My response is OT for this board, so skip it if that bothers you.
Very interesting link. Maybe none of these guys has ever played soccer or could kick the ball through a barn door at ten feet, but the point remains: we don't see athletes of this calibre playing for our national soccer team. Maybe it's a matter of money (tho that's a chicken and egg thing) or maybe it's a matter of access to the sport while still a kid, but the fact is that the US Men's Soccer team doesn't represent the strength and diversity of the athletic talent pool in this country. This was never more apparent than during the Ghana game when a country the size of Oregon, with the population of Texas and a GDP that is half that of Vermont and smaller than that of 261 US companies, effectively eliminated from the tournament a team that the US Soccer Federation had spent four years assembling and that focused primarily on this tournament for the last two years (unlike the makeshift, thrown-together-at-the-last-minute US baseball and basketball teams that lost in international competition in recent years and that never practiced or played together).
BTW, are you aware that of the 15 Directors of the US Soccer Federation, only one, a man born in India, is a person of color?
