How to Win the World Cup

The World Cup final is the world’s most watched sporting event. Yet how is it that the U.S., which has one of the world’s largest populations of athletes and dominates so many other sports, has failed to ever get even to the World Cup quarterfinals? I mean…we’re not talking about winning the Cup. Not about getting to the final. Or the semifinals. We’re just talking being in the top 8 in the world.  Ever.

It’s not like Americans don’t play soccer. In fact, in many states, including the largest one, California, soccer is the number one sport played by young boys and girls.

So what is it that fails to produce world-class results for the US in this singular arena of human competition?

As an Argentine hincha (fan) and soccer player and coach who just went to Brazil to watch his team advance to the World Cup final for the fourth time in my lifetime, and a dual German national, whose nation just advanced to the same final after scoring 7 goals against Brazil playing host, I think I have an answer or two.

First, let me put that in perspective. Argentina is a nation of only 40 million souls. That’s five times smaller than Brazil. Seven times smaller than the US. Yet this relatively tiny nation has won two world Cups and will be playing their fourth final in the last forty years. That’s more than a third of all World Cups played in that period, for a nation whose population is much less than 1% of the world’s.

Germany, for its part, has also won two World Cups in those same years and will also be playing their fourth final in the same period.

The match itself has history: Germany-Argentina is the most replayed final in World Cup history. This will be the third time the teams play each other for the World Cup final. Each won once: Argentina in Mexico ’86 and Germany in Italy ’90.

So what’s the recipe that has got both of these teams such extraordinary results? It turns out they are two very different recipes.

Germany has invested a billion dollars in the last decade or so in its soccer. Each soccer club is required to set up a youth soccer school to participate in the national league. There are 366 youth training centers throughout Germany. German soccer has the highest percentage of World Cup players playing in their home country of any other soccer power. And this year, Germany software giant SAP created a software program that helps the German team track the more than 7 million data points generated by every team every ten minutes. Each German player wears monitoring devices during every practice. Distance run, number of accurate passes and shots on goals for each player, for example, are all measured. Each practice is also taped from four different camera angles. 40 sport science students scout every adversary before each game. All of these data are available not just to coaches but also to the players themselves on a smartphone or tablet. The data revealed, for example, that Brazil had trouble with speedy attacks. The results of this investment-rich, data-centric approach showed on Tuesday, when Germany scored 5 goals on host and four-time World Cup champion Brazil in the first half alone, to finish 7-1, the most lopsided result in the history of World Cup semifinals.

Argentina’s approach is very different --and not unlike Brazil's. It does not have the resources to invest in keeping its players at home, so most of its best players play abroad. No software powerhouse is backing it. Its population is a fraction of Germany’s. But what Argentina lacks in resources and numbers, it makes up in soul. Despite the fact that 80% of host Brazilians supported Holland in the semifinal against Brazil’s traditional soccer rival, Argentina, to the extent that Brazilians were wearing orange Dutch jerseys throughout the stadium, Argentina’s fans’ chants supporting their team drowned any opposition at the stadium in Sao Paulo at the semifinal Wednesday. Some Argentine fans sold their car to afford the trip to neighboring Brazil to support their team. Tens of thousands of them traveled to support the team even though they could not afford tickets to the stadium. Long after the game was over and the rest of the spectators had gone home, Argentine fans kept celebrating, singing and jumping, first on the stands and later pouring into the streets of Sao Paulo. The Argentine national anthem is sung by the entire crowd before each match with a fervor that makes Argentinians get goose bumps. Argentinians have an expression, oft sung at the semifinal, which happened to be Argentina’s Independence Day: “Ponga huevo”. It translates roughly as “show balls”, and means you are supposed to leave everything on the field. Up until players’ last ounce of effort. No self-respecting Argentinian ever misses a World Cup Argentina match –my graduation trip to Bariloche in 1990 was punctuated by bus stops every time the Argentine squad played. And if you thought that this does not influence match results, think again: South American fans so determinant that no World Cup played in the Americas has ever been won by a team from anywhere else. The very word for fan in Portuguese is torcedor, a derivation of the root to bend (the score, presumably). In Spanish, the word is hincha, from the root to fill (a chest with pride). Players know that their performance at the World Cup will be remembered by virtually every countryman for the rest of their lives. And so they play their hearts out.

So what about the U.S.? Having lived in the US for the last twenty years, played and coached here, here is what I think is wrong with soccer in the U.S., and how to fix it, in 3 simple steps:

1.     Americans don’t care. Americans don’t miss the SuperBowl or the NBA finals, which pit mere clubs against each other, but when their national honor is at stake at the World Cup, a competition that pits virtually every country in the world against each other, Americans simply don’t care. I was on a plane for the first half of the USA’s last World Cup match, against Germany, and I’m not even a US citizen, but I was the only one in the plane who cared enough to watch the game. Once the plane landed, I found the closest TV to watch the second half, only to see most Americans leave the bar in disappointment when their team was losing 2-0, unaware of the comeback that almost got the U.S. even when they finally started playing their hearts out in the last few minutes of the game. When Brazil’s star, Neymar, was injured, an ad in Brazil read: “1 goes out; 200 million come in.” Having just watched Brazil’s semifinal in a Brazilian home, I can tell you that was no exaggeration. Work finishes early on a match day. Shopping Centers close down. Airlines stop flying. This is, after all, the country where an airline is called Gol (“goal”). In fact, Dia do jogo (“Match Day”) is a highly anticipated concept in Portuguese. Americans don’t like to lose –nobody does. When they see their team underperform in the World Cup, they tune out. Yet the US has come back from a losing start to the Space Race, and came back from behind to put a man on the Moon. To win a World Cup, Americans need to start caring about soccer, watching the games and supporting their team. This will give players the sense of responsibility they need to give it all.

2.     American kids are taught at AYSO the result of the game does not matter. They all get medals at the end, win or lose, and the smaller kids aren’t even allowed to keep track of the score. Well, real life does keep track, and shielding our kids from competition and real life does them no good.

3.     Teenage years are key formative years for any sport. Yet at that critical age, promising athletes learn that football will get them cheerleaders –yes, Southern states actually assign a cheerleader to each football player to satisfy almost his every whim--, while soccer gets them none.  If we want teenage boys to play soccer, we need to get teenage girls to care about it.

With a large population of youth soccer players, plenty of resources, a knack for sport stats, a history of stepping up to bigger than life challenges and a track record second to none in most other sports, the U.S. is uniquely positioned to win a World Cup. If only Americans start caring enough.

-Alex Bäcker

Dr. Bäcker has played soccer most of this life, and has coached many AYSO teams. When he is not playing, coaching or cheering soccer, he runs QLess, a company dedicated to extend enjoyable lifespan by eliminating waiting in line from the face of the Earth. Which has given twenty million people on five continents five hundred years of their time back --some of which hopefully was spent playing the world's most popular sport.