World Cup 2010 ... US sent home by Ghana ... by gimleteye

Soccer was my sport for more than 25 years, and then I coached for more years than I played the game. The theme that is most resonant is that top soccer skill is not generated in weekend leagues or by travel teams; it happens in early years when kids play informal pick-up games on the street or in fields. If I were to guess a fair representation of kids playing on the US World Cup team started their playing experience in games as children in Haiti, or Germany, Mexico, or other countries.

My youngest son, when he was in his early teens in Miami, was skilled enough to be in the feeder system for national team training. It was a system that depended, heavily, on parents and automobiles and countless hours ferrying kids to practices and games. (And BTW, it was through these youth soccer travels that I experienced first-hand the penalties of the sprawl landscape in Florida that are central targets on this blog.) But back to the World Cup. Our guys did well. We did well enough to win against Ghana in a game where we were lucky as against Algeria. There is still a big gap between the skill level of the world's top players and ours. When Landon Donovan said, after the game, that "we were a little naive", I guess what he meant that the US still needs to play more physically and brutally to make up the difference. The gap is much narrower than it used to be, but as long as millions of parents are driving kids to soccer practices, that is how it will remain. That is not to say that we will never win a World Cup. Advanced selection and training systems are already in place that have turned professional football into a human form of thoroughbred racing. I wonder, where is the joy of the beautiful game in that?