US Women's U17 flamed out of World Cup

Any concerns that our U-17 team did not advance out of group play? Only beat Paraguay and lost to Ghana and Japan. Canada did not fare well either, Mexico did advanced, is North American women's soccer in trouble? Is the world catching up to us and we do not know it? Interested to hear what people think.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water just yet.

This isn't unusual for U17. That being said, yes, it worries me.

Don't worry it's not a problem of team selection or coaching.

US Soccer will just introduce some more rules for 6-yr olds and all will be fine.

In my opinion, all this means is that we will not have all U17 girls make the senior team when they age out of U whatever. Sure we will get some girls from that team I am sure. But, they have time to get a lot better before it really matters.

txsteeler wrote:Any concerns that our U-17 team did not advance out of group play? Only beat Paraguay and lost to Ghana and Japan. Canada did not fare well either, Mexico did advanced, is North American women's soccer in trouble? Is the world catching up to us and we do not know it? Interested to hear what people think.

player identification is extremely FLAWED in the USA. we try and identify girls (and boys) at 12. we try to get these "elite" players playing together asap. it is extremely tough for true talented and often times better skilled players into the pool. at any age group, i promise, another coach could take another group of 23-24 players and groom them to compete and beat the "chosen squad". a country of 300 million plus should have 10 or possibly 20 USA player pools and spend more time beating each other up, playing many more meaningful games and much less travel. take the allstars from the 10-20 separate pools and travel for world wide competition. too many of our best players are not their beast at 12. some are not even playing competitively at that age

txsteeler wrote:Any concerns that our U-17 team did not advance out of group play? Only beat Paraguay and lost to Ghana and Japan. Canada did not fare well either, Mexico did advanced, is North American women's soccer in trouble? Is the world catching up to us and we do not know it? Interested to hear what people think.

Not to worry. It is only because the benefits of going age pure have not been realized yet.

Just wait till the effects of the Big Five's power move that forced the great consolidation of NTX soccer in the summer of 2016 are felt around the country. It's gonna be huge.