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Geoff Cameron FEB 9 2018. Dated article bout these things still to be changed /apply:
"It’s time to learn from our mistakes — as players, coaches and as an organization. It’s time to look forward and get to the heart of the matter.
Our best young players need to be playing in the top European leagues. Period. It shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing. It should be a huge source of pride to send a 20-year-old American kid to play in the Bundesliga or the Premier League. Even better if they came up in MLS for a few years.
The powers that be in U.S. Soccer have created a poisonous divide between the MLS players and the so-called “European” players, and until that culture is torn down, the USMNT will continue to slide backward
Why is it seen as a negative for America to “lose” a player who goes to play abroad? Brazilians don’t think this way when Neymar goes to Barcelona. The Dutch don’t think this way when their Ajax academy kids go to Chelsea or Bayern. Why don’t we go the other way entirely? U.S. Soccer should take out ads with pictures of all the players, past and present, who have made a huge impact on the world stage.
Does anyone honestly think that Christian would be the player he is today if he had stayed in Hershey, Pennsylvania? He had to go.
Look, there are plenty of excellent players in MLS. It’s not just the level of “quality” that’s elevated overseas. It’s more than that. It’s a whole mentality. In the top leagues in Europe, it’s just … ruthless. And not just in training camp. Not just when you’re trying to impress a new manager.
Every. Single. Day.
It’s a grind, both mentally and physically, to keep earning your spot every weekend. You can’t even explain it until you’ve lived it. At Stoke, sometimes we have a few of the academy kids come and fill in during practice if we need some extra bodies, and we can usually tell within the first five minutes — seriously, within the first five — whether or not the kid is going to make it as a pro. There’s a certain mentality. A certain look in their eyes. A certain demeanor when they take a really hard tackle. You can recognize it almost instantly.
It has nothing to do with athleticism or size — attributes that the scouts and coaches in U.S. Soccer seem obsessed with sometimes.
If you want to see what’s wrong with U.S. Soccer in a single image, just go out to one of these fancy suburbs some weekend and spot the coaches of the fancy club teams strutting on the sidelines. Half of them are carrying themselves like they’re Pep Guardiola. I mean, the arrogance. It’s unbelievable.
It’s not about you, man. You coach kids. It’s about the kids.
These are the kind of coaches who will take their teams to Europe for a week to train at Barcelona’s academy and be too proud or too stubborn to ask the Barca coaches any questions.
Right now, those future World Cup stars are 16 and 17 years old, playing in America. We need to groom those players in our system until they hit their ceiling, and then we need to encourage them to get on a plane and on to the next challenge. We need a president and a national team manager who embrace that mentality."
What Must Change in U.S. Soccer | By Geoff Cameron
The powers that be in U.S. Soccer have created a poisonous divide between the MLS players and the so-called “European” players, and until that culture is torn d
www.theplayerstribune.com
"It’s time to learn from our mistakes — as players, coaches and as an organization. It’s time to look forward and get to the heart of the matter.
Our best young players need to be playing in the top European leagues. Period. It shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing. It should be a huge source of pride to send a 20-year-old American kid to play in the Bundesliga or the Premier League. Even better if they came up in MLS for a few years.
The powers that be in U.S. Soccer have created a poisonous divide between the MLS players and the so-called “European” players, and until that culture is torn down, the USMNT will continue to slide backward
Why is it seen as a negative for America to “lose” a player who goes to play abroad? Brazilians don’t think this way when Neymar goes to Barcelona. The Dutch don’t think this way when their Ajax academy kids go to Chelsea or Bayern. Why don’t we go the other way entirely? U.S. Soccer should take out ads with pictures of all the players, past and present, who have made a huge impact on the world stage.
Does anyone honestly think that Christian would be the player he is today if he had stayed in Hershey, Pennsylvania? He had to go.
Look, there are plenty of excellent players in MLS. It’s not just the level of “quality” that’s elevated overseas. It’s more than that. It’s a whole mentality. In the top leagues in Europe, it’s just … ruthless. And not just in training camp. Not just when you’re trying to impress a new manager.
Every. Single. Day.
It’s a grind, both mentally and physically, to keep earning your spot every weekend. You can’t even explain it until you’ve lived it. At Stoke, sometimes we have a few of the academy kids come and fill in during practice if we need some extra bodies, and we can usually tell within the first five minutes — seriously, within the first five — whether or not the kid is going to make it as a pro. There’s a certain mentality. A certain look in their eyes. A certain demeanor when they take a really hard tackle. You can recognize it almost instantly.
It has nothing to do with athleticism or size — attributes that the scouts and coaches in U.S. Soccer seem obsessed with sometimes.
If you want to see what’s wrong with U.S. Soccer in a single image, just go out to one of these fancy suburbs some weekend and spot the coaches of the fancy club teams strutting on the sidelines. Half of them are carrying themselves like they’re Pep Guardiola. I mean, the arrogance. It’s unbelievable.
It’s not about you, man. You coach kids. It’s about the kids.
These are the kind of coaches who will take their teams to Europe for a week to train at Barcelona’s academy and be too proud or too stubborn to ask the Barca coaches any questions.
Right now, those future World Cup stars are 16 and 17 years old, playing in America. We need to groom those players in our system until they hit their ceiling, and then we need to encourage them to get on a plane and on to the next challenge. We need a president and a national team manager who embrace that mentality."