Reuters recently followed up on a report in Spanish sports newspaper AS about the number of soccer players registered for play in the Champions League. While plenty of numbers stand out, perhaps the biggest concern for U.S. Soccer is this: only one USA player is on the list.Technically, it should be two, since both DaMarcus Beasley of Rangers and Freddy Adu of Benfica have seen Champions League action this season. Adu, however, is a joint national of both the U.S. and Ghana, so he could be one of the four Ghanaian players registered.
Compare just two Americans, though, with the 98 Brazilians, 64 Frenchmen and 55 Italians currently playing in the biggest club competition on the planet. Is it any coincidence that those three countries have won the last three World Cups?
American soccer players are starting to make inroads in Europe, and while many of them play clubs in other countries' top leagues, few of those clubs have a real shot at European competition. Perhaps more U.S. stars would do well to find their way onto the rosters at places like PSV Eindhoven, Porto and Olympiacos, rather than Fulham, Reading and Watford. English experience helps, but international club competition will do the most to prepare national teams for 2010.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-01-2007 @ 8:17PM
The Capn said...
First of all your last to articles on football, absolute rubbish. What does the appearance of Rooney and Tevez have anything to do with playing the game? Mind the fact that Rooney has one of THE hottest g/f even though she is a scouser. Furthermore I did not know that male writers would care about the appearance of footballers and rate them accordingly. Enough about that article, which might be THE dumbest thing I have ever read. Now, in response to your "Champions League," do you watch any games? EVER? If you didn’t know the schedule you play qualifiers which depends on last year's league finish, 6 games of group play and then a round of 16, 8, 4 with 2 legs and a single leg final. Add them up and you get and astonishing 13 games played after qualifiers which are useless matches. Your rationale is this. American footballers should play on lesser teams in lesser leagues because they get to possibly play 13 more games. Excuse me but did you take note of the semi-finals last year? 3 English clubs and one Italian. No offense to the Dutch or Portuguese clubs or leagues but they are inferior to England, Spain, and Italy. Germany, France and Scotland are in between. Yes I will admit Ajax and PSV along with Celtic and Ranges from Scotland, and PSG from France, have had some very good years, but they are few and far between, and once they do all of the top clubs pluck their players (i.e. Ronaldinho transferred to Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo transferred to Man Utd; Ronaldinho played for the French side PSG and Ronaldo for the Portuguese club Lisbon). My statement is this why play in a lesser league when American footballers are playing week in and week against THE best. That for your information is a total of 38 games played and if I must dumb it down further 2 against each team. They may not be on Manchester United or Barcelona or AC Milan but playing against them sure as hell beats playing in the MLS for one and some feeder European Leagues. The reason why, if you must know, America is lack-luster in every world cup is because of the way Americans develop their players. However, I will save that for the time you comment on the American Youth System. (PS here’s a clue… there is none.)
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