u/Breklinho

Ligue 1, Turkish League, and some Portuguese + matches for $5 a month on sling is goated

Is he having that good of a season? Only seen 2-3 Strasbourg games this season and he was mid to poor in all of them. That being said him getting minutes regularly is huge for him.

Dude. Who do you think makes up a large percentage of the blue collar workers, in any industrialized economy?

Are Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Estonia, Latvia, Japan, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, or Pakistan not industrialized countries? Or do they not count because they're not in Western Europe or the Anglosphere?

So yeah; there’s a very good reason we want “fuck Trump” and “abolish ICE” shirts in our sections. And a reason why anyone wearing a maga hat needs to be removed - for their own protection. We have about 100 years of precedent.

I'm sorry but this is somewhere between revisionist and delusionally self-congratulatory: right wing supporters groups are at least as much a part of "soccer culture" as left wing supporters groups.

It'll vary country to country but east of the Prime Meridian there are, at the very least, as many right wing supporters groups as left wing supporters groups. In France, Italy, Turkey, and every country in Central (maybe except for Germany) and Eastern Europe there are certainly more explicitly right wing supporters groups than left wing supporters groups. You made a point about wearing a MAGA hat in a MLS supporters section. Wear a keffiyeh in a German supporters section or a Pride shirt in a Polish supporters section and see how that's received.

Soccer is not a left wing sport. I wish it were true, but it's just a sport. Wishing away right wing supporter culture as "not real soccer culture" is unfortunately ahistorical and delusional. Beyond that, MLS supporter culture is unique among nominally left wing national cultures for being ahead of the curve on most gay and gender issues... Pride flags are often not well received in traditionally working class clubs abroad and plenty of working class clubs are also anti-immigration. It's all part of the totality, you can't just pick the parts that you like and say it's the true culture.

Is Steinbeck assigned in the UK? I had to read him in California high school but I assumed that was because he wrote books about California.

And just like today, the working class guys tended to be a little rougher around the edges than the wealthier and more cultured supporters sitting at midfield. Behind the goals are the ones who originated the hooliganism. All of our SG’s are the descendants of these rough groups made up entirely of blue collar workers. And just like today, who do you think they supported politically? The politicians who supported tax breaks for the rich, or the politicians fighting for labor and immigration rights?

I appreciate the sentiment but come on lol 21st century Americans with MLS season tickets are not spending 35 hours a day working at the mud factory for a shilling like it was in England 100+ years ago.

And in general if you're regularly attending professional sports in America you're not working class, sorry. We have a different soccer culture here that's objectively more middle class than what you're describing. No need to LARP about this stuff.

I read the whole post and dig the angle of “what if we break the nuclear seal and live long enough to deal with the consequences.”

Some questions on lore:

- Why would Russia or China invade Mongolia? Like it would seem strategically insignificant and is kinda de facto already engrained into a “Russia-Chinese sphere” if that exists. Also not a source of irredentism/separatism so not an obvious flashpoint like Ukraine or Taiwan. It kinda just read like a forced analogy of Molotov-Ribbentrop.

-How/why do Cuba and Venezuela get involved? Like you say they don’t have any sort of military threat to the US, and spend most of their time trying to avoid confrontation at all costs. It seemed a little forced to add another front. Also your lore, your world but since this mostly maps onto irl: you should consider switching Venezuela’s alignment. The Rodriguez government is effectively a US State Department Viceroyalty.

Anyways enjoyed reading the post, I always dig “what if WWIII isn’t The Day After/Threads” type of thing.

San Diego actually has a workable stadium that could be elite (with canopy and some improvements) on the Green line and in the urban core of the city. Moving to a stadium in fucking Del Mar on a commuter line that 5 people use daily would be such an own goal for SDFC for sure and probably for Wave too.

Yeah but you're mistaken for thinking they're all just as valid

Tex Mex > traditional Mexican

Bait

Disagree about LA, and I say that as a San Diego nationalist with a vendetta against LA who has been living in the Bay for a while.

For people 25 and under soccer's the third most popular sport (well behind American football and basketball), it's gotten wildly more mainstream in the past 15 years and is going to be even more normal going forward.

Now we just need to have one hit at least a Guzan-level career lol. Even less than a Premier League starter, if we could just have a single goalkeeper capable of holding down a starting job in a top 5 league it would be a huge improvement.

Would rather have one clear ahead-of-the-pack starter than a grab bag of guys who can't nail down a starting job, which is where we presently are at and have been for the past decade. Schwake's looked pretty good in MLS but ditto for Steffen, Turner, Johnson, Freese, Schulte, or whichever flavor of the year has come and gone since then.

It's more that America is systematically or structurally racist, but individual Americans are less likely to be a dickhead about it in person; on the other hand, Eastern Europe isn't really "structurally racist" like that, but individuals are far more likely to be a dickhead about it in person.

Yeah there's literally no difference between playing for the United SSnaKKKeSS of AmeriKKKa (3/4ths of our players are black) and Poland (almost went through a civil war when they recently had their first black player).

True, but he's still punching above his weight for being a soccer player--most of whom are functionally illiterate.

If the numbers game is decisive then why is America not already a soccer powerhouse? Genuinely.

We have had more youth soccer players than most major soccer nations for at least a generation, soccer is ALREADY the third most popular sport with people under 30... all the ingredients for why America should "obviously" be a soccer powerhouse have been here for a generation, so why hasn't population + youth participation worked yet?

If high school, college, and pay to play club ball is capable of “producing more talent than any European football program” then please explain to me why America isn’t already a global soccer powerhouse. You’re describing a development system that already existed in American soccer prior to free MLS academies and in case you weren’t here for it we produced worse players when we relied exclusively on schools and travel clubs lmfao.

Yeah I don't get it. 190 countries on this planet are soccer crazy and maybe 4 of them at a time have a chance of winning the World Cup (which has only been won by 8 countries, all from Europe and South America). Winning the World Cup is probably the hardest sporting achievement to pull off, I don't know why Americans (maybe I do, but I think it's stupid) think that you either push for the World Cup title or suck.

Is your argument that the US really has no chance of being truly competitive until soccer is the most popular sport.

If by competitive you mean "can plausibly compete for the World Cup title", like Belgium's Golden Generation did, then yeah that's right I don't think the US can compete for the World Cup until soccer is the most popular sport. The intangibles of culture, obsession, and sports monogamy are so much more important for elite soccer countries than population size or wealth.

Do you really not think the US could be a powerhouse in the world of soccer if it was the second or third most popular sport in the country?

It depends on what you mean by "a powerhouse". Could we consistently become the best team in CONCACAF? Maybe. Could we become a team that makes the quarters of the World Cup here and there? Sure. Are we going to be competing to win the World Cup? No.

Do you think America would still suck at soccer if MLS was bigger than the NBA or the MLB? Does it really have to be number one? Second or third is not good enough?

Well first I never said, and don't think, America "sucks at soccer" (top 20 or so is respectable) and second of all what do you think American soccer would be like if all Americans were 9 feet tall and dribbled like Messi? I mean MLS being bigger than the NBA in America is about as likely as 9 foot tall Messi's. And again, you look at "second or third sport" from a numbers game of how many kids play it growing up while I'm looking at it qualitatively in terms of what soccer being THE sport does for the spirit or vibes of the sport in a country, which is ultimately decisive.

A couple of things to respond to:

1. We're the founders/first movers in American football, basketball, and baseball and comparing across sports, especially into the most global sport and one where we're pretty backwards, doesn't work.

2. Producing soccer players is not a function of Population x Wealth, obviously. Both can help but they're pretty minor determinants of how successful a soccer country is. Not breaking any crazy ground here but poorer countries already produce more elite soccer players than we do globally (middle income countries like Brazil, Argentina, Turkey; also low-income countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, etc.) as do small countries (Uruguay, Croatia, Belgium, etc.). For some reason the obvious formula of "there's a lot of Americans and Americans rich, why don't we produce world class players" never seems to work out. Maybe if we just wait and hope for different results things will change!

3. Spain (your example) has 42 professional clubs across La Liga and the Segunda Division and another 130, mostly semi-professional but with some professional clubs mixed in, across the Primera and Segunda Federations. Basically all of these clubs offer free professional tier training for a population of about 50 million people, all of which live within about 200 miles from Madrid. The United States has maybe 40 free professional tier academies for a population of about 350 million people, living on a 3000 mile wide continent. Sure we're richer and bigger, but one that doesn't matter much and two Spain is so much denser in high tier professional clubs and free professional tier academies that comparing the two only makes the US look more like a soccer backwater. If there's any lesson to be taken away from soccer and demographics its that the key is having a dense network of professional clubs in a dense network of urban areas (think about why England, West Germany, Paris, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, South Brazil, Northern Italy, Catalonia produce so many elite players... why Japan and South Korea were able to develop better academy networks than America, despite all starting their pro systems in the mid 90s... why countries like Mexico and Turkey, despite having a massive soccer crazy population and rich clubs, never seem to actually get better). This works against the US where our urban centers are hundreds to thousands of miles apart, and where each of these urban centers has 1 to maybe 3 free professional academies, compared to literally dozens for the regions I mentioned above. Trying to elaborate this out partly for my own sake, but I think it's also not surprising so many of our elite young talents are from the Northeast Corridor, and why it's always been a hotbed for US soccer considering it's the closest thing the US has to what I'm talking about.

4. I think this is the biggest one but I don't think it's possible for a country to win the World Cup or compete at the global level (i.e. what the OP was getting at) unless soccer is your most popular sport. You can't have the culture, sport monogamy, and density of youth development required to be a major powerhouse if soccer is only one of several major sports-- and the intangibles of culture and density of youth development are way more important for producing good soccer players than population and wealth. I think you and too many people buy into American exceptionalism and think the obvious indicators/paths to soccer success that apply literally everywhere else on Earth can be suspended and circumvented because America.

If by “hopeless” you mean “I fully expect to die without seeing the USMNT reach a World Cup semi-final” (i.e. what Belgium’s golden generation achieved) then sure, but I don’t think you need to expect to win the WC to enjoy watching your team in it and I’m fully convinced that American soccer will be better in 20 years than it is now. I don’t buy into this Manichean “we have to compete for global titles or we’re a failure” framing though and believing in delusions of becoming the best in the world is a faster trip to hopelessness than realism.

Can you please name one country that has won the World Cup or regularly competes for the World Cup, Euros, or Copa America… and for whom soccer is also not the most popular sport.

Sure, but the more professional youth training Americans have (a function of the number of professional clubs):

1. The more high quality training youth players will get

2. The “deeper” the culture is… deeper culture means more ball heads, means more Project Mbappe children

Again, downstream of the density of professional clubs

Nonsense, it DOES matter for a couple of reasons:

1. More professional clubs = more professional training for your youth base.

Obviously the cream will always rise to the top, but it matters if your base/average elite youth player is getting trained by a professional club, a pay to club, rec club, or school. More pro clubs means elite players are getting youth competitive minutes against more elite players.

1. Culturally, having a local club that you support, attend, and can dream yourself playing pro minutes for matters. The more “distance” between players and pro clubs, the less important soccer will be culturally… the weaker soccer is culturally the weaker the national team. More clubs brings soccer closer to more kids.

2. In a population sparse country like the US the low density of professional clubs… even semi-pro clubs like you have in the National League, Regionalliga, or Primera Federación, means it’s more costly to organize high level youth soccer (distance, travel). The lack of density of professional clubs is a main reason of why we have pay to play… which I am going to assert is not as good as being trained by a professional club for free.

3. Professional clubs generally, as a rule globally, offer free academies and make pro training more accessible. America has the MLS academies and a handful of USL clubs that offer free training (compared to the hundreds of free academies in England, Germany, Spain, etc.) … the rest of America’s players are ushered into pay to play, which again I think is not an ideal foundation for youth development.