“Hustle” Over Talent: US Soccer’s Mental Hurdle Strikes Again

There are few things that I despise more than 'intangibles'. Anyone who has ever listened to the Thugcast knows that I cannot stand it when people try and argue about things that cannot be quantified when it comes to sports. It's much harder in soccer to get actual numbers for those sorts of things even with the advent of Opta-stats. That's why it's one of the hardest games to analyze out there — any idiot can figure out a baseball game, because all the numbers are laid out right in front of you. In soccer, it's different. As much as baseball fans want it to be 'the thinking man's game', soccer is far more so. You really have to have your head in it in order to take any real analysis out of something, every statistic has to be taken in context with the others.

Unfortunately, a lot of fans just eschew all of that and bleat on endlessly about heart, hustle, grit and determination. Words that have absolutely no meaning in any actual context of analysis, but words that people like to try and use to end arguments. A generally mediocre player scores a bunch of goals early in the season? And the so-called 'experts' are saying he'll regress!? He won't regress, he's got hustle! This player has been generally mediocre defensively, and gets burned at least three times a game? Well don't worry, that boy deserves a starting XI spot every week regardless because he always gives 100% for the team!

This has always been the flaw of American soccer. We do not care about talent in this country. We only care about intangibles. Does he give 100% every play? Bring that boy on in, he's just our type! There's just one problem with that. There's a reason why the majority of players who have big intangibles get talked about in terms of their intangibles: they are lacking in one or more other departments, sometimes big time. A guy who "gives 100% for the team" is usually a guy who wouldn't even be sniffing the starting eighteen if he didn't work absurdly hard every single second. Most of the time, those guys don't tend to be that great at soccer overall. It almost always comes down to an argument of intangibles over talent.

Yet despite that, when Cummings was doing absolutely nothing game-after-game from 2011 until he was traded, he was the one that a lot of Rapids fans would defend to the death. Why? Because while Casey's smart movement made him 'lazy' and 'scoring just the easy ones', Cummings would run all over the field, even if goals weren't coming for him. He had 'hustle' and 'determination'.

That is also the curse that always seems to plague the US Men's National Team. We're cursed with what appears to be some sort of underdog complex: we don't want to be a World Class talent. We want to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps and beat them bad guys with heart and grit because this is America, damnit!

You know who I never hear harping on endlessly about intangibles? You know who never sings the praises of 'hustle'? Spain and Brazil. The two most absurdly talented teams in the world don't need hustle. Fernando Torres never hustles — in fact it's a running joke how little he tends to work on the field sometimes — yet he's got 106 caps, 36 goals and several winners medals from big tournaments, along with a Golden Boot from EURO 2012. 64 of those caps and 27 of those goals have come in actual competition, too. Despite his work rate and his perhaps lack of 'giving 100% to the team' every second, he produces because he's got talent.

It's clear that Klinsmann knows that there are plenty of talented players that were left off of the roster for Brazil, because a lot of them made it far enough to get cut from the 30-man in the first place. Alexi Lalas made a tweet that I very much agreed with in that same vein.

Germany nearly always has an absurd amount of talent to choose from, so Klinsmann could do as he liked with them. The United States does not have an absurd amount of talent to choose from. We might be in that position in four years if all goes well with the flood of young prospects in the USMNT picture, but right now, we're not. There is no easy picking for the starting eighteen, and that's because of a lack of talent, not a dearth of it.

In 2018, we might have enough talent to get away with keeping some of it off the roster when it's time to head to Russia. Until then, I hope we can finally get over this foolish mentality that 'hustle' will ever defeat talent. When we finally do, we will always have the potential to turn into a world power.

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Edit: Hahahahahaha