Soriano At Blazercon; Nycfc: A Year In Review
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I was at this talk and came away horribly disappointed. It's clear that Soriano barely respects the American player as a soccer player. The dismissive response to the "$100K player" question showed exactly the roster construction issues that have been beaten to death here - they legitimately think that they can win with three Euro studs and nothing else.
The man preached patience and acknowledged that the playoffs weren't a good target, but then dismissed what he saw last year as reprehensible. Unless there was something absurd going on behind the scenes, there's a huge intellectual disconnect there.
And the comments on coaching in the US -- while I agree that youth coaching needs to improve here to a degree, dismissing American talent as "courageous but not much else" is both insulting and regressive. It tells me we can't expect a damn thing out of the SuperDraft until they wise up.
Most of the programs that beat our asses last year were built on the talent of the exact players that he dismissed, so I'm not sure he really has much room to be claiming that a 17 year old MCFC loanee has that much talent than the average MLS veteran.
And if anyone believed that Kreis had a guiding hand in roster construction, maybe look at this talk. They're clearly *all in* on the DoF model. Unfortunate that they chose Reyna instead of a guy like Lagerway.
The man preached patience and acknowledged that the playoffs weren't a good target, but then dismissed what he saw last year as reprehensible. Unless there was something absurd going on behind the scenes, there's a huge intellectual disconnect there.
And the comments on coaching in the US -- while I agree that youth coaching needs to improve here to a degree, dismissing American talent as "courageous but not much else" is both insulting and regressive. It tells me we can't expect a damn thing out of the SuperDraft until they wise up.
Most of the programs that beat our asses last year were built on the talent of the exact players that he dismissed, so I'm not sure he really has much room to be claiming that a 17 year old MCFC loanee has that much talent than the average MLS veteran.
And if anyone believed that Kreis had a guiding hand in roster construction, maybe look at this talk. They're clearly *all in* on the DoF model. Unfortunate that they chose Reyna instead of a guy like Lagerway.
Apologies - Director of Football.
Moral of the story - I did my best to go in with an open mind, but the talk really confirmed a lot of the suspicions and doubts I had about the club to begin with. Very, very disappointed.
The Times had a good intro/explanation for it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/s...to-brooklyn-at-blazercon.html?ref=sports&_r=0
Think of it as comic-con for soccer nerds and in its first year it's already been taken over by corporate marketing (just like ComicCon in San Diego).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/s...to-brooklyn-at-blazercon.html?ref=sports&_r=0
Think of it as comic-con for soccer nerds and in its first year it's already been taken over by corporate marketing (just like ComicCon in San Diego).
BlazerCon is a con (as in Comicon, for example) run by the Men in Blazers show. They're two Englishmen who live in New York and do a half hour TV show on NBCSN on Monday night at (usually) 11pm after EPL weekends (so not on today). They're usually pretty hilarious. They also do a podcast as well. Worth checking out if you're into English football at all.
I've seen some rerun episodes of there show before. Their tiny room for filming bothers me for some reason. I'm sure if I understood their English lingo a bit more I'd find them to be more funny. (English isn't my native tongue so I don't really understand their sense of humor.)
Hmm, you were at the talk, so I imagine there must've been a discrepancy between the Twitter transcription and what you heard, because it didn't seem he was being overly disrespectful to US players (coaching, yes). Also not sure I understand the "intellectual disconnect" you pointed out. I think people are still getting hung up on the idea that Kreis was fired on results alone. On the surface, I see no incompatibility between statements like "we must be patient, playoffs were a hard target" and "we need to play better soccer". Maybe you can illustrate that for me furthermore, though.
This is why I've been relatively quiet so far on Mr. Soriano's talk. I keep thinking I'm missing something. I need to read the referenced Times article.
UPDATE:
read the Times article.
Didn't find anything particularly ominous in it.
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I just can't see this working. Let's say you live somewhere in Europe and you are a soccer fan. (A) You are a fan of a big club that is close to home and playing top level talent. (B) You are a fan of a little club - bottom table, 2nd or 3rd division. You already have your Cinderella. (C) You are both of the above.
In any of these situations, why on Earth would you watch an American team?
I'm a soccer fan and I'm obsessed with NYCFC, but only because I'm a New Yorker. I watch European teams because I want to see the game played at a higher talent level. If the Australian league was on TV, I wouldn't watch. I just can't get my brain to follow any path by which a European fan (other than the MCFC fans who follow NYCFC because they feel connected) spends their soccer watching time on MLS when there is generally an abundance at any given time of higher quality, more personally connected soccer for them to watch.
Re read the comments at the end regarding MLS. Not very rosy. Well if your a fan of MLS that is. But it's not anything a speaker said its the author of the article.
It was an absolutely fantastic time. The talk from the Southampton chair was *delightful*.
You're honestly only getting half the story reading the twitter comments. He was overwhelmingly negative about the US player pool, and repeatedly talked about bringing in foreign talent as this team's chance to turn the corner. The tone was very harsh -- Soriano clearly sees this league as two steps below Belgium right now.
And there were absolutely intellectual disconnects. Look at what he talked about with MLS' technical level and physicality. He said that he doesn't see this as a league that's less technical than others abroad. But it's made up of mostly players that learned soccer from the American system. So if it's not technically deficient, then why the emphasis on importing talent from Argentina, a country known for building creative, technical talent? If America wasn't that far behind technically, you'd think he'd have mentioned the college soccer system, the American lower leagues, or scouting of MLS once. Not at all.
Yes, there are improvements to be made to the US coaching pyramid. There is serious work being done there by US soccer right now. But if you think you can win MLS just by importing talent, you don't have a prayer of winning in this league. The league's foundation is built on limiting how much expensive talent you can import. Unless they send the salary cap up tenfold and raise the international limit by 5, cheap American talent, particularly on defense, is what wins you this league.
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I think that I've given them quite a few chances to make good. At this point, I'm just about out. I want to see winning soccer, but there are some things I'm seeing here that winning can't cure.
No, I got that the author of the article isn't a fan, but in LitoLand, his opinion doesn't hold anymore value than yours or mine. It's just more noise among the ether.
because one thing is on at noon or 3 or 5 and ours is on late at night?
I frequently watch the A-league because I'm an early riser and I find it at 4-6 am. I'm not obsessed with any team in particular but the more soccer the merrier to me
Seeing the article was in the New York Times it probably killed the author even to mention MLS.
Giving Major League Soccer coverage in the Times takes away from all the other important stories. You know.......like the daily Sepp Blatter articles (plural); WC qualifiers from Oceania; football news from Africa; daily articles on the Barclays League, La Liga, Bundesliga and other news for the Eurosnob.......
Giving Major League Soccer coverage in the Times takes away from all the other important stories. You know.......like the daily Sepp Blatter articles (plural); WC qualifiers from Oceania; football news from Africa; daily articles on the Barclays League, La Liga, Bundesliga and other news for the Eurosnob.......
Because Soriano does not want to come out and say that we are technically deficient and that the American system sucks. Soriano especially does not want to say that right now because he is new in the league and would, rightly, be seen as someone from on high coming to criticize without knowing what's been happening.
Our developmental system sucks, but that's ok. Its ok because the soccer development system in the US is improving in leaps and bounds year after year and does not show signs of stopping. Its a three sided problem, at least, but lets do a quick rundown.
1a. Money, we don't spend enough of it on soccer development. Especially when you consider per capita spending and how freaking huge the US is. As of 2014 MLS claimed to spend more than $20mm in youth and academy programming. http://ussoccerplayers.com/2014/10/youth-soccer-development-right-direction.html
1b. Between 2001 and 2011 Germany was spending an average of $68mm on youth development per year. That figure has only gone up with the Bundesliga straight up giving clubs extra money, up to $400,000, depending on the grading their youth academy has. http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-youth-system-2014-7
1c. Using current total population figures for both the US and Germany. In 2014 the entirety of United States soccer spent about six cents per person on soccer development. From 2001 to 2011 German soccer spent on average 84 cents per person.
2. Newness, using the Edison team development life cycle model I would say we are in the Normal section of development, we've made it past the hard part but there is a lot of work yet to go.
http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/pubscats/atl/2008_05_06/edis_mj08.pdf
3. Coverage, its only very recently that substantial areas of the US have received any kind of professional soccer development structure. Someone else on the board mentioned it with a source, but until RSL in 2005 there was no soccer development at all in Utah and large parts of the surrounding states. It was something like 10 million people that had no access at all to soccer development with professional connections.
So yeah, we suck. Honestly, getting to the finals of the world cup is probably a 20 year project at this point. The only thing that alleviates all of the problems that I've outlined is that our population is so freaking large and diverse. We simply have a larger absolute number of the genetic freaks that are required to play sports at the highest levels.
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