How Team USA can become a world-beater
JOHANNESBURG – Until 8-year-olds aspire to be Landon Donovan rather than LeBron James, the United States is as far away from matching the new world-standard Spain as it has been with any World Cup champion of the past 80 years.
(Charles Sykes/AP)
Right now, soccer is the other sport that elite young American athletes play on a big field. The participation numbers in youth soccer are staggering. But it’s a pastime, mostly suburban, and not the route to either a college education or untold riches that inspire the best and most dedicated of players.
Those kids dribble basketballs with their hands instead of soccer balls with their feet. They play football, not futbol. That’s why Americans dominate in those sports.
Training, coaching, commitment, popularity, they all play a part in a nation attaining international success, as Spain did Sunday in defeating the Netherlands 1-0 here to win the World Cup.
In Spanish society, soccer is not a game. It is a way of life, a rite of passage for young men seeking not athletic perfection but credibility among their peers. It’s not so different than football in Texas or basketball in Brooklyn.
Eight-year-olds – or younger – are driven by material, obvious rewards. Today the richest, most famous, most beloved American athletes play football or basketball or baseball. Those sports provide the role models. Those role models are the bench mark.
They get the eight-figure endorsement and the MTV “Cribs” segments and the one-name superstar status (Kobe, Peyton, A-Rod, etc.).
Donovan is the closest thing to a U.S. star in soccer and his name only comes up once every four years. He can make around $4 million a year, in salary and endorsements – less than the NBA mid-level veteran exemption. Most of the American players have had to leave their homeland to find even less money – an unappealing prospect to a kid.
Forget the millions. A realistic prize – a college scholarship – is more readily available in those other sports. While some U.S. colleges offer full-rides, many are forced to pool their scholarships and allocate them partially to multiple players.
Even the best-funded college soccer team has just 9.9 scholarships to offer. A football team has 85.
They don’t have 100,000-seat campus cathedrals for college soccer. They don’t show the games from morning to midnight on Saturdays. They don’t have March Madness.
The kids are going to follow what’s in front of them. And the World Cup, while splashed all over television screens and the news during the briefest of windows, is enough to pique, but not maintain, interest.
If U.S. Soccer could just get some of the athletes playing Division I college football or basketball – the ones who won’t make the NFL or NBA – then it would stand a chance. With a population of 330 million, the numbers would be there. Spain is a nation of just 45 million.
Spain, however, is home to arguably the world’s best professional league. The money and glory of La Liga means soccer chooses them, rather than the other way around. And then an intricate development and identification web kicks into gear. It allows the cream of the crop to be identified at a base level and immediately ushered into an environment where they can mature.
The U.S. has neither of these things. One of the biggest problems for U.S. Soccer is that talented youngsters too often slip through the net. The country is simply too big and its soccer infrastructure is still too much in its infancy.
That’s the not case with Little League, Pop Warner or AAU basketball.
For the United States, it isn’t about a quick fix or a new coach. It can field an excellent national team – one that can contend for World Cup quarterfinals or maybe semifinals.
But without a dramatic change of the culture, one that can get the kids’ attention, the prospects of beating the world’s best and holding aloft the golden trophy are remote.
Since Landon isn’t about to become LeBron, U.S. Soccer needs a non-materialistic spark.
How to grab the next generation’s attention? Field a winning team. How to field a winning team? Get those best athletes out of helmets and into soccer cleats.
Welcome to the Catch-22 of American soccer.