Kansas Crimson

i don’t disagree, generally

i know my brother has forked out a ton for my nephew to play on his traveling team…3 or 4 national tournaments/year it seems like

Growing up (ages 12-18), I played on a select travel team and we participated in several national tournaments, as well as regional, every year. The cost back then was not cheap, so I can't imagine what it is these days.

We subsidized our costs by having day long bbq events. The fathers would all stand around massive, smoking hot grills and cook slabs of ribs, half/whole chickens and hot links in the Kansas summer.

Carpooling and packing players into hotel rooms proved to be cost effective too

Good times

Parents putting 4 kids per room and watching them get settled in to play 4 player GoldenEye on the hotel TV after a soccer tournament, whatever the hotel room cost in the late 90's.

Parents finding hotel charges to porn movies the next morning, priceless.

pdub wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:38 am Parents putting 4 kids per room and watching them get settled in to play 4 player GoldenEye on the hotel TV after a soccer tournament, whatever the hotel room cost in the late 90's.

Parents finding hotel charges to porn movies the next morning, priceless.

I was on a good south-central Kansas travel soccer team up until I was about 11 or so. In the best league and always finished near the top. Picked it over football much to the chagrin of my parents as they liked football way more.

We didn't go far for tournaments, but we went to Omaha, OKC, Springfield MO and KC. But a mom on the team worked for Nabisco. It was fantastic. Had all the oreos, crackers and more at our fingertips on each trip.

But yes, we all carpooled all the time. Just great times. Miss those times.

NewtonHawk11 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 11:11 am Just great times. Miss those times.

Indeed.

We had a really good team. It ruined high school soccer for me because our HS team sucked. Coach was the PE teacher. Assistant coach watched too much Euro League and thought we could run similar stuff, which was ineffective and frustrating.

Tore my ACL junior year. Decided to forgo playing senior year and focus on my social life LOL.

US Soccer has commissioned an investigation into the incident from 30 years ago.
So dumb.

What a thread. It's a shitshow.

Seems like some inaccuracies in here, but I think the evolution is mostly correct. Spoils system.

Weird feeling loss last night to Serbia. A lot of fresh faces making debuts. Mixed feelings. I hate when our players/coaches lose a game and then sort of act happy about it.

You play to win the game!

I don’t know who Serbia brought but that was USAs C team.

Be like if, for some reason, KU had an exhibition in January against Nova and he played Pettiford, Cuffe, MJ, Zuby and Udeh.

pdub wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 5:59 am I don’t know who Serbia brought but that was USAs C team.

Be like if, for some reason, KU had an exhibition in January against Nova and he played Pettiford, Cuffe, MJ, Zuby and Udeh.

I get it. But when you're trying to create a culture you don't do it by losing.

My point was, it doesn't matter who we brought, we shouldn't act so happy/encouraged about a loss (in my opinion). That doesn't mean there weren't positives to take away from the game. Or explanations why we performed below expectations.

Actually it’s more like if Elmarko, Jamari McDowell, Chris Johnson, Vyctorious Miller and Amier Ali were in an exhibition game and they lost.

But Elmarko had a double double and Chris Johnson scored 22 so people were encouraged by that.

They're literally 1 year away from next big competition. Don't have a permanent head coach yet.

Don't care about a result in January.

I prefer winning even if it is not an important game.

Sure.
But a win if we played poorly and just got a fortunate bounce isn’t as good as a loss where we played well and had two shots off the bar.

"Played well" is not exactly how I would describe what I saw. We were heavy betting favorites even with the newbies.

I would describe it as having some good moments and promising signs for the future....but ultimately gave up a lead and lost to what was thought of as an inferior team.

Curious to see how Saturday goes. Then a long break until March.

I haven't seen anything about this match, even its existence, outside of this thread. But what I can gather is that a national team threw together some young players whom have barely played together before for a friendly and without even having a coach yet.

Similar to when people overreact to the KU hoops scrimmages for the Bill Self campers when they have to patch the teams together with guys like Sherron and team managers.

Possession USA 62%.
Shots USA 20(5) - Serbia 11(6).
Corner kicks USA 9 - Serbia 3.

2 shots of both sides of the post in the second half ( which don't count as shots on goal ).
Walker Zimmerman the only starter who was at the World Cup.
An 18 year old goalkeeper.

:\

pdub wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:03 am Possession USA 62%.
Shots USA 20(5) - Serbia 11(6).
Corner kicks USA 9 - Serbia 3.

2 shots of both sides of the post in the second half ( which don't count as shots on goal ).
Walker Zimmerman the only starter who was at the World Cup.
An 18 year old goalkeeper.

:\

JUST WIN BABY. With your C squad against mabye a B or C squad for a decent country who also made it to the World Cup.

Long way to go but after watching brief highlights and reading some analysis from some soccer peeps I like, Brandon Vasquez and Cade Cowell looked very good at the forward positions. That's the position US needs more than anything right now.

US will have to work to keep Vasquez as an American player since he is a dual citizen. Cowell is still a teen and performing well for MLS San Jose.

Speaking of, Herculez Gomez just feels like a slighted former US player who shits on everything.