2024 COPA America Thread

[MarkDavis'Haircut]

Beautiful opening message! I can't believe they opened with a prayer. Love it.

Go USA!

Argentina should beat Canada. I hope they do.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

Also, America is a ginormous country. There are a gajillion athletes out there. You can’t tell me we don’t have athletes even if many prioritize the big 3. Hell, we have tons of Hispanics in this country who probably love soccer more than any sport. There is simply no excuse. And I still believe a huge part of the problem is pay to play. College basketball doesn’t revolve their recruiting around travel leagues and academies. They go to the hood and they find players and then they develop the hell out of them. Soccer should be one of the EASIEST sports to recruit from poor neighborhoods because you barely need any equipment to learn to be great

If Kevin Durant would have decided to be a goalkeeper instead of picking up a basketball we would have a World Cup by now. All of our best athletes still flock to football and basketball.

[POND_OF_RED]

The issue with US soccer is that we treat youth soccer different than every other country in the world. We don’t groom young talent. We just pick the kids with the richest parents to play club level and charge the parents an arm and a leg. Every other country finds amazing youth talent and pays them to start playing professionally before they are even teenagers. The pay to play system in this country is what needs to be fixed

[PatMahomesIsGod]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

If Kevin Durant would have decided to be a goalkeeper instead of picking up a basketball we would have a World Cup by now. All of our best athletes still flock to football and basketball.

KD isn’t going to help the USMNT score goals.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by PatMahomesIsGod

KD isn’t going to help the USMNT score goals.

That’s where players like Tyreek would come into play. Could you imagine Tyreek as a winger?! The fact of the matter is that it wouldn’t matter if we had KD in goal because no one would ever score on us. They don’t make pure athletes in other countries with 7’ 5” wing spans

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

If Kevin Durant would have decided to be a goalkeeper instead of picking up a basketball we would have a World Cup by now. All of our best athletes still flock to football and basketball.

And you think in this massive country of ours that even after you take away all those athletes, our next wave of athletes are worse than Uruguay? You think there isn’t, for example, a huge and growing Hispanic population that probably have soccer as their #1 sport? Yeah it makes it harder for us to be the best of the best, but there aren’t excuses for us soccer to be this bad. There is plenty of athletic talent that could and would prioritize soccer.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

The issue with US soccer is that we treat youth soccer different than every other country in the world. We don’t groom young talent. We just pick the kids with the richest parents to play club level and charge the parents an arm and a leg. Every other country finds amazing youth talent and pays them to start playing professionally before they are even teenagers. The pay to play system in this country is what needs to be fixed

This I totally agree with. It’s absurd. A sport that just requires a ball and we over complicate it. If we recruited soccer the way we did basketball we’d have a way better team