Starting from last to first, I think it won’t have a huge impact. I think the slow, steady progression for soccer in the US will continue, but outside of a major victory I can’t think of anything that will catalyze a huge shift. 

As a Montrealer, I am liking that the Impact will drift up to MLS and the North American league looks to be getting stronger.

As for 2… I’m not sure what they need to do to get to the next level. Like you said, they need to lead and start more strongly, but I don’t have a fix for that. I don’t see a major fault in the coaching or an obvious locker-room cancer or any such thing. “Get someone like Villa” is nice to say, but you can’t really just order one up.

What went wrong? They got outplayed. I think they were completely outplayed in the first half, and then pushed back strongly, but as you say Ghana was stronger on all the loose balls. Both Ghana goals felt like moments of individual brilliance, so I’m not even sure how much it was an overall breakdown that killed them.

1. I’m too new to really watching soccer to say.  I am inclined to get American-sports-fan (or maybe New York-sports-fan) quasi-mystical, though.  Bradley talked about letting the team soak up the moment and revel in their victory after we won the group.  Donovan said something about how much of a relief the win was.  In light of that, I’d venture that we had a psychological letdown.  Yes, Ghana played a better match today, but I think the American team just did not have its head in this match the way it should have.

2. Following up on that, they need to think less about the people back home.  Save it for the post-elimination press conferences, fellas!

3. Nah, I don’t think it will, at least not in terms of immediate impact.  WINNING the World Cup, or advancing further on, might have pushed things forward for soccer here in the US.  Being on ESPN more often would have helped.  I find it shameful that more attention is paid to Republican-ass golf tournaments than MLS.  Perhaps this will push the Worldwide Leader into covering at least our USMNT stars a little bit more.  I’d enjoy seeing Donovan highlights on SportsCenter, for example, and it would be even better if they’d show Howard highlights from England or Altidore’s clips from Spain.

1. The same thing that went wrong in 2 other matches and nearly the 3rrd.  We don’t know as a team how to get out there going full speed.  I’ve joked that the pre-game speech needs to start out “So, we’re down 0-1…” but really we’ve had poor first halves and better seconds.  Until that changes, it was just a matter of time.

2. Don’t know.  I don’t think the above drastic problem so much as one requiring, well more and better players.  Maybe in time for the 2018 WC (hosted here or not) we’ll be confident and well played enough to make it a bit farther along without luck being so much of a factor.

3. In a positive way, yes.  There’s a few folks I know that follow other sports and have tried and enjoyed this.  So USMNT (and maybe the under 20 and USWNT and so on) might get more viewership.  MLS?  Hell if I know.

I’m a quadrennial soccer viewer who’s been watching the World Cup since 1994 and pretty much no other soccer, and I’ve seen the USMNT go from being “defense-only, keep kicking long balls down the sidelines and hope for something to happen”, to a side that was able to dissect a defense with extremely skillful passing and ball handling.  If that’s part of what MLS has to offer, I might very well take in a match or two before 2014 rolls around.  What concerns me is that Donovan and Dempsey will be in their 30s the next time the WC rolls around, so we’ll need reenforcements.

I think LC has it right, in that it will be a slow and steady rise, but it will take more and better athletes to get to the absolute zenith.  Currently, our best athletes play and get very well paid for playing Football, Basketball and Baseball, and that’s not going to go away.  Not that it needs to, but it will just take time.  Whether we can pull it off before, say, 2050 is an open question, at which point I’ll probably be senile and our home will be in the middle of Lake Michigan. :-|

I called the outcome of both matches today, but I take no great pleasure in this one. Well, almost no pleasure, as it’s pretty cool to see a team from an African nation progress in the first tournament on the African continent! That being said:

1) I think they lost their concentration, let in early goals again. Chasing the game is emotionally and physically tough.

2) I’ll say it again - they need a better manager. Bradley is OK, but he’s not that guy that takes the team to the next level. USMNT also needs to have more players going abroad and experiencing the highest level of coaching, training, and competition. They need players who have the talent and the experience of a Messi or a Villa. It seems that a lot of tactics in this WC are straight out of the Champions League playbook, so I think it’s critical to have players and a manager who have experience in that competition.

3) I doubt it. There are plenty of us soccer fans in the US and we’ll continue to watch the WC, and we’ll drag our partners, friends, coworkers with us. They’ll watch, but after it’s over, they won’t have anywhere to go. MLS just doesn’t have the high level of play that can hold the interest of a casual fan.  I know I can’t bring myself to watch my local team. There are OK matches once in a while, but no star players who can capture the imagination with tricks and creativity. That’s what the casual fans are most likely to appreciate, not good defending or great saves. What’s really unfortunate is that the opportunity to play professionally at the highest level and make good money is the only way to draw talented youth athletes to footy. Without that, they’ll stick to baseball, basketball, and gridiron. Since the MLS doesn’t offer that, they will have to go abroad to play. For the USMNT, good players going to get experience abroad is a good thing, but for the MLS it’s obviously not. So I don’t know what the solution is there. On the other hand, the MLS is growing slowly but steadily, which is not a bad thing. Maybe it’s really just a matter of time and patience.

USA had several clear goal opportunities but failed to transform any. There was a terrible lack of realism when they got close to Ghana’s goalposts.
Bradley son should have been replaced at half-time or even before. He’s a fine player but it just wasn’t his day.

Ugh, I am too much of a sad panda to really discuss it. Will likely post on it at some point, but for now…just depressed. And rooting for the Netherlands I guess.

I don’t see a major fault in the coaching

Boy, I do. There is plenty of blame to place on the players, but if there’s one thing that must change, it’s the coach. US Soccer needs to open up the wallet and hire a world class coach. If this WC has shown me one thing, it’s that we have players that could - and it’s definitely a could, not a guarantee - could do something special on the world stage. I don’t care what sport it is, if you describe a team which goes behind early and comes back to tie over and over again, you’re describing a team which is badly coached. Hell, if the extra time had been 15 minutes longer, I think there’s every possibility that the Yanks could have scored. In other words, a team which can “turn it on” and play teams off the pitch for half a game, shows that they’re physically capable of doing the job in front of them. It’s the coach’s job to take a physically capable team and get them in a mental and strategic state to execute to their potential.

(Or, as Jesse Taylor observed, “If you play as the US team in FIFA, do they not get turbo until the second half?”)

The US needs a coach who can free himself of bad habits (CLARK? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?) and who can take responsibility for mentally unprepared players.

I don’t care what sport it is, if you describe a team which goes behind early and comes back to tie over and over again, you’re describing a team which is badly coached.

You know. You’re right. I’m wrong.  That’s a solid point.

I was quite disappointed at the loss, but a day has given me a bit of perspective.  The goals and reasonable expectations for this team were to reach the second round, anything else was beyond that.  The United States won their group despite holding the lead in matches for only 2 minutes in the entire tournament.

Without a doubt, this team was much less than what it could have been.  Charlie Davies’s auto accident denied the team of the striker it needed to finish, and it was clear that Oguchi Onweyu was not fully recovered from his injury.  We don’t have the depth of talent to replace those key players.

I’ll agree with the need for better coaching; others have said it better than I could.

I’ll also agree with elena that the MLS is not helping develop a fan base for football in this country.  I received this in email from a friend yesterday:

I’ll say this, though—this World Cup has made it very clear why the game hasn’t caught on in the US. It has nothing to do with the usual memes: low scoring, no action, can’t use your hands, diving, blah blah blah.

The simple fact is this—when a child is 8 years old, a parent will watch “herd ball” and be perfectly happy. But when they go home, they wouldn’t watch it on TV. Soccer played at its highest level is riveting—even to me…who wouldn’t know Tottenham Hotspur from Juventus. (And yes, James, I would never root for Man U.)

The highest level of soccer we have in this country (MLS, allegedly) is akin to the WNBA. If the MLS were even the equivalent of the frickin’ French league (and we could get Ian Darke to do the commentary of televised matches…he’s brilliant and makes the game ridiculously understandable)—people would watch.

I remember the NASL, and how it would fill 70,000 seat stadiums.  I was a regular at Cosmos games.  The NASL died in the Reagan recession because they overreached, but with salary caps and low budgets, MLS underreaches.  That league needs to upgrade.  It would probably takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (and arguably those are better spent on other things) but until that happens, football fandom in the US will be quadrennial at best.

I remember going to the NASL games when I was a kid.

James, your friend just about summed it up. I’m not sure why the MLS is developing so slowly. Maybe they don’t want to over-reach and collapse, but it needs at least a jump forward, if not a leap.

I’ve watched six world cups now and to be honest, the US team as a whole haven’t really improved since then. There is a definite momentum in terms of the fanbase at home which is distorting the performance of the team. Let’s be honest, considering their past pedigree the US have actually underperformed.

No killer instinct in front of goal, a team which didn’t switch on until they were behind and the familiar problems of a lack of flair and creativity, obscured by the familiar US strengths - strong goalkeeping, fitness (which was a big factor in their second half performances) and team ethic. If I were the American football association I’d bite the bullet, get in there quick and try to hire Roy Hodgson because he’s exactly the kind of coach they need to get the best out of those players but regardless, it would only be a short term solution. I’ve said this for a long time and I still believe it: football/soccer in the US won’t be a significant force until you unearth a truly world class player, someone in the same league as David Beckham at least, who can act as a figurehead for the sport in America and inspire others. I’m an England fan and believe me, I have a lot to say about our own debacle but the fact remains you lot are capable of better.

What went wrong:  US lost track of Boateng.  Immediately.  One of the keys to that game was being sure that our defenders shut him down.  Maybe they were expecting Ghana to probe their defense at some leisure, but they immediately attacked, and the back line blew it. 

I would have liked to have seen the USA come out in a more offensive mindset, believing that they could establish the lead and then keep it, rather than adopting this mantle of forever-the-underdog.  The US were slight favorites, but they sure weren’t playing like it—at least not immediately. 

To take it to the next level, we need more of what we have now.  It’s good to see that the USA has developed star talent that can make it in EPL or Bundesliga.  That’s not to slight MLS… it’s just that the international leagues are far more competitive, and you’ll see a Clint Dempsey gaining experience against some of the other global talent that we’re seeing.  How huge was it for us that he’d squared off regularly against the players on the English side, not to mention what he’d been exposed to in the UEFA Europa League games that he was playing in for FFC. 

I mean, sure, it’d be great if we were raising talent from the age of 5 to play soccer, but that’s sort of not how we’re geared - and certainly not how we would be in time for WC 2014.  To be ready for 2014, we should focus on the talent that we have and enrich it.  And while I don’t know that a big-name international coaching brand is exactly where we’d need to go, I think Bob Bradley could use some coaching himself.  (Maybe Jurgen Klinsmann would make a decent coach-emeritus, even if he didn’t want the head coaching job?)

I thought Hodgson was going to Liverpool? But, yes, that’s the type of manager they need.

Klinsmann had a good point today. He basically sad that football is a working class sport in the rest of the world. Most players come from families with modest economic means and have the drive to succeed because it’s also their economic ticket. Here, we have middle class families paying to have their kids play so that they can win a college scholarship. An actual career in this sport isn’t the goal The idea that sports are a ticket out for poor kids is troubling, but there’s a lot of truth to it.

1) The biggest problem was clearly the failure to defend against long passes and fast breaks in the initial minutes of the game. Defensive breakdowns happened in two of the group stage games (and almost in the third) and again against Ghana. It was almost like the US players needed a goal by the opposing team to wake them up. They got away with it in the group phase, but they can’t do that and survive in the elimination rounds. That may point to a need for better coaching; it’s hard to imagine a well-coached team having such consistent problems.

2) The USMNT needs more and better talent. Perhaps sending players to spend more time in the European leagues would help with this. In particular, they need better goal scoring. In the games I watched, they had plenty of good opportunities around the opposing team’s goal but rarely had players in the right position to convert them. Instead, they kicked shots directly into the goal keeper or kicked from so far out that the shots were easily stopped. Perhaps that is partly a coaching issue, but I feel that the US could use some better talent up front.

3) I don’t think it will. The USMNT achieved about the same level of success as it did in a few previous World Cups, so it’s not as if the team had a sudden breakthrough. Whether there is a boost in soccer fandom depends on what happens in the next four years. MLS still lags behind other American sports leagues; I don’t see that changing without improving the level of competition. A big problem for MLS (and soccer generally in the US) is that it has to compete with the other sports leagues for top-level athletic talent. Good athletes are likely to be pushed into football or basketball at the youth level, and that reduces the talent pool available for professional-level soccer.

Overall, I’m pleased with the USMNT’s performance at this World Cup. They have a lot to improve, but they were an exciting team to watch, and they kept all of their games close. After seeing the results from today’s games, I’m really glad they didn’t get eliminated with as lopsided a score as England did.

After seeing the results from today’s games, I’m really glad they didn’t get eliminated with as lopsided a score as England did.

This.  At least we fought our competition into extra minutes.

And it does give me some hope that perhaps the USA doesn’t have as far to go to get to the next level as the vaunted English side might.  (I feel bad for them as well ... about half of the side just came off of a bruising Premiership finish less than a month ago - and the Community Shield is all but a month away.  No rest for the wicked.)

1) What went wrong today: Lack of speed. Both of foot and of mind.

2) What does the USA have to do to take the team to the next level: Learn to play on a full size field (I was absolutely stunned that we played our last in-country warm-up match on a god-damned, narrow-ass Football field), send more players to Europe, hire a coach with experience outside of the NCAA and MLS.

3) Do you think this run will leave any lasting impact on US sports fan culture: No.

1) What went wrong? Well, Clark had an absolute nightmare of a game, so that didn’t help. But I think Bradley didn’t start with the right formation… again. We’ve been better in the second half because we’ve switched to either a) a 4-5-1 with Altidore holding up top, which allows us to control possession and launch attacks from midfield with Dempsey, Donovan, and Bradley 2.0; or b) a 3-4-3 (3-5-2?) that permits us to throw numbers forward.

2) What does the USA have to do to take us to the next level? Marc, I know you’re big in Bradley 1.0, but I think he’s too often reactive and not proactive. He has a default that he starts with and tweaks things in-game. That’s kinda like an NFL team that scripts its first 20 plays until they get the feel of the game, and it works in American football but not in soccer. When you only have three subs and a scoreline that often ends 1-0 (and I can’t remember the last 7-0 NFL game I saw), you can’t come out with a starting lineup that’s going to need changes. You’ve gotta get it near-right from the start, and the tweaks Bradley made were downright predictable. In each of the last three games, Bradley was playing against a counterattacking team that would exploit our weakness in central defense and that would require us to possess against a packed midfield - and yet he trotted out a 4-4-2 in each game. I’d like to see Bradley experiment with formations from the start and be willing to change tactics to better take on each specific opponent. And also, Bradley needs to learn to go with the in-form player. Choosing the out-of-form Clark over Maurice Edu, who had been great in two straight games, was an odd choice that would prove fatal.

I don’t necessarily want to see Bradley 1.0 gone, but he might need to be.

Also, more of our players need to get in on bigger games on a regular basis. Right now we have one regular - Edu - who starts for a Champions League regular. Howard and Deuce are in the Europa League with Everton and Fulham every now and then, but that’s about it.

And as much as Alison’s not going to want to hear this, we need to start thinking of who’s going to take over for Donovan as alpha dog come 2014. He’ll be 32 by then, and while he’ll still be good, he won’t be able to carry our offense on his back.

3) Any lasting impact on US sports fan culture - no. Nor does it need to - soccer is either fourth or fifth in America right now, there’s a solid core of supporters, and support will continue to grow. You know what will have a huge effect on soccer? An NFL lockout in 2011.

I think hiring a world class coach is never a bad thing.  But compared to the other teams in the last 16, the US just doesn’t have that many good players.  The Ghana game was basically a coin flip and we lost it.  There really aren’t any conclusions to be drawn from the game beyond that.  Against any of the real contenders we would have been 4:1 underdogs.  We just don’t have the talent. 

I don’t think it’s anything to do with the socioeconomic backgrounds of the players - “drive” is often attributed to hardscrabble upbringing but that’s mostly a myth.  The problem is, the best US athletes don’t become soccer players.  Why would they?  The 100th best wide receiver in the US makes a half million a year.  The 100th best soccer forward in the US has a day job.

The more we produce good players who get sold to big European clubs, the better our national team will become.  That’s the answer and that’s why we’ve had a steady improvement in our talent level over the last couple decades. 

MLS doesn’t figure into it one way or the other.  It’s a dull, low-quality league that offers basically nothing to a neutral.  But that’s true of Brazillian and Argentinian club football as well.  You don’t need a good club system to produce good players - you need good youth programs and the expectation that a talented player who puts in the work will eventually be rewarded with fame and fortune.

And as much as Alison’s not going to want to hear this, we need to start thinking of who’s going to take over for Donovan as alpha dog come 2014.

Hopefully Altidore will have developed, but how many times can he be loaned out by Villareal?  (Has there been any rumor about who picks up his option following HCFC’s relegation?)

you need good youth programs and the expectation that a talented player who puts in the work will eventually be rewarded with fame and fortune.

Long term, maybe.

Short term, you write off WC success until at least 2022, and that’s if we start tomorrow with today’s U8’s. 

And we’ll probably be saying “THE NEXT GENERATION MAKES IT HAPPEN!!1!” until then.  Meanwhile, you’ll have Dempsey types that succeed despite the difficulties of our development regime.

“Short term, you write off WC success until at least 2022, and that’s if we start tomorrow with today’s U8’s.”

The “write off” in this is a very American definition, sports-wise.  The top Italian tennis player is usually quite famous and celebrated in Italy, despite the fact that no Italian player is ever #1 in the world.  In the US most people aren’t interested unless we get to win.

Personally our success in the world cup the past three cycles - three qualifications, two trips to the KO round, and a KO round victory - is perfectly satisfactory for a country that isn’t a soccer power.  The trajectory of US soccer is fine by me.  If you told me I’d see US in a world cup semifinal by 2022, I’d say that the next 12 years of US soccer sound like great fun.