It wasn't just that the US Men's National Team lost 2-1 to Trinidad & Tobago last night, it was the lackluster manner in which they did it.
It's that USMNT Head Coach Bruce Arena said "no excuses" and then made several.
It's that people are actually asking if appealing a Panamanian goal is viable.
It's that US Soccer still doesn't get it.
And that's the problem. If an entity rots from the head then it's time for US Soccer President Sunil Gulati to do the honorable thing and step down. In fact, he should have done so immediately after the loss.
But soccer in the US, and the world to be honest, is a clubby atmosphere at the top in most cases and little things like wins and losses only matter to the fans. Barring arrest, and sometimes not even then, the leadership in world soccer is more entrenched than both sides in WWI.
What US Men's soccer needs right now is a full house-cleaning. They need to blow the whole thing up, break up the foundation and start fresh. With all of the money, resources and talent that the US has at its disposal failing to qualify for the World Cup in a 2nd Tier qualifying group (CONCACAF is not as weak as people say, but it's certainly not top-flight) is unacceptable.
It's so bad right now that fans are griping at Mexico for not doing the US a solid. Mexico, a team that was down four years ago during qualification but found a way, a team that has firmly planted itself atop CONCACAF with no legitimate threat to it's crown.
Yes, the USA won the CONCACAF Gold Cup but that's a tournament that few take seriously outside the US. Mexico had other, bigger designs, and a plan to get there. The US has always failed to understand that thinking, incorrectly, that winning local tournaments are a big deal.
In retrospect we should have seen this coming. During qualification for the last two Olympics the US Junior Men's National Team failed. Many of the same players that couldn't get that job done are on the senior roster today. And while it's easy to blame Klinsmann or Arena for this (and they share a lot of blame) the entirety of the US Soccer system is the real culprit.
It starts with the Junior leagues, where kids are taught a clinical game by coaches who, in some cases, don't know anything more about the sport than they learned from TV or in a workshop. There are high school coaches who's only knowledge of soccer is that they have read a book. I'm not kidding. And what has US Soccer done to address this? *crickets*
Pay to play will suck up a lot of the oxygen (rightly so) but, as the linked article states, it is just a symptom of the overall disease that is US Soccer right now. But in the US we're so worried about kids earning a soccer income that we outlaw the very thing that could make us more competitive. We also do a horrid job identifying talent, another systemic problem whose poison flows down from the top.
So, we don't find the best players, we don't coach the game correctly and then we take steps to ensure that US Soccer is one of the least diverse sports available. The result?
When Major League Soccer formed a horrible decision was made. It was a decision to administer the league like the National Football League, which ignored the successful model of the rest of the world (Promotion/Relegation) and removed any incentive for the owners to consistently produce a winning product. They also decided to play on a different professional schedule than the rest of the world, which certainly hurts come qualification time.
There's also the reality that MLS is not doing a very good job developing top-flight players at the international level. All of the truly great USMNT players in the last 20 years began their careers playing overseas, before some of them came back to the MLS and stagnated.
Clearly then the rot goes from top to bottom. Sunil Gulati should be the first to go, followed by Arena, followed by several more. The entire youth system needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the bottom up, College Soccer needs reform, as does the MLS.
The problem is, I don't think this will ever happen.
Already the excuses are being made that "The US was just 'between generations' of players and what we saw were the unfortunate results. The MLS is making money and there's no way the cabal of owners is gong to OK a system where they might have to be responsible for their poor decisions by getting shunted to the USSL for example, and Sunil Gulati will probably survive with his job.
Why? Because that's the way US Soccer is. Both US Soccer and a large portion of the media who cover it are a giant echo chamber that refuses to even listen to dissenting opinion. All of the players who act as commentators were players on the team and many are still beholden to the people in power. There is no onus to change as long as the golden goose continues to lay golden eggs, even if those eggs are getting smaller and smaller as time goes on.
There will be no meaningful change, and in four years from now the USMNT will try again, possibly with new players and a new head coach. They might even succeed this time, and might accidentally make it out of the group rounds. They'll lose in the Quarterfinals however because once there they will have to face a legitimate team.
If nothing changes that's the ceiling. What we're seeing now is the floor.
That alone should depress the hell out of you if you're a fan of the team.
On the bright side, I can start rooting for Spain from the jump in 2018.
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