WC 2018 qualifiers & ostali reprezentativni fudbal

Daï Djakman Faré wrote:crnogorci bezubi

#Syria: Thousands took to #Damascus' streets, celebrating their national team's qualification to World Cup playoffs pic.twitter.com/bhHaH9tfXQ

— Maher Al Mounes (@Maher_mon) September 5, 2017

What would missing the 2018 World Cup mean for soccer in America?

The thought sends chills down spines throughout American soccer. It has to. Because when the fear of momentous failure meets the fear of an unknown, anxiety becomes acute. Worry multiplies. The possibility of that failure becomes overbearing: This couldn’t really happen, could it? Could it!?!

Heading into the most important World Cup qualifier an American soccer team has played in 28 years, such a possibility is exactly what we are faced with. In seven days, it could become a disheartening reality. In seven days, the United States men’s national team could be eliminated from contention for the 2018 World Cup. Seven days. Holy s***.

Before we talk about implications or ramifications or catastrophic consequences, it’s worth noting just how unfathomable a concept that is to so many American soccer fans. An entire soccer-loving generation has been reared not on the possibility of two month-long parties every four years, but on the knowledge that both will occur, and that its national teams will be invited   It’s an underappreciated assumption that we’ve been innocent enough to make   . Indeed, it’s been a privilege. Only seven nations have participated in every men’s World Cup since 1990. Only three have appeared at every men’s and women’s World Cup since then. The U.S. is one of the three.

And because many middle-aged men and women who currently consume the sport are post-1990 converts, the vast majority of the U.S. soccer fan base has no idea what it feels like to miss a World Cup. Until now, many probably didn’t even consider the possibility. And yet here we are. In seven days, we might be able to erase all this worry from our memories. In seven days, we also might be staring at 101 months between our men’s national team’s appearances at World Cups. It’s worth noting the foreignness of the concept, because nobody really knows what the consequences would be. Heck, a small minority of fans would probably argue that those consequences will be positive ones. (They’d be incorrect.)

But we can engage in educated speculation, and educated speculation would lead us to a pretty clear conclusion: A failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup would be damaging for soccer, and particularly men’s soccer, in the United States. It would not be catastrophic or disastrous. But it would be harmful.

Soccer in America has progressed to a point where it does not need a World Cup to survive, or even to sustain long-term growth. But the beneficial offshoots of World Cups are plentiful. To miss out on them would hurt. And there are both strong theoretical claims and evidence to back that up. If the ultimate goals are thriving professional leagues and world-class national team programs, World Cups contribute to the mission in many ways. Most importantly, they generate interest in the sport. That interest takes many shapes.

First, it inspires youth participation. Members of the current men’s national team have pinpointed 1994 as the experience that hooked them to soccer. Stars of the 2015 World Cup-winning women’s national team have spoken about the galvanizing effect of the 1999 edition. Both the ‘94 and the ‘99 tournaments were held in the U.S., but others, especially given the breadth of TV and online coverage nowadays, replicate those effects, even if to a lesser extent.

On Friday, the same day the senior men’s national team battles Panama in Orlando, 21 American teenagers will represent the U.S. at the Under-17 World Cup in India. As 9- and 10-year-olds, they watched Landon Donovan beat Algeria at the death in 2010. Millions of children across the country watched. And millions of children in the past have been able to point at Donovan or Clint Dempsey or Jozy Altidore on a TV screen and say, Hey, I want to be him someday.

If similar children – the ones who could represent the U.S. at the U-17 World Cup eight years from now, and senior World Cups thereafter – don’t have Christian Pulisic to point at next summer, that’s a missed opportunity. To think that a young boy flirting with the sport could go from age 6 to age 14 without watching a U.S. men’s national team at a World Cup is slightly distressing.
If the United States misses the 2018 World Cup, what are the realistic implications for soccer in this country? (NBC Sports)

A failure to qualify, therefore, would shrink the player pool. It would be detrimental to development efforts, and to the talent level and depth of future national teams. How detrimental? It’s impossible to know — again, in the modern era of U.S. soccer, such a scenario is unprecedented. It would by no means cripple the men’s national team program. But the effects probably wouldn’t be negligible either.

World Cups also propel fandom. The quadrennial spikes in interest generally subside, but the interest settles in above pre-World Cup levels. Over the past 15 years, MLS has seen its three biggest year-over-year increases in per-game attendance in 2007 (8.2%), 2011 (7.2%) and 2015 (12.6%). And since 2007, it has never seen a decrease of more than 2.6 percent. There are various explanations for the pattern, but men’s World Cups are surely one of them.

Fan interest, in turn, puts more money in the pockets of the organizations in charge of promoting and improving soccer in the U.S. You can levy all kinds of legitimate criticism against MLS and the United States Soccer Federation for how they reinvest the money they make. But more revenue is unequivocally good for soccer in the United States. And World Cups bring revenue.

USSF made $66.7 million in the financial year ending March 2011, up from $42.3 million the previous year, and more than the $56 million it went on to make the following year. In the financial year ending March 2015, it made $100.5 million, up from $76.6 million the year before. The 2015 Women’s World Cup contributed to another steep rise to $125.3 million in the year ending March 2016.

Interest begets money, which begets improvement, which begets more interest, and so on. A failure to qualify would interrupt that cycle. The growth of the game would hit a snag.

The contrarian argument here is that failure would provoke necessary change, and that U.S. boys’ and men’s soccer would be better off in the long run because of it. But that argument implies that complacency is plaguing growth, that there is not an understanding that things have to change.

That understanding exists. There has been an acknowledgment that the youth system is grievously flawed, and that scouting and coaching have to improve. Thousands of people are working to address those issues. Whether the U.S. makes or misses the World Cup does not influence their work.

The men’s national team will also likely have a new manager by the time 2022 qualifying rolls around, regardless of Friday’s and Tuesday’s results. There is no direct and exclusive line from failure to change, much less from failure to change to success.

Oh, and you know why else missing the World Cup would be detrimental? Because it would suck. It just would. It would suck for all of us who want to have fun next summer. It would suck for FOX, which paid hundreds of millions of dollars to televise the event under the assumption that the USMNT would headline its coverage. It would suck for the club careers of national team players. It would suck for the reputation of American soccer.

But to be clear, the ramifications would not be the reciprocals of qualification in 1990 or hosting in 1994. Those successes gave American soccer the boost it needed. It has since grown from nascent to fragile to stable, and is still growing. Failure on Friday and Tuesday might lead to temporary stagnation. But a permanent setback? Probably not. American soccer has graduated from adolescence. It can handle a little, or even a lot, of adversity.

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