Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup
A Historical and Cultural Reality Check
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- USD 34.99
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- USD 34.99
Descripción editorial
October 10, 2017. The U.S. men’s soccer team loses in Trinidad and Tobago, and fails to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Winning soccer’s greatest prize never seemed more distant. Immediate fixes—a new coach, a revamped professional league, a commitment to coaching education—won’t put the USA in the global elite. The nation is too fractious, too litigious, too wrapped up in other sports, and too late to the game.
In Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup: A Historical and Cultural Reality Check, Beau Dure shows what American soccer is really up against. Using hundreds of sources to trace more than 100 years of history, Dure delves into the culture that only recently lost its disdain for the global game and still doesn’t have the depth of soccer insight and passion that much of the world has had for generations. The difficulty isn’t any single thing—the mismanagement of failed leagues, the inability to agree on a path forward, the lawsuits that stem from an inability to agree, or the unique American culture that treasures its homegrown sports. It’s everything.
And yet, Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup is ultimately optimistic. Dure argues that with the right long-term changes, the U.S. can build a soccer environment that consistently produces quality players, strong results, and a lot more fun on the international stage. Soccer fans and skeptics alike will find this a fascinating examination of America’s past, present, and future in the beautiful game.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ranting Soccer Dad podcast host Dure delivers a clever look at the history and current state of American soccer. Dure covers the historical debates as to why soccer did not become one of the Big Three professional sports, beginning with the fact that the American Soccer League, established in the 1920s, "only covered the Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor." Despite the recent success of the U.S. women's national soccer team, Dure believes that the odds are against the men's team achieving similar success. For example, unlike the rest of the world, where soccer is wildly popular, in America, it takes a backseat to football, baseball, and basketball, which translates into less emotional and practical investment in the men's team. Dure notes that this was not inevitable, as the "U.S. sports landscape of the nineteenth century was wide open," and soccer had been played in America before 1900. While Dure may be correct in certain arguments that excessive litigiousness is a major contributor to the failures of men's professional soccer in the U.S., for example the granular detail he provides (e.g. Fraser v. Major League Soccer, the 2000 antitrust lawsuit filed by eight players) will make casual fans' eyes glaze over. Serious soccer fans are most likely to enjoy this ruminative complement to Bruce Arena's recent What's Wrong with U.S.?
