Thanks but no thanks Abby Wambach

Abby Wambach has been a great soccer player for the United States women’s team.  As such, she deserves for her opinions to be given some attention.  Her call for Jurgen Klinsmann to be fired because he is not paying enough attention to the US domestic players is ridiculous in the extreme.

First of all let’s put international women’s soccer into perspective.  It’s a Mickey Mouse competition in comparison to the men’s game.  There are, at best, three teams with any type of realistic hope of winning a world cup or the Olympics.  In fact, were it not for the need for other countries to grow the women’s game, they could just start with the final four and be done with it.  Don’t get me wrong.  I would like to see this change.  Anyone who follows women’s college hoops knows what I mean.  The competition there is Mickey Mouse.  And because of this, you have to put records and victories into their proper context.  Abby Wambach has achieved a lot.  And that’s great.  But in a competition so limited, this is really not much at all except that she has done a good deal to grow the game from virtually nothing.  The truth is, international women’s soccer is like swimming.  No one cares until it’s the Olympics or World Cup.  Maybe that will change tomorrow, but that is the way it is today.

The men’s game, in contrast, is far different.  There are scores of real teams out there and it’s a tough world in the jungle.  You would be hard pressed to find someone with Wambach’s accomplishments in the men’s game but then, those men are up against real players all the time, not just occasionally. 

Given this contrast, let’s look at Wambach’s comments.  She doesn’t like all the “foreign players” Jurgen brings into the team.  Foreign?  Earth to Abby.  Those are American citizens out there on the pitch.  As an American who lives overseas I find such comments distasteful.  I’m just as American as you are and I’ve been one for a lot longer than you have.  Those guys who play in Germany and other countries have just as much of a right to play for the US national team as any other American.  They are not “foreign.”  I guarantee you Abby if there was a German team out there who offered you 20 times what you could make in the  US, you’d be there like a shot.  And you would go for two reasons.  Those guys who play overseas play against better players, and are part of established mature no nonsense competitions.  If a middle-of-the-road Bundesliga team like Stuttgart whom I follow toured the USA and played all the MLS teams, we would soon see just how superior “foreign” players are to ours.  Again, don’t get me wrong.  I want this to change.  I want US players to get better.

The pressures on the men’s national team, and therefore its coach, are far greater than for the women.  The men are fortunate if they get out of their group.  With the women, it’s pretty much a given they’ll make the final four.  Jurgen needs to win now because he knows that winning games in a World Cup does more to grow the game in the US than just about anything else.  He must also pay attention to domestic based players while others must ensure MLS is not swamped by real foreign players, which I define as those who are not US citizens.  You know, the real definition of foreign. 

Making sure the domestic market has players who are improving is the job of grass roots soccer.  Jurgen’s biggest contribution to this effort is World Cup victories.  And to get those victories, Jurgen needs the best players on the pitch.  He has to weigh up whether to have an all-star team or perhaps take less talented players who play better as a team, but in general, he needs to win World Cup games. 

High schools and colleges and MLS itself can feed off of the national team to grow the game.  And the game is growing.  More parents are encouraging their sons to play soccer.  Soccer is watched by more and more people.  The standard is getting better.  But at the end of the day, when that ball is put into play in the World Cup, I want to “just win baby” as Al Davis famously used to say.  When it’s World Cup time, all that grass roots stuff takes second stage.  It’s time for the big boys to play and win because they’re playing the very best that 31 other countries have to offer and anyone of those teams could surprise anyone on any given day.

Jurgen Klinsmann was a real player on a real team that won the World Cup in 1990.  He knows what it takes to win a real competition.  You don’t Abby because you’ve never played in one.  And you don’t know what it’s like to play in front of 3 billion people.  Jurgen does.

The USA has a long way to go before it becomes a consistent soccer powerhouse.  But it’s getting there.  We have come a long way since the dark days when World Cup qualification was a distant dream because beating teams like Trinidad required divine intervention, and even then that might not be good enough.

So Abby, let the big boys work out what the big boys need to do in order to do well in a big boy world.  I truly hope women’s soccer will catch up.  It will never equal the men’s competition but it can get much better, and that will be better for everyone.

Some who follow the World Game might argue that England suffers from a lack of solid domestic players.  The premier League, some say, emphasizes foreign players so much, that when it is time for the English national team to play in a World Cup, they underachieve and disappoint.  There are two things worth noting.  England’s failures at World Cup level bolster my argument that the men’s game boasts big boys playing in competitions that are anything but Mickey Mouse.  It’s hard to win World Cups, even for nations where soccer is a religion.  The difference between the USA and England is that England does not need to worry about making the game more popular.  It already is.  The Premier League is perhaps the top domestic competition on earth in terms of prestige and quality.  If it’s not on top, it is right up there.  Perhaps England’s problem is not enough of them play overseas in the Spanish or Italian leagues.  But in terms of the international game, theirs is a selection problem.  For the United States, there is a quality problem.

In England, if the national team fails, the English will be upset.  They might even run the national coach out of town.  But when the sun rises the day after elimination, they will still love the game and premier and other division games will sell out.  For the US, if the national team fails, that will deal a severe blow to the game in general.  It is perhaps ironic that Abby Wambach, probably the greatest US player ever, who has played in many countries, doesn’t seem to understand the real world, and the US men’s national team’s place in that real world.