2014 World Cup - Brazil

[Jetsfan80]

Croatia and Brazil - Thursday, June 12, 5 PM EST.

 

USA opens vs. Ghana on Monday, June 16th, at 7 PM EST.

 

 

Finally we have a World Cup in our hemisphere where the start times are US-centric. 

[JustInFudge]

Nobody cares

[Jetsfan80]

Nobody cares

 

USMNT Facebook page has 1.3 million followers.  I humbly disagree.  You may now return to a thread you care about.

[bitonti]

looking forward to it. rooting for the USA and Uruguay but this is Brazil's to lose. If they don't win they literally will have riots in the streets. 

[Jetsfan80]

looking forward to it. rooting for the USA and Uruguay but this is Brazil's to lose. If they don't win they literally will have riots in the streets. 

 

Yep.  They've won every World Cup on non-European soil EXCEPT for South Africa 2010.  It would be hard to imagine anyone else winning.  But if we make it out of the Group of Death, hell, we can win the whole thing too. 

 

Looking at the groups I think there will be few European countries making it beyond the Round of 8.  There's just so many strong teams on the Western side of the globe and its basically like home games for all the South American countries.  Uruguay, Argentina, Chile....those are the teams I expect to make deep runs along with Brazil, while non-elite European teams like France, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia and England get bounced earlier than anticipated.

[Matt39]

I'll watch it but meh. Not much buzz this go around it seems.

[Jetsfan80]

I'll watch it but meh. Not much buzz this go around it seems.

 

Yeah maybe its because of what bitonti was saying; the foregone conclusion that Brazil will win it. 

[Jetsfan80]

Also in WC news, 2022 may be pulled from Qatar due to corruption and major human rights violations.  Since the US was 2nd in line in the bidding, there's a chance it might come here:

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2014/06/01/qatar-world-cup-fifa-official-would-support-re-vote-for-2022-if-corruption-is-proven/

 

Qatar World Cup: FIFA official would support re-vote for 2022 if corruption is proven

 

A FIFA official said he would support a re-vote to determine a new host for the 2022 World Cup if allegations of corruption and bribery in a newspaper report are true.

 

The Sunday Times reported that football officials took a total of  received the equivalent of $5 million in return for their support of Qatar’s bid for the games after reviewing documents from an inquiry by Michael Garcia, FIFA’s chief investigator. Qatar’s bid committee said in a statement that it denies all allegations.

 

“I certainly as a member of the executive committee would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if the recommendation was for a re-vote,” FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce said on BBC Radio 5 live’s Sportsweek. “If Garcia comes up with concrete evidence and concrete evidence is given to the executive committee and to FIFA, then it has to be looked at very seriously. The FIFA executive committee are 100 percent. He will be allowed to go and speak to anyone from around the world to complete his mission.”

 

The Times says millions of secret documents, including emails, letters and bank transfers, allegedly show that Mohamed bin Hammam, the former Asian Football Confederation president, made payments to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid. BBC sports editor David Bond, who says he has seen the documents, reports that they allegedly show bin Hammam made payments into accounts controlled by the presidents of 30 African football associations  to allegedly buy their support for Qatar.”

 

Bin Hammam’s son, Hamad Al Abdulla, declined to comment on his father’s behalf to the Times. Although bin Hammam was banned for life from the sport in July 2011 after he was found guilty of trying to bribe voters in the FIFA presidential elected, that was annulled a year later when the Court of Arbitration for Sport found it was based on insufficient evidence.  He was banned in 2012 for “conflicts of interest” while he was president of the Asian Football Confederation.

 

Greg Dyke, chairman of the Football Association, told the BBC that he agreed with Boyce. “I think if it is shown it was a corrupt system and that the people who won used bribes and other influences to get the vote, then of course it has got to be done again.”

 

Suspicions arose at virtually the moment Qatar was awarded the 2022 Cup and, since then, there has been controversy over the country’s labor laws and its stance on homosexuality. And the competition is likely to have to be moved because of the country’s extreme summer heat.

[JetsFanInDenver]

If our guys do good this thing is going to be a lot of fun!

 

Also i hope they update us with how many tourists are murdered per day.

[SayNoToDMC]

If they can't start with a win against Ghana they have no chance of getting out of the group and most US fans will lose interest. If they somehow get out of the group(which I doubt) they should win at least one knockout game cause our group gets a group H team which are garbage.

[Jetsfan80]

If they can't start with a win against Ghana they have no chance of getting out of the group and most US fans will lose interest.

 

True.  This is a revenge game.  Nothing but 3 points will suffice.

[bitonti]

 Looking at the groups I think there will be few European countries making it beyond the Round of 8.  There's just so many strong teams on the Western side of the globe and its basically like home games for all the South American countries.  Uruguay, Argentina, Chile....those are the teams I expect to make deep runs along with Brazil, while non-elite European teams like France, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia and England get bounced earlier than anticipated.

 

agree overall but every tourney they count out Italy and they always make a run. All it takes is Balotelli to get hot.

 

Spain (now with Diego Costa) could also be nasty. 

[Panzer Division Marduk]

At least Ronaldo might not play for Portugal.

 

http://thescore.thejournal.ie/ronaldo-curse-1500265-Jun2014/

 

Ghana face Portugal in their final group game on June 26 and Nana Kwaku Bonsam, the country’s most influential witch doctor, believes he has delivered on a promise he made in February to keep Ronaldo out of action.

“I know what Cristiano Ronaldo’s injury is about, I’m working on him,” Bonsam is reported as saying on Ghanaian radio station Angel FM.

“I am very serious about it. Last week, I went around looking for four dogs and I got them to be used in manufacturing a special spirit called Kahwiri Kapam.

“I said it four months ago that I will work on Cristiano Ronaldo seriously and rule him out of the World Cup or at least prevent him from playing against Ghana and the best thing I can do is to keep him out through injury.

“This injury can never be cured by any medic, they can never see what is causing the injury because it is spiritual. Today, it is his knee, tomorrow it is his thigh, next day it is something else.”

 

 

Still can't see the US getting out of the group.

[Jetsfan80]

At least Ronaldo might not play for Portugal.

 

http://thescore.thejournal.ie/ronaldo-curse-1500265-Jun2014/

 

 

Still can't see the US getting out of the group.

 

I for one hope Ronaldo plays.  As scary bad as our defense could be we need this acid test against the best player in the world.

[Larz]

can't wait for the riots and violence

[Arsis]

What's a world cup? The Seahawks are playing the winner of nfl Europe?

[Panzer Division Marduk]

Ribery's the latest to miss the World Cup through injury. That'll cut the profit margin for the underage Brazilian hooker industry by a considerable amount.

[CrazyCarl40]

'Merica!!

[Jetsfan80]

can't wait for the riots and violence

 

There will definitely be murder.  One of the host cities, Recife, has an electronic homicide counter downtown.  We'll be facing Germany in Recife on June 26.  The chilling article below from about 5 years ago describes a lot of these murder victims being children killed by the police themselves. 

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/death-to-undesirables-brazils-murder-capital-1685214.html

 

Death to undesirables: Brazil's murder capital

 

Killing squads are hiring police officers to 'cleanse' a city of petty criminals, reports Evan Williams from Recife

 

Friday 15 May 2009

 

With year-round sun and some of Brazil's best beaches, Recife draws a million foreign tourists a year, many of them on new direct flights from Britain and the rest of Europe. It seems odd then to find an electronic sign in the middle of the city which records the daily murder toll. But behind the narrow stretch of beach restaurants and high-rise apartments shown in the tourist brochures lies a violent city. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in Recife in the past year – up to 12 murders a day - making it Brazil's murder capital. Incredibly many of those who are doing the killing are the police.

 

So routine is murder in Recife that a small group of residents installed the electronic body count. Eduardo Machado, the group's chief organiser, explained that it was an attempt to shock the city fathers into action because, he claims, at present they are turning a blind eye.

 

"It's a perverse kind of killing," said Mr Machado. "I call it social cleansing because the people being killed are normally black, they're poor and they're from the slums that surround the city. They have become what I call 'the killables'."

 

Many of "the killables" are no more than children who've been driven on to the city's streets by the crushing poverty and violence of their homes in the sprawling slums – or favelas – that stretch back from the city.

 

A social worker, Demetrios Demetrio, looks after some of these street kids in the city centre. Children as young as 10 sleep rough on the street. The vast majority sniff glue and are high on different types of drugs, including the crack-cocaine that has flooded the favelas in the past seven years. They make their money from begging, stealing and prostitution. Some of them rob the market stalls near where they stay and that makes them a target. "The big danger is getting a death sentence," said one of the street kids, Roberto, 14. "You can also be burned alive here."

 

According to Mr Demetrio, the biggest threat to these kids is from death squads, made up of local police officers, both former and serving. "They believe they've got to clean up what they see as a social problem by killing these street kids," he said. "Over the years I have personally known 600 street kids killed on the streets – 60 per cent of them have been killed by these organised death squads."

 

Mr Machado and fellow residents believe the police operating in the death squads are taking the law into their own hands because they feel the justice system isn't working. "The system is just overloaded," he said. "People don't have access to justice. There are not enough judges, not enough attorneys and what happens is, even if the case does go to trial, it can take 10 years."

 

The head of one of Recife's homicide units, Detective Walcir Martins, admitted that some police are involved in the death squads and estimated that they were responsible for at least a third of city's murders. "It might be hard for them to kill at first but then they get used to it and it becomes an avalanche," he said. "They have no human feeling left."

 

It took days of persuasion before a death squad member was willing to talk. To avoid spies we met at night at the edge of a favela and drove to a remote beach. He was a police officer and had been in the force for 20 years. He had personally killed more than 30 people, he said, and his "team" had murdered more than 50. He said they killed mainly in the slums. He had a silver handgun in his belt which he took out and carefully ensured it was unloaded before he laid it on the seat between us. "We usually take out rapists and drug dealers and those sort of people," he said. "These are people who, through their actions, require us to perform a service, to get rid of them."

 

Why did he and police officers like him feel they had to take the law into their own hands?

 

"It's right to take a human life in these cases because it takes so long for the legal processes here to go through and the drug trafficker or the killer that we might catch as police officers can be released the next day and go back on the streets and kill and traffic drugs again so it's much better for us to take care of these scumbag crooks, to kill them and solve the problem like that."

 

He said he felt no remorse because they were performing "a social service". But he admitted they don't just kill to enforce their perception of the law. "The price to have somebody killed would actually depend on type of person you want killed," he said. "It depends, if it's a journalist or a politician or somebody who is just damaging somebody's business, it depends on how powerful that person is."

 

Senior police officers said they were taking new steps to try to shut down the killing squads, including the arrest of 400 suspects from across the state. But the man we interviewed about this supposed crackdown laughed and said he didn't fear arrest because many of their senior police officers are involved. "Look, it works like this, the senior police officer at a detective or colonel level will call us in for a meeting," he said. "They will say there is a guy we want you to take care of, to kill, we want it done by Friday, we go and do the job, so a lot of police are involved."

 

The state's security secretary, Servilio Silva de Paiva, said the police and the state government were serious about trying to arrest any police officer involved, but only admitted a limited responsibility for police death squad actions. "If an officer is working on duty as a police officer and he kills somebody then all the responsibility for that lies with us and with me," he said. "If he is off-duty it's not our responsibility."

 

Recife: Brazil's murder capital

 

* Travel agents tout Recife as "the Venice of Brazil" thanks to its numerous waterways and bridges.

 

* A major port on the north-east coast, it is Brazil's fourth biggest city with a population of 1.5 million.

 

* The city is famed for its beautiful beaches, especially in the Boa Viagem neighbourhood. Porto de Galinhas, 60 kilometres to the south, is known as Brazil's best beach.

 

* The city's carnival rivals Rio's.

[Irish Jet]

Hopefully Blatter is removed ASAP, preferably via assassination. One of the most disgusting individuals around.

 

Fancy Uruguay to win the whole thing and all of the South American sides should do well, they have been the most accomplished one those sides lately, been excellent in recent major tournaments. Can see Brazil flopping though, I just don't think they're that good. Too reliant on inconsistent attacking players.

 

The European sides will struggle. Hopefully England go out without winning a game, which if they are relying on Rooney in the #10, they certainly ******* will.

[Jetsfan80]

Hopefully Blatter is removed ASAP, preferably via assassination. One of the most disgusting individuals around.

 

Fancy Uruguay to win the whole thing and all of the South American sides should do well, they have been the most accomplished one those sides lately, been excellent in recent major tournaments. Can see Brazil flopping though, I just don't think they're that good. Too reliant on inconsistent attacking players.

 

The European sides will struggle. Hopefully England go out without winning a game, which if they are relying on Rooney in the #10, they certainly ******* will.

 

Yep, South American countries should dominate the tournament.  I'm hopeful that being on this hemisphere will help the US as well.

[Panzer Division Marduk]

Hopefully Blatter is removed ASAP, preferably via assassination. One of the most disgusting individuals around.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to see him worked to death on a Qatari stadium building site. Poetic justice and all that.

[predator_05]

Brazil won't win it.

[JOJOTOWNSELL]

if the US wins a few games the bandwagoning that will occur will put what happened with the Rangers to shame

[Jetsfan80]

if the US wins a few games the bandwagoning that will occur will put what happened with the Rangers to shame

 

I have no problem with that.  The USMNT needs more support.  And maybe some talented 10 or 11 year old kid whose Mom doesn't want him playing football with all the concussion stuff will be inspired and choose soccer instead.

[predator_05]

Soccer will never be a big deal in a 'typical' American family. Too many negative stereotypes attached with the sport, not enough prestige and our best athletes always gravitate towards basketball/football.

[Matt39]

How is Ronaldo so good at soccer but isn't coordinated enough to throw a ball properly. That's fascinating.

[Jetsfan80]

Soccer will never be a big deal in a 'typical' American family. Too many negative stereotypes attached with the sport, not enough prestige and our best athletes always gravitate towards basketball/football.

 

All of the reasons you list here are fixable, not permanent.  Our best athletes won't gravitate towards football if the NFL doesn't get out of its own way.  All it takes will be a deep run in the WC, either this year or in the near future.

 

Our success in 2002 certainly had a positive impact.  We're coming off our most dominant CONCACAF run in our history, and our captain is from football-driven Texas.  Jurgen is making long-term improvements to the sport here in the US from top to bottom, and the MLS is getting better and averaging 17,000 in attendance per game.  Not bad for a league that has teams in such monster media markets as Carson (California), Commerce City (Colorado), San Jose, Salt Lake City and Vancouver.

 

Stereotypes shift as people gradually realize it's pretty cool to support a national team that actually means something.

[Jetsfan80]

How is Ronaldo so good at soccer but isn't coordinated enough to throw a ball properly. That's fascinating.

I thought his throw was actually decent. A little wobbly but it got there.Throwing a football for the first time isn't all that easy.

Now, 50 cent throwing that disastrous first pitch at citi field? Inexcusable.

[Larz]

There will definitely be murder.  One of the host cities, Recife, has an electronic homicide counter downtown.  We'll be facing Germany in Recife on June 26.  The chilling article below from about 5 years ago describes a lot of these murder victims being children killed by the police themselves. 

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/death-to-undesirables-brazils-murder-capital-1685214.html

 

Death to undesirables: Brazil's murder capital

 

Killing squads are hiring police officers to 'cleanse' a city of petty criminals, reports Evan Williams from Recife

 

Friday 15 May 2009

 

With year-round sun and some of Brazil's best beaches, Recife draws a million foreign tourists a year, many of them on new direct flights from Britain and the rest of Europe. It seems odd then to find an electronic sign in the middle of the city which records the daily murder toll. But behind the narrow stretch of beach restaurants and high-rise apartments shown in the tourist brochures lies a violent city. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in Recife in the past year – up to 12 murders a day - making it Brazil's murder capital. Incredibly many of those who are doing the killing are the police.

 

So routine is murder in Recife that a small group of residents installed the electronic body count. Eduardo Machado, the group's chief organiser, explained that it was an attempt to shock the city fathers into action because, he claims, at present they are turning a blind eye.

 

"It's a perverse kind of killing," said Mr Machado. "I call it social cleansing because the people being killed are normally black, they're poor and they're from the slums that surround the city. They have become what I call 'the killables'."

 

Many of "the killables" are no more than children who've been driven on to the city's streets by the crushing poverty and violence of their homes in the sprawling slums – or favelas – that stretch back from the city.

 

A social worker, Demetrios Demetrio, looks after some of these street kids in the city centre. Children as young as 10 sleep rough on the street. The vast majority sniff glue and are high on different types of drugs, including the crack-cocaine that has flooded the favelas in the past seven years. They make their money from begging, stealing and prostitution. Some of them rob the market stalls near where they stay and that makes them a target. "The big danger is getting a death sentence," said one of the street kids, Roberto, 14. "You can also be burned alive here."

 

According to Mr Demetrio, the biggest threat to these kids is from death squads, made up of local police officers, both former and serving. "They believe they've got to clean up what they see as a social problem by killing these street kids," he said. "Over the years I have personally known 600 street kids killed on the streets – 60 per cent of them have been killed by these organised death squads."

 

Mr Machado and fellow residents believe the police operating in the death squads are taking the law into their own hands because they feel the justice system isn't working. "The system is just overloaded," he said. "People don't have access to justice. There are not enough judges, not enough attorneys and what happens is, even if the case does go to trial, it can take 10 years."

 

The head of one of Recife's homicide units, Detective Walcir Martins, admitted that some police are involved in the death squads and estimated that they were responsible for at least a third of city's murders. "It might be hard for them to kill at first but then they get used to it and it becomes an avalanche," he said. "They have no human feeling left."

 

It took days of persuasion before a death squad member was willing to talk. To avoid spies we met at night at the edge of a favela and drove to a remote beach. He was a police officer and had been in the force for 20 years. He had personally killed more than 30 people, he said, and his "team" had murdered more than 50. He said they killed mainly in the slums. He had a silver handgun in his belt which he took out and carefully ensured it was unloaded before he laid it on the seat between us. "We usually take out rapists and drug dealers and those sort of people," he said. "These are people who, through their actions, require us to perform a service, to get rid of them."

 

Why did he and police officers like him feel they had to take the law into their own hands?

 

"It's right to take a human life in these cases because it takes so long for the legal processes here to go through and the drug trafficker or the killer that we might catch as police officers can be released the next day and go back on the streets and kill and traffic drugs again so it's much better for us to take care of these scumbag crooks, to kill them and solve the problem like that."

 

He said he felt no remorse because they were performing "a social service". But he admitted they don't just kill to enforce their perception of the law. "The price to have somebody killed would actually depend on type of person you want killed," he said. "It depends, if it's a journalist or a politician or somebody who is just damaging somebody's business, it depends on how powerful that person is."

 

Senior police officers said they were taking new steps to try to shut down the killing squads, including the arrest of 400 suspects from across the state. But the man we interviewed about this supposed crackdown laughed and said he didn't fear arrest because many of their senior police officers are involved. "Look, it works like this, the senior police officer at a detective or colonel level will call us in for a meeting," he said. "They will say there is a guy we want you to take care of, to kill, we want it done by Friday, we go and do the job, so a lot of police are involved."

 

The state's security secretary, Servilio Silva de Paiva, said the police and the state government were serious about trying to arrest any police officer involved, but only admitted a limited responsibility for police death squad actions. "If an officer is working on duty as a police officer and he kills somebody then all the responsibility for that lies with us and with me," he said. "If he is off-duty it's not our responsibility."

 

Recife: Brazil's murder capital

 

* Travel agents tout Recife as "the Venice of Brazil" thanks to its numerous waterways and bridges.

 

* A major port on the north-east coast, it is Brazil's fourth biggest city with a population of 1.5 million.

 

* The city is famed for its beautiful beaches, especially in the Boa Viagem neighbourhood. Porto de Galinhas, 60 kilometres to the south, is known as Brazil's best beach.

 

* The city's carnival rivals Rio's.

 

I had a really crappy day, and after reading this I realized it was all so minor compared to what  these kids are facing

 

so sad

[predator_05]

All of the reasons you list here are fixable, not permanent.  Our best athletes won't gravitate towards football if the NFL doesn't get out of its own way.  All it takes will be a deep run in the WC, either this year or in the near future.

 

Our success in 2002 certainly had a positive impact.  We're coming off our most dominant CONCACAF run in our history, and our captain is from football-driven Texas.  Jurgen is making long-term improvements to the sport here in the US from top to bottom, and the MLS is getting better and averaging 17,000 in attendance per game.  Not bad for a league that has teams in such monster media markets as Carson (California), Commerce City (Colorado), San Jose, Salt Lake City and Vancouver.

 

Stereotypes shift as people gradually realize it's pretty cool to support a national team that actually means something.

 

I dunno man.

 

I love the game, but it's hard to see soccer ever becoming as popular as the NFL or basketball. MLS has improved a lot, i agree, but salaries and TV time are insignificant; and this is why most of the country's best athletes will always choose the NFL/NBA. I can't see that changing for a long time.

 

It's great to see people becoming excited about the world cup, and i had fun talking about it with coworkers and giving them advice on brackets/fantasy teams, etc. However, most people won't know the sport even exists once the tournament ends. It's hard to sustain interest with one event every 4 years. The fact that there isn't much TV time available for advertisers doesn't help things either.

 

The USMNT still can't play games in big cities because there just isn't enough interest and more people end up rooting for the opposition. Remember the sea of green at the Rose Bowl when we played Mexico in the 2011 Gold Cup final? That should never happen, but the reality is that most Americans don't really care about soccer inbetween World Cups.

 

I think it will take more than one deep run. Its not like the US hasn't had a decent run before, QFs in 2002 was a amazing achievement at the time and we nearly won the Confederations Cup in 2009 (knocking out eventual world champs Spain along the way). What it takes is one great player - an icon - to change the way people view the sport. If the US somehow produces a superstar soccer player that is born and bred here, goes to Europe...kicks ass every week and becomes a global superstar, THEN people will take notice. We need some kind of soccer stud that will get people out of their beds and make them turn on their TV at 7:30 AM in the morning. A soccer version of Pete Sampras or Agassi, if you like. Remember how popular those guys were? Until that happens, this will be just a marginal sport that exists in the backdrop and emerges once every 4 years.

 

Unfortunately, i'm not so sure if we can produce a player like this anytime soon. Most our superstar players are girls (nobody watches women's soccer anywhere except here...) and our kids are too 'coached' and are therefore lacking the natural flair that South Americans, africans and Europeans have. An American soccer player is a bit like a European basketball player; a decent enough player, well coached, disciplined, great team guy but not somebody that has the natural, eye-catching, 'holy sh*t, how did he do that' type talent of some player that grew up playing at Rucker Park every week.

[Jetsfan80]

I dunno man.

 

I love the game, but it's hard to see soccer ever becoming as popular as the NFL or basketball. MLS has improved a lot, i agree, but salaries and TV time are insignificant; and this is why most of the country's best athletes will always choose the NFL/NBA. I can't see that changing for a long time.

 

It's great to see people becoming excited about the world cup, and i had fun talking about it with coworkers and giving them advice on brackets/fantasy teams, etc. However, most people won't know the sport even exists once the tournament ends. It's hard to sustain interest with one event every 4 years. The fact that there isn't much TV time available for advertisers doesn't help things either.

 

The USMNT still can't play games in big cities because there just isn't enough interest and more people end up rooting for the opposition. Remember the sea of green at the Rose Bowl when we played Mexico in the 2011 Gold Cup final? That should never happen, but the reality is that most Americans don't really care about soccer inbetween World Cups.

 

I think it will take more than one deep run. Its not like the US hasn't had a decent run before, QFs in 2002 was a amazing achievement at the time and we nearly won the Confederations Cup in 2009 (knocking out eventual world champs Spain along the way). What it takes is one great player - an icon - to change the way people view the sport. If the US somehow produces a superstar soccer player that is born and bred here, goes to Europe...kicks ass every week and becomes a global superstar, THEN people will take notice. We need some kind of soccer stud that will get people out of their beds and make them turn on their TV at 7:30 AM in the morning. A soccer version of Pete Sampras or Agassi, if you like. Remember how popular those guys were? Until that happens, this will be just a marginal sport that exists in the backdrop and emerges once every 4 years.

 

Unfortunately, i'm not so sure if we can produce a player like this anytime soon. Most our superstar players are girls (nobody watches women's soccer anywhere except here...) and our kids are too 'coached' and are therefore lacking the natural flair that South Americans, africans and Europeans have. An American soccer player is a bit like a European basketball player; a decent enough player, well coached, disciplined, great team guy but not somebody that has the natural, eye-catching, 'holy sh*t, how did he do that' type talent of some player that grew up playing at Rucker Park every week.

 

Yet despite all these factors working against the sport, we still went to the Quarterfinals in 2002 and won our group in 2010.  We lack superstars in the sport, the MLS is just coming out of its infancy, yet we're ranked 14th in the world.  We're doing something right.

[Matt39]

The US is awful at soccer and hasn't improved an iota since the 94 team. Our best athletes just don't play.

[Jetsfan80]

The US is awful at soccer and hasn't improved an iota since the 94 team. Our best athletes just don't play.

 

Are you kidding me with this?  Two words:  Landon Donovan.  He had fans in the EPL chanting "USA!" when he played there with Everton.  Dempsey has had success with Fulham (50 goals) and Tottenham (7) as well.  We didn't previously have players who had sustained success in Europe.  And the 1994 team didn't find themselves in the Round of 8 like the 2002 squad.  Meanwhile, Mexico used to kick our asses and now we have the upper hand. 

 

But yeah, I guess we're awful.  Lmao.

[Matt39]

Are you kidding me with this? Two words: Landon Donovan. He had fans in the EPL chanting "USA!" when he played there with Everton. Dempsey has had success with Tottenham as well. We didn't previously have any players who had success in Europe. And the 1994 team didn't find themselves in the Round of 8 like the 2002 squad.

94 was the year soccer has arrived. We're still waiting. If the US wanted to get better they'd be way more strict on citizenship. It's the only way they're going to get better.