General Soccer Thread

[thrill]

They have an MLS club with good owners. That's pretty much all it takes these days to whip up a base.

[lukethedrifter]

I blame our 20 year dalliance with the Rams

[MrSaigon]

I don't know if any Oregonians have ever been capped. Rubio Rubin has a good shot. But he came up undoubtedly travelling to Washington and California and Nevada and probably even farther away to play against higher levels of competition. Maybe the kids in Hawaii do too. It just seems crazy to me. I mean those huge Polynesians that are freakishly strong and fast--learning to play on an offensive line is doable. But soccer can't be one of those sports where 'he didn't even play until his senior year in high school.' There are a million people on Oahu. You gotta be stretching out against kids that are good, don't you?

Whoa, Zach Scott is a Maui boy. That's super crazy.

[thrill]

I don't know if any Oregonians have ever been capped. Rubio Rubin has a good shot. But he came up undoubtedly travelling to Washington and California and Nevada and probably even farther away to play against higher levels of competition. Maybe the kids in Hawaii do too. It just seems crazy to me. I mean those huge Polynesians that are freakishly strong and fast--learning to play on an offensive line is doable. But soccer can't be one of those sports where 'he didn't even play until his senior year in high school.' There are a million people on Oahu. You gotta be stretching out against kids that are good, don't you?

Whoa, Zach Scott is a Maui boy. That's super crazy.

Your (I think) jokingly myopic stuff about Hawaaian racial demographics/ethnicity aside, Bobby ain't exactly young. He's 23. Well behind the curve based on talent. That's pretty much the story of American youth development in a nutshell and speaks to your point about competition and rather than assuming Hawaaians are at a geographic disadvantage in not being able to engage in the AYSO/USS/ODP travel team model, I think you could also reasonably assume based on Hawaaian players developing that those programs aren't helping our young players from the mainland develop much at all. That is widely accepted truth by most youth soccer pay-for-play haters (experts).

Rubin has already been capped but I think you might be right that he's the only Oregonian in the modern national team era.

[MrSaigon]

Hmm. I wasn't trying to be offensive. Most of the Hawaiian football talent is Polynesian. I was only making a generalization about Polynesian football players. I was just trying to make a point about highest-level talent from Hawaii and how it makes some sense to me for football but not soccer.

[thrill]

Hawaii is famously ethnically diverse. Bobby Wood and Brian Ching are obviously of part Asian heritage. Zach Scott is white. BJ Penn is part Korean. John John Florence and many other professional surfer brahs are white as hell.

Clearly there are many Hawaiian athletes that aren't Samoan.

[MrSaigon]

Hawaii is famously ethnically diverse. Bobby Wood and Brian Ching are obviously of part Asian heritage. Zach Scott is white. BJ Penn is part Korean. John John Florence and many other professional surfer brahs are white as hell.

Clearly there are many Hawaiian athletes that aren't Samoan.

I lived there for four years. One of my dearest friends is a Japanese Maui Boy who played little league with Suzuki and Victorino. I got called Haole by more Filipino's than you can guess. If you read what I said as Hawaiians (or their athletes) are Polyneisians part of that may be on me for poor wording/framework, but I'd suggest some of that may be on you.

Timmy Chang is a guy you could point to for calling out my myopics.

To sum it up, the only generalization I made (or meant to make if I totally biffed it) was about football players from Hawaii, and linemen at that. If making any racial generalization is bad, then I guess I've been bad.

[thrill]

I wasn't offended, just confused. It's like pointing out that most NFL players from Texas are African American and then using that to wonder how the state produced Clint Dempsey and Omar Gonzalez. I just had no idea what the relevance was or what point you were trying to make.

[MrSaigon]

To clarify, it's that you can take guys with clear physical tools and make them high-level football players even if they don't have a big competitive background (they probably do. HS football is HUGE out there). Hell, it happens in basketball. But it seems much harder to take a great athlete who seemingly didn't have a lot of opportunity to play against strong competition and make a great soccer player. Baseball makes more sense too, because if you have someone to work with, you can really develop individually pretty well.

[thrill]

Ah. I got ya.