**Official USMNT Soccer Thread**

[deepinthajeep]

Just got around to watching that "Team USA doc on ESPN", it was pretty cool to see the team up close and personal. Didn't know Jermaine Jones and so many players on the team are German. Anything is possible come World Cup time. We can finish first in our group or last but I just hope we bring our A game and compete to the fullest and not get overwhelmingly embarrassed with the WHOLE WORLD watching.

Very disappointing that in a country our size we cant find 23 players locally. We are just lazy so we rely on the soccer programs in other countries to highlight players with an american connection.

This has nothing to do with how we field our team. Having dual-national players play for us is a HUGE step for USSF. You can be American and not 'live' in America. AJ was born in Alabama and spent his summers in Florida, J. Green spent a most of his younger teen years in DMV. It's not like these guys have no connection to our country at all. More over, isn't that exactly what America is? A bunch of people from various countries and backgrounds living here in the land of opportunity. I live in NYC and can walk 10 blocks to the train and not hear one conversation in English. America is a melting pot and I'm happy our National Team reflects this. Regardless, every single dual-national player we have, by definition, is American - So imo that's where the argument should end.

Also - yall acting like we're the only country to take advantage of dual-nationality players. Zinedine Zidane was a citizen of both Algeria and France.. he chose to play for France. Many players that play for Germany could've also have played for Poland. Lukas Podolski was born in Poland. We've also lost players to other countries that could have played for the USMNT too... see Neven Subotic and Giuseppe Rossi. I mean, sh*t, Rossi was born in NJ and decided to play for Italy. It's within the rules so we should move on. Ya win some, ya lose some. Thank god we have JK now so we started to win a lot more of those players. Get over it.

 

[illvine]

ESPN's "March To Brazil' stream for those interested:


http://slickvid.com/g02qmp3k5vi0#

 

[babam11218719]

at whoever said Jermaine Jones could not speak English. He can speak English just fine, Not sure why he was speaking German in that episode.

 

[ronaldo nazario]

so do jermaine jones and john anthony brooks not speak english well enough to speak it in an interview

at whoever said Jermaine Jones could not speak English. He can speak English just fine, Not sure why he was speaking German in that episode.

I was wondering the same, Brooks was speaking German too.

 

[rck3sactown]

TIME UPDATE: Watch episode 2 of @30for30 series #Inside: @ussoccer March to Brazil TONIGHT, 10 p.m. ET on @espn. pic.twitter.com/3cTrLgk80E
— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) May 21, 2014

 

[mr marcus]

I still need to see the first episode 

 

[Kimchi Papi]

Sneak peak into tonight's ep...

 

[rck3sactown]

I'm probably gonna order my WC kit sometime this week once I figure out who's name I want... still can't decide between Bedoya, Bradley, Jones, or maybe.... Altidore 

probably gonna pull the trigger on that tech fleece jacket that Jurgen has been wearing too

 

[100027]

Allow me to elaborate and slightly alter my point. In my honest opinion, the entire team should be made up of guys born and raised in the US. At the very least they should have lived a significant time in the US if they werent born here (like 10 years for example). I dont like the idea of guys like Diskerrud (sp?) and Jermaine Jones who have lived very few years here and were not born here taking a roster spot from a domestic player. 

And here is my thing about the German team integrating immigrants. Ozil (Gelsenkirchen), Gundogan (Gelsenkirchen) and Khedira (Stutgart) were all born and raised in Germany. Podolski and Klose lived in Germany for the majority of their lives. There is no reason we should be taking "leftover" players from the German squad and taking that roster spot from a domestic American. I'd also like to see more latino players on the US squad. Guys like Edgar Castillo and others should be on the team IMO. 

Lastly, I dont like the idea of a German coach at the head of the US team. England, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Holland, Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Mexico all have coaches from their respective countries, why not us? Dont mean to sound like a redneck, but to me the American team should have American players and an American coach 

Yeah if you want to suck forever. Every great European team is pulling in players and coaches from wherever they want.

 

[illvine]

I still need to see the first episode 

ESPN's "March To Brazil' stream for those interested:


http://slickvid.com/g02qmp3k5vi0#

 

[noskey]

I'll welcome any player from any nation so long as they better the team. Could care less if they live on the moon as long as they can help.

The US needs all the help we can get if we want to be the team not picked to finish last in a future Group of Death.

 

[rck3sactown]

The skill, talent, and all that is secondary to whether or not that duel-national player wants to represent the country and the crest. 

IMO, that's what matters the most.

Also, shout outs @ICE CITY FC  for that response to @AJIIIpLATINum, absolutely hit it on the nail.

Not to be Johnny-Come-Lately, but to not accept duel nationals would be akin to taking the hardline stance (a stance in which I stood by for a long time before changing my tune recently) that all Americans should be USNT fans. To simply make the issue of categorizing where you are born or from; and correlating that with your true identity is simply too black and white. There are obviously many factors in where/what country you identify yourself with. Just look at the Ultimate Football thread and all the different countries that posters in their support. For awhile, I thought that the thread was 95% international NTers with the various national team love, and quite frankly, the lack of support/love for US soccer in there. 

For those interested, here is a pretty dope article from about last summer that depicts the start of USSF beginnings of searching for duel-national players.

Kinda cool, how it was Mix Diskerud that kicked it off...

I always forget that Bob Bradley had already started the recruitment of Jermaine Jones and Timmy Chandler long before Jurgen came on board.

[h1]FOREIGN AID[/h1]
POSTED BY JACOB    JANUARY 30, 2014

[h4]HOW THE DISCOVERY OF MIKKEL DISKERUD LAUNCHED THE U.S. MEN’S NATIONAL TEAM’S WORLDWIDE SEARCH FOR TALENT[/h4][h6]BY SETH VERTELNEY[/h6]
Editor’s Note: This story appeared in our Summer 2013 issue. With the U.S. national team’s winter training camp drawing to a close, and several of the young players mentioned in the piece vying for spots on the U.S. World Cup roster—including Mix Diskerud and John Anthony Brooks—it seemed like a good time to post it.

ONE AFTERNOON IN JANUARY 2008, Thomas Rongen was coaching the United States Under-20 national team at a tournament in Guadalajara, Mexico. The U.S. U-20s were matched up against a youth squad from the Norwegian club Stabaek. “Since this was a friendly tournament, I ended up standing next to their head coach,” Rongen says. “We’re just chatting and I go, ‘Wow, Number 10 is a great player. Is he playing on the Norway national team?’ He goes, ‘Just so you know, this kid has an American passport.’”

Rongen was stunned. In the middle of Mexico, he had stumbled upon a player who could help the U.S. U-20s. After the game, he spoke to Number 10, Mikkel Diskerud, who was born in Norway but eligible for the U.S. because his mother was born in Arizona. Three months later, Diskerud was playing for Rongen’s U-20s, and two years after, he earned his first senior cap for the U.S.

Rongen’s discovery gave him an idea. “I said, if we can find a guy in Mexico who plays in Norway with dual citizenship, why not do a little bit of research and see if I can find some other players?” He met with USSF officials, laid out his case, and asked for a budget for his project. The idea of a list tracking U.S.-eligible players overseas wasn’t completely new to the federation, but the scope of Rongen’s plan was. He got “a small budget” to travel and spread the gospel of U.S. soccer. The List was underway.
BRYAN ARGUEZ IS A NAME  only die-hard U.S. fans will recognize. He played for several U.S. youth national teams but has struggled to make an impact at the club level. Now 24, he currently plays for Minnesota United FC of the NASL. But Arguez may wind up having a bigger impact on the U.S. national team than some of the players currently on Jurgen Klinsmann’s roster. As Rongen began assembling The List, Arguez—then on the U.S. U-20 team told him that three of his Hertha Berlin teammates had U.S. passports.
Rongen pounced, contacting Terrence Boyd, John Anthony Brooks, and Jerome Kiesewetter. All three were born in Germany to American serviceman fathers and German mothers. All three have now played for U.S. youth teams, and Boyd has graduated to the senior level. Brooks, a hulking, 20-year-old center back, is perhaps America’s top young prospect, though he refused a recent invitation to play with the U.S. U-20s.

Rongen used his budget efficiently. On U-20 trips abroad, he would journey alone a few days ahead to meet with players and coaches, but he found most of the names on The List just by picking up his phone. “When the word got out, I was contacted almost daily about players on all levels,” he said. “Sometimes by agents, sometimes by parents, sometimes by coaches, sometimes by just people I knew who were in those countries.” The List began to grow, ballooning, eventually, to an estimated four hundred players from all corners of the globe.

Using foreign-born players is not a new phenomenon for the United States. German-born Thomas Dooley, Dutch-born Earnie Stewart, and French-born David Régis all featured prominently in the 1990s. But players were brought into the fold as established professionals; their chances of playing for their birth nations were slim to none. Targeting younger players can be more problematic. “[The USSF] knew it would ruffle some feathers,” Rongen says of his recruiting mission. “Germany got somewhat upset when I approached a player from Bayern Munich who played for the Under-17 German national team.”

That player—Mainz forward Shawn Parker—is a rising star in Germany, but has U.S. eligibility through his serviceman father. The German federation wasn’t about to let him get away. “I could just tell something was wrong as I talked to him on the phone,” Rongen says. “He said, ‘Well, I can’t really talk to you.’”

Under intense pressure from his home federation, Parker cut ties with the U.S. program. Rongen calls Parker, now a Germany youth international and Bundesliga regular at just 20 years old, “one that I couldn’t crack.” (The German federation has been on the other side of this tug-of-war in the past, awarding more than one hundred caps each to the Polish-born players Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski.)

Did they care about the crest? We opted out of a few players we felt didn’t do it for the right reasons.”

Integrating foreign-born players into the U.S. national team also presents a unique set of challenges. Rongen treated each encounter more like a job interview than a courtship. He needed “to have a keen understanding of how serious these players were about representing the United States,” he says.“To me, that was the most important thing. Did they care about the crest? We opted out of a few players we felt didn’t do it for the right reasons.”

The List included a growing number of players born in the U.S. who are signing with foreign teams at a young age—players like Ben Lederman of California, who, in 2010, became the first American to enroll at FC Barcelona’s La Masia academy. He was 10 years old at the time.

Omar Salgado was born in El Paso to an American mother and Mexican father. At 15, he left U.S. Soccer’s residency program in Bradenton, Florida, to sign with Chivas de Guadalajara in Mexico. While at Chivas, he got the itch to return to the United States. Rongen reached out. “He was under a lot of pressure from the Mexican federation and from his club,” Rongen says of Salgado, who had represented Mexico at the U-17 and U-20 level. “We emailed a couple times,” says Salgado, “and I told him that I wanted to play for the U.S. and I wanted to play for him. At the moment I couldn’t, because I was at Chivas.”

Chivas has a strict policy: its players must be eligible to play for the Mexican national team. After the emailing started, the young forward’s days in Mexico were numbered. In 2011, he signed with MLS after Vancouver selected him with the first overall pick of the 2011 SuperDraft.

RONGEN WAS FIRED AFTER THE U.S. FAILED TO QUALIFY  for the 2011 U-20 World Cup. Later that year, he met with U.S. national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann and top assistant Martin Vasquez in Miami. He presented them with a copy of The List, and walked away from the U.S. Soccer program. “I have no idea what they’ve done with it since,” he says.

According to U.S. Soccer, The List is an ongoing project. “The data is tracked every day, in one way or another, by our technical staff, from top to bottom,” says Jim Moorhouse, director of the youth national teams.

Rongen is now academy director for Toronto FC in Major League Soccer. His involvement with the U.S. program is over, save for a few conversations with Tab Ramos, his replacement with the U-20s. “Tab calls me once in a while and says ‘I looked at The List again—what do you know about this guy?’” Rongen says. “He’s brought in some players who have done well for him, in particular kids who were playing in Mexico.”

The U.S. will take part in the U-20 World Cup this summer in Turkey. The U.S. men are currently trying to qualify for the main event next summer in Brazil. Both of those rosters will undoubtedly feature a few names that appeared on The List Rongen did so much to create. And for that, U.S. Soccer can be thankful its U-20 team faced Stabaek on that blistering afternoon in Mexico five years ago.

http://www.howlermagazine.com/foreign-aid/

 

[imasoleman18]

stupid baseball is holding up the episode

 

[DeadsetAce]

great the delayed start prob caused my DVR to cut off half the episode

 

[rck3sactown]

Yup once I realized the Dodgers game was still going I just decided to cancel the recording

 

[Kimchi Papi]

Was last night's ep only 30 mins?

 

[mr marcus]

yep

and thanks for the stream drizzy

edit: not to bring that topic back up but I have no issue w/ kids of servicemen being on this team........actually think it's pretty unique. 

 

[Kimchi Papi]

I nodded out the couch last night watching the doc.

The last scene I remember was the Nike rep that laid stuff out for Klinsmann. I was like . Can I get that hook up too? I wonder why he doesn't like any of the red gear? He tossed out the red polo & all the red kicks...

 

[luisfigo]

I nodded out the couch last night watching the doc.

The last scene I remember was the Nike rep that laid stuff out for Klinsmann. I was like

. Can I get that hook up too? I wonder why he doesn't like any of the red gear? He tossed out the red polo & all the red kicks...

Was thinking the exact same thing and tried to figure out why.  First thought was that red is one of portugals primary colors and also represented in ghana's and germany flags.  Maybe he didnt want to wear red because of that... but red is obviously an american color too.

 

[DeadsetAce]

I nodded out the couch last night watching the doc.

The last scene I remember was the Nike rep that laid stuff out for Klinsmann. I was like . Can I get that hook up too? I wonder why he doesn't like any of the red gear? He tossed out the red polo & all the red kicks...

my DVR cut off shortly after that scene

 

[Kimchi Papi]

Klinsmann has been wearing flyknits alot. I've seen him in the chukkas & the first lunar flyknits....

 

[b fresco]

FYI, we've been recruiting dual citizenship players since our NT's inception...

Many of our NTs players at the beginning of this century were italian, Irish, and Scottish immigrants.

Our goal in the 1950 WC upset of England was scored by Joe Gaetjens who was from Haiti.

We had like 4-5 dual citizens on our 1990 WC team that re-established THE US's intent to become a soccer-loving nation in its first WC in over 30+ years.

This is nothing new gents, let it go.

 

[Kimchi Papi]

^ A man who knows...

Edit - One thing that's hampered footy in this country in the past is that we had people in positions who have never played football coaching, managing, administrating, & such at all levels. You can see the effects they had because it's stunted the growth of proper football as evidenced in the way we've played in the past.

Now we're seeing American players who played at all sorts of higher levels taking leadership roles throughout the country & we're starting to see better football.

That's why I love Klinsmann's hiring as coach & technical director. He's already done in 2 years more than what that dumba** Arena & Bradley (as much I like him) have accomplished in their combined careers with the USMNT.

He's moved the program further not only from the first team but right on down the line. It helps the organization behind him (the US program) is better organized than it has been & likewise with MLS to a certain degree.

My wish would be to have strong academies in each state or something like that. One thing that has to continue to improve is the coaching at the youth ranks. Having a son play U10 club, I've seen some terrible coaching.

We had a terrible experience with my son's first club. An experienced coach left because he had too much on his plate & one of the fathers took over who had never played the game or really watched that much footy. Needless to say it was a disaster.

My son tried out for 2 new clubs recently. He got accepted to one but we're waiting to hear from the other. The later is the club my son really wants to play for so wish us luck.

 

[DeadsetAce]

^ good luck to you and your son


as for the whole mix of players that make up the american team...that's what america is. beyond soccer and sports...that's what this country is about, not to sound corny. we're all from somewhere else down the line. it's just a matter of how recently your family came over. i think it's what makes this country awesome despite all it's other faults that people feel it has.

 

[100027]

^ good luck to you and your son


as for the whole mix of players that make up the american team...that's what america is. beyond soccer and sports...that's what this country is about, not to sound corny. we're all from somewhere else down the line. it's just a matter of how recently your family came over. i think it's what makes this country awesome despite all it's other faults that people feel it has.

Definitely.