The United States Men's National Soccer Team gave it their all in a 2-1 loss to Belgium in the World Cup. While the USMNT didn't win, the team did improve. This was the first time in back-to-back World Cups that the U.S. advanced out of the group stage. The U.S. also advanced out of what was a very tough draw for its group.
Sure, the U.S. earned a draw against Portugal after a win against Ghana, but the team outplayed Portugal most of the game. That doesn't happen often, and the U.S. didn't give up a ton of goals to Germany in a 1-0 loss.
Soccer for the U.S. is like basketball for the rest of the world. When we send our best players, we own every basketball tournament in the world, but other countries put us in our place with soccer.
It has taken some time, but the talent gap in both sports is starting to shrink. That doesn't mean the rest of the world should eye our Olympic basketball gold medal any more than we should be thinking of holding the World Cup trophy anytime soon. What it does mean is that one day, the talent gap will close. One day, the sports world will be shocked as we lose an Olympic gold medal against a better team. The same will happen when the U.S. shocks one of the big boys of the soccer world in the World Cup.
When the U.S. starts beating Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and other good soccer nations on a regular basis, it will signal that we have finally arrived in the sport. The rest of the world takes that view of basketball. We are the yardstick that other countries use to measure their progress in the sport, and we use the top teams in the rest of the world to measure how far we have come in soccer.
American soccer will finally come into its own when we find the LeBron James of goal-scorers in the sport. We must find someone that talented on the pitch, who can produce goals for the U.S., to finally start challenging the rest of the world. We need that player that the rest of the world fears on the pitch like everyone fears James on the court.
U.S. soccer is getting better, and one day we will be contenders for the World Cup. We just have to find our homegrown superstars.
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