The World of Football/Soccer.

[mikev]

It was late, sure, but the middle of the shin guard is NOT high, and he barely made contact. It was a rubbish call, plain and simple, especially given the other crap that went uncalled.

Not an excuse, since the US still took the lead after, but they had some breakdowns in the 2nd half that cost them.

[ukhotstove]

If it had been in the Prem it would have probably been a booking.

What football should be about

[ukhotstove]

By the way Home United lost 2-0, wonder if they change their name to Away United when they play away

[ukhotstove]

Also Madrid had best put a full strength team out against Shamrock as they won 3-0 away against Drogheda in the FAI Cup tonight.

[ukhotstove]

Question.

If you could change anything in football what would it be ?

Personally I'd change the European Cups back to what they were, the European Cup (Champions League) would go back to only teams who have won their league being in it and a straight knock out, I mean lets be honest how can you call it "Champions" League when teams don't have to be champions to enter it and I'd revert to the old Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup. I know it wouldn't happen but that's what I'd change.

[mlyons]

Originally Posted by mikev

It was late, sure, but the middle of the shin guard is NOT high, and he barely made contact. It was a rubbish call, plain and simple, especially given the other crap that went uncalled.

Not an excuse, since the US still took the lead after, but they had some breakdowns in the 2nd half that cost them.

The middle of the shin guard isn't, true, but it looked to me like he caught him on the knee. And made pretty heavy contact. There's some wiggle room there; it wouldn't have been an outrage if it was just a yellow. It was still a stupid play, though, simply because the possibility existed that it would be called a red (and because he was nowhere close to getting the ball). This isn't exactly an isolated incident from Clark, either.

[thehatfield]

Very relieved my Forest squad managed to save themselves in the Championship this past season but at the same time very disappointed we gave Colin Calderwood the sack; the guy was a class manager for Forest, especially coming off the back-to-back disasters of Joe Kinnear & Gary Megson. And we replace Caldy with Billy Davies who was the Derby manager of all clubs. Looks like another struggle this coming season, but supposedly there's some money available for the summer window so we shall see.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by ukhotstove

Question.



Personally I'd change the European Cups back to what they were, the European Cup (Champions League) would go back to only teams who have won their league being in it and a straight knock out, I mean lets be honest how can you call it "Champions" League when teams don't have to be champions to enter it and I'd revert to the old Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup. I know it wouldn't happen but that's what I'd change.

If I had it my way I would knock out the dead wood from the champions league. Teams like the Faroe Island champion or San Marino or Belarus.
I would add in more teams from the top class divisions.

Why is a team from the Faroe Islands more worthy of a CL spot then whoever finishs second in the EPL? Or Serie A?
I don't want to see a team of amatuers who play football as a second or third job get beaten 17-0 on aggerate.

Or even better. Break up the CL into two divisions. Division 1 is Europes top half of leagues. Division 2 is the bottom half of the leagues.
This would allow for more competative games across the board and allow teams from the likes of Sweden, Norway Switzerland et al to have a chance at winning a trophy

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by mikev

I think that's the inherent problem with US Soccer. There's tons and tons of rugrats that are running around playing soccer when they are little, but the development programs are awful compared to the rest of the world.

Granted, a good number of athletes are lost to Football/Basketball/Baseball, but the ones who stay and continue with footy are the ones who truly love the game and, IMO, their country has failed them by not developing them into world class players.

Does that fall on Bob Bradley? No.

Also "Clark's moment of idocy" is probably a bit much. It was a dumb tackle attempt, but was in no way deserving of a sendoff.

I have written on this several times. Those hundreds of thousands of rugrats have only really exsisted in the past 10/15 years. Give it another 10/15 years and you will begin to see the payoff of all those numbers adding up.
But yes the U.S. does need a extensive youth league that picks the best of these youths and places them into leagues where they can face one another.

Programs like Generation Adidas are helping as well. But even that program has seen about 50-60% of its players go no where. Scouting soccer players is a tough buisness.

[mlyons]

Well, if you want to criticize Bob Bradley, now is probably a good time. He just completely failed to prepare the team to play Brazil. If there's one absolutely unforgivable offense in international play, it's getting outworked and outhustled by Brazil.

[phightin]

As I declared many times Bob Bradley is a sham. A coach of a national team that never even played at a professional level, his highest level was playing in college for princeton, is vastly unqualified to coach at the national level no matter how much success at the club level he has had.

Secondly, and more sadly though our players are not as a good as they were 10 years ago. We have a greater number of professional players now which isn't a bad thing but the overall quality of our players has dropped due to the developmental system here. The rugrats you talk about playing who will be good in 10-15 years our the guys out there right now. soccer has been far and away the most popular sport at the youth level for almost 20 years now, and it doesnt matter that our best athletes aren't involved, thats not the whole issue. I'll go into the details later, but the reason why there are no more Reynas, O'Briens, Armases etc is because of a broken system that I came up through.

[thehatfield]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

Programs like Generation Adidas are helping as well. But even that program has seen about 50-60% of its players go no where. Scouting soccer players is a tough buisness.

Is Generation Adidas the Bradenton, FL soccer compound?

[bababui]

A table we are unlikely to see again int he near future. From the 65/66 season. Bayern wasnt even in the top division the year before.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by Purple Cowboy

Is Generation Adidas the Bradenton, FL soccer compound?

Not Really. The Brandenton Soccer Compound is where the youth national teams live and play together etc. Generation Adidas is a program that identifies players through the ODP and now Youth Academy System to identify potential future national team/professional players.

And also scouting soccer isn't really a tough business here in the US we just have no clue what we're doing at the youth level, and it shows with our lack of quality currently.

[thehatfield]

Originally Posted by phightin

Not Really. The Brandenton Soccer Compound is where the youth national teams live and play together etc. Generation Adidas is a program that identifies players through the ODP and now Youth Academy System to identify potential future national team/professional players.

And also scouting soccer isn't really a tough business here in the US we just have no clue what we're doing at the youth level, and it shows with our lack of quality currently.

Gotcha... thanks for the clarification.

[ukhotstove]

What's the answer for football in America ? Being someone who is looking from the outside in I just don't understand what seem's like there is massive interest in the game or at least playing the game then when you leave college it's like people have their brain washed and never heard of football.

[ukhotstove]

Great game in the Copa Mustang in Colombia, Once Caldas 2 - 3 La Equidad. Equidad led 2-1 going into the 89th minute and were down by a player with Viafara getting sent off when all hell broke lose, both teams had a man sent off in the 89th minute Caldas made it 2-2 through Mena only for Giraldo to score in the 90th minute for Equidad to make it 3-2 to the visitors. Caldas were the favourites as well going into the game.

[thehatfield]

Originally Posted by ukhotstove

What's the answer for football in America ? Being someone who is looking from the outside in I just don't understand what seem's like there is massive interest in the game or at least playing the game then when you leave college it's like people have their brain washed and never heard of football.

I think a lot of it begins to change at the high school level because that's when peer pressure and factors other than "love of the game" first come in. So, American football players are usually top dogs on their high school campuses during the fall season with great support from the student body and the local community, and the best athletes will go there, while "soccer" gets relegated to secondary status consisting of the leftovers and the odd foreign kid. Partly I think it's because the "coaches" often have little-to-no experience (at my high school, the soccer coach was the science teacher and knew nothing about the game) or their experience comes from reading a book of soccer laws or training programs, so they wouldn't be able to identify a talented player if one fell on them (and even if they did they probably wouldn't know how to push him through to the next level). And without proper coaches how are those schools going to recruit players specifically for the sport?

Of course there are exceptions, some schools don't have American football programs because of previous fatalities or serious injury, cost of the program, etc..

[mlyons]

Originally Posted by ukhotstove

What's the answer for football in America ? Being someone who is looking from the outside in I just don't understand what seem's like there is massive interest in the game or at least playing the game then when you leave college it's like people have their brain washed and never heard of football.

The answer is for it to continue to grow in popularity as a spectator sport so it remains an attractive option for players when they hit high school age. Right now, there isn't much incentive for the best natural athletes to stick with soccer when baseball, American football, and basketball (not to mention golf and tennis) are so much more popular -- and offer higher paydays at the highest level. We talk about the crazy amount of money someone like Michael Owen gets paid, but he's actually being paid less than Aaron Rowand.

Let's say you're an elite level athlete for your age group and about to enter high school. American football and soccer are played during the same season at your school, so you only have the opportunity to play one, even though you're naturally gifted enough to be a star at either. The odds of you playing soccer over football are miniscule, especially if you think you're good enough to eventually turn professional, where your options are the NFL (minimum salary: around $300,000 per year) or MLS (minimum salary: about $20,000 per year). Even if you think you're good enough that you could leapfrog MLS and go to Europe, you're still looking at a Tim Howard $3,000,000 per year at best. That's a backup in the NFL.

[mlyons]

dola

That's not to say it's a lost cause. Soccer is growing in popularity as a spectator sport here. MLS certainly plays a part, but the bigger deal is that ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel, and GolTV are around to make it easy to watch high level matches and the internet makes it easy to follow clubs and players in other countries. Ten years ago, the only time anyone got to see a match on TV was during the World Cup, and newspapers sure weren't carrying soccer coverage. As more people watch, it'll get more popular, and won't shed as many 14-year-old players.