Before I start, this piece is essentially about attitudes around the world towards men’s football. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the huge success that the USA Women’s National Team has had but there’s a very different dynamic between the US and other nations with regard to the women’s game. In that case, America […]
Read more "Why Are the US Men’s National Team the Most Hated in the World?"Before I begin, I’d like to state the fairly obvious and point out that I don’t know former footballer and recently-employed head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann. Away from the world of football, he might be wonderful. For all I know, he may be as warm and tender as a perfect cut of filet mignon, as generous […]
Read more "Klinsi’s Coaching Failures: Surely a Pattern?"The United States Men’s National Team: a team that apparently builds its mission statement around a post-it note from 2008, found in 2016, that read something like “we should be more like Arsenal”. At least, that’s my theory on how they came up with the current strategy of selling overpriced tickets to a spectacle of […]
Read more "International Football: Pride Over Opportunity"Pay-to-play: the scourge of youth development in American soccer, a pet-peeve of USSF’s most fervent detractors and a practice that has been characterized as everything from counter-productive to institutional discrimination. If there’s one way in which the world associates the USA with soccer, it’s in its reputed dislike of the sport, compared to most other […]
Read more "Transformational? MLS Adopts Solidarity Payments and Training Compensation"Once there was a man named Egbert who lived in a shack. It wasn’t much but due to circumstances, he had to make do. On a hill, not too far from Egbert’s humble abode, stood a beautiful mansion, looming large and proud. Then one day came an event that would change Egbert’s life. As he […]
Read more "Building the US Football Landscape"It made for a tragic spectacle. Darlington Nagbe sits in a wheelchair. A towel is draped over his head and shoulders. Slumped forward as he is rolled to the locker room, he cuts a broken and forlorn figure. The man who put him there, Nigel De Jong, remains on the field, a mere yellow card […]
Read more "Where Did it All Go De Jong?"When it comes to the early years of the Premier League, there are few images more iconic than that of Jurgen Klinsmann airborne, arms outstretched in a celebratory dive. This goal celebration soon became synonymous with Klinsi and his first Tottenham spell. It originated as a sly dig at the British press, who had greeted […]
Read more "The US National Team: It’s Getting Beyond a JK"Back when the Da Vinci Code was a bestseller, a friend of my brothers went down in legend among our social group for his reaction: “It had more about religion than I expected”. Naturally, we ribbed him mercilessly for the comment. Yet here I sit in a similar situation. I just finished Robbie Rogers autobiography […]
Read more "Robbie Rogers (but not on the first date)"Football’s relationship with the USA is an interesting one. Considered the most popular sport in the World, the Beautiful Game, the World’s Game, the United States have been notoriously less enthused about it than some. Having lived here, I’ve seen the gradual shift away from that mindset. And by the way, make no mistake about […]
Read more "Festive Footy Advent: Day 3 of 24 – He Did it His Way"
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