Lack of U.S. Soccer involvement ruins reputation, progress

It was the per­fect set up;  A Mex­i­can squad in dire need of a win to gain back con­fi­dence, A U.S. squad play­ing with bench­warm­ers.  US Soc­cer exec­u­tives prob­a­bly didn’t fig­ure on 5 — nothing. 

The dam­age is done.  After huge sum­mer gains with the Amer­i­can sports fans, US Soc­cer blunders. 

At some point, US Soc­cer will have to gain more influ­ence with CONCACAF.  US Soc­cer can not take the same risk again.  The next qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Con­fed Cup may need to exclude the U.S. from play­ing the fol­low­ing Gold Cup. 

Right now, pro Soc­cer is try­ing gain its foothold with the sports fans.  If the sports fan is going to be in con­stant bewil­der­ment over wins and losses, first team­ers and sec­ond team­ers, Cups and Cham­pi­onships, then Soc­cer is defeat­ing its pur­pose.  This Gold Cup meant noth­ing, but a tro­phy.  Treat the fans hon­estly, don’t try to sneak things past them.

Pro Soc­cer is being directly impacted by the USMNT’s play.  The USMNT gen­er­ates inter­est when it wins, which in turn, gen­er­ates more inter­est in Pro Soccer.

It is time for those mak­ing the deci­sions for US Soc­cer to make a stand for com­mon sense.  It is the only thing the sports fan under­stands.  Sports fans in the U.S. only sup­port teams play­ing to win with its best players. 

If the Gold Cup was just a buffer in case of an early exit from Con­fed Cup, its under­stand­able why US Soc­cer made the com­mit­ment to play it.  But, there are only so many pri­or­i­ties USMNT play­ers can have, and US Soc­cer is aware of this. 

Hav­ing more fore­sight into sched­ul­ing issues is extremely impor­tant for US Soc­cer execs.  The U.S. can not afford to be play­ing sec­ond team­ers as Soc­cer con­tin­ues to rise in pop­u­lar­ity.  It needs to win as much as it can as often as it can.   

After the great final from the Con­fed­er­a­tion Cup, the U.S. had only one option for the Gold Cup and that was to win it.  The result from the Gold Cup final only con­fuses sports fans.  So much of the progress made from the great run against Brazil in Con­fed Cup can now be com­pletely zapped with a loss to Mex­ico in the World Cup Qual­i­fier later this month.

The bot­tom line is that US Soc­cer must project ahead and try to help CONCACAF to build strate­gies for a bet­ter sched­ule of tour­na­ments.  CONCACAF is a great orga­ni­za­tion, and it is con­tin­u­ing to make strides.  It has made the region more rec­og­niz­able to Soc­cer fans and has brought many of its par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries much over­due respect in the eyes of Amer­i­cans.  But improve­ments and refine­ments need to be made to its struc­ture and US Soc­cer should be a dri­ving force in those changes.