to football, Brazilians play as much against each other as with each other, hence they rarely pass the ball. In good years like 1958 and 1970, the mix can work quite well.
But as we saw against Germany when they hosted the World Cup, when it goes wrong, it's highly comical.
But none of those countries have a real interest in football, if football was the number one sport in those countries they would obviously be on a different level to what they currently are.
 

LimePark

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India are always the ones that get me. At least China are half decent. India would lose to Luxembourg.
That's the cricket effect I guess. Every sportingly talented young Indian wants to be the next Tendulkar. Most Indians couldn't care less about football from my experience.
 

Needham

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But none of those countries have a real interest in football, if football was the number one sport in those countries they would obviously be on a different level to what they currently are.
The Chinese invented football. India gave us leather, from which we make footballs. Russia has most of the world's grass, the main ingredient of football pitches. The US controls the satellites which beam Champions League fixtures to bars around the globe. And Canada is just above the US.
 

Castia

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The Chinese invented football. India gave us leather, from which we make footballs. Russia has most of the world's grass, the main ingredient of football pitches. The US controls the satellites which beam Champions League fixtures to bars around the globe. And Canada is just above the US.
That's all brilliant. Still doesn't change the fact there's probably 4 people between the lot of them who know anything about the game.
 

LoneStar

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India are always the ones that get me. At least China are half decent. India would lose to Luxembourg.
No football structure in place, and it doesn't look like it will improve anytime soon.

Although more and more of the younger generation is getting into football, so could change a bit.

But the facilities and other infrastructure for professional footballers right now is very sad.
 

Zehner

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It's no more annoying than some of your stupid posts. It is a fact that a country with a lot of people playing a particular sport will, on average, produce better players. Yes there are exceptions like a Roger Federer and others but if the USA had the LeBron's of the world and the Tiger Woods and the Tom Bradys and Michael Phelps playing "soccer", of course they would be a dominant, if not the dominant country in football.
Hang on. Most of the athletes you named are doing sports that aren't that popular outside of the US. Is the US really that dominant in sports that get equal attention in both Europe and America? For all we know, the US could be an average country in these American football, basketball etc., too, if other countries took those seriously. Maybe Brady, Jordan and co. wouldn't be era defnining talents when they actually competed in a pool of a few billion athletes and not maybe 10% of that. So you'd have to compare between sports that are comparably popular in the US and a European country and that's a hard question. For the sports that come to mind (ice hockey, tennis, maybe winter sports) the US doesn't seem to be all that dominant to say the least.

After all I think population size is an overestimated factor. Sure, it theoretically improves your chances of developing standout talents but reality doesn't seem to support that thesis. To me it seems that you rather need to meet some sort of "minimum requirement" (a country like San Marino will never be able to compete, obviously) but that seems to be it. I mean, Argentina has "just" 40m inhabitants, isn't paritcularly rich and has bad infrastructure and still produced the most genius level footballers of any country (Maradona, Messi, di Stefano) apart from possibly Brazil. I mean, there's evidence that big population and great infrastructure guarantees results (Germany), we have evidence that a generally poor standard of life and street football "helps" a lot (Brazil, Argentina) and mixtures of both/evidence of the contrary (Holland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Mexico, ...).
 

limerickcitykid

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The Chinese invented football. India gave us leather, from which we make footballs. Russia has most of the world's grass, the main ingredient of football pitches. The US controls the satellites which beam Champions League fixtures to bars around the globe. And Canada is just above the US.
Shit lads, why didn't we think of this. I'll let the FA know that the key to producing footballers isn't high level coaching but it is in fact making leather.
 

Needham

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That's all brilliant. Still doesn't change the fact there's probably 4 people between the lot of them who know anything about the game.
4 people out of a combined 8 billion? Now I know you're taking the piss.
 

SquishyMcSquish

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The feck is your problem?

And how the feck does dominance in swimming and basketball and football where you throw the ball instead of kick it, translate to being brilliant at a sport like football, where physical dominance isn't as important as technical ability on the ball?

You know what? Don't answer that. Just jog on and don't reply, cause I won't see it.
It's so fecking stupid. Because yeah having athletes like LeBron would really help you in football, where all the best athletes are immobile 6ft9 giants. Because it's really a sport where athleticism wins out, hence why that athletic specimen Lionel Messi is so good and probably the best club/international sides of our generation (Spain & Pep's Barca) featured a core of pure athletes.

Fecking Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps too. Because being good at golf (!!!!) and having a mutant body built perfectly for swimming would somehow impact footballing ability.
 

MrMarcello

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Had we kept developing the sport after our 3rd place finish at the first World Cup as our “other” pastime behind baseball, which was already established, instead of making American football that 2nd sport, then I don’t think it would be outrageous to think we would be up in the top 8-10 nations globally.
Check out this paper from 1996. Very in-depth take on the sport in the US and how American nationalism and nativism knocked it down while raising up baseball and gridiron football. Also goes into baseball vs cricket in the mid-1800s.
https://repository.law.miami.edu/cg...rer=&httpsredir=1&article=1211&context=umeslr

Interesting article from Slate.
https://slate.com/culture/2010/06/how-soccer-almost-became-a-major-american-sport-in-the-1920s.html
 

Carolina Red

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Check out this paper from 1996. Very in-depth take on the sport in the US and how American nationalism and nativism knocked it down while raising up baseball and gridiron football. Also goes into baseball vs cricket in the mid-1800s.
https://repository.law.miami.edu/cg...rer=&httpsredir=1&article=1211&context=umeslr

Interesting article from Slate.
https://slate.com/culture/2010/06/how-soccer-almost-became-a-major-american-sport-in-the-1920s.html
Nice! Thanks dude. I’ll read this tomorrow during lunch. (I’m taking a grad course at the moment)
 

markhughes

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They would be competitive however money and infrastructure is partly irelevent compared to passion for the game.

We played footie at before school, during our breaks and after school every day, that is what leads to top footballers in my eyes, just the pure love of the game. I don't see that happening any time soon in the US.
 

Demyanenko_square_jaw

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But none of those countries have a real interest in football, if football was the number one sport in those countries they would obviously be on a different level to what they currently are.
Football is the number one sport in most of Russia. It's not religion like in South America or UK, Germany, Italy, Spain etc and the sporting culture in general was hit during the '90s when people had more pressing matters to focus on, but it's more than popular enough and with enough knowledge and tradition in the game to be a more consistently good footballing nation when combined with the population size. Problem is the footballing infrastructure\youth development systems took a terrible beating with the breakup of USSR and the sport has never been a priority of the government since other than the World Cup vanity project. I don't have great hopes of things improving much under Putin, but it's a situation of underachieving that could be considerably improved within 10-15 years with some competence and focus.
 

paraguayo

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USA has the biggest tennis farming system and biggest amount of courts but don't have any player in the top10.

One could argue they are lacking in massified sports.
 

Carolina Red

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USA has the biggest tennis farming system and biggest amount of courts but don't have any player in the top10.

One could argue they are lacking in massified sports.
Folks were saying that about us before we churned out the Courier, Chang, Sampras, Agassi generation, too.

But that’s more a topic for another thread.
 

RedRonaldo

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How about China? They are by far the most populated country in the world, and they are very rich too, and actually there are large base of football fans there too. In sports (Olympic), they are usually among top 3 country in medal ranking. But their football still sucks. Why is that.
 

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You have to have the talent, first and foremost. Without the talent, nothing else matters. But obviously you need the culture and passion as well, which the US will just never have. We don't care about soccer on the same level as other countries, and never will. The best talent will continue to pursue the other sports and soccer will continue to get the bottom of the barrel. The college system will continue to hamper development and it's a tough choice to ask a kid to decide between a very small chance at a pro sport, moving to another continent or an education, (i.e., not a tough choice at all as far as life decisions go).

The only thing anyone cares about on a national scale is the world cup and even that is just a fleeting moment, if we can even qualify. I would bet most Americans didn't even know the Gold Cup just happened or Copa America.

MLS is a fun league to go watch live; I've been to a ton of matches between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver (but the PNW has a bit of soccer history which makes it fun, most other areas of the country don't), but it really is a very poor product to consume on the TV and again, the talent just isn't there and I don't think ever will be. Any upper level South American will look to move to a lower lever European league if they are a real prospect or just develop in a top South American league and North America hasn't ever produced a top talent, let alone a world class one. MLS continuing to buy old players putting them on huge salaries is great for ticket sales I guess, but really diminishes from the quality of the league and makes it hard for me to take MLS seriously at all.

The die hards continue to say "oh just wait for the next generation, 10-15 years". It won't change. Soccer would be lucky to even get 10% of that talent focusing on soccer, and only a small faction of that will ever make it. The fact that after 1994 WC an argument is that "look MLS is still around" just highlights for me the frustrating lack of any meaningful progress. Klinsmann came in and tried to shake it up, failed pretty bad at the end (I was a big fan of the hire), and was just never able to get the culture shift he was (rightfully) going for. Then US soccer devolved about a thousand centuries and hired Arena again. I checked out after that.
 
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Why are people talking about population and money ?

Brazil have nothing in terms of money and infrastructure compared to european coutries. They produced the best talents this sports has seen.

They have more population ?

China have 1.4 billion people and they have been trying to improve the football there putting a lot of money in it for what, 10 to 15 years now, it should start bearing fruit now since it'd be the next generation of footballers. But nothing ...

Saudi Arabia have a shit ton of money. Football has always been the main sport there. They have the infrastructure. They have twice the population of netherlands but they produced way less talents if any.

This thread just feels like "USA is best in the world thread, and even if they aren't, it's because they don't want to be and they don't care about that sport.They would be if they did"....
 
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roonster09

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They might improve a fair bit but won't be dominant like Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, Italy of past.
 

kouroux

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Why are people talking about population and money ?

Brazil have nothing in terms of money and infrastructure compared to european coutries. They produced the best talents this sports has seen.

They have more population ?

China have 1.4 billion people and they have been trying to improve the football there putting a lot of money in it for what, 10 to 15 years now, it should start bearing fruit now since it'd be the next generation of footballers.

Saudi Arabia have a shit ton of money. Football have always been the main sport there. They have the infrastructure. They have twice the population of netherlands but they produced way less talents.

This thread just feels like "USA is best in the world thread, and even if we they aren't, it's because they don't want to be and they don't care about that sport.They would be if they did"....
In a nutshell, we are lucky they are not taking football seriously :lol:
 

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With all their money and infrastructure they are yet to produce a single world class player. Often the best players have come from poorer nations so I doubt it will change much as their national league is low standard. You get good by pushing yourself.
 

Denis79

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Don't believe they would be, just look at England. Great infrastructure, richest league in the world, national sport and still not won the world cup since the 60's. While a country like Croatia with 5-6 million inhabitants has managed 3rd and 2nd place in the world cup within 20 years.
 

RochaRoja

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Football being the main sport wouldn’t solve the massive cultural issue the US has with its insistence on sticking to Anglo philosophies that are about 30 years out of date. Or the fact that their entire sporting development revolves around the college system, putting their players a good five years behind their peers in every other country. Unless the global centre of football was to transport from Western Europe to the US (which is really unlikely due to the CL and great clubs being based in Europe) they would always be on the fringes of where all the major innovations are taking place.

The US had a massive head start in the women’s game but will most likely be surpassed by the major European players in the next decade. I’ve seen plenty of talk from people who cover the women’s game saying that the USWNT is in decline and this WC win has papered over the cracks.
 

Conor

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I don't think it's that simple, no. This is based on an article from the NYTimes, but over 2 million kids from 6 to 12 play football in the US, as of last year. There is work to be done regarding better youth development and creating better pipelines than the NCAA system, but even with that in place, I don't view US dominance of football as a foregone conclusion. How many kids do you need playing the game to field a world class team 20 years down the line? Smaller countries have done it with much less resources.
But you're ignoring the kids playing currently. Football gets mostly the cast offs from the dominant sports in the US, would you agree? In this fantasy world of football being the no. 1 sport, you would have the best child athletes playing football, not just the kids that couldn't make it into the other sports(obviously not every kid is a cast off from other sports, but you get what I mean).
 

kouroux

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But you're ignoring the kids playing currently. Football gets mostly the cast offs from the dominant sports in the US, would you agree? In this fantasy world of football being the no. 1 sport, you would have the best child athletes playing football, not just the kids that couldn't make it into the other sports(obviously not every kid is a cast off from other sports, but you get what I mean).
Why is the focus solely on "athletes" ? Football is much more than that. The physical aspect of it has been more or less leveled all over the world but the raw talent and tactical setups are what makes the biggest differences between teams.
 

Neil_Buchanan

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We have got too much of a head start for them to ever catch up. If you were to go back in time and delete baseball and basketball and all those other bizarre sports that they play over there and encourage football then it is likely that the MLS would be the equivalent of the premiership today. Collecting the best talent from South America plus all the US athletes and resources that would now be focused on soccer, they could be unbelievable with some of the biggest clubs in the world. It would make interesting competitions between continents, the world club championship would become one of the biggest competitions in the world.
 

RochaRoja

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The feck is your problem?

And how the feck does dominance in swimming and basketball and football where you throw the ball instead of kick it, translate to being brilliant at a sport like football, where physical dominance isn't as important as technical ability on the ball?

You know what? Don't answer that. Just jog on and don't reply, cause I won't see it.
Also golf :lol:

Like, at least pick people who play actual sports, dude.
 

Conor

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Why is the focus solely on "athletes" ? Football is much more than that. The physical aspect of it has been more or less leveled all over the world but the raw talent and tactical setups are what makes the biggest differences between teams.
I agree with what you're saying, athletes was the wrong word to use, I more meant the high achievers in sport, the best kids in all the american sports would be instead playing football, which would surely create a much higher chance of producing the best players.
 

deafepl

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We have got too much of a head start for them to ever catch up. If you were to go back in time and delete baseball and basketball and all those other bizarre sports that they play over there and encourage football then it is likely that the MLS would be the equivalent of the premiership today. Collecting the best talent from South America plus all the US athletes and resources that would now be focused on soccer, they could be unbelievable with some of the biggest clubs in the world. It would make interesting competitions between continents, the world club championship would become one of the biggest competitions in the world.
Unpopular opinions, I think it's too one-sided, especially considering the USA's market for TV rights and commercial, they'd be far ahead. European teams would find it difficult to compete with USA teams for player's signature as the USA will able to offer a player better career choice, higher salary, high quality of lifestyle and multiplies big cities likes of NYC, Washington Dc, Miami, LA, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia to live. the USA will shop around Europe for top talents like European did the same thing to South America.

England national team probably could benefit from the USA being a leader in the footballing world as most of our English star would be playing in the USA like Kane, Sterling, for an example but that would mean more chances for English stars to break through and get playing times in English league before they get picked out by the USA.