Originally Posted by
Yachtzee
So guys like Jozy Altidore and Deandre Yedlin are just chumps who couldn't hack it in football or basketball? Yedlin is regularly rated as one of the fastest players in the Premier League, one of the best leagues in the world. We already produce soccer players who are better athletes than players in many other countries. We just do. Our players are bigger, faster, and stronger than a lot of players from other countries. Yet our best player is Christian Pulisic, who is 5'8" and not even 140 lbs. He's better than Altidore, he'd better than Yedlin, he's probably going to be one of the best that has ever played for the US. Who was the best American player before he came along, Landon Donovan? 5'8" and 150 lbs. If you look at the history of soccer, a lot of the great creative players often seem to be in that 5'6" to 5'10" range and rarely weigh more than 170 lbs. Those aren't the guys who are making it in the NFL or NBA, and if they're making it in baseball, it's typically going to be as a light hitting middle infielder. Guys like that, if they play other sports, might do well enough to get a free education on a basketball scholarship, but they're not making it in the NBA. And guys that small are usually going to be specialist kick/punt returners unless they're able to bulk up to closer to 200 lbs.
Our soccer players are already elite "athletes." And we already produce youth players that are impressive in international tournaments. Our biggest problem is always going to be that hole in the development system between youth soccer and the pros, and the High School/College Soccer path we currently have, with its rules on how often players can play, who they can play against, and limits on when they can work with their coaches in the off-season, not only insufficient, I would say it's counter productive. If you want to know why we haven't produced the American Messi yet, we probably have produced kids with the same raw talent that Messi had as a kid. I've seek kids at youth soccer tournaments do amazing things with the ball. The problem is that our hypothetical American Messi went to an American High School and got a free ride to a US College, and thus never got the chance to hone his skills against the pros early enough to become the polished jewel that the Argentinian Messi has become. Saying we don't produce world class soccer players because our best athletes play other sports is a weak argument that justifies all those old-school American sports fans who don't watch soccer "because our best athletes play 'our' sports."
But things are changing. More European clubs are forming partnerships with US youth soccer clubs and they're getting more US players into their system before they get stunted in the US High School/College system. And when we have more clubs with professional development academies, where kids can forego high school soccer in favor of year-round technical training from professional coaches and their parents won't have to pay an arm and a leg in order for those kids to play, we will see a big improvement in the quality of players coming through MLS. But raising salaries without proper investment in development is just going to result in clubs attracting more foreign talent to displace American players. In fact, the constant complaint in England is that all the money flowing to the Premier League Clubs has led to clubs buying up so much foreign talent that young, talented English players get blocked and are unable to progress because they can't get minutes when the manager feels compelled to play those who came from abroad with a huge transfer fee.