USA
The search for identity
If one were to ask one hundred fans and journalists from each of the nine other countries profiled to write a piece about their nation’s soccer federations, the content generated would center around the same ideas and reach relatively similar conclusions to each other and to what has been written here. If one were to ask to a hundred fans and journalists to write a profile of the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) heading into the World Cup, the response would be one hundred unique and contradictory pieces.
This notion is perhaps best supported by the fact that articles about the American team published on the same day in the leadup to the World Cup made completely opposite assertions. The Wall Street Journal declared about the current direction of the US national team that they now “play like Americans” under the leadership of coach Jurgen Klinsmann, while The New York Times article was titled “Jurgen Klinsmann Plans to Make U.S. Soccer Better (and Less American).”
Much discussion has revolved around whether the US Soccer Federation, in particular head coach and technical director Jurgen Klinsmann, who has total control over the men’s program, has made the national team more or less American since Klinsmann’s appointment in 2011. On the one hand, of the 23 players going to Brazil, five were born outside the US and seven were raised in foreign countries, five of them in Klinsmann’s native Germany. However, Klinsmann has declared that he wants to create a style of play that represents the United States’ culture, particularly American exceptionalism, in that same way that other national teams’ play reflects their cultures. Klinsmann has derided American arrogance, and yet has called upon his team to play with an attacking style, even if cautious defense may be a wiser strategy against a powerhouse such as Portugal or Germany.
There is ample evidence on both sides of this debate, but the reality is that this argument that has dominated the discussion over the direction of US soccer does not matter: American soccer does not need an American identity. American soccer needs to win.
This statement may not necessarily be true for all countries. The Dutch playing an anti-Dutch style in the 2010 World Cup final bordered on sacrilegious in the eyes of their own fans, even if that strategy was the one most likely to get the team a result. While Brazil has considerably toned down its carefree beautiful style over the years, the national team still does and always will feature players with extraordinary skill who create magical moments. But for the United States, none of these considerations matter.
National styles have grown organically within certain countries according to the conditions that fostered growth of certain traits. Brazil’s urban conditions and small spaces forged players who mastered the ball at their feet and were capable of sublime trickery in small spaces, thus creating an emphasis on this tactic for the national team. Cultural influences such as the societal value of order along with the pop-culture figure Captain Tsubasa largely shape how the Japanese team plays the game.
Furthermore, the natural development of tactical innovations has determined the style of play of various national teams. Coach Hector Herrera pioneered the defensive catenaccio system while at Milanese club Internazionale, and thus Italy have adopted this approach — even if not this exact system — ever since. Soccer managers have never sat down and tried to design a system that best reflects a nation’s culture; rather, formations and style of play have evolved naturally.
As detailed in Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, the English 2-3-5 pyramid formation evolved into the Danubian school in Germany and Austria in the 1920’s, while it took on a W-M shape and then a 4-1-3-2 shape in England. The Danubian school became a 4-2-4 shape in Hungary, which, transported by coach Bela Guttman to Brazil, became a diagonal variant of the 4-2-4. The development of most soccer tactics over the past century have originated from these foundational underpinnings.
This is all a long way of saying that national identity does not dictate the style of play on the pitch; in fact, the opposite is true. Cultural and societal factors undoubtedly influenced what tactics are most effective for a given group of players, but the natural development of new strategies — imported by coaches from foreign lands and modified to fit a nation’s talent pool —- holds a far greater impact on the development of national styles than the red herring of national identity.
Coaches and federations must devise strategies that are the best for winning games. A consistent style or formation over a long period may be suitable because players from the same country are likely to share physical and technical traits with their predecessors, given that they come from relatively the same gene pool and that they grow up watching and emulating the stars that came before them. However, a strict dogmatic tactical philosophy stifles growth, as has been the case in England, instead of creating unity and direction. Wilson observes that those teams who have been successful over a long period of time “all shared the clarity of vision to successfully recognize when the time was right to abandon a winning formula and the courage to implement a new one.”
For the United States, the imposition of a national style of play is not only a distraction from what should be the ultimate task — winning — but in fact detracts from the United States’ ability to achieve competitive success. The available talent pool affords the US a great deal of diversity with respect to cultural heritage and playing style. While the five players raised in Germany are accustomed to a physical counter-attacking style, many players of Hispanic origin — or even those like Landon Donovan who grew up playing with and against mostly Hispanic players — are more technically gifted and move the ball around the field well. Several other national and sporting backgrounds — including Italian, Scandinavian, and Dutch — represented on the team mean that the United States is not restricted to a singular style of play.
This diversity should be maximized, not subdued in order to enforce a uniform style. Some of the most talented national teams around struggle because of homogeneity within the team. When Germany — designed around the idea of strong defense with a swift counter attack — went down a goal to Spain in the 2010 World Cup semifinal, the team lacked the resolve or the players to fundamentally change its plan of attack. Similarly, Spain’s players, while all masterful at executing a possession-first strategy, lacked any players who could adopt a different approach in order to play with greater urgency and exploit wide areas when Brazil defeated Spain handily, 3-0, in the 2013 Confederations Cup final. Examples of one type of player dominating a national team have been demonstrated in Japan, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere in previous profiles, and have been shown to create disproportionate amounts of talent in a few positions on the field and to restrict the dynamism of a team.
The United States national team ought to embrace its melting pot collection of players. While a team must buy into a certain system, that system should have flexibility to accommodate different types of players and different approaches for certain opponents, especially in the case of the United States.
As discussed in the introduction and throughout the preceding profiles, all soccer nations do have a certain identity, one that soccer federations should be mindful of. However, the forced imposition of a style representative of American culture, regardless of opponent, is not the right way to go about building an identity for the national team. Already, the desire to impose a certain ideological framework for the side has come at odds with the ability of the team to win, as Klinsmann cut Landon Donovan, the greatest player in US soccer history, in order to make room for players who fit Klinsmann’s mold of what the American player should be like, even if they undoubtedly have much less to offer on the field than Donovan in Brazil. Rather, a success-first focus will yield a foundation upon which to build a lasting legacy of what defines the United States national team.
In order for a soccer federation to build an authentic identity, it must first develop and experience tradition and history that the United States does not yet have. Although the USSF has been around for more than a century, it has only become a consistent presence — both on the international stage and within its own country — in the past 25 years. The well-known on-and-off the field identities of more notable soccer federations around the world only started to emerge decades after they had been at a level — in terms of quality and relevance — similar to where the United States is right now.
In order to gain that tradition, the USSF must build from the ground up, instead of instituting a superficial vision in order to attempt to match its European competitors. While Klinsmann’s efforts to streamline and centralize the United States development system are laudable, a complete rethinking of the way in which American players are produced is necessary.
Competing elements within this system — high school soccer teams, college soccer teams, Major League Soccer team academies, and the United States national youth teams — vie for relevance and for the best players, while none of them have the efficacy of European club academies. The reality that over a third of the current team’s players spent multiple years in their early twenties — part of the prime of a soccer players’ careers — playing college soccer instead of at the professional level demonstrates a deep weakness in the American youth system.
When the roster for the US World Cup team was released, the most widespread observation about the squad besides Donovan’s omission — a bit of a “how else was the play Mrs. Lincoln?” situation — was that so many of the players were so young. Surprisingly to many, the team’s average age was actually higher in past years; the players overall were not exceedingly young, just inexperienced. Players like Chris Wondolowski (31), Brad Davis (32), and Matt Besler (27) have all just broken into the national team, but have done so at an older age because they did not start their professional careers until having gone through college.
Of the players who actually are quite young, many play abroad, which presents its own difficulties because of the lack of first team opportunities overseas. 19 year old starlet Julian Green has only played a total of 2 minutes for his club team Bayern Munich, a figure unlikely to change soon as the club, and many others like it, are loaded with experienced, elite players from around the world. If, as discussed in the FA’s profile, young English players cannot get playing time in the Premier League, how can young American players expect to get first team experience in Europe’s top leagues?
The best way to move forward is to encourage top players to play for Major League Soccer academies and either to forego or not complete college and enter MLS at an early age. United States and Seattle Sounders right back Deandre Yedlin, aged 20, is the first player to have taken the path through the MLS academy system to a year of college to becoming a MLS starter to the US national team, a path that should become the most traveled one for American players.
This type of system is preferable for a number of reasons. The foremost of these is that Major League Soccer offers the best environment for young players to get opportunities to play while demanding them to play at a high level. MLS is a much higher level than college soccer, offering the challenge and professional environment necessary to accelerate a young player’s development, while far enough below the top leagues that good young players can get plenty of playing opportunities.
While Klinsmann has expressed a desire for American players to play in the top European leagues, young players should start in MLS and move onto Europe if they excel and can find a club situation where they will get playing time. Of the American players who have become professionals since MLS’ founding in 1996, the best — Landon Donovan, Tim Howard, Damarcus Beasley, Clint Dempsey, Brian McBride, and Michael Bradley — have all spent the early years of their careers in the domestic league. Even if MLS is not among the best leagues in the world, it can still provide an ideal platform for the development of the country’s young players, in the same manner as the “feeder” — meaning they produce talent that is often sold to bigger and better clubs — Brazilian, Dutch, and Argentine leagues, and eventually grow to the point where it can compete as one of the best leagues in the world (the blueprint for that is another story altogether).
A robust, centralized developmental system is just the first in a long list of changes that must occur in order for the US national team to become one of the best in the world. Superior coaching — especially at the youth levels — enhanced player identification and evaluation, greater tactical awareness among players and coaches, and the regular exposure of American players to the highest levels of competition at the club level are all necessary improvements to make in order for the prospects of the national team to continue to rise. But the most important concern is one that the federation has little control over: popularity.
While the common tripe “what if Lebron James played soccer?” doesn’t hold that much water, the concern that soccer loses a great deal of its most athletically inclined potential players to other sports is a valid one. On the other hand, the beliefs that soccer has not caught on in the US, or that only little kids play the sport and then lose interest, or that it is only popular within the immigrant community, are flawed. Soccer has a solid foundation of interest and support with both Americans and foreigners who have come to the country, as indicated by the fact that professional soccer is more popular than the MLB, NBA, NHL, or college sports among Americans aged 12 to 24 according the 2012 ESPN Sports Poll Annual Report.
Countries with far fewer resources or players — such as the profiled countries of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Honduras — have been able to produce as many if not more world class players than the US because soccer is not merely a hobby, but a lifestyle for large swaths of these populations. The USSF must work to build upon the already existing foundation of support and popularity and cut out a greater and more intense niche for soccer within the American cultural and sporting landscape, a feat of tremendous difficulty given the crowded playing field soccer must compete with and surpass.
Part of that process merely requires the USSF to await the passage of time. The young demographic studied in the ESPN poll will become adults, the millennial generation — who comprise the plurality of American soccer fans — will age and take positions of power at cultural and media institutions that previously showed little to no regard for the sport, and a new generation will grow up watching a widely broadcast domestic league and relatively successful national team.
Beyond this natural rise, the USSF must capitalize on these auspicious demographics to ensure that soccer gains maximum traction and relevance in the US. In other places where soccer has little history or tradition, such as Japan, social media campaigns centered around the sport have had an enormous impact, with 37% of Twitter mentions about the World Cup in the leadup to this year’s tournament coming from Japanese users. Marketing the sport in ways such as these that are tailored for the millennial generation is a simple and effective step to ensuring that the sport is relevant continuously, not just every four years. Joint ventures with Major League Soccer, such as the creation of the LLC Soccer United Marketing — which aims to market the sport through MLS, the national team, international tournaments, and exhibition games with clubs like Real Madrid and Manchester United — are smart initiatives that grow the game and consequently augment the potential future success for the national team.
The United States has reached a point in its development of the game where it can either plateau or break into the class of the world’s elite teams. Like other stellar but not extraordinary sides — Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, the Ivory Coast, South Korea, and a handful of others — the US is, and, if it continues at its current level, will be consistently one of the top teams in its confederation, win the occasional continental championship, and reliably qualify for the World Cup every four years, getting knocked out in the first or second round.
Unlike those other countries though, the US has a true potential to be one of the world’s best. While Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and other African teams must rely on the whims of European scouts to take their players and develop them, the United States has a strong domestic league capable of producing quality players. While Japan and South Korea are limited by genetic disadvantages that prevent their teams from having big, strong players in positions where those body types are necessary, the United States produces plenty of this type of player. While even the most successful of teams like Spain and Germany produce the same types of players who play in the same style, the United States produces players with skillsets as varied as their cultural backgrounds.
These auspicious conditions make the future of US soccer more promising than ever. But the USSF must play an active role in order to convert this potential into reality. In the past, the coming of Pele and the rise of the old North American Soccer League in the 1970’s, the boom of youth soccer, the influx of soccer-loving immigrants, and myriad other conditions have caused many to declare that the time for the US team to become a world power is right around the corner. And, in all of these circumstances, these opportunities have been squandered or, at the very least, not led to the dawn of the American team as an international powerhouse.
The long road to a World Cup title has only just begun for the USSF. The current squad of 23 representing the US in Brazil is one of the best in the program’s history. The teams that go to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022 will be even better. But, even though the young players in the United States developmental system offer loads of promise, these teams will not be at the level to win a World Cup. The day — albeit in the distant future — will come in which the United States national team wins the World Cup. Only at this point in time will writers, pundits, and coaches be able to judge accurately what is the United States’ soccer identity or the quintessentially American style.
In the mid-1990’s, two Real Madrid players, Spaniard Fernando Hierro and Brazilian Roberto Carlos, developed a combination, detailed in the aforementioned Inverting the Pyramid, in which Hierro would hit balls over the top of the defense onto the foot of the charging Carlos, often leading to goals. And yet, Madrid fans booed this event. To play long balls was to forego patient build up, to neglect the Spanish way of playing the game. Even if this tactic produced a positive result, the sacrifice of the Spanish on-field identity was too great a cost. This is the Spanish way, and adherence to certain values is just as important as results to many soccer fans in Spain and around the globe.
At this World Cup and beyond, goals by long balls, patient build ups, set pieces, lucky deflections, opponents’ mistakes, and any other type of means to get the ball in the net for the US team will be cheered by American fans with equal enthusiasm. The national teams of the future may play with the possession of Spain, the sturdiness of Italy, the flair of Brazil, the liberty of the Netherlands, or some eclectic mix of them all. And no matter what, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will still offer opposite interpretations about the extent to which the team does or does not epitomize the culture of the country it represents. While that determination will remain a completely subjective one, there is an objective observation to be made on the subject; the US team that will earn the title of most ‘American’ will not be determined by how the team plays, by what style the coach employs, or by what backgrounds the players have. The most American team is the one that wins the World Cup.
