This week, US Soccer denied MLS from replacing its teams’ participation in the US Open Cup tournament with its 3rd tier MLS NextPro teams.
Much of the discussion since centers on the fan popularity of the tournament. Some point out that it’s not well watched on TV (neither is MLS). Others point to some games that sell a lot of tickets. While still others lay out their ideas and plans for making it more popular.
IMO, all that misses the point. I feel we’ve been missing the point of US Soccer for a long time in this country as most discussion about soccer focuses on it make it a more popular fan sport so it can make more money.
What point are they missing?
The point of competitions like the U.S. Open Cup, is to find out who plays the best soccer in the country.
This is what the concept of ‘sporting merit’ is all about. Sporting merit is codified in FIFA’s requirements for chartering governing soccer bodies around the world.
It basically says a soccer federation should hold open competitions to see who is best, despite whether it attracts viewers or not.
Why would they want to do that?
Because soccer is a sport and finding the best is what sport is about.
I feel more discussion should be about why open competition is good.
Most don’t understand why. It’s tricky.
It’s not just that it’s fun. It’s that what will work is not always obvious and open competition has proven to be better way of discovering what works than other methods.
Does that mean that every lower division team that plays an upper division team will win? No. Most will get smoked.
Does it mean it’s worthless if most of the time the upper division team wins?
No. This is where competition gets tricky.
Those small percentage of times that a lower division team matches up to or beats a better opponent are where most of the value of competition is produced.
From those instances, we can learn things that have tremendous benefits.
We might learn about some players who are much better than everyone thought. Maybe they had been written off by the groupthink of coaches who felt they didn’t measure up and it turns out the groupthink was wrong and the competition gave the chance for everyone to learn not only about these players but also that the coaches biases were wrong.
We might learn about a new styles of play or tactics that can help. Possession soccer is one example. It spread in countries with more open soccer competition much quicker and has evolved several versions in those countries in the last 15 years or so.
The U.S. still struggles with Possession Soccer 1.0. While we have adopted some of its basic concepts, we try to execute it with teams composed of players best suited for our direct style of kick-and-run soccer and that doesn’t work so well.
That is a big sign of the slow evolution of soccer in the U.S.
Why do we have slow evolution if the U.S. Open Cup is such a good open-style competition?
I think it’s better than nothing, but still isn’t as open as most other systems that also have promotion/relegation in their leagues, which provides a much larger sample of open competition to learn from. Sample size matters.
In the U.S. we don’t know what we are missing, because our system basically keeps what we are missing from existing in the first place.
Our Dinner Table 
Hey Seth,
I have been watching my grandchildren playing soccer for a few years. I really enjoy watching the games, even when they get creamed. But I am totally ignorant about the sport and could use a recommendation for a book that I could read to find out what the heck is actually going on. Kind of a “Soccer for stooges” if you will. Any thoughts on that for a true beginner?
Grant Davies
Hi Grant — That’s a good question. I don’t have recommendations for just getting to know the game itself. For parents and grandparents of young soccer players, I do recommend Tom Byer’s “Soccer Starts at Home” if you can get your hands on it. It’s more about how parents can help kids develop the basic skills they need for the game, which might be helpful.
I think it took be a good five years to learn the game well enough to not sound too stupid when I talked about it, from playing and watching it. I’m 13 years in, I’m still at learning it. I read a ton of stuff when I was getting started and didn’t find much of it as helpful as watching and asking questions.
Learning it as an adult, I can remember the time when it looked like random ball chasing to me. The thing that opened my eyes that there’s more to it is when I learned the technique to drive the ball and I sent the ball sailing further than I ever had before with what felt like less energy input, much like when you learn to swing a golf club and that inspired me to learn more. There’s good technique for everything from receiving the ball, dribbling, passing, long and short passes and as you make those second nature, winning and losing becomes a minor detail.
Learning how to spot improvement and encourage the improvement in your grandchildren can make it more enjoyable for all even when they get creamed. Oh well. Did they keep the ball more often on their first touch? Are they completing more passes? Were they able to keep the ball safe by dribbling way or past defenders? If so, that’s progress and worth mentioning that you notice that.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks Seth. I’ll try and find the book you suggested and I appreciate the comments. It’s a beautiful sport and I hope my grandchildren continue playing. I hope you and family had a nice Christmas and wish you the best in the coming years.