Why do we fail at Soccer?
A gang of us traveled up from Atlanta to Nashville yesterday to watch the US Men's Under-23 team lose a meaningless game to Honduras. The game was meaningless in the sense that both teams had already qualified for the Olympics and their positions in the Olympic bracket will be determined not by the outcome of this tournament, but by the nations' previous Olympic finishing. After eight hours on the road and six hours in the Tennessee Titans stadium, it's pretty clear to me why people don't give a shit about soccer in this country.

1. We don't take it seriously! Okay, so this tournament ended on the ridiculous anti-climax of a meaningless double-header. Why even set the tournament up that way? Surely this was something that was decided between CONCACAF and the USSF. How do you structure a tournament that is essentially over on a Thursday and then try to make an event the following Sunday exciting in any way? Not only did we give players like Adu and Spector back to their European club teams (why should they stay for a meaningless game?), we didn't even start the strongest 11 players who were still available. There weren't that many people at the game, but those of us who WERE there were certainly looking for the USA to step out with the best team and to try to put Honduras down. We continue to fail at balancing the priorities of our players who have obligations to their club teams--both MLS and abroad.
   
   For one thing, the MLS season takes place DURING THE FUCKING WORLD CUP and during just about every other major worldwide event and qualifying season. Other countries just shut down and watch the world play out the most important event in soccer, but we continue to book the local league with teams who have their stars yanked away to compete in something that is inarguably more important.
   
   For another, we field teams for competitive tournaments based on who is available, and as a result we don't go into places like the Copa America with any chance of holding our own. If the national team is a priority and if we take performing at a high level seriously, we have to keep the best players with the best chance to win together for these major international competitions.


2. We can't beat your mom! How is it that we still have trouble with teams like Honduras? Not to take anything away from them, but just in the grand scheme of things, how can a nation as big and resource-laden as ours have trouble fielding a roster of 20 guys to beat 20 guys from places like Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, and El Salvador? Sure, anyone who knows anything about soccer will tell you that the size or GDP of a country doesn't determine its success at soccer, but to the average American sports fan who might have an interest in soccer but isn't quite sure, the headline reads "USA loses to a country you can't even find on a map!" and that just doesn't help us to gain support.
   
   We need to beat these teams, and especially with teams like Jamaica or Guatemala, we should be racking up some impressive, dominating wins. I watched all of the US U23 team's Olympic qualifying games and while we dominated possession in most games, we never really took control of games to put them out of reach early. It doesn't bode well for our chances against powers like Argentina when the only team we consistently even seem to try to beat in CONCACAF is Mexico.



3. We can't finish! Face it, the typical American sports fan doesn't want to see a defensive struggle in any sport. Most people would prefer to see a 108 - 97 NBA game than a 79 - 83 result. Soccer is a low-scoring game to begin with, but we seem to be particularly inept at developing strikers. Until we can consistently put the ball in the net (not from the PK spot,) we just won't rope in new talent and new fans because the perception is that the game is boring. In Sunday's match, I watched a Honduras team that had what seemed like a total of two shots on goal and about three actual moments of offense in 120 minutes of play. The reverse side of that was our complete domination of the game and our ability to keep the ball on their half of the field for almost every second of the playing time. All that, and we still couldn't muster one goal? We didn't impress anyone with any of these Olympic qualifying matches on the offensive side, and if we can't produce the occasional 5-1 result in a tournament like this, we're always bound to be playing in the shadow of teams that can.



4. We can't outdraw fans from Honduras at a home game! With Mexico, I understand it. There are tons of Mexicans or folks with Mexican heritage living in the US who flock to these games and are bound to outnumber us everywhere except maybe Alaska or Minnesota. But really, when we can't fill a stadium with more fans in Red White and Blue than fans of Honduras, we've done something wrong, and I think you can look at points 1-3 to see what that might be.

All in all, I had a fun time and the trip was great and I was glad to get to see the game, but I just felt a little cheated by the whole thing. When are we going to stop pissing on our fans by leaving the stars on the bench or at home? When are we going to go into these tournaments and show these other countries that we mean to beat them down (on the pitch!)? When are we going to develop some legitimate scoring threats and stop relying on Donovan or Altidore going down in the box? When are we going to stop broadcasting games where the entire crowd is seated on the half of the stadium that is directly underneath the cameras, thus giving the impression that the teams are playing in an empty building? Someone needs to wake up and start figuring some of this shit out.