Tim Weah is the son of a Ballon d’Or winner. Tim Weah is a Paris Saint-Germain player. Tim Weah is American. Tim Weah scored a hat trick on Monday. Tim Weah helped the U.S. into the U-17 World Cup quarterfinals. Tim Weah is, like, Weah good.
Being handed his Norwegian senior debut at 15 and promised first team training with Real Madrid at 16 was clearly too much too soon for the now 18-year-old Martin Odegaard, but to call the precociously talented midfielder a burn out for failing to disrupt the back-to-back European champions’ starting XI is obviously extremely harsh.
Tuesday was a nightmare for U.S. soccer, but soccer does not stop because the U.S. won’t be in the World Cup next summer in Russia. In fact, the U.S. is competing at a World Cup right now — the U-17 World Cup in India — and the team is doing quite well.
The USMNT’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup is nothing less than an abject failure. It’s a failure for U.S. soccer on so many levels, from player development and youth organization to individual performances and coaching decisions. It’s a failure that must be learned from so as to never repeat it again.
When it comes to attracting top talent to your youth club or league, control what you can control and the rest will take care of itself. Sounds easy, right? Well, it’s not always simple to know where to focus to recruit youth players, especially if you want the best.
We sat down with several experienced club directors to find out what they focus on to recruit talented young players (and their families) to their organizations.
Because Christian Pulisic is too old and will never accomplish anything, we present to you the next American Messi: 9-year-old Alessandro Cupini (no relation to Cuphead). The Kansas City native will be moving to Italy next year to train with AS Roma according to a press release, an impressive step for a young American.
The U.S. U-17 World Cup Roster was released Thursday and it is loaded with talent, starting with forwards Tim Weah and Josh Sargent. The roster includes four players who are already playing abroad, not including Sargent, who signed with Werder Bremen on Wednesday.
It’s been nearly 15 years since Marvin Lee last took a breath on this planet. Once a captain of the Trinidad and Tobago youth national team, Lee died at the age of 21 at his home in Arima after suffering a career-ending neck injury from a collision with U.S. legend Landon Donovan two years earlier.
In 2001, Trinidad and Tobago was at its footballing zenith, ranked No. 25 in the world, the highest it would ever get. Marvin Lee was a defender on the U-20 squad. Some of his teammates would go on to take the Soca Warriors to their first and only World Cup appearance in 2006.