*Soccer post: USA's Oguchi Onyewu signs with AC Milan.
- Thread starter JohnDawg
- Start date
leave Europe to play in the NBA. Dominican baseball players come to the US to play. What's the difference? Coach was saying that the top athletes don't choose soccer because there's no money in it, and that is completely false. It's just a matter of where you play, just like every other sport in the world. Just so happens that most sports top leagues are in the USA. Soccer is the exception.
he was saying top US athletes don't choose soccer because one reason is you have to leave the country to get paid unless I misunderstood what he was saying.
dawgstudent said:
Basketball is moving in the same direction. I wouldn't be completely shocked to see Lebron head to Europe in a couple of years.
people are purposely missing his point -- the same people who think it is cool to talk about equalizers, tables, and kits.
I do believe that if Americans were equally motivated to perform well in soccer as European nations, we would be a world power. We can debate the reasons for the lack of motivation all day long, but all that is beside the point. The fact that soccer is an extraordinarily popular participation sport pales in comparison to the fact that the majority of our top athletes don't view it as a means to superstardom.
One American decides that he wants to dominate the world in something as mundane as competitive eating and he does so. I, for one, believe in Manifest Destiny. If the country ever decides to make soccer part of the national fabric (as European countries have done) and become a dominant force in the sport, it will be so. The fact that most of current soccer players come from a generation in which soccer was barely a blip on our sporting radar and we are still one of the top twenty playing nations (or thereabout) is pretty extraordinary.
Look no further than golf. The trilogy of all-time greats - Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Bobby Jones - in this centuries-old game started in Europe and played in this country no earlier than the middle or early part of the 19th century are all Americans.
I do believe that if Americans were equally motivated to perform well in soccer as European nations, we would be a world power. We can debate the reasons for the lack of motivation all day long, but all that is beside the point. The fact that soccer is an extraordinarily popular participation sport pales in comparison to the fact that the majority of our top athletes don't view it as a means to superstardom.
One American decides that he wants to dominate the world in something as mundane as competitive eating and he does so. I, for one, believe in Manifest Destiny. If the country ever decides to make soccer part of the national fabric (as European countries have done) and become a dominant force in the sport, it will be so. The fact that most of current soccer players come from a generation in which soccer was barely a blip on our sporting radar and we are still one of the top twenty playing nations (or thereabout) is pretty extraordinary.
Look no further than golf. The trilogy of all-time greats - Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Bobby Jones - in this centuries-old game started in Europe and played in this country no earlier than the middle or early part of the 19th century are all Americans.
There isn't a strong summer league over there to rival MLB. They do have a winter league- I'm a big fan of the Licey Tigres, but that's another thread- and a lot of the Dominican players play over there during the winter. They also have a Dominican Summer League, but it's rookie ball, and is basically for evaluation purposes.
A better example would be Japan's Nippon Baseball League. They've actually gotten some American players to go over there and play, and have been doing so for years, but they've never been able to attract a major star to go over there in his prime. The closest that they could claim would be Bob Horner in 1987, but the main reason that happened was because of collusion. It's usually guys like Tuffy Rhodes who palyed very briefly in the Big Leagues, but was a AAAA player, or guys at the end of their careers like MSU's very own Bobby Thigpen. A few guys have gone over there and starred like Cecil Fielder and then come back to star in the Big Leagues, but not many.
I don't know very many Americans that would want to go over there, and they pay fairly competitively to MLB- you would get more playing in Japan than in AAA for sure.
A better example would be Japan's Nippon Baseball League. They've actually gotten some American players to go over there and play, and have been doing so for years, but they've never been able to attract a major star to go over there in his prime. The closest that they could claim would be Bob Horner in 1987, but the main reason that happened was because of collusion. It's usually guys like Tuffy Rhodes who palyed very briefly in the Big Leagues, but was a AAAA player, or guys at the end of their careers like MSU's very own Bobby Thigpen. A few guys have gone over there and starred like Cecil Fielder and then come back to star in the Big Leagues, but not many.
I don't know very many Americans that would want to go over there, and they pay fairly competitively to MLB- you would get more playing in Japan than in AAA for sure.