Adrian

You do what you want when you're poppin #SIA #TMC🏁

[Adrian @SirBahena]

"And you know they be lying like Kellyane Conway"-@Bas

[Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins]

Kellyanne criticizes Biden campaign for saying he's going to win. "That should not be said bc we are still counting votes." Fox notes Trump claimed victory 2 days ago. "I think what the president was meaning is that he had won, meaning earlier in the night, he had the race won."

[Peter Burns @PeterBurnsESPN]

Roger Goodell looking at how FIFA has a 3rd place game

[UNICEF @UNICEF]

Yes, those photos you’ve seen are real.

More than 18 years ago, a baby named Lamine Yamal and his mom Sheila met Lionel Messi at a UNICEF fundraising photoshoot.

Today, their achievements on the pitch inspire millions. Off the pitch, both Messi and Lamine Yamal use their voices and platforms as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors to support and advocate for children around the world.

The goal? That every child survives, thrives, and fulfils their potential.

We are proud to have them on our team.

Credit: Joan Monfort

[Ben McAleer @BenMcAleer1]

So he did a wholesome request for Bellingham’s shirt and then straight into the Gordon exchange? An icon

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

🚨🤯 WHAT A STORY.

A WhatsApp message from an unknown number changed the life of Dominican barber Cándido "Coco" Fernández, owner of Mobar Cuts in Massachusetts. 💈

Thinking it was just another house call, he accepted the booking... only to arrive and discover his clients were Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé. 🇫🇷😱

🗣️ Coco: "I got a WhatsApp asking if I was available to cut someone’s hair. When I arrived, I saw it was Dembélé and Mbappé. I tried to stay calm, but I realised I was cutting the hair of two of the best players in the world. I’ve worked with plenty of celebrities, but I’d never seen a level of security like that."

Mbappé was so impressed that he recommended Coco to Achraf Hakimi, leading to another call-up at Morocco's team hotel, where he also cut the hair of Chadi Riad, Bilal El Khannouss and several other players. 🇲🇦✂️

He might have just had the best World Cup from anyone. 👏🌍

[B/R Football @brfootball]

After 27 days straight of football, there are no games today...

[Gravvy 🇲🇽 @coutixszn]

I saw Mohamed Salah play 120 minutes in a knockout game at 34 with a hamstring injury and he got MOTM while leading his country to win their first ever knockout game, some players don’t have it 👍

[niran @TheOfficialFNG]

how about we send both switzerland and colombia home and bring back cape verde

[Daniel Pearson @DPearsonPHL]

Btw lalas supporting the current system is basically proof that it doesn’t work. Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic would never have had the money to pay for the American system. So we are stuck with players like Lalas and Pulisic as a result of this exclusion.

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

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.

[Emmanuel Acho @EmmanuelAcho]

*Zlatan on Messi missing the PK*

“Everyone misses PK’s. I’ve missed PK’s, Thierry has missed PK’s… Alexi was never asked to take PK’s so he couldn’t miss…” 😬😬

[Jordan Elliott @splash_cousin]

If you think this is bad just think about the Italians who didn't get to see their team in the World Cup AND have to watch Pulisic play for an entire season

[Kirk @kirkkinsey]

One of the ironies of this whole USMNT thing is that every youth coach in the country has dealt with soft kids who have been helicopter-parented into oblivion.

And this team just had the ultimate helicopter parent moment and looked EXACTLY as you would expect. Absolutely no fight because mommy and daddy paid too much money for them to ever fail.

[. @tosinmm_]

Clint Dempsey is the greatest men’s player in American history, always was.

[#1 Daryl Morey Enjoyer @sthsthburner]

The US has millions of immigrants from countries that are acc good at football and they can't even get them on their team bc their system is pay to play 😭

[Adrian @SirBahena]

Yall tried telling me this was the lebron james of soccer. Captain America himself....

[ESPN FC @ESPNFC]

Christian Pulisic lost possession 11 times in just 45 minutes.

The MOST of any player on the field 😳

[the thicc husband & father @lukeisamazing]

haven’t seen America this thoroughly embarrassed on the world stage since we lost that war we started with Iran like 3 weeks ago

[nick wright @getnickwright]

Pulisic skipped the Gold Cup—much to the dismay of many current & former teammates & his coach—to be “best ready” for the World Cup.

He then went 6 months without scoring before the World Cup & then in the 5 games of the World Cup he missed one & left two early with injury.

[Ed. @DepressedDETN]

As a non footy watcher I’ve heard Christian Pulisic’s name as a star for years and I ain’t never seen him do a damn thing

[Nico @E0_DS0_Omega]

@DanWetzel rest of the world develops players thru public clubs for free. we charge 5k a year to play u12 and wonder why the talent pool is a kiddie pool compared to every country beating us.

[Dan Wetzel @DanWetzel]

Maybe making travel soccer even more expensive will help the US finally get good.