Cali, I've been reading No Goals posts for some time and it appears that he is floating on his college soccer cloud and no one better disagree because he thinks he knows it all, proud little papa for sure. No Goals only endgame is college and money, nothing else, but little does he actually know and it is starting to get a little annoying. It is one thing to have an opinion, its another to belittle everyone that doesn't agree. What he fails to realize is that college soccer is not everyone's dream or end goal and I am talking strictly from an athletic standpoint, some kids actually really do want to make the USN SR squad, or SR squad of their country of heritage and represent their country and/or play real soccer, professionally and some just play for fun and then quit, nothing wrong with that either. National team/Pro soccer should be on a different path than college/amateur soccer (and yes no goal your kids will be playing amateur soccer, so calm down), we need players committed to the cause no half in/half out and suddenly jumping ship and go for that schollie once things get a little rough. Wanting to get an education and wanting to be a professional athlete, should have nothing to do with each other, but that is a discussion for another day.
Is pursuing a professional soccer career the most financially wise decision right now? probably not, but neither is becoming an actor, musician, boxer, mma fighter, you name it and US soccer is trying to change ALL that on the soccer front and hopefully one day there will be an established women's league where these players can keep developing and continue to play the sport they love, it will happen, no doubt.
Making the Olympic team for any other sport is probably not the financially wisest decision either, yet we have plenty of people who do and we clean up the medal count every 2 years. Not everyone comes from the same economic background, so different strokes for different folks, some amazing stories out there every Olympic cycle.
We are in a unique situation here on many fronts, we have the best athletes in the world, we have a huge country with many different cultures, many different states and not many countries take school sports as serious as we do, so it presents unique challenges in trying to evolve and align at the same time. One has to wonder how many stars the USMNT has lost in the shuffle because those players went to college, played some garbage college soccer and got a job instead of taking on some risk and pursuing what i'm sure was their original dream, to play professionally or for a SR Squad. The other issue probably was that back in the day US soccer scouted mostly college playing athletes, well that creates a bit of a void as we all know our best soccer players don't always end up in college and it was evident by the way US soccer played, like a college team.
US soccer's job is to be able to compete on the International stage both men and women and that is what they are trying to accomplish, but you won't if you show up to the world cup with 24 college players. Right now it is working on the womens side because to be quite honest no one else in the world gave 2 "cents" about the womens game until recently. There were what 12 countries in the womens "world cup" in the 90's? Some countries don't even have the finances to support the mens national teams let alone the womens. So the US womens game is working for now but needs to keep evolving to stay ahead of the curve. What US soccer is doing is a huge step in the right direction from an athletic standpoint and if we can be the first country to have a nice professional league for women I'd be all for it. The DA system is a proven feeder system in SOCCER.
