Cliffy6745 said:

Who is coaching this team at the moment?

I don't know much of anything about McKennie until yesterday, but nice to see another potential star paying on the other side of the pond.

One of Arena's assistants.  Forget the guys name.  Assuming they won't announce a full time replacement for Arena until after the USSF elects a new president.  And possibly not until after the world cup depending on who that person wants to target.

Sounds like McKennie looked really good.  So did some other young guys like Adams, Vickers and Miazga.  Too bad Sargent was injured and couldn't play.  He'll be going to the Bundesliga with Werder Bremen when he turns 18 in February.  A lot of young kids playing over in Europe to get excited about...hopefully this becomes the norm.

Cliffy6745 said:

EdsonNascimento said:

Wobbie said:

NIT World Cup?

dumb.

FIFA would never sanction such a thing.   They will try to dress up the friendlies that always precede the cup, but it won't be anything more than a marketing gimmic.   

Such a stupid, loser idea

jeffbr said:

Here's a great article touching on this money grab by US Soccer, as well as scorching Bruce Arena. I think the author is spot on.

American Soccer Needs To Burn To The Ground

"First we learned about an absolutely absurd, moronic, avaricious, unintentionally self-disgracing plan by the money-grubbing shitbrains in charge of soccer in this country. These geniuses are apparently attempting to organize a Tournament of Losers next summer in the U.S. that would host some of the prominent international teams that failed to make the World Cup. Rather than hibernating for a year or so in shame over how colossally the U.S. botched the World Cup qualification process—and rather than undergoing a sober and ruthless accounting of the specific ways the entire soccer system in America failed, and coming up with a strategy for how to fix these flaws—U.S. Soccer and their shady marketing arm Soccer United Marketing thought the best use of their time was to draw even more attention to the most humiliating incident in this country’s history in the sport by dreaming up a risible, though almost certainly profitable, World Crap."

EdsonNascimento said:

jeffbr said:

Here's a great article touching on this money grab by US Soccer, as well as scorching Bruce Arena. I think the author is spot on.

American Soccer Needs To Burn To The Ground

"First we learned about an absolutely absurd, moronic, avaricious, unintentionally self-disgracing plan by the money-grubbing shitbrains in charge of soccer in this country. These geniuses are apparently attempting to organize a Tournament of Losers next summer in the U.S. that would host some of the prominent international teams that failed to make the World Cup. Rather than hibernating for a year or so in shame over how colossally the U.S. botched the World Cup qualification process—and rather than undergoing a sober and ruthless accounting of the specific ways the entire soccer system in America failed, and coming up with a strategy for how to fix these flaws—U.S. Soccer and their shady marketing arm Soccer United Marketing thought the best use of their time was to draw even more attention to the most humiliating incident in this country’s history in the sport by dreaming up a risible, though almost certainly profitable, World Crap."

Whatever you call it, the games will happen here.  Don't get hung up on what writers are trying to drum up to get clicks.   We are the only ones that hate ourselves.  The rest of the world loves to play here. They have that stupid preseason international club cup where like 30 teams play around the world with 3/4 of them playing in us.  They then declare a winner.  I have no idea how but the point is every club and country comes to the us to grab the money.  Don't be more self hating about this.  There is no doubt friendlies will happen on us soil and some concept like this will be taken but it won't be officially sanctioned.  It will be the Barclays-Qatar-Exxon-Virgin Atlantic World Goblet.  And all the Italians and Chileans and Trinidadians (oh, wait we won't invite them) living in the US will buy tickets which is the exact reason they will hold the meaningless games here.

as for burn to the ground - how silly.  We missed.  It happens.  Yes, in concacaf we should make it every time.  But don't forget, if we hadnt scored a late, meaningless goal on the last day 4 years ago Mexico would have missed.  We are just not used to losing.  We now have the most creative player the us has ever had who will be in his prime the next 2 world cups.  We were caught between cycles.  He's too young now, Dempsey is too old, and altidore never fulfilled promise.   The old cycle is done, and now we spend 2 years figuring out who's next.  That's how this works.  

jeffbr said:

Indifference71 said:

EdsonNascimento said:

Indifference71 said:

EdsonNascimento said:

jeffbr said:

Here's a great article touching on this money grab by US Soccer, as well as scorching Bruce Arena. I think the author is spot on.

American Soccer Needs To Burn To The Ground

"First we learned about an absolutely absurd, moronic, avaricious, unintentionally self-disgracing plan by the money-grubbing shitbrains in charge of soccer in this country. These geniuses are apparently attempting to organize a Tournament of Losers next summer in the U.S. that would host some of the prominent international teams that failed to make the World Cup. Rather than hibernating for a year or so in shame over how colossally the U.S. botched the World Cup qualification process—and rather than undergoing a sober and ruthless accounting of the specific ways the entire soccer system in America failed, and coming up with a strategy for how to fix these flaws—U.S. Soccer and their shady marketing arm Soccer United Marketing thought the best use of their time was to draw even more attention to the most humiliating incident in this country’s history in the sport by dreaming up a risible, though almost certainly profitable, World Crap."

Whatever you call it, the games will happen here.  Don't get hung up on what writers are trying to drum up to get clicks.   We are the only ones that hate ourselves.  The rest of the world loves to play here. They have that stupid preseason international club cup where like 30 teams play around the world with 3/4 of them playing in us.  They then declare a winner.  I have no idea how but the point is every club and country comes to the us to grab the money.  Don't be more self hating about this.  There is no doubt friendlies will happen on us soil and some concept like this will be taken but it won't be officially sanctioned.  It will be the Barclays-Qatar-Exxon-Virgin Atlantic World Goblet.  And all the Italians and Chileans and Trinidadians (oh, wait we won't invite them) living in the US will buy tickets which is the exact reason they will hold the meaningless games here.

as for burn to the ground - how silly.  We missed.  It happens.  Yes, in concacaf we should make it every time.  But don't forget, if we hadnt scored a late, meaningless goal on the last day 4 years ago Mexico would have missed.  We are just not used to losing.  We now have the most creative player the us has ever had who will be in his prime the next 2 world cups.  We were caught between cycles.  He's too young now, Dempsey is too old, and altidore never fulfilled promise.   The old cycle is done, and now we spend 2 years figuring out who's next.  That's how this works.  

So do you think everything is fine in US Soccer and nothing should change??  If it shouldn't be burnt to the ground now, then when should it be? It's just about impossible for a solid team not to qualify from CONCACAF, but the US somehow found a way.  And then you have Arena out there saying everything is fine, nothing to see here!!!  What a joke.

Absolutely not.    My kids play soccer and the identification process is fd up.    

We we love to parse what people say.  Just remember that Bruce Arena is the most successful coach in US history.  That last loss is completely embarrassing, but we put ourselves in a huge hole he was trying to dig us out from under.  But that doesn't go to how we build a national team.   

But burn the whole thing down?  And what would you replace it with?  Until we are ready to spend $100 s of millions identifying and then training players, we are never going to have the best possible team.  So, sure burn the whole thing down and replace it with that.  You willing to pay for that?

We've had a fairly successful run.  A few knock out stages, a final 8 that could have easily been a final 4.   Let me know how England has done over the last 20 years.

When I say burn it down, I mean that there needs to be new leadership and Gulati needs to go.  I'm not saying the whole system as it exists needs to be thrown out, but obviously there needs to be changes because something isn't right.  Like I keep saying, with the talent and resources US Soccer has, it's just about impossible not to qualify out of CONCACAF.  

Like Cliffy mentioned, the costs associated with playing high level youth soccer are astronomical and obviously not something that every family can afford.  I don't have all the answers, but something needs to change.  

And just because Arena has had success doesn't mean that he can't be criticized for what happened.  Yes, he came into a bad situation but the fact is that they ended up needing a tie at Trinidad of all places and couldn't come up with 1 goddamn point.  He didn't even bring in Fabian Johnson for the last 2 qualifiers and left their most reliable central defender in Cameron on the bench in the last game.  But he'll just continue to say that everything is fine and nothing needs to change.  Smh.

Yes to this post. Burn it down is figurative, but I am in favor of jettisoning all of the coaching and scouting staff at all levels of USSF national team play. We didn't qualify for the last Olympics, which is a good indicator we don't have the necessary talent moving up to the senior team in the near future. There are some great players, but I'm sure there are many, many more great players who are never identified and brought into the system due to the expensive nature of pay-to-play in this country. When we do identify good players, we either use them improperly (in different positions than they play with their clubs, or positions which hinder rather than promote their growth), don't have a good tactical understanding, keep them on the bench, etc... I'm tired of the same coaches just moving around different levels at USSF. Time for new blood, new ideas, new players, new development programs. Don't burn it down all at once, but identify issues and make big changes. Our program here is beyond needing tweaks. We need wholesale changes starting at the top, down through administration, and out onto the field. Coaches, scouts, players, administrators - the lot of them. I have never been a big Lalas fan, but his rant about tattooed millionaires was on the money. We can have the best facilities, management, coaching staff, and tactics but if the players don't give two shits, then we don't win. The current players don't give two shits. Or even one. There are 3 or 4 players who should be invited back. But our roster for the 2022 games should currently be unrecognizable. I want to spend the next 6 years getting to know our new players, and erasing the current players from my memory.