The American football market is center-right whites between 14 and 40 and center-left blacks of the same age group. If they leave NFL football they're not going to soccer, they're going to baseball, basketball, or hockey (if they're in the north).
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Not exemplary. That's the Allen H.S. Stadium. High school football is wildly popular in Texas. I think that thing cost like $60 million. It's in a rich independent school district where the taxpayers actually voted themselves a tax increase to build it (a ridiculous indictment of their priorities, but that's another story). Point being, I think it's the largest H.S. stadium in the country, most are nowhere remotely close. What's hilarious is that a year after it opened it got shut down for years due to dangerous foundation flaws, so it just sat there unused.My bad, idk why I thought you were talking about our football when you wrote football. But getting back on topic, yes, just like most other team sports "football" (soccer) is viewed as an avenue to a college scholarship more than a realistic career path. It's a serious problem with our youth development, since schools are woefully inadequate compared to pro academies. The Big Three sports have all found ways around this.
Baseball has its farm systems and elite underage travel teams. Basketball has the AAU, where 15-16 year olds are offered multi-million dollar deals before they even leave for college (for example, Lebron James received a car and other gifts from nike/adidas/reebok execs when he was 16). Football has absurdly over-funded high school football programs featuring ex-professionals coaching teams in massive stadiums. And of course the college basketball and football leagues are practically professional leagues on their own, with billions of dollars in revenue, massive stadiums, and millions of people watching them on tv. Soccer doesn't really have an equivalent for youth and college.
EDIT: This is a high school stadium, I bet it cost more than most MLS stadiums.
I mean across the board in elementary/high schools all over, for instance my brother in law from southern California (not a football part of the world) as a kid/early teens having American Football as the main sport he played at school, maybe switching to pushing Football/Soccer more with the new findings
One of my best friends here is a real meathead, played college American Football in Ohio, yet will not have his sons play, was just thinking they could cash in on this shift in mentality.
I get what you're saying, but your meathead Ohio bro isn't going to put his kids in soccer. That's for girls and immigrants. He'll put his kids in baseball, basketball, or hockey. Your brother in law in So Cal, on the other hand....that's possibly the most pro-soccer region of the entire country, literally 10 million Mexicans (legal and illegal) out there. He might be more likely to put his kids in soccer.
There are almost too many problems with US Soccer to even successfully point them all out.
Pay-to-play. It's an unfortunate reality that well off white children are the most likely kids to grow up playing the sport with any sort of decent coaching. It excludes a ridiculous number of children and forces them to play in AYSO style programs, where if they're lucky they'll get someone that is actually a licensed coach and not just one of the other kids' dad. The problem with parents paying $2,500 - $3,500 a season is that they then demand success instead of development. Look at the vast majority of these programs, lump the ball up to the fastest kid and hope he scores. When coaches even bring up these points to parents they're usually given a good dose of hostility cause Little Billy has parents that don't even think their child is playing a real sport.
Substitutions. This problem is widely overlooked. The number of substitutions allowed even at the COLLEGIATE level is INSANE! NCAA rules allow for ELEVEN subs. This problem isn't just limited to college, lower leagues allow ridiculous amounts too. I don't know exact numbers, but they're all higher than three. I don't think I need to point out why this is a problem.
Lack of real academies. No promotion/relegation. Lack of television coverage.
I could go on and on and on.
Pay-to-play. It's an unfortunate reality that well off white children are the most likely kids to grow up playing the sport with any sort of decent coaching. It excludes a ridiculous number of children and forces them to play in AYSO style programs, where if they're lucky they'll get someone that is actually a licensed coach and not just one of the other kids' dad. The problem with parents paying $2,500 - $3,500 a season is that they then demand success instead of development. Look at the vast majority of these programs, lump the ball up to the fastest kid and hope he scores. When coaches even bring up these points to parents they're usually given a good dose of hostility cause Little Billy has parents that don't even think their child is playing a real sport.
Substitutions. This problem is widely overlooked. The number of substitutions allowed even at the COLLEGIATE level is INSANE! NCAA rules allow for ELEVEN subs. This problem isn't just limited to college, lower leagues allow ridiculous amounts too. I don't know exact numbers, but they're all higher than three. I don't think I need to point out why this is a problem.
Lack of real academies. No promotion/relegation. Lack of television coverage.
I could go on and on and on.
Well I went to high school in suburban ATL and soccer was huge, coaching was decent and facilities out of this world. Also, the amount of sheer hours we played a week compared favourably to Spain and surpassed the uk. The standard was a little poorer though. I probably would have made my Spanish school's team (every team needs a dirty little fucker) but I would not have been a definite starter like I was in the us. Maybe it is, as y'all say, a socio-geographic thing
Do you think with yous not getting to the WC and wasted investment, as it will no doubt be portrayed, along with the huge popularity and opportunities of other sports there is a danger of football being left to rot?
It would be a shame to lose US altogether from the world stage.
The pre-season Spurs games looked amazing and that tail-gating thing is something else!!
I don't think that football will be left to rot, but I don't know that even this debacle will lead to meaningful change in the sport in the US.
As I put earlier in the thread I think that a big part of the failure of the development of a significant number of high quality footballers is the immense popularity of American football (or hand egg as some of you folks like to call it,) basketball and in the northern states hockey.
Another huge issue is football at the collegiate level. The mindset of American athletes and their parents is that the elite American kids who come through youth academies should go on to play collegiate football at the university level. The problem with this thinking is that you have kids going to university at 17-18 years old, playing football for 3, maybe 4 months out of the year for the next 4 years. When they finish university (at 21-22 years old) they have lost the best part of 4 years of development and will (IMO) never catch up to their counterparts around the world that have been playing on club teams since they were 16. The NCAA and the member institutions do not allow their athletes to have signed any type of professional contract so the kids are forced to choose between playing at university (often under scholarship) or foregoing university to pursue top level football at 16-17 years old (Christian Pulisic.) I don't see many parents in the US getting behind the idea of their kids foregoing university and starting training and playing professional football at 16 years old.
While MLS has grown dramatically in the 25ish years it has been around; there are still issues with the sport at the professional level here. We have to do things the #'Murican way. That means playoffs and no promotion/relegation. MLS owners have paid massive amounts of money to buy directly into MLS and have no intention of agreeing to a format where they could be dropped from the top division even if they field a shit team. I am by no means saying that pro/rel is a magic bullet that will fix all that ails football in the US, but something needs to be done to promote the sport professionally in more than just the 20-25 markets lucky enough to have an MLS team. I live about an hour from Raleigh, North Carolina where the local lower division team is putting together a bid to buy into MLS. As part of that bid the new owner re-branded the club as NC Football Club, bought a women's team and moved them to the area, and has just this year pushed through a merger between the 2 largest youth academies in the area, and put them under the umbrella of NCFC. We now have the largest youth to pro academy in the US and while that is a great thing to have here it isn't happening in a lot of places with lower division teams.
Just to demonstrate the sheer stupidity of many MLS supporters and some of the reasons for how we have become this fucked up, you need only check out the reddit page for this tweet. Besides the fact he's never coached a team, has never run a large organization, or has any relevant experience in any respect at a time when the entire organization needs leadership, a steady hand, and needs a complete overhaul, here are some of the top comments...
"With Donovan's reputation throughout US Soccer, being a true positive lightning rod for attention over the years, and being in the trenches as American soccer has expanded, he is the obvious choice. If I were SG, I would be concerned."
"Amazed at how many people are falling over themselves without even knowing what he would plan to do.
Truly a cult hero"
"Wow, this would be fascinating. I'd like to hear his platform"
"Plz"
"Save us, LD."
"I’m all for it and I don’t even need to hear his plan. If his plan is anything like what Taylor Twellman believes, which I’m almost certain it is, then yes."
Yes, there are some anti-LD comments, or at least more skeptical, but those are the less common ones, at least in terms of ranking.
This is how we ended up with Trump.
Yup. We get what we deserve.
I read your twitter thread and that situation would be intolerable anywhere else in the civilised world. I don't even like the idea of franchises for soccer.
He's still better than the wicked witch of the west wing
I was talking about US soccer. But no he's not.
But this isn't the thead for that discussion, we've debated that ad naseam in the first 100 pages in the politics thread.
Just to demonstrate the sheer stupidity of many MLS supporters and some of the reasons for how we have become this fucked up, you need only check out the reddit page for this tweet. Besides the fact he's never coached a team, has never run a large organization, or has any relevant experience in any respect at a time when the entire organization needs leadership, a steady hand, and needs a complete overhaul, here are some of the top comments...
"With Donovan's reputation throughout US Soccer, being a true positive lightning rod for attention over the years, and being in the trenches as American soccer has expanded, he is the obvious choice. If I were SG, I would be concerned."
"Amazed at how many people are falling over themselves without even knowing what he would plan to do.
Truly a cult hero"
"Wow, this would be fascinating. I'd like to hear his platform"
"Plz"
"Save us, LD."
"I’m all for it and I don’t even need to hear his plan. If his plan is anything like what Taylor Twellman believes, which I’m almost certain it is, then yes."
Yes, there are some anti-LD comments, or at least more skeptical, but those are the less common ones, at least in terms of ranking.
This is how we ended up with Trump.
We're all fame whores. It's embarrassing, but we eat up bullshit in mass quantities off the idiot box. The reality is that's the standard of USMNT "support", a bunch of know-nothings who show up with their flags and USA chants ever 4 years. That's why I'm honestly not bothered we didn't qualify, it'll be more enjoyable now.
Regarding Donovan even entertaining a run - what an arrogant prick. Cements my opinion of him and his messiah complex. He has no business near the job, and he should know better. I really wish he and Lalas would find somewhere private to suck themselves off and leave the rest of us in peace. Just from the pool of explayers there's a number of eminently more qualified people - Stewart and Reyna have more relevant experience as players than big-fish/small-pond Donovan, and years in executive leadership/decision-maker roles in the club game. But the right person for President is most likely someone whose name isn't sexy or known. Either way, I'll continue to only give it passing concern...until the way the sport is run at the very bottom grassroots level is changed it's all for naught.
Bravo Will
Can you explain what #automatiseren is?
Also I just looked up this douche's twitter, jesus what a Tool Shed he is
He looks like the Sith Lord version of Moyes
