I follow the US team pretty closely and if this day ever arrived I thought I'd be really bummed. But surprisingly I'm not at all. This is a fairly unlikable team filled with guys that play hard sometimes, totally coast other times. No one really exciting other than the teenager Pulisic... who will be around for awhile. But most of the old guard... Bradley, Altidore, an aging Bradley(great in his prime), Nagbe, Gonzalez, Besler, etc... just aren't fun to watch. Not a lot of speed on the team. Not a lot of guys who are creative. And couple that with guys who don't seem to hustle for 90 minutes. I guess part of the reason I'm not bummed is that I'm not really surprised. They've had some really terrible moments the last two years.
Supposedly we have a lot of talent on the younger squads who just havent been called up yet. And honestly, I'm a lot more excited to see what these younger guys can do than I am to watch this current cycle of players any more.
(10-10-2017, 10:25 PM)rfc17 Wrote: [ -> ]I follow the US team pretty closely and if this day ever arrived I thought I'd be really bummed. But surprisingly I'm not at all. This is a fairly unlikable team filled with guys that play hard sometimes, totally coast other times. No one really exciting other than the teenager Pulisic... who will be around for awhile. But most of the old guard... Bradley, Altidore, an aging Bradley(great in his prime), Nagbe, Gonzalez, Besler, etc... just aren't fun to watch. Not a lot of speed on the team. Not a lot of guys who are creative. And couple that with guys who don't seem to hustle for 90 minutes. I guess part of the reason I'm not bummed is that I'm not really surprised. They've had some really terrible moments the last two years.
Supposedly we have a lot of talent on the younger squads who just havent been called up yet. And honestly, I'm a lot more excited to see what these younger guys can do than I am to watch this current cycle of players any more.
Its an awful shame.
I suppose you don't want to see Panama's first goal tonight.....
It will be interesting to see what the level of interest will be for the 2018 World Cup in the United States. This might be the true gauge of how far soccer has come as a spectator sport on the Professional level.
Embarrassing. Makes you think back to Alexi Lalas' rant about the players not being mentally tough and lack effort. This should have been in the bag, but USMNT choked
Embarrassment that is what every player and every coach should feel. US Soccer needs to rebrand itself. All coaches and all of the top brass need to be fired TODAY. Then find people who REALLY KNOW soccer and get them in charge. Consider bringing back Jürgen Klinsmann. The top brass at US Soccer needs to make a plan NOW. This plan needs to concentrate on how to improve our youth leagues, improve MLS, how to get more US players in Euro leagues. This is an embarrassment and a joke and anyone with any involvement in this program should be ashamed. The issue with US Soccer is TOP to bottom.
Given the fact that the qualifying (elimination game) was on the BEIN Sports Network pretty much shows everyone the level of interest in the US.
Strange to think everyone will be 6 years older prior to their next opportunity to qualify.
Oh well .... it is what it is. Luckily all of the games will be at 2am-8am due to the time zone so we won't be missing any great evening sports bar functions to watch the US team like the ones that occurred when it was in Brazil with only a 1-hour time zone difference
I do not get BeiN sports so I watched it on Universo in Spanish. It was hard.
(10-11-2017, 10:14 AM)Browntrouser Wrote: [ -> ]I do not get BeiN sports so I watched it on Universo in Spanish. It was hard.
HA !! I started to watch it there until I found it on BEIN. I also watched a little of the Mexico-Honduras match but the noise from those vuvuzelas that the fans were blowing drove me crazy
The only person i have had high hopes for was pulsic. This team hasn't fielded a young player who was the caliber of Dempsey or Donovan in a while and lets be honest, it's not like those guys were world class ballers. With every major sport that we dominate it is crazy to think that we have never even sniffed true relevance in this sport. i think that it begins at the lowest levels of sports in this country. The talented, confident, and natural athletes that are born in this country end up playing a sports like Football, basketball, or baseball. few trickle down into soccer. when i think back on all the years i played in school, playing soccer was never really the "cool" thing to do. we may have had a decent crowd for a rivalry game or two, but nothing like the crowd football would draw. I always wonder what would have happen if our big athletes would have grown up playing soccer, where we would be.
I always think that the World Cup is more watchable when England go out.. that way it's not so tense... it's inevitable anyway! :-)
The US under 17 team is doing great in their World Cup. Maybe they are going to make USA great again. They will be around 21 for the next world cup. Bobby Wood and Pulsic will have a lot of Euro league experience by then maybe we can must up a pretty decent team.
Need to build around Pulisic, Morris, and Wood.
As others have said, embarassing.
Personally, I don't think it's fair that we had to beat 2 countries (Trinadad and Tabago). .... just sayin' .... combining 2 countries of that talent level presents a real challenge for a country that only has 323 million people and GDP of 18.57 trillion
(10-25-2017, 12:33 PM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote: [ -> ]Personally, I don't think it's fair that we had to beat 2 countries (Trinadad and Tabago). .... just sayin' .... combining 2 countries of that talent level presents a real challenge for a country that only has 323 million people and GDP of 18.57 trillion
Haha... I love this!