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And with that comment about our crappy soccer team we have now missed another World Cup.

I find your comment somewhat strange since the US has not missed a world cup in a very long time, but I understand your sentiment. I suggest you watch the women play. The US has a very good women's team and actually the women's game has come a LONG way recently. It's not on par with the men's game obviously, but the games look a lot more similar to the men's game then it used to. They use the whole field, move the ball back and forth, maintain possession, build up with quick passing, counter at times etc. And I'm not just talking about the US, I'm talking about all the top teams. I remember when the US just completely dominated play and basically they just kicked the ball to the front and let Kristine Lilly and Mia Hamm run it down and score. It's not like that anymore. There are a lot of talented players on a lot of teams and the games are very evenly matched and mostly enjoyable. Give it a shot. I love watching the US women's national team play, the US men's national team makes me gag.

I'm kind of derailing but I can assure you I am very familiar with women's soccer. I have coached or been part of teams that included girls playing or have played in the past for many top 10 colleges. Current players are starting at North Carolina, Duke, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Florida, Florida State, Villanova, and UCF.  In fact, have known several current and former women on the national team.  I was president of what is now Orlando City Youth (Formerly Seminole Soccer Club) for many years.  We are one of the very few clubs to own their own complex including a stadium. Michelle Akers is from here. Ashlyn Harris, the goalie for both Orlando City and the national team played in our club for my Girls Director. The national teams have trained there on many occasions and we have had many of the national team players on our team. Currently Alex Morgan and the best female player in the world Marta plays here.  As other nations have develop their own leagues and are actually training their women, we are losing ground there too.

We also host many International teams while they are in town so I actually get to see what good soccer is supposed to look like. Barry Hulshoff from Ajax used to coach at our club as well so I learned a lot about "football" from him and his protege'.   

I see how other places train and it isn't based on how much money mommy and daddy can pay and that's the biggest issue with soccer.  Kids with a head for soccer need to be trained. Our problem is only rich kids and big and fast poor kids get trained so it limits our ability to grow. Everyone is worried about winning in the short term so mommy and daddy can show off JRs trophies. College football mirrors that but the parents are replaced by boosters.

At risk of just you and I posting, I agree with everything you said, but there's a couple other things besides what you mentioned that also prevents the US from excelling in Soccer and that's FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, BASEBALL and to a lesser extent HOCKEY. There's so many talented kids that play multiple sports and soccer tends to get pushed to the side at some point in the kids growth that we lose out on a lot of kids that could be terrific soccer players if they just stuck with it or got the training they needed. It's not like that in a lot of these other countries that we play against in the world cup, in fact it's just the opposite. Kid is good at both Basketball and Soccer in Germany, 1 guess which one he ends up playing or at least which one is pushed more on him. Just makes sense they end up with best soccer players and the US ends up with the best Basketball and Football players. At least that's a part of it.

Forgot to mention that's why I feel the US has done much better with the Women's national team overall. There's not as much competition for Women athletes in other sports, the best ones have as good or better chance of playing professional soccer as they do any other sport.

Probably a dumb question, but why don't major nations just make it in every year? -- expand the tournament.  There's certainly demand for it and money to be had.

I thought this should be split into it's own thread.

The question now is what does U.S. Soccer do to get back to the World Cup? We are at a crossroads here as several players should have suited up for their last memorable matches (Howard and Guzan are both finished in my opinion, Dempsey, Zusi, Beasley, and several others) and I have not been impressed by much of the youth as they have not been able to qualify for the Olympics either. Basically Pulisic is it. I'm in favor of some sweeping changes personally. I think Gulati has given us all he can and we should probably look at replacing Arena as well (I've always like him and trained at his camps when he was at UVA).

Because the tournament is already a month long as it is with 32 teams. There are plans to expand the field again but just saying all major nations qualify is not a good answer. Qualification is part of the process. Do you hear anyone with an effective argument for taking every NFL team into the playoffs?

I don't really think this is a fair comparison.  The World Cup doesn't feel like playoffs of a league to me -- it's more like a global event, akin to the Olympics (which I understand you still have to qualify for.)

Expand the field and give the top 20 countries, population-wise, auto-bids.  I don't know diddily dick about soccer, but it just seems like a shame to leave a major nation, with major money, major interest, etc -- out of a tournament that only occurs every 4 years.

My thoughts - Iceland, with a population of 330K made the Cup.  Even if the U.S. is not getting their top tier athletes to play football, their 6th string athletes ought to be better than Iceland's.  Poor play and poor coaching led to this debacle.  It's embarrassing.  As for competing to win the Cup, sure all the other arguments do come into play as to why the U.S. may never win the World Cup.

Still a terrible idea and since you don't know diddily dick about soccer, I'll show you why. Below is a list of countries by population (based on the first Google result I received) and the number of World Cup appearances with their last one in parenthesis. That isn't a tournament people want to watch and eats up qualifying positions from a number of soccer powers.

1   China – 1 (2002)   
2   India - 0   
3   United States – 10 (2104)   
4   Indonesia – 1 (1938)      
5   Brazil – 21 (2018)      
6   Pakistan - 0      
7   Nigeria – 6 (2018)      
8   Bangladesh - 0      
9   Russia – 11 (2018 automatic bid as the host, previously 1990 as the Soviet Union)      
10   Japan -    6 (2018)   
11   Mexico – 16 (2018)      
12   Philippines - 0      
13   Ethiopia - 0      
14   Vietnam - 0   
15   Egypt – 3 (2018)      
16   Turkey – 2 (2002)      
17   Germany – 19 (2018)      
18   Iran – 5 (2018)      
19   Congo, Democratic Republic of the – 1 (1974)      
20   Thailand – 0

Zusi used to play our club too! His sister and my daughter played together at one point.

Unlike football, soccer is about being dynamic. Being able to see things before they happen. You can only get there by taking chances and not being afraid to make mistakes. You have to fail a lot before you succeed. In the US we teach kids not to make mistakes so they never develop a Messi attitude. The best soccer player in the world is 5'7" and weighs about 155 lbs. He is far from being one of the best athletes in he world from a physical stand point. He can see things before they happen and do things no one else can. In the US if you tried to do that in youth soccer you'd fail and then get benched. In Spain they don't keep score in the youth so the kids keep trying. I don't know how you get past that when parents are spending thousands of dollars to watch little Johnny and Suzi play and get trophies they can post on Facebook.

Fair point -- what about an automatic bid for countries of that size that have qualified in the last 20 years or something like that?

2 things

1 -
The best player in the world is 6'1 and weighs 175

2 - the US team already has by far the easiest qualification route to every world cup, there are 3 qualifiers from concacaf. Other than mexico, you're competing against countries with comparatively tiny populations.  losing to trinidad and tobago is absurd. It would be like a major european team losing to andorra.

Chile also didn't make it into the world cup this go around and they're the current south american champions. Holland failed to make it in from europe and they've traditionally been a staple in world cups. There's no entitlement in qualifying for the world up. If you want in, then win and you'll be in. That's all there is to it.

Pay to play hurts the US in developing talent, yes. But jettisoning Klinsmann for washed up Arenas was a mistake. He had gotten the US qualified before, he was working with an aging squad and he was given 2 games and then the boot. Rumors are he lost the locker room and they players wanted him out, and if that's the case, the players have only themselves to blame in all this. He at least had a realistic evaluation about the current crop of players. Sometimes playing ugly and winning beats trying whatever the crap Arenas was trying to pull with his lineups and losing.

If a country with a top 20 population can't field a team that can beat a small country, they don't deserve to be in.  Q.E.D.

Hahaha I'm assuming you are going with Ronaldo? Either way he weighs over 25lbs less than Jarvis Landry. Most soccer players are small in comparison. The NFL and the NBA are not stealing those players in the US unless intelligence is only is our larger guys.

Arena went 10 wins-2 losses-6 draws in 11 months at the helm compared to Klinnsman's 6 wins-6 losses record in his last year so I'm not sure your point has any validity. While I agree with everyone that there is no excuse for losing to T&T, opening the Hex with a home loss to Mexico and a trouncing by Costa Rica away set the stage the the rest of the cycle.

Arena has stepped down and it was a move I expected. The process is starting I guess.

True, but peewee football, little league baseball  and youth basketball often gets the talent over youth soccer.  When the kid is 8 and starts down the football route it doesn't matter that at age 18 he is built for soccer not football.  He has never played soccer so just because he  didn't get a football scholarship doesn't mean he can now develop it to a world class soccer player

You have got to be kidding.  That would be like assigning wildcard spots in the playoffs based on the size of the city the team plays in.

I don't think it's quite fair to compare weight.  I think NFL players would train to put on much more muscle than soccer players would.

I think if Deion Sanders, Allen Iverson, Griffey Jr., Barry Sanders, and Jerry Rice had grown up outside of the USA they would have been star soccer players.

I dont understand why this is a big deal? The US has never been a power is soccer so why or who cares?

I guess there are soccer fans somewhere in this country that care.

We have been considered a power in our region up until now, so it is a big deal.

I know what your saying but I promise you soccer is won and lost between the ears. Europeans know soccer and how it should be played at early ages. Because of money and other distractions the US kids are taught a different game. Even now with the team being better than ever our woman are falling as other countries are training their women.  It's getting better as US soccer has created academies to try and control things but it's still behind ... and very expensive.

I disagree with the premise, which is that the US is falling behind the rest of the world because we aren't spending enough money on expensive soccer programs.  Brazil and Argentina are not a soccer powerhouses because they spend billions of dollars on soccer academies that suburban middle class kids attend.  They are soccer powerhouse because every poverty stricken child starts playing soccer almost as soon as he can walk.  When the kids get much older only then the cream of the crop wind up with extra coaching and learn the finer points of the game.  Much like how every innercity kid plays basketball in the park and only if they are good enough to get a college scholarship do they actually learn the finer points of the game.  The difference between the US and Brazil isn't that Brazil spends more money, but that in Brazil most five year olds are in the park kicking around a soccer ball and in the US they are dribbling a basketball and shooting hoops or are tossing a football back and forth. 

One of the reasons soccer is the most popular sport in the world, is fundamentally it is one of the least expensive.  All you need is some space and a ball.  Almost anything can be used as goal posts.  Basketball is popular in cities because it requires very little space. 

Keep in mind a disproportionate number of  NFL and NBA players come from household that are in poverty.  Same with many professional soccer players in other countries.       

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying parents spending thousands of dollars a year for little Johnny and Suzi to win are killing it.  Coach says kick it to the fast player and watch them run instead of teaching them to knock the ball around.  They need to learn how to play out of the back or be dynamic with the ball which comes from lots of attempting and failure. Instead they are teaching them how to win young but not play the game the way the rest of the world is. Coach has to make that money.

One of the best coaches I know used to sit in a lawn chair during the game and never raise his voice except to tell each player when to go in. that is very counter intuitive to the way american coaches coach. they usually scream and yell directions. Instead his players learned to play the game. to take risks and to recover from mistakes they had made. He does his coaching on the sidelines or at practice and couldn't care less about winning. He refuses to change people regardless of the score.  Needless to say many parents hate him but he has players playing in Europe today so it's obvious he knows what he is doing. he has also ended up with some pretty good teams.