Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #338: A World Cup primer for general U.S. sports fans

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Greg and Belz talk about why you should care about the U.S. men's national team and watch them play at the World Cup. This is for sharing with friends and family, ideally. Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes (more than 50 this year) by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast, where we talk about U.S. soccer. This is a quick primer for the general American sports fan who wants to get plugged into the U.S. men's national team ahead of the World Cup. A few discerning scuffed podcast listeners suggested we do this and said they'd pass it around to friends and family, so we thought that's a great idea. And we're doing it. My name is Adam Bells. With me is Greg Velazquez. We've been making the scuff podcast for almost five years now, and we'll be talking about the World Cup a lot over the next couple

weeks. Greg, how you doing? Bells, I'm doing good. Anybody who's listening, welcome to the party because that's what the World Cup is. It is a month-long celebration of soccer and just the entire globe. Chaos and, you know, a lot of national pride and, you know, people living out the dreams that they've had since they were little kids of playing at a World Cup. So first, two bits of housekeeping. One, here's how the world. World Cup works because I think this is going to be um before we even get into the format of the World Cup like I just want to kind of give a quick quick like uh overview of what the World Cup actually

is it's it's a please once it's a once every four years tournament um that captures the attention and imagination of almost every single soccer fan in the world uh so it's it's not necessarily the best 32 teams um in the world uh national teams but it is a represent sample of teams from all over the world, countries from all over the world who send their best players. And the way we get to the 32 teams is a like two year qualification process where each country, yeah, each country plays in its own little regional tournament to determine who gets to advance into the final 32 teams. Once they get there, then Bells take it away for the format of how a, how the tournament progresses. Yeah, those 32 teams are split into eight groups of

four and each group of four plays a round robin and the top two teams advance to the knockout rounds so you play the u.s for instance plays wales on monday england on black friday and then iran on tuesday after that and the top two teams from those four will go on to the knockout rounds generally not always but generally one win and one draw is enough to get through to the knockout rounds. So that's kind of our target. As the U.S.'s target to get out of this group is to find a way to end up with four points after these three games, three points for a win, one point for a draw. And zero points for a loss. The other bit of housekeeping is we should probably just acknowledge how you probably think about soccer in America right now and tell you that you are correct

if you think this way. We have a good women's, this is how I assume a lot of people think. We have a good women's soccer team and by a comparison a pretty bad men's team and that's basically true you know relatively speaking the men are nothing compared to the women the women have won four world cups and have finished in at least the top four at every women's world cup that is like on the men's side that's like Brazil Argentina Germany level and they don't even do that well the u.s men have made it to the final eight once in the modern era basically since the tournament expanded into something resembling what we know it as now. And that was 20 years ago.

That was 20 years ago. So, you know, we just talked about how there are eight groups of four, two teams advance out of each group. So after the group stage, you get a round of 16 knockout. And at that point, it's just a single elimination bracket. And so we have one win in the knockout stage in sort of the modern era. All right. Well, the history of the World Cup, because back in 1930, there were only 13 teams.

we advanced out of the group and went straight to the semifinals where we got pasted 6-1 by Argentina. The men usually either get knocked out in the round of 16 or in the group stage. And as you may know, they missed the last World Cup by failing to qualify from our region. That failure was, I mean, totally unexpected and spectacular. Because prior to not making it to the 2018 World Cup, the men's team had qualified for 70s, straight final tournaments. So we'd made it to the actual big show seven straight times dating back to 1990 before crashing out in the 2018 cycle.

We came to think of it sort of as our right. And when we weren't able to make it to the World Cup, it really did hurt. I think everybody who's a big fan of soccer. So given this sort of mediocre history and recent history, why pay attention to the men at the World Cup? I have some ideas here, but... You get started. you've got a great first item here.

Well, we have the most talented group of players we've ever had, and they're very young, which is exciting. So just to try to explain this, the good national teams, like Brazil and France and Argentina and Germany, they have a lot of players playing at big clubs in Europe that you've probably heard of, like Barcelona, A.C. Milan, Juventus in Italy, Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Manchester City, and Arsenal,

clubs like that. the number of players a nation has at those kind of clubs, the ones who are competing for titles in the Champions League, which is the top level of professional soccer in Europe, is really a good proxy for how good that nation is at soccer and how well they might do at the World Cup. Now, up until about three years ago, there were no American players at famous clubs in Europe.

Really none. I mean, there were a handful here and there who kind of were on the bench for big clubs, but not really anybody playing a major role for a big club. And as it happens in the past three years, U.S. men's national team players have played for all of those clubs I just mentioned. That list I just gave. The American is typically not the best player on those teams,

not even close, actually, but this generation of American players is different from the past and that they are contributing for clubs like that. We don't know who's going to make a name for himself at this tournament, but the odds makers have Christian Pulisic as the most likely top goal score for the U.S. So maybe watch for him. You may have heard his name already, but this is, you know, I can't emphasize enough how unprecedented this is. You know, like you said, we've had players maybe dabbling toes at some of these clubs in the past,

maybe had a cup of tea at one. But at no point have we had players racking up the minutes, racking up the trophies, that we currently have for players who are playing their club soccer, which remember, this is different. It's like that anybody can play for any club team. You can play for a club team in any country. So these sort of super teams that Americans are now playing for is again, just unprecedented in our soccer history.

And it's why a lot of us who follow it really closely are so excited about this team. And I would say this level of talent gives the team a higher ceiling than past teams. Now, this team is young and has been injured a lot, so it hasn't fully coalesced under Coach Greg Burhalter. For instance, in September, we were quite bad and lost 2-0 to Japan and drew Saudi Arabia 0-0. But we have seen flashes of a successful formula.

And if Burrhalter can get these next three games right, we can get out of the group and I think we can challenge anybody on our day. So the whole range of possibility really is in play. Everything from losing three straight in the group to a quarter final run or even better, you know, if we really get lucky and really come together. And I also can't emphasize enough how rare it is for a team this young to be, to be showing, it's showing out in a World Cup, to even be there. like most teams that are in the World Cup just do not play the number of young players that we will be playing for this tournament.

So the phenomenon I'd compare it to for people of a certain age would be the Fab Five at Michigan. And I feel like that's the parallel for me is the excitement around throwing this kind of responsibility to this group of players. And I do feel like the excitement level is similar. again, how unique this is to just be like, okay, we're going to send a bunch of 22-year-olds and younger into these games against, you know, it's almost hard to even call the opponents their peers because their opponents are players who have been doing this for multiple cycles,

who have been playing at the highest level for several World Cup cycles, and we're just like, all right, well, let's throw our kids at them and see what happens. And they're really in it. I feel like they are in it with a chance to compete. It's a good comparison because we're, we have what's essentially a lineup of freshmen going into the World Cup. Not only with no World Cup experience, but just not much experience in general. The number three reason you should pay attention is this team is a reflection of something America can be proud of. The roster comes from a lot of different walks of life and is made up in large part of the children or the grandchildren of immigrants or the children of members of the military.

We've got players from Missouri, Georgia, New York, Washington, Texas, California, New Jersey, and of course, Hershey, Pennsylvania's own Christian Pulisic. We've got a scrappy defensive midfielder named Tyler Adams, who was raised by a single mom until he was 13, and now he plays in the Premier League for Leeds United. Our elegant winger Tim Wea is the son of George Wea, one of the better footballers of all time, and now the president of Liberia. Waya grew up in New York. Josh Sargent's dad is a carpenter in suburban St. Louis and his mom is a civil engineer.

Christian Pulisic's grandfather is from Croatia. Gio Rana's grandfather is from Argentina and Luca Delo Tore's dad is from Spain. There's a, I think, the sort of melting pot element of the U.S. is reflected well in this team and I think it's a pretty cool thing about it. Yeah, again, between that and the youth, this team has just an incredible dynamic. You know, the charisma, the personality present in this locker room is amazing. And it's, again, it's just fun. If you like watching sports and you like, you know, human stories that you get every four years at the Olympics, you are going to get all of those from the U.S. men's national team at this World Cup.

And the last thing is we sort of alluded to this at the beginning. But knockout tournaments are insane. As you know, if you follow March Madness, anything can happen. And the World Cup is the greatest one of all. all due respect to NCAA basketball. Anything can happen except that the same six or seven teams always win it. France went goalless and exited in the group stage at the 2002 World Cup after winning in 1998 and then winning the 2000 euros.

Russia went to the quarterfinals in 2018, not traditionally a soccer power. For the U.S., in the modern era, the next frontier is to make the semifinals. We haven't done that since 1930 and nobody has. predicting that we're going to do it this time, but it could happen. It could, right? I mean, it could. And like you're saying, the knockout, once you get to single elimination, it's crazy. Even in the group stage, things can get crazy.

A 90-minute soccer game has a lot of room for luck to play a part, which just gives underdog teams, which will be, you know, even though we're talking about how we have a lot of talent, we have that talent, our inexperience, you know, definitely does work against us. but we're good enough to get lucky. And I feel like that's going to be the big, like the big current for this group stage is to watch if we can play well enough to get lucky. And then if we can, how far can we ride that luck? And really, a lot of it does come down to this game against Wales on Monday.

I think both sides will sort of view it as a game that they would really like to win because they both have to face England, who is going to be heavily favored against everybody else in the group. And I guess my daydream is we score a couple nice goals against Wales on Monday, we beat them, and then the entire nation gets behind this team as we head to a Black Friday showdown with England. When nobody has to work, everybody can watch the game to two Eastern, 1 p.m. Central time. That's the time of the game on Monday against Wales as well. So that's the best case scenario.

Yeah, because how easy is it to root against snooty old England, right? Like their reputation and their way they sort of carry themselves even as a soccer team is exactly what you would expect based on England's history as a country. So it is extremely, I think, easy to really, it will be easy for the entire country to jump on board with our men's team to sort of show those uppity English soccer players and their whole culture, what's what? Yeah. We beat them once. We'll beat them again. In fact, soccer-wise, we, I was referring to the Revolutionary War there, but soccer-wise, we beat them in the 1950 World Cup and we drew them in the 2010 World Cup. So we are unbeaten against them at the World Cup so far. Hit that subscribe button. If you want to really dive into where this team was four years ago and the journey to get to where we are today, listen to episode 333. And if you really want to dive into, what this Wales game is going to be like. Check out the forthcoming episode, how we can beat whales, where we really dive into the opponent and how we want to approach them. So thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.