Assessing the USMNT in an angry soccer culture

It used to be rather easy to access the United States Men’s National Team.

Remember the heyday when the USMNT would go into a tournament, put in one good performance, one mediocre performance, and one terrible performance and there would be no hand wringing and no divide among supporters. No matter the performance there was always the little orphan Annie attitude of the sun coming out tomorrow.

Sadly those days are long gone. If they were still around one might look at their performance during World Cup Qualification as being generally positive. But in this day and age USMNT soccer supporters seem angry.

It is an odd reaction given the results of the tournament. The United States beat the teams that they were supposed to, lost to an Argentina side that is one of the best in the world, and played Colombia to a very close 1-0 loss. There is nothing wrong to losing out to a Carlos Bacca strike and a brilliant David Ospina save.

But during a time when the expectation is that the United States should be beating both Mexico and Costa Rica sadly that is not enough.

More from Playing for 90

Pundits will point to victories over those sides in 1996 and 1994 as examples that somehow magically transfer over (Never mind on the second result that victory was only achieved through an own goal and the players were receiving death threats prior to the match).

After having watched countless hours of soccer this past month and having followed the United States over the past twenty years, it does not really bother me that the squad is in the position that they are in.

Remember there was a time when indoor soccer ruled the land and the best chance to catch a National Team match was watching it on tape delay at 3 am. Despite the assertions of some not everything from the 1990s was great. Things are pretty okay right now and considering the black hole that soccer was in twenty years ago that is not a bad thing.

At this point you are probably wondering: wait, where is the hot take?

Sorry. No hot takes. Just an honest assessment. The United States Men’s National Team is fine. Not good, not bad. Just fine.

Now for some that may seem like an insult. It is okay. For decades U.S. Soccer and most recently their media partner Fox (and the trumpet for all things hot take Alexi Lalas) have pumped out the idea that the boys in red, white, and blue were just thiiiis close to winning a World Cup. Sorry, we are not. And that is fine.

In regards to some of those big victories in statistics we like to call them outliers. If every team that was favored to win a match did so the game would be completely boring and uninteresting. That does not necessarily take away from those victories, it just gives proper context that generally speaking this type of result would not happen.

Oh and for the record let’s get rid of this ridiculous population theory that seems to make the rounds every so often. Let’s look at the ten most populous countries in the world.

TOP TEN COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST POPULATION
#	Country	2000 Population	2010 Population	2016 Population	2050 Expected Pop.
1

China

1,268,853,362

1,330,141,295

1,378,561,591

1,303,723,332

India

1,004,124,224

1,173,108,018

1,266,883,598

1,656,553,632

United States

282,338,631

310,232,863

323,995,528

439,010,253

Indonesia

213,829,469

242,968,342

258,316,051

313,020,847

Brazil

176,319,621

201,103,330

206,050,242

260,692,493

Pakistan

146,404,914

184,404,791

192,758,348

276,428,758

Nigeria

123,178,818

152,217,341

186,879,760

264,262,405

Bangladesh

130,406,594

156,118,464

162,855,651

233,587,279

Russia

146,709,971

139,390,205

146,358,055

109,187,353

Japan

126,729,223

126,804,433

126,464,583

93,673,826

TOP TEN Countries

3,618,894,827

4,016,489,082

4,249,123,407

4,950,140,178

Rest of the World

2,466,012,769

2,829,120,878

3,090,970,573

4,306,202,522

TOTAL World Population

6,084,907,596

6,845,609,960

7,340,093,980

9,256,342,700

Graph courtesy of InternetWorldStats.com

Now aside from Brazil and maybe Japan, Nigeria, or Russia can any of these countries be considered soccer powers? No. Having a large population doesn’t mean that there are going to be more soccer stars.

All of that being said the United States is not a minnow either. There are 211 members of FIFA. Not everyone is Argentina, France, Germany, or even England (completely kidding about that last one) but they are a perfect example of where delusion can lead you. The USA currently finds themselves in 28th place in the FIFA World Rankings. Although anything FIFA puts out should be scrutinized, if we are to take them at their word that puts the United States in the 86th percentile. Not great, not terrible but pretty good.

So how does the United States make that next big step from being a decent soccer country to a great soccer country? There seems to be plenty of theories. Firing Sunil Gulati seems to be a popular opinion. As does playing just Major League Soccer players. There is also the notion that we need to burn the entire system down and re-build. There are even those who say we should do nothing at all, that everything is fine.

Here is a novel idea: let’s stop with the hot takes. Rather than over thinking every match as if it is the end of the world let’s try to be a bit more constructive in our thoughts. Find the good, understand the bad, and come up with constructive analysis. Not everyone wants to be a journalist but remember your words are a reflection of yourself and coming across as a zealot never looks good.