Ok its time…

Over the last couple of weeks I got to watch the US Men’s National Team compete in the Confederations Cup in South Africa. As many of you probably know, they started horribly, losing to Brazil and Italy before beating Egypt 3-0 and qualifying for the second round semi-finals, over Italy, based on goals scored. They then shocked everyone and beat Spain 2-0, THEN had Brazil down 2-0 before ultimately losing the finals 3-2. Overall it was quite an exciting tourney and certainly had people talking.

Part I
I was adamant prior to the Spain game that Bob Bradley was not the coach I wanted leading this team to the World Cup next summer. I felt that the loss to Costa Rica and close call in other recent qualifiers, coupled with the first two games of the Con Cup were a clear indication that he could not generate the play needed for the US to compete. Even the win over Egypt did not change my mind…that is a game we should win, and after two losses if the players couldn’t motivate themselves then they all deserved to be cut and replaced!

But the Spain game has forced me to reconsider. Mind you, I’m still not sold, but I’ll spend some extra time watching the Gold Cup this month to make up my mind. The thing about the Spain game was this: Coaches get three opportunities to affect a game – preparation, half-time, and with a substitution. Bob certainly had the team prepared. They came out hard, fast, aggressive, smart, and on form. They forced the Spanish to make mistakes and then capitalized on them; that’s what it takes to beat a better team (make no mistake – Spain is WAY better than the US!). After the half, the team was able to sustain their vigor and keep their composure. They withstood attack after attack early and kept the difficult burden of playing catch-up on Spain.

The biggest problem the US was having at that point was relieving pressure. By that I mean that they were unable to possess the ball in the other team’s half long enough to force them to come back and defend – giving our defenders a moments rest. Every attempt to go forward was rushed, sloppy, and resulted in quick turnovers that themselves became dangerous counter attacks. We needed to hold the ball longer, or at the very least give it back as a deep throw-in or a goal kick. Just as I was beginning to shout at the tv that Bradley put in the best ball handler on his bench, he made a substitution and put in exactly that – a player known for being able to keep the ball and temper the pace.

If you weren’t watching carefully, Benny Feilhaber, after coming on moments before did the opposite of rushing – he held the ball for just a moment extra. In that moment the Spanish defender who was rushing back to mark Landon Donovan ran across the passing lane where he surely would have disrupted the pass had it come earlier. Instead he had no pass to intercept so he kept going, to position himself in the classic goal-side stance…leaving the passing lane clear for Feilhaber to lay the ball wide to Donovan. Donovan curled a cross in behind the defense and the missed clearance opportunity by Ramos teed the ball up for Clint Dempsey to swipe it in the goal. And that was that.

Well done coach. Patience needed, patience added at the right time. The fact that you then got your team up 2-0 on Brazil tells me more than does the fact that they lost that same lead to some of the best players in the world – soccer is just like that sometimes.

Part II
The result of those games has got a lot of folks talking about soccer in the US. So let’s talk about soccer in the US. I hear all sorts of theories, thoughts, complaints, predictions, and criticisms – literally everyday. Well here are some of mine in response:

1. The US will not win the World Cup for at least 25 years.

2. The MLS will never compete nationally (or internationally) with the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL.

3. I don’t think it needs to in order to be successful.

4. For the US to win the World Cup, the MLS cannot be the home of our national team players – 2/3rds or more of our starters need to play abroad.

5. The purpose of the MLS, in my opinion, is to a) provide continual visibility for the sport in the US; b) motivate young players to develop by providing attainable professional opportunities (thus expanding the pool of quality players at all levels); and most importantly c) train futures coaches with high-level playing experience and acquaintances in foreign pro leagues.

These are all related by the way. The trickle-down of good coaching in 5c leads to the better pool of players in 5b, which increases the quality of play and the visibility of 5a. That same improvement in both coaching and players helps produce the tip-of-the-iceberg players, who then get appropriately noticed by those same better coaches and pointed out to those international acquaintances so that they get to play and develop overseas with much better competition. Those tip-of-the-iceberg players then become 2/3rds of our national team, supported by the best of the MLS players. That’s when we can really compete for a World Cup.

Some could say “we have that now” and that would almost be true. But today, most coaches of 14-18 year old players did not play professionally; coaches of 11-13 year olds did not play in college, and coaches of 3-10 year olds did not even grow up playing or play through high school themselves! While I appreciate their commitment and applaud their effort – and I’m sure many, if not most, of them are doing a great job of teaching and motivating – more experience is more likely to produce better players.

So 25 years means that this generation of MLS players-turned-coach raise the next generation of youth coaches, who raise the next generation on international stars.*

That just leaves 2 and 3. Maybe never is too strong a word…I guess I use it so that people will just get off soccer’s case! Stop rushing it, or expecting it to be something people are not ready for it to be!

Here’s what I’ve learned about sports. Watching any sport requires an appreciation for the details! They all look silly or boring if you don’t understand the little occurrences or decisions that get made or occur in microseconds. And to understand those, you either have to have played the sport on an organized level, or been forced to watch it long enough that you learn those details. It also helps if the version of the sport you are watching is high enough quality to instill some awe at what occurs!

Let’s look at football. Most of us learn the sport by watching as kids because dad puts the game on. We then go out in the yard and play two-hand touch. We learn by playing how tricky it is to time a crossing route so the ball hits their hands, how hard it is to drop the ball just over the receivers shoulder on a deep pass, and how fast and agile you have to be to run and cut by a defender. Then we watch Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith and you HAVE to enjoy what they can do!

With baseball, as kids we study statistics on collector cards and argue about lineups and lefties versus righties and then try to hit a wiffle ball out of the backyard, or at least advance our ghost runners with a single. No wonder when we watch a game we understand the nuance of pitch counts and clean-up hitters and relief pitchers. Without understanding that it’s a slow, plodding, boring game with occasional home runs or a diving catch.

Golf requires you to be able to see differences in the swings of two guys doing the same exact thing, or understand the difficulty of getting a ball to roll 10 feet instead of 9 or 11 feet. Nascar asks that viewers can tell that something huge just ALMOST happened when, after 40 laps that look exactly the same, one guy goes high instead of low in an attempt to pass and is thwarted by another car accelerating to a degree we can’t measure with our eyes.

Soccer too is a game of nuances that take years of watching, or playing, to understand. Why is running all the way downfield with the ball and then passing it 30 yards backwards valuable? (For the same reason Kobe drives to the baseline and then passes back to the point guard.) Why is he not trying to take the ball from that guy who is just standing there? (Because he’s waiting for support, like a running back waiting for a block.) Why did everyone just get so excited about that pass that looks like it was 20 yards off target? (If only his teammate had seen the same opportunity he saw – like when Favre throws long but his receiver cuts a rout short.) He kicked it and missed the goal, so what? (Like home runs never die short on the warning track?)

Think about this…Youth soccer has been widespread in this country for 30, maybe 35 years – that means that this current generation of adults is only the first generation to have a significant population that grew up playing soccer! And very few of us got to watch it on tv as kids. But you know why the Seattle Sounders FC draws 30,000 fans and could sell 5,000 more if they wanted to? Because the state of Washington has one of the largest populations of adult recreational soccer players and people who understand a sport will watch a sport.

So it works. The system that has worked for football and baseball and basketball and every other sport is working. It will continue to work as long as soccer is still played by huge numbers of kids, as long as those kids have opportunities to play their whole lives, and as long as the MLS continues to be entertaining to those who understand it.

Is it working slowly? Yes I’ll concede that it is. I think one reason is that it still has to compete with the incredibly sophisticated marketing and distribution systems of the other sports which include superstars, gear and paraphernalia, constant television and media coverage, parallel video games, and so on. TV directors are experts at producing broadcast that highlight the best of the sports and commentators are creative, knowledgeable and entertaining in their own right! Soccer in this country has little of that. But watch a broadcast from the EPL…their camera angles, close-ups, replays, and commentary are expert and exciting (which is also part of the problem now that those leagues are so available – why watch MLS when the Champions League is on?!). But better broadcasting will come, as will more stars, more jerseys, and more media.

The other reason is probably the most widely discussed, and I concede the point - that soccer is probably just a little bit harder for the un-indoctrinated American sports fan to appreciate. Soccer’s lack of measurable progress means that there is less for these viewers to grasp on to, less to help them understand where things stand in what they are watching. That’s why broadcasts now relay stats like time of possession, the number of corner kicks, shots on goal and fouls, and even things as annoying as the number of turnovers! Soccer is not a game of progressive achievement by one side or the other; its fluidity borders on random and its unpredictability can be a consternation to even its die-hard fans. It requires you to appreciate the attempt more than the achievement maybe a little more than other sports.

But again, the system works. Fans of soccer are the ones who appreciate the game because of that difference, not in spite of it. We are grown over time, not sprung out of a box fully formed. Do I need you to love it? No. Just do me the favor of not hating it so I can enjoy it in peace. Do us all a favor and stop treating every game, success or failure, like the make or break moment for the sport as a whole! And feel free to jump on the bandwagon anytime you want for as long as you want! I’ll be driving in 25 years!


*While a generation is generally 25 years, I think a sports generation is roughly half that…so two generations per 25 years.