It's Time to Stop Saying American Soccer is Struggling Because the Best Athletes Are Playing Other Sports

The USMNT suffered another high-profile setback and our delusions of innate American superiority demand a rationalization. Otherwise educated and insightful thinkers immediately jump to the common refrain: “our best athletes aren’t playing soccer.” This lazy defense reassures our national self-worth, but unfortunately it is ignorant, unfounded and flagrantly racist.

Dispense with the euphemisms. Here is the core argument. Short, slender white men failed. Robust, athletic black men are all playing football and basketball. Our soccer team isn’t receiving “freakish athleticism.” The ultimate black athlete, LeBron James, would probably not be an incredible soccer player.

The “athletes” argument miscasts the athleticism suitable for soccer. Basketball is played ten-feet in the air with hands. Soccer is played on the ground with feet. There’s some overlap, but it’s not surprising those two sports would select for different types of athletes.

The “athletes” argument also overstates the importance of athleticism in soccer. Every sport is on a continuum between athleticism and skill. Football and basketball skew toward athleticism. Those sports run prospective players through gauntlets, compiling all sorts of measurable physical traits. Every position has restrictions. Being a better athlete correlates highly with being a better player.

Soccer is farther toward the skill end. Athleticism is a factor, but it’s one of a number of factors. The U.S. has athletes. Eddie Johnson is six-feet tall, looks great in Under Armor and runs like a gazelle. He doesn’t have the technique and vision to compete at top-level. Jozy Altidore is a beast. Clint Dempsey is gifted physically. What the U.S. does not have is high-end skill players.

Technique and tactics are where the U.S. has trouble, and why they lose to teams such as Mexico. Those traits aren’t being siphoned off into other sports. They just aren’t being taught properly.

It starts from ages six to 12. American players are poorly coached. In Germany there are tens of thousands of coaches throughout the system with professional coaching licenses or professional experience. In the U.S. you have guys who played in high school or college under poor coaching, sometimes not even that.

American players are often over coached. They learn the game artificially in structured practices and on manicured fields running though cones. The playing style becomes very textbook and formulaic. They don’t have the natural affinity and creativity of someone from say, a poor neighborhood in Sao Paulo, who played pick-up soccer constantly throughout his youth on poor surfaces.

It continues into adolescence. In Europe, the best kids are plucked by professional academies. They endure intensive, professional training to learn their craft. In the U.S. you have a few players who end up in an IMG academy. MLS clubs are just starting up their academy systems. Most players go the traditional route through high-school and college.

At 19 or 20, the German player has been training with a professional team for three or four years and is breaking into the senior squad. The American player might have just been drafted by an MLS club. The average German player is comprehensively better; consequently, the German team is better.

The Germans don’t win because they are Teutonic supermen marauding around the pitch. They win because every player has been trained to execute simple passes and every player knows where he’s supposed to be on the field. It’s inconceivable that someone like Michael Bradley, spraying haphazard aerial passes like he’s popping champagne corks and vacating his position would end up being a fixture in the German national team.

You have to find a Mesut Ozil. You also have to train him to reach his potential. It’s the latter part where the U.S. has failed. The U.S. has the raw material to be a top-flight soccer country. It just doesn’t develop it.

[Photo via Getty]