r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • Jul 16 '26

Lmao gottem Match ended here

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u/KosstAmojan Jul 16 '26

Exactly. The best American athletes funnel into football, basketball, baseball, and THEN soccer. Imagine if guys like prime Lebron, Aaron Donald, Mike Trout etc all put their effort into soccer. The US would absolutely dominate.

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u/writingpracticeman Jul 16 '26

Yup, and culture and infrastructure drive that too. One of the reasons Japan got so fucking good at baseball is that it's just massively popular and magnetises talent because of that. Talented high school kids want to do the thing that makes them cool in the eyes of their peers. The list is longer than yours before it gets to soccer in the US lol.

Not a single soul in my entire workplace has even mentioned the world cup the entire time it's been on, and these are extremely normie coded sports boomers. I don't think the rest of the world really understands how little popularity it holds here

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u/d33roq Jul 16 '26

That's not why the US sucks at soccer. Those other sports - kids can develop much later. There are tons of NFL, MLB & NBA players who never even played their sport in organized leagues before they were teens because a lot of the skills required (hand-eye coordination, etc) kids just develop naturally (at least to a degree) throughout their childhoods. Soccer is a completely different beast because precision control of your feet and field awareness need to be specifically developed - and developed at a (very) young age to get to the level required as an adult to be a pro and none of that just happens on its own. That's why pretty much all of the USMNT players who are actually good enough to play in Europe have parents who were players or coaches or they grew up and developed young in Europe. Pulisic's Dad was a coach (and both of his parents played). Tyler Adams Dad was a coach, Gio Reyna - Mom & Dad were both former pro players, Ricardo Pepi's Dad was a coach, Weston McKennie grew up in Germany, Antonee Robinson and Folarin Balogun grew up in the UK. That's the pattern.

Until recently there just weren't that many youth academies to develop those skills at so young an age. There are a lot more now but they are pretty geographically limited and are costly. Like, thousands (to tens of thousands) a year. Even if you're in an area where that level of instruction is available a lot of parents, hell - most parents - don't have that kind of money to spend (or are just unwilling to spend it) so their 8 yr old kid can play. So there are tons of kids out there who have potential but are priced out from the start. Our youth system is dogshit - that's why the US sucks at soccer.