US Soccer and a better World Cup: it’s not just athletes

We’re all still stinging from the U.S. elimination. The World Cup goes on, while a spunky American team sits and watches.

As we look for solutions to improve the game, let me remind everyone of this favorite axiom of mine: show me the simplest solution to a complicated problem, and I’ll show you the wrong solution.

Sometimes we offer up simple solutions because it’s easier than diving into the nitty gritty of it all. Let’s face it: tackling complicated issues takes energy and commitment. Most of us don’t have the energy or commitment to get the damn car washed regularly, much less really grapple with big thinky problems.

So, let me eliminate one quick fixer that always gets a spin on the wheel of U.S. Soccer fixes: "We need better athletes."

Yes, it would certainly help to a point. Speed kills. Height and might can be right. But it’s hardly the be-all, end-all, I promise.

If you look at the U.S. team that just went out, athletic ability wasn’t the issue. Ricardo Clark is a terrific athlete, tall, rangy and quick. I’ll just stop there, because we all know how that worked out.

Robbie Findley was supposedly on the team for his speed (even if I never saw him pull away from anyone in South Africa.) So, there you have two good athletes – also probably the worst two players on the field during the Americans’ South African elimination.

You think being better athletes would help the U.S. team hit early balls out of the back the way Germany did to launch those picture-perfect counters? Go back and watch those initial passes on the strikes against England and the speed of thought that created them. That is not athletic ability; that’s the work of a well-trained soccer brain.

You think a better athlete will finally create the difference-making striker the U.S. so desperately needs? Diego Forlan has been a horse at this World Cup. Carlos Tevez is getting it done. I could go one, but here’s the point: Eddie Johnson is a better athlete than either of those guys, easily. But would anybody take E.J. over Tevez or Forlan? Thought not.

What about playmakers? The United States hasn’t really had once since Claudio Reyna, and that’s a stretch anyway. He was a terrific two-way midfielder, but hardly a classic creator. Wesley Snyder is quick, and he looks like a pretty good athlete, but he’s a small dude. So, he’s not an "athlete" in the way we think of them; classic thinking in this regard suggest that the Americans would do better with a lot of NFL defensive back type athletes, about 6-2 and 190 pounds.

Again, better athletes would hardly be a bad thing. But don’t fool yourself. This is about so much more. It’s about teaching kids the right way from very early ages, and about identifying players and nurturing them the right way. It’s about solving problems on the field and first touches that create space.

I’d love to better developmental mechanisms within U.S. Soccer and MLS. Somewhere in there is the answer … not just siphoning off better athletes from football and basketball.