When the full-time whistle blew Tuesday in Trinidad and Tobago, the U.S. soccer world blew up. The game marked the first time the team failed to qualify for the World Cup since 1986.
Their loss to Trinidad and Tobago, coupled with wins by Panama and Honduras, led to their failure to qualify. All the U.S. needed to make it to the World Cup was a draw.
The upsetting performance was a combination of poor play by Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore, and overall apathetic playing by the whole team. The only player who fought for the win was Christian Pulisic, a rising star in U.S. soccer who plays for the German club Borussia Dortmund.
However, this defeat was ultimately the final product of a system that has failed soccer in the U.S. all the way from youth clubs to the major league.
In 2000, when Germany failed in the European Championship, the soccer leagues and governing body of soccer for Germany created a 10-year plan to develop the next World Cup championship team. They accomplished this in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
According to their website, U.S. Soccer started to make changes about a year ago, nationally altering guidelines and expectations for development of young talent in the soccer world.
What America needs is skill and skill is learned at a young age.
It would be wise to take a page from Iceland’s book on the development of youth players. Iceland made a historic run in the 2016 European Championship and has invested heavily in the development of their youth, according to Sports Illustrated.
The nation has many highly qualified coaches, and in Iceland, coaches typically only coach one or two teams. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a coach may run multiple teams at once.
If you go to the Sportsplex during the week, you will see the youth of Starkville practicing and playing soccer. However, how many of those coaches are qualified to coach youth programs and are they coaching with the same quality a club coach would?
The biggest problem with the U.S. is not that our best athletes are playing other sports like football, baseball or basketball, although there is a small percentage of those who, if they were in another country where soccer is the most dominant sport, would be playing it.
The biggest problem for the U.S. is we expect we will win a game because of who we are, because we are the United States of America, not because we put in the work to develop and train players who can win games.
The U.S. soccer team does not play a typically American, aggressive style of play. They often score early goals and are content to defend for the rest of the game.
This is not the aggression one would expect from the U.S. In the Mexico game, they took a 1-0 lead and stopped playing hard. It came back to haunt them, as the final score was a 1-1 draw.
There are a few good things going for the U.S. team, like manager Bruce Arena, who led the LA Galaxy to three championships. However, he will more likely than not be shown the door, as he is only an interim coach because the U.S. fired Jurgen Klinsmann at the start of the qualifiers.
Luckily, the team also has Pulisic and Bobby Wood, two young players on the come-up. They are attacking players whose finishing skills and creativity, coupled with their constant fight to win, are exactly what the U.S. needs.
Another player who is often overlooked is Stefan Frei, a goalkeeper for the Seattle Sounders. He is a Swiss national who moved to the U.S. at a young age and got his U.S. citizenship this year. He has a lot of talent and experience in high-pressure games. Frei is arguably the next Tim Howard.
However, the U.S. still needs a good central midfielder and some young defenders if there are going to be any improvements in the team’s near future—especially if they are aiming for an eventual World Cup championship.
This derailment of the men’s national team means there is enough time for change in the American soccer system to take effect and lead to positive results. Hopefully, a World Cup in the near future is not as far-fetched after the next four years.
