Sunday, October 25, 2009

Soccer or Anti-Soccer


Freddie Ljundberg wrote a piece for soccernet this week (October 23rd, to be exact) that got me thinking. At first I thought, if this is going to be some kind of piece about how great the fans are in Qwest Field up there in Seattle I can pass. But I clicked the hyperlink, read it, and was impressed. Here is a former underwear model who is saying things that the real journalists have been skipping over ever regarding the MLS. What he said could easily be extrapolated entire world of US soccer including the men’s national team.

“[T]he big difference I see is in the buildup of the game. Sometimes in MLS, teams just play physical and hit it long and fight for the ball and then fight for the second ball -- that's a football style that is less about skill and ability.”

Then it dawned on me. We’ve been calling it boring, we’ve been calling it one dimensional; frankly, we’ve been calling US soccer a lot of things, but I finally realized that US Soccer is anti-soccer.

I’ve never spoken to a Mexican fan about this, but let’s face it… if we were Mexican fans, and we had to go up against the USA we would call them anti-footballers. Let’s just look at the evidence.

Fact one: An inordinate amount of our goals come from set pieces
Fact two: When a US defender is in trouble and he has a choice between skillfully dealing with the difficulty or booting it to the sidelines, you know it’s going into the sidelines.
Fact three: Our most skilled ball handlers, Clint “Deuce” Dempsey and Jose Francisco “Gringo” Torres look completely out of place when they are in our midfield. “Why?” you might ask. While they may be great soccer players, they are horrible anti-soccer players.

I could go on.

If you ever listen to a US coach talk about soccer, this idea of anti-soccer should hardly surprise you, it’s just never called by its proper name. You hear things like, “we want to be hard to play”. When I look back at Bob Bradley’s Grant Wahl interview (September 8, 2009), Coach Bradley comes across as a wise man, but a man so entrenched in a ‘safety first’ mindset, it’s amazing the team scores any goals at all. When asked to explain his world view of soccer, he completely deflects the question, because he just might not have one.

Upon further reading it becomes clear that Bob Bradley is an excellent man manager, and certainly a student of the game, but not exactly a master of the game. He reminds me of the soccer Dad who just seems like a really honorable person, who loves the game, and especially enjoys watching his kid enjoy the game. After a hard fought victory, the pride he takes in each successful stride the team makes is so apparent it is nearly palpable. He may not take any team to the promise land, but they will be a team—with eleven men fighting for each other. If the stars properly align it could certainly be enough to get into the second round of the World Cup and maybe even further. But it will come at the expense of being a team known for its ugliness of play, rather than for its skill or ability.

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