This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

IF I WERE HOLDING MY BREATH I’D BE DEAD BY NOW EDITION

Two of my biggest frustrations were alive and well this week. One because there is still yet to be an appearance, and the other because there was the rarest of sightings (we’re talking snow leopards here). Give me just one star player and one long form soccer story, and I’ll cry you a river. One out or two aint bad. Which one we got, along with my favorite discussion topic, after the jump.

Before we get into what isn’t around this week, let us celebrate what we do have: a feature story – No, even better - a cover story on soccer. It comes from Philadelphia Weekly’s Steven Wells and focuses on, what else, The Sons of Ben. It may come on the back end of the SOB slurp fest, but breaking news is rarely a feature’s job. Observation, time spent, and context are more the point, and Wells captures American supporter groups better than anyone yet, delivering an entertaining read that exposes more than just the facts, putting that stamp of finality on a story that only a feature can (newspapers are dead; long live the weekly newspaper magazine). The conclusion following the final story break falls apart a bit for me, but I’m not complaining; they might have just cut it at “As one SOB T-shirt puts it, quoting the movie Anchorman: “We’re kind of a big deal.”” Indeed you are SOB. Certainly better than what La Barra Brava got in the Post’s Style Section, though the Post’s multimedia work is a huge bonus.

—-

Now to what we are missing:

MLS season is quickly approaching and dragging with it the biggest (and most annually repeated) question for professional American soccer: Is it going to be better? An influx of talent the nation has never seen arrived on our shores this off-season, and everyone is wondering who will rise up, whose bubble will burst, and how the league will fair (and as we will see in a few minutes some think it is “completely misguided and fool hearty”).

MLS gets a few months each year to address these questions, making for fun discussion. But USSF (remember that acronym) and its system of teams don’t, so we’re constantly asking, analyzing, and in most cases complaining with compounded confusion. It is all pretty worthless but unavoidable. After all, success from one week, one game to another can change dramatically.

Enter Olympic Qualifying. Who is going to step up? Who is going to take their potential and turn themselves into a star?

No one can seem to set themselves apart from the pack or apparently find a position where they belong. It goes for our national teams at every level, though that last part may be as much the coach’s fault as the players. Nowak’s line-up in the first game against Cuba for example had to surprise everybody as much as the lack of tune-up matches, but some of us saw it coming. But the killer instinct falls to the players. It is their personal responsibility, and we’ve yet to see a single player in the last – forever – really make it happen.

It makes watching even friendly games overly frustrating at times. And all the fair excuses in the world don’t change that.

After the first game people complained about the out of place line-up, but a little killer instinct here, an inch or two there, and it would have been a blow out, no questions asked. We wouldn’t need to wonder why the recently anointed star was removed at halftime due to injury concerns that looked more like excuses for poor play. But instead they were targets for criticism and fraught with worry, until the same problems beset Mexico. Throw in a few Cuban defections and world order was restored. At that point it was still US and Mexico’s tournament to lose, but winning would require some killer instinct.

There’s that term again. Killer Instinct. An overused sports cliché for sure, but one that belongs in soccer above all other sports. In no other sport does that phrase personify itself so perfectly: that moment when a player receives the ball with a scoring opportunity; that moment all the drills and scrimmage during practice can’t prepare you for. Acute composure; lethal finishing. So fleeting even the world’s best players can’t store it for later use. Adu in that first game and a scant few others throughout the player pool have shown glimpses, but so sporadic it has been you can’t remember the last time an American player truly controlled an international game.

The importance of this moment magnifies under the realization that soccer is abstract. Just as ESPN can’t figure out how to show a narrative highlight of a soccer game as they do with the American sports, that murderous moment isn’t where you might expect. it is not guaranteed from the free throw line with one second left on the clock. It’s not two-outs, bottom of the ninth inning. It may be the fourth minute, the fifty-first. When it comes you have to be ready. If you are going to be a great player. And without great players, you are not going to be a great team. which is what I was thinking about when I sat down to watch the second U23 Olympic qualifying game against Panama…

I like watching the U23 team because its all about ‘down the line’. It’s about who might compete for a roster spot in 2010. Who might be a break out star? Because let’s face it, if by the time you reach the age of 23, if you can’t play competitively on this team, the likelihood remains you won’t be playing for the full men’s team. The second game saw an entirely different line-up, a more traditional line-up and one that seemed to work better than Tuesday’s game. But why that is, is harder to nail down. A lack of warm-up games could have had as much to do with a flat-footed start to qualifying as much as having nearly everybody out of position or everybody only having that limited training with a particular group. Will they be even stronger or more synchronized on Saturday against Honduras? We had more good shots on goal the first game. So did we regress or is Panama better? Argue amongst yourselves on those, because I really want to know is did we learn anything more about our players? Is someone bubbling up? bursting? Whose killer instinct is ready for the big time?

The sad conclusion: No one. A few of the boys - Adu, McCarty, Edu, Holden - showed promising minutes, but these two games have been nothing if not what we’ve come to expect the last few years: inconsistent team performances without a standout player. Along with this comes the understanding that at any minute things could change, something could click, magic might be bottled. So, I’ll tune in on Saturday with an Obama-sized batch of hope.

It’s a popular topic at TIAS to try to dig around and determine why we can’t get that star player or in the very least talk about why this situation persists. It comes to the surface with not just every game, but with every move made by the greater soccer infrastructure of the United States. One writer this week took aim at MLS.

When I saw the link on du Nord to US Soccer Spot’s column on MLS “failing in its Mission,” outlined by Kartik Kirshnaiyer as “to build a player pool or unparalleled historical depth and quality for the U.S. Men’s National Team,” I was intrigued. This is my favorite subject because more than anything that mission is for me the most important. But I’m not sure the premise – building a US MNT player pool being the MLS mission - is fair. In fact, you’re crazy, no matter what anybody said or wrote, if you think that is the mission of MLS. But it opens a discussion that we can’t cover enough. So lets work with this for a moment.

“When MLS began play in 1996,” Kirshnaiyer writes, “22% of the players were allowed to be foreigners. This was at a time when the United States did not have the blooming soccer culture of the advanced player development system it has today.”

Where is that blooming system? Blooming by definition means the flower and fruit are yet to arrive, so from the get go Kirshnaiyer cuts the hamstring of his own argument. And blooming? Really? I’d say its more like sprouting. It’s a seedling still. Though no doubt planted late, it is now time to nurture and let it grow. Through putting in place the right infrastructure, coaching, and management – no small task – we should be looking forward to cultivating a Redwood tree – slow growing yes, but strong and with a lifespan that seems eternal. We’ve had the toothpick pine tree with the NASL, and it burned quickly leaving more than just the ground scarred.

Continuing:

“Now in 2008, over 45% of the Senior roster members are allowed to be foreigners. These foreigners are being paid the highest salaries under MLS’ embarrassingly low salary cap. So essentially, any American wanting to make a decent living plying his trade in the game he loves must either play for several years making less than his peer in his age group make doing any other professional job or he must move to Europe, where an investment in young American talent isn’t something club sides worry about. After (sic) their job is to provide entertaining football and develop good young players for their club. But that isn’t MLS’ mission: Unless I missed the memo.”

Don’t kill the messenger, but he missed it - unless I missed the memo that says USSF is incubating MLS as a non-profit. It’s called business 101, capitalism, whatever. MLS sells a product. In a free market it is their singular job to make that product as viable on a competitive marketplace as is possible. If through their charitable foundations and youth player development they can help the national team harvest a killer crop, all the better. But if MLS succeeds and the U.S. national team player pool drifts about as it has been, that is not to be laid at the feet of MLS. But it is not MLS’ job to make a great USA player pool. That is USSF’s job in the marketplace. Now we can go round and round about how USSF has arrived long overdue to the party of youth and coaching development, but they did finally arrive and deserve some time to work through the transition and settle in. We need 5-10 years at least to begin harvesting the still-being-implemented-mind-you youth development systems of USSF, MLS , and on down to elite independent club teams. We’re talking about weaving a new fabric for soccer society. Deep breaths everyone.

More:

“To this point MLS’ has done a remarkable job of deepening the player pool for the US National Team and making the United States in say 2002 more competitive at all levels of competition than at any time previously in the nation’s history of playing the sport. However that has begun to change. At this point in time not a single American field player could make a 23 man Tournament squad for England, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain or France. These leading European nations are in a position where their worst pool player is better than our best pool player. This wasn’t always the case however, as I could point to several players in the US pool who could have contributed to England’s Euro 2000 or World Cup 2002 campaigns.”

Now this point about our best being their worst may be true, but is the argument here that the player pool used to be better four years ago than it is now due to a few superlative players? And who are these guys? Point to them please. Is anyone else at the bar regaling the good ole days? The most elite talent fluctuates for every nation (ok, except maybe Brazil). We’re still missing the KILLER standout but that is not a new problem and one that goes much deeper than even the best development system. Culture is the culprit.

Call me when kids like this are playing soccer. Watch the embedded video on that link and tell me it doesn’t have something in common to this…

Back to Soccer Spot. Now this is something to worry about:

“Today, with England in a state of decline the United States is possibly in a more rapid state of decline which has gone unnoticed by those not maintaining a historical perspective on current events or those buying the refrain that we are always improving soccer in this country. We are replicating England’s failures without any of England’s history or footballing culture to fall back on.”

Kirshnaiyer is dead wrong about the rapid state of decline in the United States but his comparison to England is something to keep an eye on. But what he fails to do is point a finger at the English FA. The blood of England’s international decline is on its hands, not the EPL. Just as he constructs his argument about MLS, this one is also a frame job with the real criminal slipping away.

When the EPL exploded into what can only be described as ‘the world’s league’ the FA didn’t react, or at least not quick enough. Foreigners taking roster and development spots from the English footballer means the FA needed to find new outlets for them. Maybe that is the lower division leagues in England or elsewhere (and maybe PDL and USL leagues and other second, third-tier foreign leagues are such an opportunity for USSF).

Another part of the England comparison that is troublesome is that MLS and EPL are so radically different in the way each league is structured. One could easily argue that MLS is set up to avoid the exact rags-and-riches pitfalls that beset the EPL, but that’s a separate conversation.

MLS (and the EPL, La Liga, etc, etc) provides more opportunities for soccer players. Period. A new MLS team means more opportunities for Americans, but they still have to be able to play. If you aren’t good enough at the age of 23, 24 (by which time even late blooming college players are in the league) to play in MLS, than you aren’t a part of the national player pool anyway, and I don’t care what you do (I do wish them the best in life, but soccer stardom is gone). Before that age, players are still largely out of the oversight of MLS, so again, how can we blame them?

If in 10 years when the kids who are now 10-years-old with great athletic promise go through a MLS or USSF development system and don’t achieve progress in raising the quality of the national team player pool we can talk then, but I still say that discussion becomes about culture more than anything. MLS is on the list, but its waaaay down.

Kirshnaiyer concludes:

“The bottom line is MLS has made a decision it must live with it: to promote the club game and the welfare of its teams over that of football in general in the United States. Now that may be fine and well: in fact that may be the way to go. I am not entirely sure as to whether or not football/soccer fans in this country would rather see a successful national team program or a top class international league. The two are somewhat mutually exclusive in the near term given the footballing culture and history in this country. This isn’t Italy where Serie A can import top Latin American players while maintaining a high standard for the Azzuri. Besides, when Americans go abroad they are sometime looked down upon and written off when they don’t develop to the standard of the club or country they have moved to. This has happened countless times with top American young talent that went to Europe at an early stage in the players professional development.”

Why can’t we be like Italy? And why choose them? A club team (in Italy, England, Mexico, wherever) will care about an American player when that player proves his worth. If Altidore turns into Didier Drogba, the Chelseas of the world will (and have) come calling. But he will still have to perform on the first team or reserve team or in the youth system. It’s not as if non-Americans are bestowed birthrights above and beyond their skill level. It’s more to the point to realize we now live in a global marketplace that besides filling the pockets of Thomas Friedman is making the world of soccer more competitive. It will forever be harder for the historic powers of Europe and South America to maintain their dominance. I believe, for example, that we will see an African team win the World Cup in our lifetime. 10-20 years ago few would think that. Today, plenty do.

And finally:

“Obviously MLS, doesn’t bear the entire blame for a potential reversal in fortunes for the national team going forward. Youth Development, training techniques, and technical direction all need to be improved. But MLS needs to do its part to protect, nurture and promote young American starlets and on that count the league is beginning to fall way short.”

Wha wha what happened to the premise of “the mission” !?! In three sentences he just summarized my rebuttle. MLS does play a part but it is not mandated. Almost 1300 words about youth development and national team player pools and not a single mention of the words ‘federation’ or ‘USSF.’ I know the article focused on MLS, but development of the American soccer player is not, to use his term, mutually exclusive. Both can thrive under a holistic approach to the youth. And if all goes well, those youths will have all-star players, be they american or otherwise to look up, to chase, to prove a career can be had. Two of my favorite basketball players are Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash. Neither of whom are American. I guess the NBA has forgotten its american-centric mission as well. Who do they think they are trying to fill arenas?

—-

Finally, I have to drop a nod to this gem I missed and which hits close to home. The Atlanta Chiefs playing a role along with my Atlanta Braves in breaking down the walls of segregation. Global games indeed.

—-

banner photo from Ashes and Snow.