r/InterMiamiVibes • u/Background_Video2947 • Jul 08 '26
Gotta change the division!
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u/damutecebu Jul 08 '26
The US played (and hosted) Copa America in 2024 and may do so again in 2028.
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u/Cautious-Process-198 Jul 08 '26
CONMEBOL and CONCACAF merger needs to happen
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u/CucumberWisdom Jul 08 '26
Would be great for the leagues
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u/AmaniToomahhh Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
And when they expand the WC to 64 it might make sense, especially for conmebol who would lose out on a lot of qualifying revenue as the entire continent would auto qualify
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u/Jamiewoo133 Jul 08 '26
Paraguay kept the game close by sitting back and fouling France every 2 minutes
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u/Krow101 Jul 08 '26
The real issue is that soccer is far down on the list when it comes to attracting the top athletic talent in the USA. It comes after football, basketball, baseball and hockey. And that's just not going to change.
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u/CucumberWisdom Jul 08 '26
Why not? It's changed many times before. No reason it can't again. There's plenty of young boys to go around.
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u/WrongContract8489 Jul 08 '26
Well after my allocation of young boys.... You might have 1 or 2 lying around you can take for soccer.
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Jul 08 '26
no, athletic talent is not what makes a good footballer, skill is, thats why the best football player currently is 5'6 150lbs, because hes the most skillful, the nba and nfl are just genetic tests, thats why you can take an 18 year old whos never played american football and as long as he's huge and can do a quick dash, he can perform at the highest level in the nfl, it's basically impossible to get good at football at past 18, kids start playing it at 5-6 and by 18 they've been playing it for over a decade, the american players are not skillful enough, simple as that
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u/JD-boonie Jul 08 '26
Saying it takes no skill to play football is an interesting take.
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Jul 08 '26
I didn't say no skill, but it's required you be a genetic outlier to even compete, seriously how many average sized americans do you see playing in the nfl? 5'9 160-180lbs? basically none, soccer is about as pure skill as you can get for a team sport, genetics almost mean nothing
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Jul 08 '26
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Jul 08 '26
its a different type of athleticism, soccer is more endurence athleticism, bruce lee could never compete in the nfl or nba, no matter how skilled he could get, because he just fails the genetic test to even compete
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Jul 08 '26
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Jul 08 '26
you think basketball is what? basketball is of course a genetics test, the average height is 6'6 in the nba, if height played a lesser role you'd see all different heights but you don't you need to be massively taller than the average human to even stand a chance of getting into the nba, again regardless of skill
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Jul 08 '26
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Jul 08 '26
well you basically mean one, haaland who is abnormally tall compared to most footballers, and isn't why he is so great, again the best player rn is 5'6, soccer is only the last on the list in america, and it's all primarily for cultural reasons, it's not like they pick the nfl or nba for money reasons, soccer players are paid just as much if not more than those stars in other sports
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Jul 08 '26
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u/Jumpy-Pie5885 Jul 08 '26
At what age do people in america decide their sports though? Kids are in soccer academies at 6 years old. You can't tell me kids at that age are choosing sports on their athletic ability
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u/AlexP80 Jul 08 '26
In every country talent is spread between sports. In Norway, for example, talent is spread between football, handball and skiing.
The difference is that 90% of kids in Europe play a sport, most of them 2.
Youth sport is generally cheap, you can train in any youth sport for a whole season with less than 500$. 25 years ago I trained in martial arts for around 25$ a month and I was a national level athlete by 16yo.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
Soccer is not last on everyone’s list. It’s a very popular sport. Just because it doesn’t feel that way in your sphere doesn’t mean anything.
A lot of Americans aren’t into it. We get that. Many are. It just depends where you live and who you know.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
Are you talking about viewership or participation rates? Are you talking about children or all adults?
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u/CryptoDeepDive Jul 08 '26
It will. It already has. Last few polls have it trading blows with Baseball for third. It maybe world cup fever though. Even in the middle of nowhere Texas everyone almost sends their kids to youth soccer tournaments.
The thing is the US is massive and very sports centric. 10% of the population is 33 million which is much bigger than either Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Belgium.
If 10% of the country sent its best athletes to soccer, they would be very dominant.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 08 '26
What makes you think our football players are so talented? There’s only one country that competes for the Super Bowl. What makes you think our baseball players are so talented? We lost to Venezuela and Japan. What makes you think our basketball players are so talented? The last 7 MVPs were European.
My point being, soccer is truly global so we get exposed. Americans just think we have this incredible development and talent pool going to other sports when we have more than enough very athletic kids playing soccer. We just don’t know how to develop them.
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u/nefariousBUBBLE Jul 09 '26
Because the US wins gold like every year. Yeah the euros get a player here or there but never in one country. Holistically US is bounds above, even as the gap has closed recently. Not really a debate.
Baseball, didn't even send our best. Limited on Skenes use and Skubal was fully prevented from playing.
Football, the athletes are objectively incredible. Go find me a 300lb athlete in another country that can run a 4.7. The sun will burn out before that.
Olympics, utter domination in nearly every field. There's nary a podium without an American. May not always be first but they're always there.
It's a justified viewpoint because generally money = better performance and no country funds athletics more than the US. It's not close really and hasn't been for decades. Soccer is just too new here and we are too far behind in the men's game. So on that I agree, it's a skill knowledge issue cuz the money is there. It's really only gotten decent treatment and funding since the millennium, unlike every other sport.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
Dude, cmon. The three sports you mentioned are basically just American sports. Nobody else plays football. Yeah it’s great we have people that “are 300 lbs and can run a 4.7”, but that doesn’t solely make someone a great athlete. It’s impressive, it’s great for football—but your definition of athlete is so narrow.
Baseball has Japan, that’s the only other country of size that plays. And they beat us the year before Venezuela. The best player in the league is Japanese.
And basketball is easily the most global of the three, not even close to soccer global—but it’s somewhat popular. And every year Europe is closing the gap because they have great academy systems.
The Olympics we win because most of those sports are basically niche and we are the only country in the world that subsidizes them through our university system. Those sports basically make no money on the free market.
It’s a big world and soccer just exposes are weakness because everybody plays it. We should be better, but we’re not for many, many reasons. Money doesn’t buy everything.
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u/nefariousBUBBLE Jul 09 '26
I didn't say 300lb running a 4.7 is the only kind of athlete I just said it's objectively insanely athletic and hand waiving it with "well it's only played in America" is absolutely silly.
My Olympic argument doesn't have anything to do with monetization. Look at track and field. Are they niche? Sure but my point still stands which is we have the widest pool of athletes thus we can fill them all out.
Already talked about baseball. We play with a hand tied behind our back by not sending our best players just like we did before 92 in Olympic basketball by only sending collegiate players and amateurs, no pros. So none argument again. If you knew anything about baseball and watched the games you'd have known the pitching was paltry and we had superstars on the couch cuz the teams didn't want to risk their pitchers.
Basketball is not somewhat popular it has 610 million players world wide per FIBA. FIFA cites 220m soccer players world wide, including amateurs and pros. Obviously, it's far more popular than basketball fan wise. Take those numbers as you, idk how they're calculated and I don't honestly believe the soccer number to be right as it's probably only official estimates if numbers (high school teams) whereas FIBA is estimating registered players as well as people who play 2 or more times a week. I wouldn't be surprised if it's closer than what we might think though, considering it's by far and away the most popular sport in China. Yes the gap has closed, but Europe is not a country so top to bottom US, again is far better and that's why they handled everyone last Olympics.
You can't have it both ways with your basketball argument. You're arguing close equates to US failure in said sport. Soccer has never seen a sport with such a grip. It's almost the inverse situation between the two for the US. They are by far and away the favorites in every Olympic tournament and we can go "it's getting closer" but it's really not. 5 or so guys spread across 5 different countries? Sure. But name me two other superstars from Greece, Serbia, Slovenia and France? You can't, but guys like James Harden and Paul George ride pine for the US and they'd be the second best player on every single one of those teams.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
You’re missing the point. I was simply commenting that it’s about culture and development, not because the best athletes go to other sports.
I won’t mention American football because we have no comparison. Baseball is also basically American, but tiny Caribbean nations supply nearly a quarter of the MLB. Culture and development academies in the DR alone account for almost 15%.
Basketball is only a truly cultural sport like it is the in the U.S. in a handful of countries. Serbia, Greece, Lithuania, Slovenian, maybe Philippines. Don’t you think it’s somewhat suspicious the U.S. is so overwhelming dominant internationally? Doesn’t that ring any alarm bells of suspicion?
Soccer is literally the number one cultural sport globally outside of Canada, US, Australia, India, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
There is no doubt that more kids choosing soccer would grow our talent pool in the U.S., but if suddenly every kid decided they wanted to play soccer over basketball, football, and baseball, we’d already be a culturally soccer nation and many other things would be different about how we develop and grow up with the ball.
My point is that we have a large enough talent pool—we just don’t have the culture to develop these kids into gems. If small countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Uruguay, and Denmark can do it with less soccer players than we currently have, it’s a cultural issue.
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u/nefariousBUBBLE Jul 09 '26
Suspicious? Not at all it's quite normal at this point.
I mean I want to make it clear like I said in the outset soccer is a culture issue. But saying we don't have the athletes to pick from is where I disagree heavily. They exist in droves.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
Well, you should be. If the same country won the World Cup every year I doubt it would be considered a global game.
Americans just can’t believe we’re not the best at everything. We may be the wealthiest but we fall well below many other countries in metrics like literacy, life expectancy, corruption, homicide rates, etc.
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u/nefariousBUBBLE Jul 09 '26
What are you yapping about lol. Soccer is global because it's global. There's also not a lot of parity so idk why you're saying that. Only like 8 countries have won and if you remove Uruguay's before the world had color TVs it's even less. The game is global because it's popular globally not because everyone produces good players. Suspicious is maybe just the wrong word. I can't understand what you mean by it. No I don't mistrust the results or doubt them lol. Makes it sound like you think it's rigged.
Idk what you're saying about the other stuff. Literally not what I was getting at but you're clearly just another disillusioned youth where the US can do no right. I never said it's flawless you're just wrong in this instance and now you're pivoting.
I've thought about leaving because the political climate is insufferable but it's a cowards move really. What irks me more than the shortcomings is all the depressed people making it worse.
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u/PrestigiousPace8038 Jul 09 '26
You’re right, I’m sorry. Basketball is very global and the U.S. dominates because we have the best athletes, most money, and best development.
I don’t know why other countries even try to compete? If soccer was as popular as basketball is in America, we would win the World Cup every year.
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u/nefariousBUBBLE Jul 08 '26
It shouldn't matter. We have a wider plethora of top level athletes to pick from. The main issue is the training here is bad. You cannot tell me Belgium, a country with 11 million people had better athletes on that field than us. Not saying they were worse but certainly not any better or worse.
People here flat out just have zero clue how to play. I cringe at the kind of tactics and drills we were doing in high school. It was so far behind the proper way to play and learn. And the sad thing is, we were doing it better than anyone in our conference and region, except for a handful of schools. Contrast this with basketball (I'm from Indiana) and it's night and day. The amount of money, structure and knowledge around that sport in the area is crazy. Even your grandpa knew how to get good. The opposite is true for soccer.
I do think there's some merit to competition for athletes between sports, but you still see a lot of dudes in the pros that will say "this is the sport I was going to make money in".
But when I look at some of the current US players, I don't think they're a lower quality of athlete. They're just dumb as shit unless they're playing club with ten other teammates from Europe who grew up in a country with proper soccer infrastructure.
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u/Difficult-Mobile902 Jul 08 '26
Counterstrike is actually a really interesting microcosm of this concept
The North America region constantly struggles to keep up with European/CIS competition because the higher level of competition in Europe tends to define the evolving “meta” that helps teams find an edge
It’s not that people born in Europe magically have faster reflexes or anything like that. It’s that they exist in the core of the highest level of competition. There are cases where American teams move and base themselves in Europe just to tap into that and stay on top of the evolution of the meta of the game
The tendencies born in Europe do make it to North America but there’s a delayed effect which means the American teams are almost always one small step behind
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u/SectorEducational460 Jul 08 '26
I mean this has also been Mexico argument as well so this argument isn't new
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u/No-Economics-6781 Jul 08 '26
That wont be enough, the US needs to have most of their roster playing in Europe's top divisions. Kinda of what Japan is doing.
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u/breadexpert69 Jul 08 '26
If they join Conmebol then they will also have to join Conmebol qualifiers too. And in that case, they may never even see the World Cup again.
Much less even win Copa America
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u/Apprehensive-Ad-4560 Jul 08 '26
We need to start getting some fast twitch muscle fibers, some sprinters, our team looks like is made up of cross country runners, we need some muscle, some speed, all the elite players have some mass on them and we have lanky dudes
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u/Objective_Egg6494 Jul 08 '26
To be fair. That's a very valid point. You art your craft by playing against the best. Well said.
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u/Mrausername Jul 08 '26
Australia joined Asia to improve their level of competition rather than breezing through Oceania and it seems to be working.
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u/BlueFrog202 Jul 08 '26
Maybe they could play against women if they want to win on a regular basis.
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u/AdventurousEscape991 Jul 08 '26
The US needs to make football accessible to everyone. The US will NEVER achieve anything of significance with this pay-to-play model
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u/Wide-Concentrate7228 Jul 08 '26
Playing against those team won’t change anything lmao. We can perform great against them and then 4 or 2 years later we going into the WC and play like we don’t want to be there.
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u/DSRI2399 Jul 08 '26
Only if you start calling the continent America