Brendan Dauth @daaauth

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital. I played soccer for 20+ years. Grassroots. Academy. D1 college. Pursued professionally after. And I’ll say the quiet part out loud: The US soccer infrastructure is broken. In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement. For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal: Get recruited. Get a scholarship. Play college soccer. But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path. From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival. Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France. That player has likely been in a professional environment for years. Training daily. Playing meaningful matches year-round. Competing against grown professionals. Getting thousands more touches. Learning how to solve the game under pressure. The gap is massive. And it shows. American players are usually athletic. They are usually fit. They usually compete hard. But at the highest levels, that is not enough. The biggest difference is technical comfort. We do not move the ball like Spain. We do not combine like Argentina. We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood. That comes down to volume. Volume of touches. Volume of street soccer. Volume of futsal. Volume of unstructured play. Volume of high-level training environments. Volume of meaningful games. In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23. Parents spend thousands. Clubs charge thousands. Travel teams fly all over the country. Showcases become the product. Recruiting becomes the scoreboard. But the return on invested capital is poor. We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment. That is a broken operating model. And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer. You inspect the system. The US has talent. The US has athletes. The US has money. The US has facilities. But the foundation is wrong. We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system. Those are not the same thing. Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources. I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer. I’m saying it because I lived it. And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

His name is Diogo. He took us to victory. Forever loved by us all. Forever our number 20 ❤️

HAPPENING NOW: Less than 24 hours before the first FIFA World Cup match is played in Seattle. But parts of the city look like a zombie apocalypse. Mayor Katie Wilson is accused of pushing homeless drug addicts outside of the downtown tourist corridor so fans do not get upset or inhale second hand fetty smoke. Problem is, the addicts have all been pushed to vulnerable minority communities like Chinatown-ID. And business owners are pissed. @MayorofSeattle|@weheartseattle

Social media guy fired for sure

BLAST Premier 💥 @BLASTPremier

2 months ago

Yo @TeamVitalityCS, think you forgot this connect 192.137.3.13:27015; password BLASTRivals

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Pissing me off how this manager is still at this club. I'm so annoyed after reading this. Ugh. Not good, please - he's got to go... NOW.

SimonBrundish @SimonBrundish

3 months ago

x.com/i/article/2044…

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Martinelli is a classless, scummy player, just like the majority of this Arsenal side and manager. Pathetic mentality and sums up why they’ve won NOTHING in their careers, hold that lads maybe you can beat us next year👍

Connor Bradley has probably just done his ACL and Martinelli’s thrown the ball at him whilst being down injured on the ground and tried to throw him off the pitch? These Arsenal players are a pure and utter disgrace.

Win Rates with Michael Oliver as Referee (Since 2020/21) Manchester City: 74.1% Arsenal: 65.4% Liverpool: 34.8%

Michael Oliver. No penalty Also Michael Oliver: Penalty.

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Nvm, figured it out

Leo (Retired) @LFCLeo18

8 months ago

How do I fit this into my header

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"It's just a football pitch" never talk on Anfield ever again

AOC called Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric ignorant, while making an ignorant statement. She also misrepresented what Charlie said about the Civil Rights Act. We can’t keep doing this - it’s putting people in danger.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC

10 months ago

We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a “mistake,” who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that “some amazing patriot out there” should bail out his assailant, and

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GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VVD 3-2 THEY HAVE DONE IT AGAIN

A while ago, probably in 2017, I appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox show to talk about God knows what. Afterwards a name I barely knew sent me a DM on twitter and told me I did a great job. It was Charlie Kirk, and that moment of kindness began a friendship that lasted until today. Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives. When others were right, he learned from them. When he was right--as he usually was--he was generous. With Charlie, the attitude was never, "I told you so." But: "welcome." Charlie was one of the first people I called when I thought about running for senate in early 2021. I was interested but skeptical there was a pathway. We talked through everything, from the strategy to the fundraising to the grassroots of the movement he knew so well. He introduced me to some of the people who would run my campaign and also to Donald Trump Jr. "Like his dad, he's misunderstood. He's extremely smart, and very much on our wavelength." Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him too. Long before I ever committed (even in my mind) to running, Charlie had me speak to his donors at a TPUSA event. He walked me around the room and introduced me. He gave me honest feedback on my remarks. He had no reason to do this, no expectation that I'd go anywhere. I was polling, at that point, well below 5 percent. He did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man. When I became the VP nominee--something Charlie advocated for both in public and private--Charlie was there for me. I was so glad to be part of the president's team, but candidly surprised by the effect it had on our family. Our kids, especially our oldest, struggled with the attention and the constant presence of the protective detail. I felt this acute sense of guilt, that I had conscripted my kids into this life without getting their permission. And Charlie was constantly calling and texting, checking on our family and offering guidance and prayers. Some of our most successful events were organized not by the campaign, but by TPUSA. He wasn't just a thinker, he was a doer, turning big ideas into bigger events with thousands of activists. And after every event, he would give me a big hug, tell me he was praying for me, and ask me what he could do. "You focus on Wisconsin," he'd tell me. "Arizona is in the bag." And it was. Charlie genuinely believed in and loved Jesus Christ. He had a profound faith. We used to argue about Catholicism and Protestantism and who was right about minor doctrinal questions. Because he loved God, he wanted to understand him. Someone else pointed out that Charlie died doing what he loved: discussing ideas. He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions. If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he'd encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak. He exemplified a foundational virtue of our Republic: the willingness to speak openly and debate ideas. Charlie had an uncanny ability to know when to push the envelope and when to be more conventional. I've seen people attack him for years for being wrong on this or that issue publicly, never realizing that privately he was working to broaden the scope of acceptable debate. He was a great family man. I was talking to President Trump in the Oval Office today, and he said, "I know he was a very good friend of yours." I nodded silently, and President Trump observed that Charlie really loved his family. The president was right. Charlie was so proud of Erika and the two kids. He was so happy to be a father. And he felt such gratitude for having found a woman of God with whom he could build a family. Charlie Kirk was a true friend. The kind of guy you could say something to and know it would always stay with him. I am on more than a few group chats with Charlie and people he introduced me to over the years. We celebrate weddings and babies, bust each other's chops, and mourn the loss of loved ones. We talk about politics and policy and sports and life. These group chats include people at the very highest level of our government. They trusted him, loved him, and knew he'd always have their backs. And because he was a true friend ,you could instinctively trust the people Charlie introduced you to. So much of the success we've had in this administration traces directly to Charlie's ability to organize and convene. He didn't just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government. I was in a meeting in the West Wing when those group chats started lighting up with people telling Charlie they were praying for him. And that's how I learned the news that my friend had been shot. I prayed a lot over the next hour, as first good news and then bad trickled in. God didn't answer those prayers, and that's OK. He had other plans. And now that Charlie is in heaven, I'll ask him to talk to big man directly on behalf of his family, his friends, and the country he loved so dearly. You ran a good race, my friend. We've got it from here.

Dave Smith on the assassination of Charlie Kirk "Charlie Kirk was the moderate"

STOP PLAYING WITH ME

@AldrichPatrick I also meant to ask what you referring to but I didn’t leave enough characters to ask. What did they do exactly with the salary dump?

Still don’t understand how California re-elected this man lmao

Governor Gavin Newsom @CAgovernor

a year ago

$134 million that should be going to LA’s fire recovery. Shameful.

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@CAgovernor You spent $24 billion to eradicate homelessness and you actually made it worse and that money got lost. Instead of fighting for illegals, you should be fighting for your own American citizens and most importantly veterans that have no place to sleep.