Now ckb you are being thouroughly unfair, the newest generation of Mexicans, not only did they win the World Championship of U-20's (which does get the big players mind you, and they won this championship with a 3-0 thumping of Brazil) but out of that team we got one guy in Barcelona that has been drawing comparisons to Ronaldinho, and one guy in Arsenal who played on loan in Spain and was a important player for a Spanish first division club, that is not even taking into account the fact that Guardado has drawn interest from Barca, Real Madrid and Sevilla, and that Memo Ochoa will probably end up playing in Spain pretty soon.
This young generation is the best generation we have seen in years. We can't say the same thing for the young generation of US players, we simply can't. The game grew and it grew a lot there, but its growth has been stumped, meanwhile Mexico has had the game stumped at one point for years, but this particular generation is incredible.
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Funny thing that a few posts ago you call on how the U-20 squad looks great for the US but you dismiss the Mexican U-20 squad that are the world defending champions. I guess it only looks good when it looks good for the team you cheer for.
I'm not being unfair. It's only the top two or three guys from any U-20 team that MAY become fixtures on the full National team. Consider the best U-17 team the US ever had. Three guys in Donovan, Beasley and Convey made it to the National team. Convey was the one guy being most praised by opposing coaches with Donovan being the top scorer.
Well, only Donovan and Beasley from that team ever panned out. So, that's 2 out of the entire team that went on to become a regular Nat. That's the first reason why it's not that important how successful the entire team was in trying to predict how the full Nats team will do.
And the second major reason is that the major powers do NOT send most of their best players. Many of their best players are signed by that time to clubs that don't want to release them for something so "irrelevant" (irrelevant to the big powers, yes, not to us of course).
Seriously, it's amazing Argentina and Brazil can win so many U-20 WC without their best players. That just shows incredible depth.
But, ask yourself how many times Italy has won that or even come in second? NONE. Yet Italy and Brazil are the two most successful WC teams ever, being separated by one Brazil PK win over Italy in terms of number of WC's won.
Did France or England ever come in first or second? No. And Germany won it only once. And that team didn't coincide with a particularly good period in German soccer.
Hell, if success at the U-20 is such a good predictor, why haven't Nigeria or Ghana had much success at the WC?
Thus, mentioning that Mexico won it once doesn't mean it will translate into greater success for the Mexican National Team in the future. You may get a few good players out of it, but what about the rest? They come from previous U-20 teams or come from "nowhere".
Fact is, you can't consider this new Mexican National Team as clearly better than many others in the past. I'd like to see you make an argument they are clearly better than many Mexican National Teams of the past 2-3 decades (relative to the rest of the world) if you think you can make that argument.
Your WC record truly shows consistency in terms of relative strength. So, what I said there is accurate.
And finally, I was looking at how the US U-20 of a few years ago might produce several good prospects for the US team. That's obviously no different for your team. But, the context of the debate was different in the two cases. In the first case, I was just looking at what might improve the level of the US. And there, you can clearly see Feilhaber has the potential to be a midfield general of a sort we haven't had. Spector has a lot of work to do, but I still predict he'll become our best defender. And IF a guy like Marvel Wynne can make it, well we'll have a very good attacking right back (though his defence isn't as good as Cherundolo). That's talking about just a few players.
And if you notice I said it would take another generation to truly surpass Mexico, assuming that Mexico continues its trend of being at the same relative strength to the rest of the world.
But, I NEVER suggested the US U-20's of a few years ago were any better than Mexico's (obviously not) or that the US U-20's in question (of a few years ago) would somehow allow us to surpass Mexico for certain. No, I made it clear it would take another generation at least because it's arguable we have no great individual players.
However, I DO think we will clearly surpass Mexico by the time the next generation comes along. The US is just getting better one player at a time (the next step will be to get truly good individual players in the mix), while Mexico for some reason has remained relatively stagnant in strength relative to the rest of the world. I expect that to continue, hence my argument.
