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L-E Dude, does that mean you know him? If so, what are the credz dude?

Lets get back to the game

1- No way was it a penalty
2- You have to win, might as well die being aggressive - should have played a 3-5-2
3- play quickly and move
4- Even rec players know "never turn into the man" and "if you are in trouble hit it away" or in the case of higher level play the GK. There is no way anyone can rationalize what Reyna did.
5- The most important game in any tournament in any sport is the firts one.

5 simple rules known by all youth players appear to have been lost to the pros.

Dempsey is my player...

We need to throw away the old and start anew

I liked Onyewu (keep your hands down), Conrad, Lewis, Bocanegra. Beasley has superstaritis, Donovan needs to stop being a little kid, both need a good kick in the arse.

And any of our keepers are good.

Not sold on Convey, Johnson, Olsen (why in the world was he in there - fish out of water), someone have O'Brian's head checked .

McBride is a great player who needs a mate up top...period. The man cannot play by himself. But he will be too old for the next one.

So we need new blood, better start looking now....

The Hammer,

Say what you please. I feel my comments were well justified and evidenced. As for where I play, well, L-E Dude I appreciate your backing. But why allow The Hammer the glory of knowing where I play, I'd rather let him guess.

What is the racial makeup of SCYSA? How about the breakdown amongst the big clubs - MPSC, Bridge, CESA, Columbia FC?

Man U,
Going back to athleticism v. training, obviously we need both. The problem is your examples. RVN is not overly athletic but he is bigger than anyone we have up front AND he does play on a superior team. TActically, Netherlands is what it is about in my book. Total football where everyone can do everything. That is the way our youth should be trained (to me the individual skill and flair are incorporated in this. Watch a Coerver training session some time). The other example you gave was Ronaldhino. He is listed at 5'11", 176 lbs. Look at our starting midfield when Dempsey doesn't play. Ronaldhino has something like 20-30 lbs on all of them. DMB falls over when tackled. Ronaldhino does not.

And I say this when I have a ten year old son with crazy individual skills but is the smallest on his team and only weighs 60 lbs. Unfortunatley, in this day and age, you can't have a team full of smurfs.

I agree that we need both, but you echoed my point exactly in what you claim was opposition. Ronaldinho may be 176 lbs, and yes he is somewhat bigger then the US players in midfield but they are an uncharacteristically small midfield. Ronaldinho is extremely good at holding himself up though, because he understands how to use his body. Coerver coaching is something I experienced in my past on multiple occasions and I am not sure what you meant? This is focused on individual skill and flair, yes, and this is obviously technique, so what were you trying to say?

my point is that compared to what the US has, Ronaldhino is big and I think the US needs players as big to compete. Up front, it is the same situation. We need an Ibrahimovic or Adriano or Toni. I don't think we are way behind other countries, but watching our games this world cup shows that we need more size and not just more skill. As for the Holland aproach, I mentioned the Coerver stuff becaue I'm not sure if everyone on this board understands the total football thing. Will we have players like Brazil? Maybe, maybe not. Can we create players and a team like Netherlands? Yes we can. Unfortunately, not everyone practices what they preach and I have seen U10's in developmental programs "stuck" in one position and asked to do one or two things. What do they have over some other players? Size. But I don't think the trainers are working enough on the skills and tactics with them. They are big and fast and keep the other team from scoring so that is good enough.

Yes I totally agree. It's funny you mention this actually. I played for Portsmouth at U-13 in a tournament in England and we played a team from Michigan in the semi-finals and lost to them 1-0. They were nowhere near as technically sound as we were, but they had a HUGE advantage over us in size and were able to simply run past us despite the fact that we were much better then them when we had the ball and were passing back and forth. When you get older however, and the difference of speeds and size diminishes so much, this is when the technical ability again becomes the dominating factor. Like you mentioned, Holland are able to have a tremendous team every year because they are so technically good and this makes them trouble for anyone they play, despite their size and speed. There are obviously certain positions that it is very helpful to have size in, such as a big target forward, but then again teams and individuals have done very well without being large. Look at Zola, Maradona, Pele, etc, who were not tremendously big but definitely great players.

Back to the younger players, the ones who are big and fast and run past people get all the praise and the technically ability of the smaller players sometimes go unnoticed. Tactics also go out the window, as hoof it up to the fast guy for breakaways is the key to scoring.

Hammer and Kyle, I couldn't agree more concerning ODP and our recruiting of our best (and often minority) athletes. Kyle and I have had this conversation(or similar)on numerous occassions, that ODP and many clubs price some extremely talented athletes out of the market.

Hammer, I worked at the Academic Enrichment Center at USC and studied much of Lapchick's work during graduate school. You make some strong points that are easily supported when coupled with socioeconomic statistics. Sports have historically been a means by which economically depressed cultures have found their way our of poverty. Soccer has for the most part been a white collar sport in the US and our ODP program and club programs promote such in a pretty big way.