Didn't read the post, but the problem is that in most top soccer countries, soccer is the number one sport, light-years ahead of everything else. In the US, several other sports are more popular, which drains the talent pool. Kids grow up immersed in soccer culture in places like Brazil, Argentina, Germany or Spain in a way that simply isn't as common in the US.
I think that is a contributor to the problem but the real problem is we do not yet know how to develop talent consistently in the US. FC Barcelona is easily the world reference recruiting kids around 7-8 years old and building them mentally, physically and tactically into incredible players. Something like half or more of their current roster came through la masía at some point. And something like half the Spain world cup roster plays for Barcelona.
There are soccer academies in the US but it is still relatively new and we do not have a great development model yet. Youth academies are also fairly antithetical to how talent pipelines work for the established US sports.
I mean you could say that baseball academies in Brazil aren’t good yet either, but I wouldn’t say that it’s because they “don’t know how to.”
It’s just that Brazil currently doesn’t care about baseball that much and baseball first has to become popular, except they already have soccer plus even basketball is growing quicker.
In America, soccer just isn’t that popular and there are so many other sports that people currently care about more.
> It’s just that Brazil currently doesn’t care about baseball that much and baseball first has to become popular
Baseball is a hardware-intensive sport. It's hard to get popular in poorer countries. Soccer on the other side demands just a vacant lot and some soft round object you can kick around to get started.
You just need a bat and ball? My friends use a plastic bat balls and find a grassy field. Soccer balls are actually more expensive.
Basketball is growing in Brazil a lot and that’s kind of expensive.
Skateboarding has become massive in Brazil and that’s even more expensive than soccer and every person needs their own skateboard, unlike soccer where you can pool your money to share 1 ball.
Idk what you are talking about, you don’t need fancy equipment to play most sports with your friends. Most of the time, it’s having the idea is the issue.
Not if you want to develop world class talent. Baseball is incredibly technology dependent at this point. Ultra high speed cameras, radars, bat and ball sensors, software tying it all together, it's become rocket science. And honestly, if you don't have access to that technology, your chances fall dramatically.
The article is about global soccer, I'm talking about global baseball (MLB takes all the best players in the world). If you are a pitcher wanting to make it to the MLB, getting to 18 and throwing 65 mph and claiming "well that works in my country" isn't going to help you. You are miles behind.
There is no supply chain of baseballs and baseball bats in Brazil. That would be considered a "exotic" choice of sport, with those supplies only available at expensive stores with imported goods
Right, but the limiting factor is not actually that it’s expensive.
The limiting factor is historical: Brazilians just don’t think of playing baseball already.
Which leads back to the point: Americans just don’t really think about playing soccer.
It’s not about cost, or about leagues, or any technical thing. There’s nothing stopping me, as an American, from trying cricket with my friends, except that the thought has never ever entered my mind.
Frankly that is a bad comparison. Soccer is incredibly popular at a youth level. The talent pool is there and the money is there. How big is the Brazilian baseball economy? As the article states there is about $1.5bn in player value in the MLS. Not to mention that our top tier talent is usually exported to Europe where there is an order of magnitude more money available for the sport. My argument is we have a big talent pool of kids who want to be successful in soccer and we have not learned how to manage it at scale. The talent market of potential players is incredibly fragmented.
I get this argument, and it is probably partially right, but is soccer really competing for the same athletes as basketball and American football? Basketball players are mostly too tall for soccer (other than goalie), and a majority of football players are way bigger than great soccer players. Baseball and hockey might compete for the same athletes, but a huge percentage of baseball and hockey players also come from other countries.
Those genetic requirements come into play at elite levels, but you need to start young, when those differences are less obvious.
You need to look at what sports an eight-year-old is playing in the backyard, what sports his Dad is excited about on the TV.
An agile, fast, coordinated kid who's coachable and wants to train hard but is going to grow up to be 5' 8" is not going to make the NFL or the NBA, but if they've got the athleticism to play in the World Cup... well, in the US that kid will be the point guard on the local high school basketball team and also play safety and wide receiver on the football team.
The difference in sports culture leads to almost no talent getting wasted.
I grew up in a European (Holland) country and as boys we'd play soccer all the time, during school on the schoolyard, after school, in the evening and the vast majority of boys in my class joined the local soccer team (me included). Even though we were a local team in a small village, scouts of slightly more important teams would sometimes come to our matches.
Basically, because soccer is so ingrained in our culture, virtually all boys play soccer at some point. That combined with all the clubs that play at different levels, and the scouting network, virtually no talent is missed.
Put differently, when a new Cruyff or Robben is born, there is a high probability that he will be found.
Women's soccer is really a different story. It has only started to take off in recent years and at least as many girls seem to play hockey.
Of course, it should be said that the only sport that really matters is Korfbal/Korfball :).
It definitely is at the youth level. I don’t think any football or basketball pros could be soccer stars, but absolutely there are kids who are star point guards on their youth basketball team but top out at 5’8”, or football players who never make it past high school but could have been great at soccer.
Well no, an existing professional American football player has no chance of switching to being a professional soccer player. Nobody can simply switch at that level. You have to have cultivated the skills over a long period of time to ever have a chance at competing at the highest levels.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine the guys that ended up being cornerbacks, wide receivers, safeties, or even halfbacks couldn’t have become soccer professionals given the right culture, training, and desire growing up. Sure, linemen, tight ends, and fullbacks aren’t built for soccer.
When we are talking about the really TOP elite of football those kids get into it at age 5. From that age on every day consists of hours of football. There are scouts looking at prepubescent kids all over the world ready to sign them.
That's the point. Since so many sports are competing for "player attention", people may commit to the "wrong" sport early on, be decent, and then top out at an age where it's too late (in terms of going pro) to switch to a sport they may have been great at.
In a hypothetical world where every kid plays only soccer, every potentially great soccer player has been practicing the sport from an early age. In a world with 10 competing sports, some potentially great soccer players might have be playing baseball or basketball from a young age up into their late teens.
Kids who are good at sport excel at it all throughout school years, then once they hit college age the smaller ones dont make it further in American football any more - but they still spent their childhood playing it. In e.g. Uraguay its probably opposite, the naturally heavy guys cant compete at top level soccer (Im guessing) and fall out of professional sports
Perhaps the kids that could be soccer superstars stick with basketball until they figure out they aren't tall enough for the NBA, but are too old or just never developed enough interest in soccer to become a pro at that. But if they didn't have that NBA dream growing up, they may well have become a soccer superstar?
For national teams you only need to consider outlier athletes not averages. And many of the most top athletes at sport A would do very well at sport B. If a country funnels 100% of kids into a single sport, every single genetically gifted athlete will be put through the same selection process. Imagine every single physically gifted kid going to tryouts of the same sport. That's Portugal.
I think it is less about competing for athletes and more about competing for national attention (in the form of sports viewership that turns into money and school programs).
Compact density is expensive, cellular is expensive, and the iPhone has to pass all-day battery and pocket bending tests. (Edit: also being dropped on gravel)
In addition to the iPad having cheaper parts than the iPhone, the iPad reuses many of the same components for several years. The current iPad uses the same display as the previous generation iPad that was released in 2022 - three years and counting. But every single iPhone generation has changes to most of its components, and every single year has a new iPhone.
I'm sure that they have a fatter margin on the the iPhone, but the iPhone does cost quite a bit more to manufacture. Cellular itself is probably $50 or so. The iPad has more material, so you may perceive you're getting more "device per the money" but the cost of those materials is dwarfed by the cost of manufacturing the additional components.
This is incidentally why consumers don't buy small phones even though they say they want them. They feel cheaper even though they cost about the same to manufacture.
> This is incidentally why consumers don't buy small phones even though they say they want them. They feel cheaper even though they cost about the same to manufacture.
Actually from what I understood, making a small display with modern specs like Apple did on the iPhone mini was MORE expensive because all of modern high-end smartphone display manufacturing is designed for larger, 6+ inch screens.
Yeah. But then the EU lost the plot a very long time ago. There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one. It's ASML.
From 2008 to today, in USD and inflation adjusted, the eurozone saw no growth. While both the US and China skyrocketed.
There's been this little thing lately that kinda took off: it's called AI. Where's the EU? How much of a leader was the EU in this AI revolution?
Explain how the EU is not long gone?
The EU is not even sinking at this point: it sank years ago. And it's busy making sure it's turning into the third-world.
I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening.
Billions of people exist in the EU. In real terms it has not gone anywhere.
Obsession with preserving political dogma, rhetorical forms, atheist appearing syntax and semantics (language that does invoke specific concepts of theology); political and economic abstraction that do not represent reality is not much different from religion.
By your measure every nation effectively died out centuries ago as some originating principles died with their originators of those principles. Yet here we are still discussing France and Russia and the US as real things. They only ever existed as ethno objects to begin with; things that only exist if we talk about them as existing.
So what if some rhetorical specifics that used to define the economic and political foundations of the EU mutate. That's immutable reality for you. It's bound to happen due to generational churn.
People who live there can still use the term EU to define whatever political structure and economic model they land on next.
Economic growth has been slow in the EU, but it's mostly a demographic issue. There are too many retirees, too few children, and the size of the workforce is stagnant.
Measuring economic growth in someone else's currency can be misleading. By the same metric you used, Eurozone economy grew by ~100% between 2002 and 2008.
Economically the EU might not keep pace, but the built infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there.
I certainly had a delightful time visiting the winter markets across Europe, and it seemed like there were a fair number of people living well.
While the Eurozone might not be a great place to start a new business it is still a going concern, enough that those top 50 companies all have a European presence.
> infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but living in the US ain't exactly like Escape from New York or Escape from LA. For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US. I'm not sure if your comment is a counterargument or neutral commentary.
New York City. Compared to small cities like London, Paris, or Rome there are areas where it's not on par, but its multimodal transport, energy, heating, water, sanitation systems is larger and more comprehensive than most cities in Europe.
Buses and train cars are a small part of infrastructure, regardless of whether it's the only part of infrastructure certain information ecosystems speak to. But sure. $30 billion per year over many decades for those parts, in one city, provides pretty extensive systems that don't even make sense in smaller cities.
> I bet per capita buses and train cars are dwarfed by even cities well below the tiers
And I will find even smaller US cities with even better metrics.
What's frightening to me is that even in the EU people seem to think that unchecked consolidation of services is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing at all that there exist companies with a budget larger than an average country.
Is the budget of Saudi Aramco, of the King, larger than that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, also of the same King? Why would that be not good, or bad?
Think about every international dollar the Kingdom takes from Aramco: would Aramco or the Kingdom make more profit from it, including taxes on the percent more Aramco makes from it than the Kingdom?
>There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one.
And this is a good thing. All 50 of them should be broken up anyway.
>I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening
I'm in the EU and I love it. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live in any other place. And in the coming fight for digital freedom EU is almost always on the right side.
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