US Team

Only caught the 2nd half, but the thing that stood out to me was that the US did not look dangerous on offense. We had a few chances, but we certainly weren't making the Czechs nervous. On the other hand, the Czechs looked solid all around and that number 10 was pretty damn good.

On the way to work today, I caught some ESPN radio talking about how good the US could be in soccer if we had all our best athletes playing. This theory has been going around for awhile and I'm inclined to believe part of it. His stance, however, was that we simply needed to get Brian Urlacher to play soccer instead of football, and we'd be awesome because bigger and stronger is better in every sport.

In fact, I actually think this is one of cultural reasons why the US ISN'T good at soccer, a bias towards bigger and stronger players versus smart and fast and skilled players. Look at D1 soccer programs over the years and you'll see line ups that are bigger and stronger than their counterparts around the world. But we'd get our asses kicked. Our problem in soccer is more than just getting the best athletes playing. It's an understanding of the game. Baseball, football, and basketball we have enormous amounts of intelligence and experience. Soccer, we are lagging WAY behind the rest of the world. We don't identify talent for specific positions. We can't tell the difference between good athelete and skilled soccer player. We favor size and strength over speed/quickness/anticipation....we don't identify center midfielders versus forwards versus defenders.

Just the guy's comment that Urlacher would be a good soccer player is silly. Now, Barry Sanders....that's a different story. He would be unstoppable.