I agree...Spain is my favorite to win it all.
I agree...Spain is my favorite to win it all.
I coached youth soccer for a long time...even got my B license and coached Club soccer for awhile. The problem isnt getting kids exposed to it at a younger age...it's getting them to stick with it at an older age. Unfortunately, the system and social influences work against this happening. In any given association, the amount of teams drops significantly as kids get older. For example, my daughters team had 5 local opponents when she started playing at age 5. By the time her team was 14, we had one local opponent and had to travel all over north Dallas just to play league games. With girls, they are eventually swayed into basketball, softball and volleyball. With boys, they are swayed into baseball, basketball and football.
Despite the parental influences that sway these kids to other sports, there is also the financial aspect. When it comes to recruiting young players, the major colleges do not recruit from the high school ranks. They recruit from club teams and club teams are not cheap. I was the goalkeeping director for a local club team in the A league for 3 years. In order for a player to get on to one of these teams, they have to first be selected by the coaches...then the parents have to pay in the neighborhood of $3000 to $8000 a year for their kids to be on this team. On top of that, the clubs travel to all kinds of places for tournaments. So now you add travel costs and daily practices and events and it just becomes a scenario that the average family cant afford in both time and money.
So basically...the system itself plays just as big of a problem in keeping kids interested in the sport as the parents do. Football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball, track, etc. All these sports have college scouts recruiting from the high school ranks. Soccer is the exception. If you dont excel on a class A club team, you can forget about going to college to play soccer.
If Rio is a vuvuzela-free zone, that works for me. I get caught up in the nationalism but I've never been rabid about soccer. Hard to accept a sport where the authority figures wear shorts. And their means of distributing punishment is so ghey - thrusting a card in the air! Stop that now or I'll thrust another card in the air! If I ever got carded, I would just sneer "cute knees, Wolfgang".
I miss the old Mile High Stadium.
soccer is for men that fondle other men, but whatever homos, enjoy yourselves. thanks for the invite, but I'm out
Interesting.
In scotland there is no collegiate level sport (this is one area where you guys have got it soooo right). Basically you play for your local club, scouts from professional teams then come to watch you play, if you have enough talent a professional club will sign you (as young as 8). They will then develop the player (whilst they still also play for their local club). At the age of 16, they will either cut you - or sign you to a professional deal ( like the worse ever free agent NFL deal X one thousand - the best part of the deal is free boots), you can then be pretty much cut at any time.
Problem here is we dont have any professional clubs to do this with. Unless you count the MLS as a professional soccer organization, but I'm guessing no country in the rest of the world does. Our better youth clubs wont pay the players...the players have to pay them. And if a kid/family has a choice between playing other sports for a much more nominal fee, why wouldnt they?
I coached both recreationally and at the club level. I've seen a bunch of kids at the rec level that were just as good, if not better than the kids on premier club teams. Unfortunately, most of their families either couldnt afford the fees or couldnt afford the amount of time the player would have to dedicate to the club. Having been through the system, I can assure the rest of the world one thing. The players you will see wearing stars and stripes in the WC next month are NOT the best soccer players we have. They are just the ones that had the money to play the game.
"We saw it…. the hussars let loose their horses. God, what power! They ran through the smoke and the sound was like that of a thousand blacksmiths beating with a thousand hammers
They rush on to the Swedes! They crash into the Swedish riters…. Overwhelm them! They crash into the second regiment - Overwhelmed! Resistance collapses, dissolves, they move forward as easily as if they were parading on a grand boulevard
The back line has had a rocky start here.
I am watching Germany Vs Cameroon - your game is not being televised over here. Who you playing?
That's just Altidore being Altidore. I don't think that's ever going to change. Good thing we have good goalkeeping because I agree with youabout the back 4. I ddon't have a whole lot of confidence in them.
Weird stuff can happen in the World Cup. Ball bounces the right way, keeper gets off his line. Who knows? The US might surprise us.
Goldman Sachs had the U.S. at 250:1 to win it all. Our coach said it's not realistically possible for us to win it. And our group draw effing blows (because the competition is so good). That's an uphill battle.
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