dunno, but he'll be at Home Depot this Sunday...
I'll be watching NFL games in person this fall, while the rest of the world begs for the USA to actually give a about what happened tonight, despite giving the NFL top world ratings. Life is good.
Messi goat
Good one.
It's also possible Jesus Christ could return from the dead.
Couldn't even beat midgets
If you were as good at football as you are at eating contests you'd dominate
H!cks
Great analogy, except Argentina beat the US in basketball twice in a row, once at home and again on the biggest stage vs a team built to avenge the first, with some players that never sniffed European leagues nevermind the NBA.
It's kind of sad the way you gringos reduce all sports to athletic ability and money. Argentina is successful in many team sports vs countries that are bigger, richer, more history, etc, and it's mostly just passion for the sport, be it rugby, basketball, volleyball, roller hockey...
And since this is the NBA forum and Americans love to diss soccer players flopping, if LeBron took an elbow to the throat like mascherano did today without even a card shown, he would be crying about if for weeks.
Don't be smug. You're an American. Argentina should be your B-team, bro.
Don't be like these Messicans who always root for Mexico because their abuelita crossed the border on a donkey 50 years ago.
Just being realistic, tbh... 0-4 against a top 3 team in the World at the moment isn't the same as 0-7 against a very good team...Don't be smug. You're an American. Argentina should be your B-team, bro.
Don't be like these Messicans who always root for Mexico because their abuelita crossed the border on a donkey 50 years ago.
The US did real good in this tournament, IMO, but eventually you face teams that are currently at another level. It's part of the process, tbh...
Michael Bradley should consider retiring from national team duty; maybe if he has a little more decency he can consider retiring from football at once.
You know I don't follow the sport very carefully, but I didn't expect anything less than at least a 3 goal blowout here.
I don't know why US Soccer fans expect us to eventually become a power? Money plus population doesn't solve everything. Soccer has little to no cultural importance here. In soccer countries, every talented kid wants to be a soccer player first and foremost, playing morning, noon, and night, and then shoved off to an academy. An American kid will juggle 3 or 4 sports through his childhood and puberty and might chose to specialize in one during high school.
Until soccer becomes the 90% favorite sport among US citizens (like it is in other countries), the US will never grow beyond a middling team. And I'm okay with that. I like our varied sports landscape.
It will happen, tbh, it will just take some time... it's a great sport, you have the ladies already hooked and the demographics are shifting where you have a growing latino population that will also help it (cue Trump wall jokes here).
The reason people think it will happen is because you have the manpower and resources. Once it's a heavy moneymaking enterprise (and soccer does move a lot of dough outside the US), you'll be digging every corner for the next great talent.
That's basically what the US is missing right now, the scouting, finding that jewel that will elevate the team. Might be a Perez or Gonzales, but he'll be American and get people proud and hooked up.
It's been a long process, but it's a process that's moving. You have US players that have played overseas, now you have a semi-decent league that's expanding, not shrinking. You're just not going to catch up to countries that been playing this stuff since 1901 in 10 years, maybe not even 20. But you're on the right path.
Nobody thought the US would be the best north american soccer team 15-20 years ago. It was always Mexico, and now you're more than up to par on that.
That said, I also appreciate the varied sports landscape in the US, tbh... I don't think that has to go away or anything like that, nor that US soccer depends on that.
Problem here is that it's very unlikely that Perez or Gonzalez will have been trained in a top tier soccer academy since figurative birth. American parents won't stand for that (generally speaking, as there are some insane helicopter parents willing to do anything to live vicariously through little Johnny).
American athletes can't fade "academy players". Take baseball. American baseball players typically learn the game from dad and a little league coach who doesn't really know what he's doing. Contrast this to the Dominican Republic, who treat baseball like a Brazil or Germany treats soccer, raising and teaching kids in an academy system. If the Dominican had our population size, they would be so far ahead of us in baseball, it would be embarrassing. Luckily their pop is only 11 million, so we are still the better baseball country just by virtue of our population. But in soccer, we have to compete with literal billions, and relatively big population countries like Germany, Brazil, Argentina, etc, who are using an academy system.
As I told Apa in a discussion about this, if forcing kids into academy is what it's going to take, then no thanks to being a "soccer country."
This is what you get every weekend on "soccer countries", tbh.
Id argue that if these poverty countries put in as much effort with other sports as soccer...the us would be nothing talent wise. Jist look at baseball and Hockey.
The issue here is that these soccer countries make the most out of the kids during their formative years.
tbh, I don't know where you get this academy thing. More than half the players in this Argentina team didn't really go to any "academy". They do start young and play on little leagues, and eventually if they think they're decent they go try out for an actual pro team (and anybody can really go to those tryouts, I used to play in Velez Sarsfield little leagues since it was close to home when I was a kid, and tried out once in River Plate). It's not invitation stuff, like some NBA/NFL tryouts here. I don't disagree with you that there's a huge difference in the process, everybody there wants to be a soccer player, so they go and try out, and the people that get to pick talent have a lot to pick from. That's something that will take time in the US, but it works a bit different now (they pick from college teams, or soccer little leagues, which there are quite a few, especially in areas like Florida, etc). But with the league expanding, having more teams and fans, you'll get that other system eventually set up, with kids growing up watching their home team that want to play for it.
And as much as team sport soccer is, you get a generational talent kind of guy (and it doesn't to be a Pele, Maradona or Messi), you then have a good foundation to put a team around. Most soccer teams really only have one or two stars and a bunch of utilitarian players. In that sense, it's not that much different from the NBA. And as Argentina has seen in the past 10 years or so, even having that kind of star doesn't guarantee silverware, but it does make for a top 3 team.
So I don't disagree the US is far, but it's traveling the right path. At least you're much further in that path than you were 10-15 years ago. It's still going to take some more time, but I can see where this is going, it's not bad if you're basically starting from scratch (which really is what you guys did after flirting with this thing back in the 50's).
The whole concept of soccer academies is ing creepy, by the way, and it adds to the overall third-world nature of the "sport." Would anyone really be surprised if there was some Neverland Ranch type of situations going on there that get hushed up?
I can only think of a couple of these "academies". I know La Masia from Barcelona, but it's really more an euro thing... even in Europe I don't think there's that many, tbh... I know River Plate in Argentina has a school on the team stadium that you could construe as an academy of sorts, but it's really more of a place to give young kids that move from far provinces and stick with the team a place to live and study. It's not really soccer teaching, but general education like any other school. Kids that live near the team don't even go there, just attend regular school and go train normally.
Dude..messi got scouted and sold and he didnt have pubes yet
Messi tried out for River Plate actually, and the team didn't take him because they couldn't afford to pay for the hormone therapy he needed. That's when he went to Spain with his dad.
That's how precarious is in some third world countries that are soccer "superpowers", if you will. Brazil is pretty similar. That's exactly why people really do get a feel that the US will eventually rise up, because 90% of pro teams in leagues like Argentina are broke or completely disorganized (which is the reason most Argentine players end up playing overseas). Most highschools (not college, high shools) in the US are better organized and funded.
But the country still does produce great talent, not because of "academies", but because they get a huge pool to pick from, and obviously have some of the know how from doing it since forever.
Thats exactly it...do kids in the US get to try out for established teams to help them in their formative years? No... most of them at that age are playing xbox and playing ty varsity ball.
Heck Japan soccer whose league only started 22 years ago have Kid soccer "academies" thats why they went from no league nation to a respectble team.
They have 10 year old there repeating skills dribvles over and over and over again.
I've read some stories of players that couldn't make it pro in Argentina and came to play for smaller leagues here in the US. Some in the MLS. Some in US colleges. Actually, that Funes Mori guy that played today against the US, he played for the FC Dallas youth team after winning an MLS talent compe ion. Eventually he went back to Argentina, and today he's starting for the Argentina national team. So, you know, talent is out there. In some of these countries, talent comes to the talent pickers. The US is not there yet on that, but I think it'll get there. It will take time, and the MLS needs to keep expanding and getting stronger.
There's none of that in Argentina (or Brazil, or South America in general) though. Kids get together and play the game in a gym or a park or the street. There really isn't the concept of academies down there. You can go try out for a team if you think you're good, but there's no guarantees. A guy like Banegas for example, he's what we call a pure "potrero" talent. A "potrero" being a run down soccer pitch you can find in most neighborhoods, like a basketball talent you'll get from Ruckers Park. He's good though, he eventually tried out for Boca when he was a kid and stuck, then raised through the minor leagues.
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