Playing an outmanned Panama team had an early goal correctly disallowed for offside. Then at 18 minutes, Tim Weah gets a stupid red card, so had to play a man down for 72 minutes. Scored to take the lead, conceded 3 minutes later and then again late in the match to lose. Now have to beat #6 ranked Uruguay and hope Bolivia (even worse than Panama) at least ties Panama just to advance out of group stage. As much as I hate Berhalter, this isn't really on him. But it might cost him his job. We have too many players with million dollar talent and 10 cent brains.
Disastrous night for US soccer team.
- Thread starter patdog
- Start date
Olympics is later this summer. They've cut all the old veterans that should have been cut years ago and are going with a younger team. Probably semi-finals at best. And that's probably a bit of a stretch.
USA will always suck at soccer until regular people can afford to play at the top level of youth soccer. Y’all think travel baseball is expensive? It’s a fraction of high level soccer. $60k/year is the low end.
That seems absurd. My daughter is on showcase which is basically 2 levels down from ECNL which is one of the top levels and doesn’t cost anywhere near that. She has friend on ECNL and I don’t think there is any way her parents could afford that unless there are scholarships offered. I could see the travel and lodging costs adding up to 20,000 but the team and tournament cost are no where near 40.000. Even so, I’m pretty sure if my daughter got good enough to make ECNL, it would be a hard no. No amount of potential scholarship salesmanship could convince me otherwise.
17 soccer. Especially our women's team.
Holy hell no wonder we suck. We've shrunk our population of potential talent to that of a Caribbean island - but only the wealthy white tourists on vacation.
I've said it for years, the downfall of America can be traced back to the following:
1. soccer
2. Wal-Mart
3. video games
All Soccer is a bunch of candy asses playing Ice Hockey on grass using a ball and foot rather than stick and puck. Oh yeah hockey guys don't fake flops. They get knocked out. They are not as pretty as those soccer guys.**********
I loved buying FIFA 2003 for PS2 from Walmart.
Funny, I checked their account on X and they have a rainbow flag. Condolences to whatever nation that is on their soccer loss. I’m more of a red, white and blue guy myself.
Lots of people to add to the list. Thank you for your participation.**
So you think the Euro and World Cup etc….should be done away with? That’s ridiculous
And the level is athleticism is average. Go to these camps and it looks like a spelling bee.
Are they really hurt or did they just flop? You hardly ever know until they hop right back up and continue playing after several minutes of agonizingly rolling around on the ground holding their head or whatever body part the opposition tickled. Soccer is required viewing for the Univ of Northern MS defense to learn to flop like they do
The MS ECNL team probably paid 5k-7500 last year after all was said and done. I don’t know where anyone gets the 60k number.
Weah shouldn't be allowed to play for the US in the future. He knew the ramifications of his actions before he ever threw a punch and just didn't give a crap about his teams success.
Maybe he was talking about moving down to Bradenton for your kid to live at IMG? Only thing I can think of.
They don’t let them fake much anymore. They’ll get penalized.If there is one sport I am into more than NBA, its US soccer. The way injuries are faked by grown arse men is theater at its finest.
They still got their participation ribbons, though, right? And plenty of orange slices?
YES. I'm tired of seeing Liverpool players come back from international duty hurt. It's getting to the point that the top international players never really get a break at all.
Big time European soccer is pure capitalism. American pro sports have pure communist principles at their core.
couldn't have posted a more inaccurate response. club level is typically $400-1500 for registration. then couple hundred on uniforms and cost of 2-4 tournaments in the fall and 2-4 in the spring will vary if you play far enough away to need a hotel. we tend to need a hotel once or twice per year. so, 60k on the low end? ECNL was never needed - it's just the next creation to make more money and it's watering down club level play.
I'll give you 3 potential reasons: Albert, Swanson, Smith.
Let me clarify. I’m not talking about the best team your kid qualified to be on. Or the best travel team in the state. Other countries have organized training academies to develop their elite talent from across the country. The best kids compete against each other everyday. The US has several of these type training academies made up of players from all over the country. Some affiliated with European pro teams, some affiliated with US based organizations. These are all hooked up with prep schools here because the kids stay there full time and go to school. The cheapest of these programs are $60k/year after the average scholarship. In other countries, kids good enough to be in these programs don’t pay anything, so they get the best kids, not just the best rich kids. That’s why they put out better teams than the US.
I guess that is where I am confused. ECNL is probably the best group of talent in the US right now. Unless I am missing something. When I look at players on USWNT they seem to have the ECNL background. Of course I am talking girls so it may be different for dudes but US girls don’t have to go to Europe because Murica has been quite good at women’s soccer for 30 years. My daughter will not sniff ECNL and honestly I don’t care because I actually like her current “rich kid” environment (never thought the son of a wallpaper hanger and construction worker would be categorized as that). We tend to travel to Foley, Destin, Panama City, Biloxi. I spend more money on drinks, arcades, and amusement parks than dues or tournament fees. As selfish as it sounds, the moment I stopped having fun with my kid’s parents I’m probably out because I have no delusions about my daughter being the next Maddie. But I do see the ECNL team play and these 13 year olds could have destroyed my high school soccer team. (St Al so not that big of a deal) So to go back to the original quote of 60k for top tier competition, for girls that is completely inaccurate. ECNL is pretty established and filters talent effectively.
Now boys, that’s different. It’s quite simple, and I said this in 1994. The US will never get good in Men’s soccer because our best athletes would rather play our sports, Football, basketball, and baseball. Sorry soccer fans that’s just the truth. Maybe it is because of the expense of youth soccer? Possibly? But I know of a couple of kids that played rec with my daughter that clearly were dominant athletically and the club teams recruited them and offered scholarships, they still went baseball and football routes. I go back to my youth and the best soccer player I ever played with at U10 rec. He dominated the game. Where did his soccer career end up? Returning a punt for a TD against Tennessee in the 98 SEC championship game.
**** I’m drunk and that was a Bruiser length response, I apologize.
Not always.
I referee girls high school lacrosse here in Northern Virginia, and I never make any call when I see a flop. Typically, I see 2 or 3 flops each game, and I just let play continue.
I'm not calling that flopping BS.
This past season that just ended, a girl flopped near the end of a 18-17 score game to try to get a free position near the goal. She lost the ball when she dropped to the ground, and the defense picked up the loose ball and ran out the clock.
After the game, the coach asked me about the call, and I said, "Coach, your played flopped on that play. The defense didn't cause her to fall." The coach didn't care for my explanation.
We do have yellow cards and red cards in girls lax.
I have given out lots of yellow cards (2-minute penalty, so the offender's team plays one player down during the penalty) as a ref, but never for flopping. Currently, there's nothing in the girls lax rules about flopping.
However, I have considered interpreting a flop as "misconduct" (i.e., unsportsmanlike behavior) and giving the offender a yellow card, but I haven't done that yet. (Girls lax does have a rule against "misconduct.")
Doing that would likely cause a ruckus, sparking phone calls to the lead for girls high school lax officials, so I didn't really want to do that.
Also, I try to be judicious with giving yellow cards, because a player is ejected from the game if she gets 2 yellow cards.
(Nobody comes to a game to watch the refs. Rather, everybody comes to the game to watch the players/teams.)
I've never given out a red card for any reason (immediate ejection from the game + a one-game suspension for the offender).
Totally missed the LAX part of your post. But yeah, good point about being careful about giving out too many cards at youth level.