pacusmc
All American
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2016
- Messages
- 13,360
Is everybody catching up or are we just diluting athletic talent?
I haven’t followed the nba in a while so I began watching again in the playoffs.
The amount of foreign basketball players was intriguing. As of Oct 2023 there were 125 international players from about 40 foreign countries. And it’s not just average players. It’s all stars and mvp’s.
That’s crazy to think about for an old head like me. So what could be going on in the states that would have had such a drastic change n the landscape?
Was the talent in other countries always just as good and not discovered?
Is the talent in the US dwindling?
Has there been a dramatic decrease in the amount of youth participation?
Has there been a huge exodus of coaching to foreign nations?
Or is there something terribly wrong with the way the youth game is being played and coached, and or evaluated?
Is AAU pricing out the average player the same way academy soccer has basically made high school soccer irrelevant?
Maybe most in here don’t realize but D1 programs do not even recruit high school soccer anymore. They only recruit academy or travel soccer players.
Now imagine a world where Duke and Kentucky would only recruit AAU players because the high school game was so weakened simply because they priced out free basketball in school? What if all the best youth basketball coaches decided to just coach AAU?
The USA women’s soccer in the 80-90’s was an unstoppable international force.
Losing was an anomaly.
Even today, California alone has more registered soccer players than most European countries.
And yet you can no longer just pencil in a W for the women the way you used to. The difference then vs now…… academies and travel.
Also, news flash…. A nice amount of D1 women and men’s soccer are actually foreign players here on scholarship.
About 70 international women signed D1 LOI’s this year alone and about 60 on the men’s side.
Almost 15% of D1 basketball players are now international.
So despite the US having about 5 million youth soccer players, the coaches can’t find the talent and go outside the country to get players.
That sht is just a mind blowing to me.
And despite this AAU phenomenon and all the hype; d1 is 15 percent foreign? Wtf is going on?
The academy and travel system in soccer has disenfranchised so many talented young players simply cause they can’t pay to get that level of coaching.
US soccer has literally thrown money at the problem. But they throw it at these academies and training centers and not actually at trying to voucher or provide better coaching to players that can’t play. And it’s not working.
Despite having more US born players playing abroad than ever before, the just lost 5-1 to Colombia last week.
A team that they beat in the 94 World Cup.
That’s hundreds of millions of dollars, access to the best trainers and nutrition, money spent on world class coaching.
Yet 30 years later you’re getting a worse result against a Colombia team that is nowhere near as good as the 94 squad who was one of the favorites to win the World Cup that year.
I’ve seen some amazing players in travel when my son played U6 through U10.
Parents believed that those kids were “so special”.
Really? You know he’s the next messi huh
But some broke kid with a single mom doesn’t have the same talent or hasn’t been identified and never will be simply because he can’t afford it?
David Justice was just on a podcast and talked about travel baseball basically making inner city baseball obsolete to poor inner city kids and the number of young African Americans in the league in the 80’s to now is staggering.
In 1991 African Americans made up 18 percent of the league. Today it’s 6 percent.
Mookie Bets’ mom had to form her own team cause the local travel squad wouldn’t take him cause he was too small.
Altuve is a grown man at 5’6. I doubt any travel squad would take him. But maybe if he payed……
Both were mvp’s.
This ain’t a racial or a cultural thing. It’s an American youth issue. A lot of talent is being wasted and undiscovered because of money. And it doesn’t seem to be an issue in other countries the way it is here.
I haven’t followed the nba in a while so I began watching again in the playoffs.
The amount of foreign basketball players was intriguing. As of Oct 2023 there were 125 international players from about 40 foreign countries. And it’s not just average players. It’s all stars and mvp’s.
That’s crazy to think about for an old head like me. So what could be going on in the states that would have had such a drastic change n the landscape?
Was the talent in other countries always just as good and not discovered?
Is the talent in the US dwindling?
Has there been a dramatic decrease in the amount of youth participation?
Has there been a huge exodus of coaching to foreign nations?
Or is there something terribly wrong with the way the youth game is being played and coached, and or evaluated?
Is AAU pricing out the average player the same way academy soccer has basically made high school soccer irrelevant?
Maybe most in here don’t realize but D1 programs do not even recruit high school soccer anymore. They only recruit academy or travel soccer players.
Now imagine a world where Duke and Kentucky would only recruit AAU players because the high school game was so weakened simply because they priced out free basketball in school? What if all the best youth basketball coaches decided to just coach AAU?
The USA women’s soccer in the 80-90’s was an unstoppable international force.
Losing was an anomaly.
Even today, California alone has more registered soccer players than most European countries.
And yet you can no longer just pencil in a W for the women the way you used to. The difference then vs now…… academies and travel.
Also, news flash…. A nice amount of D1 women and men’s soccer are actually foreign players here on scholarship.
About 70 international women signed D1 LOI’s this year alone and about 60 on the men’s side.
Almost 15% of D1 basketball players are now international.
So despite the US having about 5 million youth soccer players, the coaches can’t find the talent and go outside the country to get players.
That sht is just a mind blowing to me.
And despite this AAU phenomenon and all the hype; d1 is 15 percent foreign? Wtf is going on?
The academy and travel system in soccer has disenfranchised so many talented young players simply cause they can’t pay to get that level of coaching.
US soccer has literally thrown money at the problem. But they throw it at these academies and training centers and not actually at trying to voucher or provide better coaching to players that can’t play. And it’s not working.
Despite having more US born players playing abroad than ever before, the just lost 5-1 to Colombia last week.
A team that they beat in the 94 World Cup.
That’s hundreds of millions of dollars, access to the best trainers and nutrition, money spent on world class coaching.
Yet 30 years later you’re getting a worse result against a Colombia team that is nowhere near as good as the 94 squad who was one of the favorites to win the World Cup that year.
I’ve seen some amazing players in travel when my son played U6 through U10.
Parents believed that those kids were “so special”.
Really? You know he’s the next messi huh
But some broke kid with a single mom doesn’t have the same talent or hasn’t been identified and never will be simply because he can’t afford it?
David Justice was just on a podcast and talked about travel baseball basically making inner city baseball obsolete to poor inner city kids and the number of young African Americans in the league in the 80’s to now is staggering.
In 1991 African Americans made up 18 percent of the league. Today it’s 6 percent.
Mookie Bets’ mom had to form her own team cause the local travel squad wouldn’t take him cause he was too small.
Altuve is a grown man at 5’6. I doubt any travel squad would take him. But maybe if he payed……
Both were mvp’s.
This ain’t a racial or a cultural thing. It’s an American youth issue. A lot of talent is being wasted and undiscovered because of money. And it doesn’t seem to be an issue in other countries the way it is here.