Part of the reason the US does "worse than predicted" is that they're only looking at the Men's game. US interest in the women's side (current World Cup champions) is arguably higher than in the men's.
Not American, but I think you're too harsh. It's certainly not top tier but lately it has fared much better than teams with bigger history and love for the sport
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here; wouldn't the funding being equal imply that both teams should perform well? Or is the argument that other countries don't spend money on women's teams?
They didn't qualify this time round, but they are by no means a joke. They tend to do ok until they come up against real contenders. And they have a fair few players in the top leagues, though not so many at the very highest Champions League level.
Perhaps it's the microcosm I live in, but I have hope for the future of US soccer. When I was a kid 30+ years ago, soccer was viewed with skepticism as a "foreign" game. Today soccer is thriving everywhere. In my community of > 30% Spanish speaking people, soccer is religion, and they are raising the profile and quality of the game from an early age. I see the US as simply in its infancy still in terms of players, coaching, and general interest in the game relative to the rest of the world, but, with things like MLS and the influx of predominantly Mexican immigrants throughout the West increasing the profile of the game on a localized level, we'll get there.
A project that might help US Soccer is to poach good athletes from other sports who would have trouble getting a scholarship in their current sport.
For example - a HS American football player with great speed who weighs less than 200 lbs, doesn't bench or squat very well, and is not a kicker.
Or a baseball player who can't come around on a 90 mph fastball. What inspires me here is how similar a good (feet-first) base slide is to a soccer tackle.
Or a 5'11" basketball player not named Allen Iverson.
To me, the question is at what age can soccer skills be taught for world-class results?
The wildcard is what happens with American football if parents and secondary schools start deciding it's not a sport kids should be playing. Rugby is the more natural alternative worldwide but it's got its own concussion issues (albeit not to the same degree) so it's hard to see American football phasing out in favor of rugby.
There are a lot of demographic dimensions. Basketball tends to be associated with inner cities although, historically, there were some other groups like Catholic schools where hoops was popular. Ice hockey was a northern sport; at one time a large percentage of NHL players were Canadian. Today, I expect that the availability of frozen ponds and lakes is much less important although I also expect its popularity is still fairly skewed to the north. "Friday Night Lights" high school football obsession tends to be associated with the South.
It's an interesting question especially as some college-educated parents choose to increasingly live in certain dense cities where the soccer-mom lifestyle doesn't necessarily fit very well.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/14179705/antonio-brown-ty...
Below is the most relevant snippet, I don't think we see this as often for soccer as we do for other sports in the US:
Gwen Cherry Park is tucked near the edge of Liberty City, a lower-income neighborhood in northwest Miami that gave rise to Chad Johnson and Santana Moss; Amari Cooper, Devonta Freeman, Lavonte David and Teddy Bridgewater are also from here. Every Saturday, the park fills with dozens of boys, their families setting up tents and frying conch before football games. Grandmothers walk the fields in T-shirts with their grandsons' faces printed on them; high school coaches scout from the sidelines; grown men bet on games between children.
Here in Argentina, it's a different story.
Until the last years, football was considered a men's only game (and still is for many).
If your daughter wants to play football, you don't have teams or football schools to send her. So girls usually have more options to learn volleyball, field hockey, or handball. Fortunately, that started to change. However, the professional football league is still men's only. There is a women's league, but it has zero presence on media.
The media sponsorship have a lot of influence on how professional teams develop, that could explain why the US women team performs better compared to other countries where football is still limited to men (that includes most of the Latin American countries, and probably Europe too).
Basically, yes. Women don't generally play that many sports in most countries.
Even in W. Europe, surprisingly not a lot of football.
There are some exceptions here and there: skiing in Austria and XCountry skiing in Scandinavia ...
The issue with US soccer is mostly the anomaly of the fact there are other, way bigger sports like US football, basketball etc. that people focus on.
Even in hockey - Sweden, Czech, Russia - with great men's teams ... their women's team are not good and it's all Canada vs. USA in that sport for women.
That said ... it's still weird that the US cannot field a competent team. I mean there are 300 million Americans, a lot of central/south American types, tons of cash, a deep field for most sports. It is a little odd.
So why do the women do so well? It's well funded, and it's more of a contender among the sports for women.
I'm not sure I agree with that. US women do well at the international level in a fair number of sports. But it's probably true that women in the US are more likely to seriously play soccer growing up, including at the collegiate level, than women in other countries are.
And, of course, the US Women's national basketball team is utterly dominant. Though given the relative popularity of basketball in the US compared to other major countries, that's not exactly a fair comparison.