Into the Fire: No Excuses For Missing Out on the World Cup

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Last October the U.S. Men’s National team just had to beat Trinadad and Tobago and they were in. They were cutting it close but every hardcore and casual fan just knew that the USMNT would certainly get this victory and land their spot in Russia. The cockiness of the fans, the players, and the now former coach led to a 2-1 shocker. U.S. Soccer lost and for the first time since 1986 the United States failed to field a team that qualified for the FIFA World Cup.

Here we are in the summer of 2018 and the world is gathering in Russia to celebrate the world’s game and the world’s foremost superpower in everything else is not even a part of the festivities. It is baffling and almost inexlicable, but it is reality. The party is raging and for some reason, nobody invited the most popular kid in school. There is a lot of excuse making as for how this happened tool; “we don’t have our best athletes playing that sport because they play basketball and football” and we’re “decades behind other countries in terms of resources and structure.” Excuses are like soccer pitches, every country has one. The USA just has more than most and none of them are really, well, excusable.

For a country as big and powerful as the United States, to not field a team that qualifies for the world’s biggest sport on it’s biggest stage shows just how we flat out do not have our stuff together. The talent is there and it is playing soccer. The talent is just not being cultivated properly. According to Project Play, data collection initiative on children’s health and fitness, the number of kids ages 6-12 who play soccer in the United States is right up there with the amount of kids playing tee ball and basketball. The numbers are virtually equal. The argument cannot be made that we do put our athletes on the soccer pitch. We do. They just do not stay there.

So how does the United States fix this problem? Spain has Barcelona and Real Madrid youth programs that funnel world class talent into their pro/national teams like products on a conveyor belt. The U.S. has the AYSO which is more about soccer moms and dads keeping up appearances than it is about developing the next generation for the USMNT. It is not one thing that we can do in order to fix this issue and avoid this embarrassment again. Usually the World Cup on TV will inspire impressionable kids to want to go out and work on their dribbling and pace, but an entire generation is void of this experience because we failed them.

In order for the United States to stop being a laughing stock when it comes to the world’s game, we need to do with soccer what we do with all of our other major sports; beat it’s stars and drama into the heads of every American citizen. Even if people are not interested, the US Soccer Federation needs to play dirty like every other respectable soccer federation in the world. There needs to be glad-handing with network executives for favorable coverage, there needs to be bag men helping out the parents of every budding superstar in a youth program, and there needs to be some kind of damn reality show. America needs it’s attention kept and there are plenty of blueprints on how to do that. If U.S. Soccer wants to avoid being left out of the party while the world experiences the Beautiful Game, it needs to start taking things a little bit more seriously, roll it’s sleeves up, and stop fighting fair. Then and only then will we have earned the respect of world when it comes to soccer. Until then though, they can enjoy the party while we wait for a game they don’t understand to start; the sporting equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons: American Football.

– Alan Michael