usmnt

this is the most otm thing I've read since the final

http://aol.sportingnews.com/soccer/story/2011-07-01/firing-bradley-wouldnt-solve-us-soccers-real-problem

friendlies against Costa Rica and Belgium announced today btw

Jozy to AZ Alkmaar huh, I always figured he wasn't ready for a club like Villareal.

Bradley out

http://www.ussoccer.com/News/Mens-National-Team/2011/07/Bradleys-Tenure-Ends.aspx

http://bestanimations.com/Holidays/Fireworks/Fireworks-01-june.gifoh shi i hadn't seen this. breaking news on ilx dan m!http://bestanimations.com/Holidays/Fireworks/Fireworks-01-june.gif

feel like thread needs
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i5/herrlicher____alptraum/Natalie%20Dee/maracas.jpg

"further announcement friday" could they have someone lined up already? seems unlikely

didn't see that coming

Be nice if he came back to the Fire :D

but yeah now is the time to speculate on who the replacement will be

Klinsmann is the easy pick of course

only other name I see kicked around: Jason Kreis

lol comment on the Goff blog article about Bradley: "Fire whomever they hire!"

ok just read Marcelo Lippi rumor think I'm gonna shoot myself

Ives lists these dudes

Juergen Klinsmann
Guus Hiddink
Marcelo Lippi
Carlo Ancelotti
Rafa Benitez
Bruce Arena
Sigi Schmid
Jason Kreis
Claudio Reyna

Juergen Klinsmann - seems like he'll get the job
Guus Hiddink - yeah right
Marcelo Lippi - dunno
Carlo Ancelotti - more often than i should admit i think back to an interview where he said he was learning english. he had this shy smile about it, made him a real person. i like him and wish him well, can't imagine he'd end up here.
Rafa Benitez - only for the dmac lols
Bruce Arena - fucking hate this guy
Sigi Schmid - sumo coach, says he hasn't been contacted
Jason Kreis - 2015? or now. good guy at some point for us imo
Claudio Reyna - just got started Teaching The Youth. stick w/that for a bit

otm

http://www.ussoccer.com/News/Mens-National-Team/2011/07/Klinsmann-Named-Head-Coach-of-US-MNT.aspx

starting the "Fire Klinsmann" bandwagon right now b/c it's inevitable -- who's with me?

What was his plan for getting 'the inner-city youths' into the game, again? I've forgotten.

Hasn't he been an advisor to an MLS team?

yah TFC lolz

this is good news, no?

i guess? not sure what his record as a coach of germany and bayern could really say about his potential with the us. but i hope they give him control and time to try his system, and i hope he's committed to the project.

Woah, well done you lot. Klinsmann gets the credit here for the renaissance of German football (not sure how accurate that is, but still) and it seems like he got across-the-board free rein for that project. If there's scope for something similar in the US, it could be spectacular.

now there's only the small problem of quality players

I'm just interested to see which high-potential young players he utilizes and in what formation. Dudes like Adu, Diskerud, Agudelo, Ream and Chandler. I hope to never see Bornstein or Kljestan again, doubt it'll actually happen.

One thing's for sure, if he doesn't get over the generational bump that currently exists we're gonna get fucked by Mexico for years to come.

seems to me the problem w us youth soccer is as much a scouting ish as it is a talent problem. we're a huge country and I would wager that as many or more kids here grow up playing soccer as, say, in England (before anyone spits anything on any keyboards, recall that we have six times as many ppl...it's not outlandish to think that for every six English ten year olds playing there's one American).

the diff is that no one is paying close attention to young American players. moreover, they don't know how.

just occurred to me that the best/fastest way to pull up young players isn't by trying to pimp the MLS or promise riches in Europe---it's university involvement. if the college game improves/gets a rep as an incubator for talent (like every single other major sport except for baseball...which has a system remarkably like European systems), then maybe we'll see some changes.

it actually makes sense, economically---soccer teams are cheaper to train and equip than football teams, and good uni scouting has to be cheaper than trying to create from scratch a youth system like you'd find at a major euro club. those things didn't happen over night.

isn't there an age problem w/ that tho?

yah i'm not sure how the college system can accomodate the sort of exceptional players you are hoping for

even jozy altidore, who was a promising but hardly prodigious sort, left for villareal at about 19

no different from the age problem in, like, bball or hockey or w/e

competition for ~scholarships~ (that is, a college education) is what drives a lot of youth development. most kids know that they'll never be pros, but they could get into a school they might not otherwise be able to afford.

aren't there already college soccer scholarships?

not sure college soccer makes enough money for athletic departments to justify a ton of scouting

the difference is that european teams aren't going to stop paying college age kids huge sums of money

yah i'm not sure how the college system can accomodate the sort of exceptional players you are hoping for

even jozy altidore, who was a promising but hardly prodigious sort, left for villareal at about 19

who cares

we have youth systems in place that produce amazing athletes already. why try and create feeder systems for less than 20 crappy American clubs when you can harness what's already in place. college sports fans obv care more about certain sports than others, but if a big state uni got a killer always-wins soccer team, ppl would support it because ppl love college sports (and go NUTS over them in a way that more closely resembles intl soccer fandom than any of our pro sports).

we have 3000+ univs. start telling kids they can get a BA/laid if they're good at soccer and you'll see results. right now the only hope young players have is the MLS (pays less than the job you ~might~ get with an education) or abroad (fat chance, you suck).

enough phenoms will bubble to the top to fill out our natl team

not sure college soccer makes enough money for athletic departments to justify a ton of scouting

of course they don't. but if we're talking about targets to strengthen the game in the US, I think college ball will be more sensitive than...better kids leagues? no need to reinvent the wheel here

are those incentives going to work with 7yr old kids? cuz unlike nfl/nba where there are players who didn't begin training til mid teens, elite ~soccer~ players have practised inane amounts from very young ages (xp)

lol, insane

the current crop of american players isn't any sort of disaster, they've been steadily improving and producing solid european top tier players like howard, bradley, dempsey.....there's a lack of really exceptional talents but sooner or later they will arrive

these sort of state-of-the-nation discussions about youth coaching are more apt for countries like england which have history/infrastructure/culture and still fail to develop players the equal of comparable nations

really talented bball players have been developing skills from childhood, maybe just not as 'formally' as some young soccer players

it just seems silly to me to assume that the best thing for the long-term health of american soccer is plucking really young kids out and, what, shipping them abroad to train with foreigners, where they will prosper in total isolation from the people that will eventually be their "fans"?

you mentioned that 19yo jozy went abroad---where do talented 19yo hockey players (who, incidentally, also start really really early...like 4-5yo) go? COLLEGE. if we focused on getting people interested in the college game, it could serve as the same sort of finishing school as it does for our other sports. if we focus more on developing young kids and putting them into farm systems either domestic or foreign that ~no one cares about or watches~ then we're developing players at the expense of developing the actual sport

*really* talented 19yo hockey players are in the nhl (but sure)

it's a chicken egg problem, of course, because as mookie said, no one watches college ball right now. i'm not sure what US Soccer could do to actually ~help~ improve the quality/profile of university teams, but i'm sure someone clever could think of something. and it would be way easier, cheaper, and more "american" than the alternative.

like, for real, if the NCAA soccer championships were televised and played in a biggish stadium, might that not attract interest in an "if you build it they will come" sorta way?

xp you know what i mean, dude

and again, the scholarship thing can't be stressed enough: there's loads of kids out there who are trying they're asses off to get improve their game because it might mean school---they already know they're not gonna be pro hockey players, but they might get some glory and a decent job afterwards

the scholarships already exist tho!

and it's sorta hard to justify any more athletic scholarships, for anything, when put in context of how our universities work

I think your argument hinges more on 'get people to care about college soccer' than anything else

that formulation is virtually ex-nihilo (xps)....even if the other conditions exist to make american college soccer desirable, the presence of foreign teams who regularly offer huge salaries to college age players will lure the best ones away

if the NCAA soccer championships were televised and played in a biggish stadium, might that not attract interest in an "if you build it they will come" sorta way?

that may well happen....but it will exist as an entertainment rather than an avenue for elite player development

ncaa baseball world series are televised and for the most part people don't care. even people who like baseball!

I think your argument hinges more on 'get people to care about college soccer' than anything else

― iatee, Friday, July 29, 2011 8:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

well sure! and in caring more about college soccer, HS/youth programs will get better. and yeah, sure, our top top players will get spirited away to foreign clubs, if the project is Get America To Care About Soccer in the long-term, then bypassing college level ball altogether seems sorta foolish.

should be a period in there

that's all very well but you seemed to be talking about Getting America Some Players Bettter Than Oguchi Onyewu

for raising the profile etc, sure

if in some counterfactual history europe had some equivalently popular NCAA, i'd imagine it would be good for football, maybe less so for universities

i was iphonin it and sort of developing a thesis on the fly. scouting/training youngsters intensively might get us some better players in the short run, but raising the profile will be better for soccer in the long run.

i dunno---i guess i've heard a lot of ppl on the internet say that the one thing that soccer needs to be magicked into a real sport is a world cup win, but we win olympic medals all day long and it's not like anyone cares about fucking swimming