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  1. #175

    A Deep Pool of Soccer Talent Is Drying Up. Why?

    (From the New York Times)

    Angel Di Mara never went home. The summer of 2007 had been a good one. He was 19, and had spent a month or so in Canada, representing his country in the under-20 World Cup. He had excelled, scoring three times, and so had his team: Just as in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2005, Argentina won the tournament.

    So fast had his star risen that, when the plane carrying the team back to Buenos Aires touched down, Di Mara barely made it through passport control. When we landed, he got off our plane and onto the one that took him to Europe, said Hugo Tocalli, the coach of that team. Really, straight onto it..

    Di Maras first stop was Benfica, the initial step of a journey that would take him to Real Madrid, Manchester United and, now, Paris St.-Germain. He was not the first member of that young squad to cross the ocean. Three of his teammates including Sergio Agero had already been signed by European clubs. Nor was he the last: Within a year, nine more members of Tocallis team had been enticed away from Argentina.

    It was the same every time, said Tocalli, who was part of the coaching staffs for all five of Argentinas victories in that period. We went to Qatar and finished as champion. We went to Malaysia, finished as champion. And after each one, the players would go to Europe, and then they would go on to the senior national team..

    As he spools through the names, it is not hard to see why: Walter Samuel, Esteban Cambiasso, Pablo Aimar from the 1997 squad; Nicols Burdisso, Maxi Rodrguez and Javier Saviola in 2001; Fernando Gago, Pablo Zabaleta and, of course, Lionel Messi from the team that won in the Netherlands in 2005. Argentina, in those years, seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of impossibly gifted teenagers, ready to take the world by storm.

    Tocalli still works in youth development, as part of the technical staff at San Lorenzo. He still casts his eye over countless prospects. And he is still confident that Argentina produces top players. The talent is still there, he said. There are still players here..

    That may not have changed, but something has. A decade ago, 47 Argentine players featured in Italys Serie A; this year, only 24 are currently registered. In 2014, the Premier League employed 23 Argentines; this season that is down to 11.

    And, as the Argentine journalist Juan Pablo Varsky has noted, roughly half of those Agero, Willy Caballero and Sergio Romero among them are in the autumn of their careers. Their heirs have yet to materialize. Europe, not long ago, took players as fast as Argentina could develop them. Now, it seems, the production line has seized up.

    Judging What You Cannot Watch.

    A few years ago, two scouts from F.C. Copenhagen, the leading Danish team, arrived in Avellaneda a city just south of Buenos Aires to watch a prospect playing for Racing Club. The only problem was that they could not work out how, exactly, to get into the stadium.

    In Europe, there is a tacit agreement among clubs to make special provisions for scouts: complementary tickets offering a good vantage point, ordinarily among their peers, or in the more tranquil parts of a stadium, like the directors box or the press seats. In Argentina, scouting has always been a little more complex. Eventually, the two Danish scouts with their calls and emails to the club unanswered had no choice but to buy tickets and sit among the fans behind the goal. It was hardly the best place to assess a potential signing.

    The incident inspired Racing to make visiting scouts lives easier, but the clubs scouting coordinator, Diego Huerta, said it could still be complicated for European scouts to watch games live in Argentina. That stands in contrast not just with Europe but also much more pertinently with Argentinas great continental rival, Brazil.

    Brazil partly by virtue of history, partly because of sheer scale has long been soccers great exporter. In May, a report from the CIES Football Observatory showed that there were 1,535 Brazilians playing professional soccer outside Brazil. Argentina has never been able to match such a figure, of course, but not long ago it was getting close.

    In 2014, in fact, Argentina sold more players abroad than Brazil. In the years just preceding that, Brazil remained ahead by only the smallest of margins. Now, though, as Argentinas production line has collapsed the CIES found that it exported only 78 players in 2019 Brazils has ramped up again.

    Those involved in recruitment in Europe attribute that to two trends. One is the standard of youth coaching in Brazil, which many now regard as on par with that available in Europe. The other is the relative ease of doing business with Brazilian clubs. They invite you in, give you a tour of the academy, offer you a coffee, talk to you about players, said the head of recruitment for one major European team. They are more transactional..

    The effect, at the top level, is clear. Until 2014, there were more Argentines in Serie A than Brazilians. From 2014 to 2018, the same was true of the Premier League. Now, even in Spain, where a shared language has always made it easier for Argentine players to settle, Brazil is ascendant. In 2018, there were 39 Argentines playing in La Liga, and 21 Brazilians. This season, the divide has narrowed substantially: 25 Argentines and 20 Brazilians.

    It is tempting to believe that the explanation is accessibility. Brazils best teams invite scouts in for a tour; Argentinas, in some cases, do not even reply to emails. In a fast-moving market, clubs will instinctively favor the player they know more about; they cannot judge what they cannot see. Argentinas fall is a failure not of talent but of organization.

    To Huerta, though, there is a flaw in that argument. All of that was true 10 years ago, too, he said. It is complicated now, but it was complicated then. And the deals still got done..

    Expanding Horizons.

    Most front offices for most leading teams have, somewhere on their encrypted recruitment software, a list comparing the relative strengths of dozens of leagues across the world. On most lists, the Premier League and La Liga vie for supremacy; Germany tends to be third.

    The list functions as something between a crib sheet and an equation, a way of weighting players merits across countries and across contexts. If a team is watching two forwards, one in France and one in Portugal, the list enables the team to see what each players data profile means in relation to the other.

    The analytics firm 21st Club which supplies data and insights to a number of teams across Europe has its own model. Brazils top flight, Serie A, comes out sixth; Argentinas Superliga is eighth. We rate Argentinas best teams as marginally better than Brazils, but there is greater strength in depth at the top of Brazilian soccer, said Omar Chaudhuri, 21st Clubs chief intelligence officer.

    For recruiters, that makes Brazil an easier market to work in. Leagues with a big spread in quality can be harder to scout, Chaudhuri said. When youre watching Boca Juniors, say, against a weak opponent, it can be hard to gauge how impressive an individual performance really is..

    That problem was exacerbated in 2015, when the Superliga expanded to 30 teams. Though that number has now been reduced to 24, it is scheduled to rise again in response to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

    It is impossible that the level does not drop, Huerta said of a league that size. When teams watch games here, they see eight or 10 teams to watch, and besides that the level is really low..

    That is typical of the way the problem is framed in Argentina, as an issue at least partly of the countrys own making. Huerta points to a variety of factors ranging from wider economic issues forcing clubs to cut development budgets to the loss of Tocalli and of his mentor, Jos Pkerman, before him, from the countrys youth system. Tocalli bemoans the lack of foresight among the Superligas teams.

    There are only a couple of clubs with projects, he said. For too many, the result, even at youth level, is all that matters, not the development of players. They think about today, and not about tomorrow..

    Argentinas demise, though, cannot be attributed entirely to self-inflicted damage. The existence of those data-driven matrices comparing leagues is proof of a new market reality: Clubs horizons have expanded far beyond traditional markets. Teams hailed as cutting edge Udinese, Lyon, Porto and all of the rest now regard Argentina, like Brazil, as a premium market. They believe there is better value to be had in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.

    And they know how to find it: sifting through the reams of data provided about those historically lesser leagues, and then using services like Wyscout to watch as many games as they choose. That technological shift has expanded soccers horizons: Nigeria now exports more players than the Netherlands. Ghana has more expatriates than Belgium.

    At the same time, Europe has industrialized its own youth development. In the past, you did not have the highly technical German players, the English players, the Spanish players of this level, Huerta said.

    European soccer used to turn to Argentina and Brazil for the magic it lacked. Now, Huerta said, it tends to source combative players in South America. Talent? It can grow that on its own.

    He hopes that the drop in Argentine exports will be just a dip in the cycle, a natural lacuna before the players start emerging once again. There are some really interesting generations here, players who are 15, 16 and 17, Huerta said.

    Tocalli is right, in that sense: Argentina has never stopped producing players. It is just that, these days, Europe does not need them quite so much.

  2. #174
    Boca's caps are a chica magnet, BJ!

  3. #173

    Soccer aka fútbol - Boca Juniors


  4. #172

    Soccer-River vs Boca


  5. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by Vampire  [View Original Post]
    Soccer is still a fairly new game in the United States. Very few Americans over the age of 40 played soccer as kids. It has only started to get popular over the past 30 years or so. Give it another 10-20 years, and the United States will be one of the powerhouses.
    I agree things have changed in the last 30 year, but America has many other opportunities that most of the rest of the world doesn't have for their children.

    My experience in local sports, saw smaller less athletic kids migrating to soccer at around 8-years-old, solely because moms did not want their kids (boys) in contact sports. My son played 1 year on a neighborhood community team, which turned out to be a strictly and intentionally non-competive, he hated it because the kids played not to win/lose. He turned out to be a draft pick and ALL state left-handed pitcher.

    In my opinion, this 30 years of not producing any dominant players to represent America is because of a lack of athletic skill, poor coaching, poor competition, and if there's an athletic kid on the team he's the goalie, hence playing not to lose/win. Plus if an athletic kid does play a position in the field the opponent just plays keep away so nobody wins or looses.

    If and when American black kids become interested in soccer America is doomed for another 30 years of not being good enough to make FIFI tournament.

    Maybe our visiting southern border friends will take over American soccer.

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  7. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by WorldTravel69  [View Original Post]
    This is a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle writer Nick Hoppe.

    "Ireland (population 334,000) qualified.

    Uruguay (population 3.5 million) qualified.

    Croatia and Costa Rica (population 4 million each) qualified.

    United States (population 325 million people) - LOSERS!

    Out of 325 million people we couldn't find 11 guys who could beat Iceland's 11 best?

    Even San Francisco has twice as many people, and we can play all year round".
    Soccer is still a fairly new game in the United States. Very few Americans over the age of 40 played soccer as kids. It has only started to get popular over the past 30 years or so. Give it another 10-20 years, and the United States will be one of the powerhouses.

  8. #169

    American Soccer

    This is a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle writer Nick Hoppe.

    "Ireland (population 334,000) qualified.

    Uruguay (population 3.5 million) qualified.

    Croatia and Costa Rica (population 4 million each) qualified.

    United States (population 325 million people) - LOSERS!

    Out of 325 million people we couldn't find 11 guys who could beat Iceland's 11 best?

    Even San Francisco has twice as many people, and we can play all year round".

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  10. #168
    Messi shines when surrounded by his top-dollar Barca teammates.

    I have watched nearly every match of the tournament and the ones Argentina was in were, for the most part, dull. France and Belgium have looked the best, then England and lastly Croatia (IMO). This has been a great tournament and I like seeing the big names toppled by superior team play.

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  12. #167

    Messi IS overrated

    Quote Originally Posted by Vampire  [View Original Post]
    The goalkeeper situation was bad for Argentina. Romero was out with a knee injury. If they had him, they would've had a better shot to advance. Messi is very overrated. He is a good player, but I'd take Suarez or Cavani over any forward Argentina has. What was the deal with Sampaoli? Was he not allowed to coach after the Croatia loss? It looked like him and the players were no longer talking.
    Messi IS overrated, at this point anyway. Soccer is a young man's game.

    "team usa" didnt build off of 2014 like some people here said they would.

    But i like the idea that there arent any dynasties, it's better for the sport.

    Any country's team has the chance to take the trophy if they actively invest in their national programs and if they luck out in the genetic lottery with a few key players.

  13. #166

    Argentina

    The goalkeeper situation was bad for Argentina. Romero was out with a knee injury. If they had him, they would've had a better shot to advance. Messi is very overrated. He is a good player, but I'd take Suarez or Cavani over any forward Argentina has. What was the deal with Sampaoli? Was he not allowed to coach after the Croatia loss? It looked like him and the players were no longer talking.

  14. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by BayBoy  [View Original Post]
    Argentina wins 2-1, beats Nigeria on a late goal, moves on to the Knockout round. Messi got a goal in the first half. Even Diego Maradona was happy. Life is good in Argentina.
    Hopefully you guys got some free pussy that night!

  15. #164

    Argentina Wins

    Argentina wins 2-1, beats Nigeria on a late goal, moves on to the Knockout round. Messi got a goal in the first half. Even Diego Maradona was happy. Life is good in Argentina.

  16. #163
    Quote Originally Posted by TejanoLibre  [View Original Post]
    Howdy BB,

    How's it standing ? I mean hanging ?

    I'm worried about the San Francisco "Packers" this year Buddy !

    Lifelong "Cards" Fan !

    Please say Hola to my Boys ! now

    Be Well,

    TL.

    Just thought about you this morning as I passed by Plaza "Miseria!".
    Hola TL: The boys are doing fine and still kicking it. Oh you passed by my favorite place: Plaza 'Misery', say hello to the chicas there. I got money problems now, but when that gets cleared up will be back to Buenos Aires. I like the Xchange rate now, 28-1 is rocking.

  17. #162

    Excellent News !

    Quote Originally Posted by BayBoy  [View Original Post]
    Argentina is back in the chase to get to the final round. Iceland lost to Nigeria, big upset. But they have to win their last game.
    Howdy BB,

    How's it standing ? I mean hanging ?

    I'm worried about the San Francisco "Packers" this year Buddy !

    Lifelong "Cards" Fan !

    Please say Hola to my Boys !

    Be Well,

    TL.

    Just thought about you this morning as I passed by Plaza "Miseria!".

  18. #161
    Argentina is back in the chase to get to the final round. Iceland lost to Nigeria, big upset. But they have to win their last game.

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