Infrastructure is not enough: USMNT failure obscures deeper problems with U.S. soccer

The immediate reaction to the USMNT’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia was unforgiving: clean house. Immediate reactions being what they are, this is a simplification of a complex problem, but also not without a large dose of truth.

If house is indeed cleaned, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, grand overseer of the most embarrassing night in U.S. soccer history, will presumably be among the first to go. But whether he goes or not (probably not), we might dwell for a moment on his comments in the aftermath of Tuesday night’s match against Trinidad and Tobago, when he raised an important (albeit self-serving) point, per Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl: “So wholesale changes aren’t needed if the ball that hits off the post goes in?”

This specific question — which is designed to make you doubt whether the most powerful man in U.S. Soccer should be judged on the performances of the teams it is his job to ensure are ready to perform — this specific question is almost unspeakably dumb. But it hints at an important point, which Gulati, if he were not a moron, may have made instead.

Namely, there was a scenario, which very nearly played out last night, in which the U.S. lost to Trinidad and Tobago and still qualified automatically for the World Cup. There was another scenario, even more likely, in which the U.S. lost to Trinidad and Tobago and still qualified for the playoff round of World Cup qualifying. In either of those cases, the USMNT would have played exactly the same qualifying campaign as the one they actually did — won three, drawn three, lost four, 12 points — and (probably) qualified.

It’s not hard to imagine what the national conversation would have sounded like had that scenario played out — because we had almost that exact conversation following the 4-0 win against Panama in Orlando last Friday. The conversation went like this: World Cup qualifying is about qualifying for the World Cup, no more, no less. It may not have been pretty, but we got there, and that’s what counts.

In this much, Gulati is right, or at least he would have been right if he made the point he seemed to be trying to make instead of asking the stupid nonsense-question he actually asked. The point is that Tuesday didn’t tell us anything about U.S. soccer we didn’t already know. If it did, we weren’t paying enough attention.

Sometimes failure can be useful, a necessary wake up call. This is especially true when it comes to massive, lumbering organizations such as the USSF, which is run by people whose understanding of the sport they oversee often seems to extend only as far as their own ability to avoid the questions they are asked about it. But what, exactly, is there to wake up to?

The changes U.S. Soccer has made in the past decade are only beginning to come into effect. The success of the U-17 and U-20 teams suggest the organization is doing something right, but since it’s too soon to tell for sure, and the responsibility for this current failure lies at the feet of a group of players who almost exclusively came of age in a soccer infrastructure that hadn’t yet undergone the changes the people currently in charge have tried to implement — because of all that, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what is going right and what is going wrong.

This doesn’t mean the people in charge shouldn’t go, or that changes shouldn’t be made, but it does mean we shouldn’t assume everything they did was a mistake.

MLS is thriving — which, in a cruel twist of fate, benefits other CONCACAF nations almost as much as it benefits the U.S. — MLS teams are beginning to embrace player development in a meaningful way and an exciting crop of young players, led by Christian Pulisic (probably the only person who has emerged from this debacle with any credit), will form the core of the squad that attempts to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. There are things to be excited about.

That isn’t to say the outrage at this current failure is unreasonable; it absolutely is. The USMNT failed to finish in the top four of a group of six teams, of which they are by far the biggest and richest, and at worst the third most talented. Whatever you think of Tim Howard, Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, et al, there’s no reasonable argument they are worse than their Trinidadian counterparts. They failed to do a job that should have been easy for them, pitch quality and weather and managers and infrastructure and refereeing decisions be damned. For that, they deserve the criticism they’ll receive.

But the outrage is also disturbing in the way it has led to some familiar handwringing about the integrity of America’s soccer culture, all of which seems to boil down to the old charge that this is a country that only cares about soccer once every four years. The assumption seems to be we need a World Cup to sustain us, to show us what soccer in the U.S. could look like, if only we figured it all out. This assumption is disturbing primarily because it so often feels correct. It felt very correct on Tuesday night.

In the past, I have argued against the idea a men’s World Cup is some sort of holy grail for soccer in the U.S. — if for no other reason than that three women’s World Cups seem to have made little difference — and now that argument seems worth making more than ever.

The American sporting temperament leans heavily toward hyper-organization, from youth soccer to high school soccer to college soccer all the way up to the national teams. But of course the wonderful thing about soccer, and the most compelling explanation for its massive global popularity, is that it thrives in disorganization. And it is in this aspect the U.S. has and continues to fail most significantly.

The national team infrastructure can no doubt be improved. Better coaches can be trained. Scouts can cast their nets farther and wider. MLS teams can do more with their academies. We can do much, much more to ensure low-income children have access to the system. The USMNT’s most recent failure is a good excuse to ensure we improve in these areas going forward.

But if the entire apparatus of U.S. soccer is directed toward the goal of a winning a men’s World Cup, the apparatus will have failed. We can’t allow the vitality of our soccer culture to be equated with the strength or weakness of our infrastructure, or the performances of our national teams.

So: hate the USMNT right now. Demand changes. Be angry at Gulati and Klinsmann and Bruce Arena and the players. But first, love the game. Always, always, love the game.