(06-24-2016, 09:06 PM)dabigv link Wrote:Some interesting points in this article. I think the niceness angle is overstated...the USMNT probably could've had two red cards for elbows to necks and such, but still thibk some of it is valid.
https://apple.news/AfUmiJ8yjQmqkOyxKWieuHw
Yeah, I dunno, I think it's silly. For whatever reason when the U.S. loses to elite opponents people love to whip up the thinkpieces and ponder.
But that was a
feeble effort against Argentina. I've been watching the U.S. for ages, and it sometimes wins against top opponents, usually loses, often loses lopsidedly...but never so bad as that game. Never! And you can't tell me that this Argentina team was better than the Xavi/Iniesta Spain teams. Nor can you tell me that the talent was worse then than it is now; the U.S. used to compete with elite teams and start Johnny Bornstein and Robbie Findley. (Both...MLS players, oddly enough.)
So whatever the malign influence of MLS, it must have cropped up in, I dunno, the past few months. It also raises a few other questions:
-- There are many foreign-based players Klinsmann could've called up. If MLS is so malign, and Klinsmann is such a critic of it, why not call them up? This is an honest question; I have no idea why the hell the does what he does and there are many useful players he's called up on a weird schedule that is of no possible help to him.
-- More likely... Klinsmann called up
the wrong players. How many close MLS watchers think that Graham Zusi, right now, is the best American winger in the league? The answer, I'll say, is
zero.
-- It also raises the question of what, exactly, Europe does. DeAndre Yedlin was, until recently, an MLS guy. Are we to believe that spending a few months outside of MLS removes the awful taint of MLS? Jermaine Jones and Clint Dempsey have never been accused of niceness -- yet, here we are, praising them. Do their years of non-MLS life outweigh their recent years of MLS life? If so why does Yedlin escape the taint? And then why does Bradley -- with similar European experience -- get exempted.
-- Evans also brings up what we'll call the sociodemography/race-based debate as to why U.S. soccer isn't good. This is not a great theory of the Argentina loss, since it has been part of the debate since time immemorial, and therefore doesn't explain why the U.S. was so feeble against Argentina and generally so competitive against others.
It also buys into romance over science when it comes to sports. Simply put I have a strong suspicion that, on average, rich and middle class kids have an advantage over poor ones when it comes to soccer and athletics, just like everything else in the world. Note this article on the NBA as an example --
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinio...tters.html -- but I suspect it applies across sports. (This, of course, puts the lie to the idea that Dempsey's background is somehow typical of NBA sports. And Dempsey wasn't poor either, which makes the anecdote so dumb.)
There's simply an availability bias when it comes to players' backgrounds; it's such a part of the romance of the game that a kid can learn playing with soccer balls made from taped up socks or whatever, and therefore writers spend a lot of time talking about those players' backgrounds -- and ignore or don't dwell upon the fact that Kaka came from a middle class background, Mario Gotze is a car engineer's son, Giorgio Chellini is a doctor's son, etc.
Strictly in a competitive sense, the U.S. is missing out that the player pool isn't as broad as possible, not that poor players are somehow quantitatively player, pound for pound, as rich and middle class kid players. But this is a long digression about a pet peeve of mine.
-- Anyway, the point is it's a silly article. Over the long run, on average, sure, yeah, get the players in the best league possible. (why this has to be a European league, I'm not sure! Evans also ignores that, historically, going to Europe straightaway -- as Pulisic does -- has been a pretty barren path to follow.) The reasons the team looked awful against Argentina are particular to the actual game against Argentina. Somehow people avoid drawing grand conclusions about the world when watching the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl, unless it naturally occurs to them; they mostly, you know, analyze the game in front of them. I'm not sure why writers prefer not to do this, but it means they avoid the obvious conclusion in front of them: the reason that the U.S. looked more competitive in the past than it does now is that Bob Bradley and Bruce Arena were far better coaches than Jurgen Klinsmann.
