It´s tough for me to get into a regular summer schedule. I am working overnight to supplement my coaching income as I don´t have a regular first-team senior gig at the moment. I keep wanting to take days off, but there really aren´t any in football, even in July. The English club for whom I am doing consulting, analysis, and scouting, Corby Town, has begun preseason; the U17 World Cup just finished; the Copa America comes to its conclusion this week; and, of course, the Women´s World Cup final is this afternoon.
The US should win today: they have been too lucky up to this point not to. To be sure, I admire lucky teams. When backed to the wall, the Americans have played with heart, skill, and passion, and have absolutely refused to accept defeat. They have taken advantage of the torrid officiating (not biased, as shown by baffling decision to allow Brazil to retake their penalty, but just really bad, as shown by Aliane´s card, the failure to eject Carli Lloyd for her blatant handball.) Pia Sundhage has been brilliant in her man management and shows a deep understanding of the game that Bob Bradley cannot even dream of, and has used her substitutes bench to change the tempo and flavor of a match.
However, even the success of the Women´s Team shows us the shortcomings of the American game, and while we will likely celebrate a victory today in Frankfurt, we must also be prepared for massive, and hugely painful, changes if the women are to remain at the top of the game, and the men are to do something more than fall into mediocre obscurity. Watching the US v. France, the Americans were faster, stronger, and at almost every position, more technically gifted. However, they could not maintain possession and attacks were predictable and defendable. Where the French were elegant and deceptive in movement with and without the ball, placing demands on American brains as well as legs, the US attack had the subtlety of a battering ram. The ball, was knocked wide, the team moved forward with numbers, and then a diagonal was played to try and find Abby Wambach´s head. While the French were outrun, they were never outplayed and certainly never out-thought. If Laura Georges had as good a match as she had against England, and the French had a second center back to compliment her, the Americans likely wouldn´t have gotten out of jail.
Against Brazil, the Americans faced a stupifyingly easy defensive system to break down, and yet failed to do so. We bemoan the lack of an ¨American style¨ but there it was for all to see: hey-diddle-diddle-right-up-the-middle. We play kick and chase and hope our individual skill and collective physical conditioning will hold the day. Today, this tournament, it will, but the gap in physical dominance has passed. If the same tournament is replayed next month with the same teams, the Americans might well go out at the quarter final. The wins, while admirable, are not convincing arguments that we have it right, and the seeds of our undoing are showing in the details.
So how have we arrived at the cavalry charge style of football, and how do we develop the kind of collective match intelligence and field awareness the French showed, the creativity of the Brazilians, and the collective organization and communication the Japanese will show this afternoon? It´s really the college style of play -- athletic, muscular, and well, uncreative. Ask any college coach in the Big East, SEC, or other major conference what they look for in a player, and size, speed, and athleticism are going to be in their top five qualities. We play with effectively open substitutions (to the point that now the NCAA allows a blood substitute and head injury substitute to avoid the horror of playing with 10 for a moment) and in a shortened season so the game rewards the team that can run. Simply put, coaches don´t demand elegant play because they don´t know how because the game has never taught the coaches. If your job depends on wins, and route one is the proven effective way, you take route one. So that´s what we have.
The way forward is simple, and will create civil war in US Soccer -- the NCAA must use the Laws of the Game. Substitutions must come into line with the world standard. Our players will learn to play with tempo and guile, and our coaches will learn to manage a game. It will mean players deep on college rosters won´t see the playing time they currently do, so talent will begin to spread to other programs. Skill, and not sheer athleticism, will begin to come to the fore. In the college game, a team that maintains possession is at a disadvantage trying to break down opposition -- as players tire, the opposition can replace them, and in the second half, even re-enter their starters after a five minute break, coaching, and observation. For a team that maintains possession, large scale substitution is undesirable as it breaks the tempo that partnerships establish in the course of a match.
The NCAA, I can tell you by experience, is loathe to make changes, and is quite fond of its exceptionalism. The US Soccer Federation and the National Soccer Coaches Association of America need to fight for the game -- for better or worse, college soccer is here to stay, and our national game will reflect the characteristics of NCAA play. If we continue to reward power and speed over creativity and guile, and the NCAA rules certainly do, today´s match against Japan will be our high water mark. The rest of the world will pass us by.
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