US Soccer and South Africa

As Sunil Gulati, the CEO of the United States Soccer Federation, mulls over the future of the USA team coach Bob Bradley, I've thought about the performance of the team in South Africa. Of all the US teams I've watched over the years, this was the team that had the best team spirit and concept, no question. Previous teams were built on a star concept, driven by the needs of the product marketers.

The current team was certainly centered around Landon Donovan. However, Coach Bradley created a team that played together, sacrificed for each other, gave 100 percent at all times, and refused to point fingers at each other on the field when things didn't go well. Thinking back to the days of Eric Wynalda, John Harkes, Alexei Lalas, Coby Jones, Casey Keller and other luminaries, this was never really the case.

The current team had players like defenders Jay Demerit and Jonathan Borenstein who were not even MLS stars, but who played with skill, passion, and fearless commitment. Kudos to them and to the coach for generating this kind of proud, fan pleasing performance. It's a real credit to this team-building skills. Newer players like Maurice Edu showed their potential at the tournament, and Edu in particular looked very comfortable in the holding position in front of the back four. So, Coach Bradley has an astute eye for talent also. His own son, Michael Bradley, has just begun to tap his own potential in the Bundesliga.

So, our discussion post-tournament is whether or not the coach should be replaced. He deserves another stint as coach. However, everything else in the U.S. Soccer infrastructure needs to change in order for him to succeed. This would force us to look at some uncomfortable truths about our soccer selves.

Aside from our goal keepers--Howard and Friedel--we don't have elite players who can compete at the highest levels of international professional soccer. Despite Landon Donovan's good few weeks at Everton, he is a solid, club level player, but not on the elite level. Our player development system is woefully inadequate, and we have no real out-and-out attacking players with ball skills to threaten a defense--like Ozil, Podolski, and Klose(Germany); Villa and Torres (Spain); Robben and Van Persie (Netherlands); Suarez and Forlan (Uruguay). Our youth coaching is woeful and focuses on producing players who can run all day, with poor technical skills.

Most of our players have been produced from organized soccer programs, may of which are in the suburbs. Potential stars, including those from minority communities in the inner cities, don't have street soccer venues to develop their skills and to enjoy the game. If we developed basketball players like we develop soccer players, the NBA would be a six team league. We need to think differently about growing players.

Jurgen Klinsmann, who was offered the US coaching job a few years back, was smart enough to realize that taking the position without reforming the entire apparatus of youth coaching and player development would lead to failure. In fact, he noted on ESPN that the German FA decided ten years ago that in order to become a World Cup winner again their entire system had to be re-invented. The current team is a product of that long-term, strategic and systemic effort.

We can learn a lot from the German retooling of their model. I don't know if it fits our short attention span or our fractured model of soccer governance, which consists of powerful, independent fiefdoms like the USSF, US Youth Soccer, the ODP, and the state associations. Here's hoping that we look down the road beyond the next tournament and keep improving ourselves in the truly global game of football.