My take away from US Soccer. It starts from the top down and the hiring of Bruce Arena was a disaster. It was a retread hire and his style is as old as the 90s. What is at the core of the problem is what we look for in a future player. I have seen first hand how the selection process goes it is political, it is flawed, and at it's core we look for athletes not soccer players. We have the mentality that big, fast, athletic overrides everything else, with soccer IQ, touch, processing the game, and ability to play on that stage not even part of the selection process. By the time the players get to the senior level the ones that have the soccer IQs, touch, etc have been weeded out for the most part and what is left isn't world class soccer players, it's the American ideal. We have no soccer identity, we get a player that has decent touch like Bradley and we think he is the next big thing but in the process from ages 15-23 we had hundreds of players better than Bradley's touch but they didn't pass the athleticism test so they were never given a shot. There is no easy fix and the whole model has to be changed but we don't have the soccer imagination, nor the know how to make that change. My guess is we will hire somebody like Alexi Lalas and double down on the American way. This mentality is rampant throughout the girls and boys club team's "give me an athlete and I will mold them into a soccer player" mentality. It is backwards and it is costly on the world stage. The men have been a disaster on the world stage with the exception of some isolated moments and the women have had a huge head start for a couple of decades and now the world has closed that gap as they invest in the women's game. Until coaches at all levels put soccer IQ, ability to read the game with and without the ball, and touch ahead of big, fast, and athletic we will repeat this nightmare over and over again.
