Who did we lose to last week? Costa Fucking Rica, for God's sake? You gotta be shittin' me.
With gazillions of American kids now playing football (the game we perversely call, "Soccer") and with even more promising to play "soccer" in the future - what with the concussion paranoia - when will we ever be able to field a competent "soccer" team internationally?
Unfortunately, never.
Our approach to this sport (and to all sports) puts us at an insurmountable disadvantage against international competition. The same is true in tennis, and would be true in basketball, but for our large population of genetically advantaged, so-called "African-Americans." The unfortunate fact is that a gifted European basketball player has a better chance of making it in the NBA than a gifted "white" kid from Boston.
The reason: Basically it is interscholastic sports. The prominence and dominance of interscholastic sports in this country, from K through Kollege, dictates that all meaningful competition in most sports is basically, BY AGE GROUP. This is a stupid way to educate children, and a disastrous way to develop top athletic talent.
In more "advanced" countries, they DO NOT HAVE INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORTS(!). There is no High School basketball team, football team, or any other team. Their schools are inexplicably focused on educating children and young adults, and do not provide the untold advantages of these athletic extracurricular activities.
In Europe and elsewhere, sports are organized at the "club" and community level, independent of the schools, and independent of the perverse paradigm that limits competition to kids of approximately the same age. If you are an outstanding player, in any sport, you are competing against other players AT THE SAME SKILL LEVEL, regardless of age. Dirk Nowitski was playing basketball against adults when he was a teenager, as Rafa Nadal was doing in tennis, and all the European football players were doing in football. Thus the most outstanding athletes are progressing as rapidly as possible, and are not constrained by forced competition with their mediocre contemporaries.
We have a hint of this in the U.S., with AAU basketball, club tennis, "traveling" "soccer," and Nick Bolletieri's tennis academy, but these are a mere shadow of the opportunities that exist for outstanding athletes outside the U.S. And they are generally only available to kids from families with significant resources, thus limiting the "pool."
To be clear, I am not a fan of "soccer." I think it is perverse and boring. But it is embarrassing to see our national football team exchanging High Fives when we happen to beat a national team from Pago Pago, or some other fucking outpost of a hell-hole. I also wouldn't mind having another World Number One in Men's tennis, the lack of which is another embarrassment. (Parenthetically, the reason why Serena Williams developed so significantly better than anyone else was that her father completely rejected the dictates of the American tennis community, and brought his daughters along ACCORDING TO their CAPABILITIES as they progressed, and not according to their age).
I have seen the enemy, and it is us.
With gazillions of American kids now playing football (the game we perversely call, "Soccer") and with even more promising to play "soccer" in the future - what with the concussion paranoia - when will we ever be able to field a competent "soccer" team internationally?
Unfortunately, never.
Our approach to this sport (and to all sports) puts us at an insurmountable disadvantage against international competition. The same is true in tennis, and would be true in basketball, but for our large population of genetically advantaged, so-called "African-Americans." The unfortunate fact is that a gifted European basketball player has a better chance of making it in the NBA than a gifted "white" kid from Boston.
The reason: Basically it is interscholastic sports. The prominence and dominance of interscholastic sports in this country, from K through Kollege, dictates that all meaningful competition in most sports is basically, BY AGE GROUP. This is a stupid way to educate children, and a disastrous way to develop top athletic talent.
In more "advanced" countries, they DO NOT HAVE INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORTS(!). There is no High School basketball team, football team, or any other team. Their schools are inexplicably focused on educating children and young adults, and do not provide the untold advantages of these athletic extracurricular activities.
In Europe and elsewhere, sports are organized at the "club" and community level, independent of the schools, and independent of the perverse paradigm that limits competition to kids of approximately the same age. If you are an outstanding player, in any sport, you are competing against other players AT THE SAME SKILL LEVEL, regardless of age. Dirk Nowitski was playing basketball against adults when he was a teenager, as Rafa Nadal was doing in tennis, and all the European football players were doing in football. Thus the most outstanding athletes are progressing as rapidly as possible, and are not constrained by forced competition with their mediocre contemporaries.
We have a hint of this in the U.S., with AAU basketball, club tennis, "traveling" "soccer," and Nick Bolletieri's tennis academy, but these are a mere shadow of the opportunities that exist for outstanding athletes outside the U.S. And they are generally only available to kids from families with significant resources, thus limiting the "pool."
To be clear, I am not a fan of "soccer." I think it is perverse and boring. But it is embarrassing to see our national football team exchanging High Fives when we happen to beat a national team from Pago Pago, or some other fucking outpost of a hell-hole. I also wouldn't mind having another World Number One in Men's tennis, the lack of which is another embarrassment. (Parenthetically, the reason why Serena Williams developed so significantly better than anyone else was that her father completely rejected the dictates of the American tennis community, and brought his daughters along ACCORDING TO their CAPABILITIES as they progressed, and not according to their age).
I have seen the enemy, and it is us.
