The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Lack of U.S. has a wide-ranging impact
You could likely triple the population of North Dakota by asking every pundit who has stated this to move there. But as the World Cup kicks off this week in Russia, it — sadly — must be stated. Again.
It’s such an obvious declaration — and no pride is taken in repeating it.
But no United States in the World Cup is an unmitigated disaster. For on-field product. For development. For pride. For the brave battle against the naysayers.
In every way, it is going to be brutal watching a World Cup without the U.S. men’s national team.
On that fateful night in Trinidad and Tobago this past October, the United States’ fate for not making it out of CONCACAF qualifying was sealed with an awful performance on an awful pitch and with an awful sequence of results.
Sometimes, sunlight is necessary to reveal flaws — and as harsh as that light can be, with the price that was paid, maybe it was necessary with larger aspirations in mind. It exposed arrogance. There is an arrogance in how soccer is developed in this country, from youth level on. There is an arrogance in what having the American crest on your shirt means. There is an arrogance in where we are as a footballing nation.
It is no secret the USMNT was in a transitional phase as it was. Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley aren’t getting any younger. Landon Donovan isn’t 25 anymore and won’t pull on the U.S. shirt again.
The future is bright. Christian Pulisic is a wunderkind in the attack — we are in good hands with him at the controls for two, maybe three World Cup cycles after this.
There are dynamic young players — Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, Matt Miazga among many more — who are seeing minutes in Europe.
But it’s going to take inclusion to get this nucleus reinforcement in the present and future. The idea, for example, that every playmaking central midfielder has to be built like a linebacker has to stop. That Americanization of a sport the rest of the world doesn’t play that way isn’t going to fly.
And as we discovered the hard way, simply being the U.S. doesn’t guarantee a World Cup spot. You can’t just show up and notch results in qualifying. Forget a standard
bearer such as Mexico for a second. Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago — these are tough places to play, and they’re solid sides in CONCACAF.
They don’t care how much Major League Soccer has improved. They don’t care how many more guys are seeing a pitch in Europe than their guys are.
They’ll make you earn it — and they did.
The Americans are sitting at home. So are Italy and the Netherlands.
You know the latter two will bounce back with a plan. We need a plan.
The people who hate soccer in America and don’t want it to succeed reveled in that failure, and the shame of it all is neither side can stay out of its own lane. If you don’t like soccer, don’t. And soccer people aren’t going to convert those who don’t want to be converted. So leave one another alone.
But above all, what’s so alarming about the collapse of the USMNT in this cycle is lack of ownership. ESPN had a story about what went wrong, talking to nearly 20 people at the center of it.
As refreshing as it was to hear the truth in that piece, it was also nails on a chalkboard — and said more than their silence
did — who didn’t speak, or who spoke anonymously. It was embarrassing. Admit it. Also part of what the sunlight exposed from this failure is we don’t know who we are tactically.
There was a time, during Bruce Arena’s first stint as coach, when there was a sense of what a U.S. match would look like — steady in the back, reliant on counterattacks and set pieces such as corner kicks and free kicks, and it would be a 1-0/2-0/2-1 type of dogfight.
Then it seemed for a while like Jurgen Klinsmann wanted to turn the USMNT into a precise technical clinic like Germany overnight. Klinsmann’s eye toward dual nationals helped, and he did some good things. But we’re not Germany. Earnie Stewart is a great hire for the newly created general manager position for the national program. He was a steady, veteran hand as a player and has a track record on the personnel side in Holland and in MLS.
He needs to hire a manager, of course — and together, they need to identify a culture.
Who are we tactically? Where are we going to find players? How are we developing said talent? Is the coaching acumen there? Does that development need to be uniform from when a 7-year-old dribbles a ball to when a 21-year-old earns his first senior appearance?
Hopefully, the debacle of not making a World Cup — and how it stunts growth — gets the right people talking.
The United States needs to figure out a system. Is it workmanlike? Does it have creative flair? Both?
It needs to be more inclusive, because it’s possible the best 17-year-old soccer player in the country isn’t playing soccer because the sport lost them. Maybe it was to another sport. Or maybe it was because the net isn’t cast broadly enough.
As a nation, we have to stop pricing and narrowing people out of soccer. Rural, inner-city, urban, suburban — that cultivation has to change.
There is reason for hope, but there is also reason to be concerned. Time is far too precious. The humiliation of not playing in Russia for a World Cup is brutal.
We can’t screw this up — again.
Lillstrung can be reached at CLillstrung@ News-Herald.com; @ CLillstrungNH on Twitter.