This new generation of the U.S. Men’s National Team hasn’t exactly taken over the world like we were told they would. Maybe it was hubris, perhaps it was hype. Either way, the so-called “golden generation” hasn’t delivered. Players moved to bigger clubs, managers came and went, and the same underwhelming results kept rolling in.
At this point, disappointment feels like the only real tradition. And now, the latest drama swirling around Christian Pulisic has only deepened the sense that something’s broken.
So, what should we attribute that to? Fox’s Alexi Lalas has some thoughts.
“We oftentimes talk about our diversity and we talk about it in the fact that it is one of the advantages we have, and of the great things about our country,” Lalas said on First Things First. “But with that diversity comes diversity of thought. If I go and ask a hundred soccer people out there, ‘What’s beautiful soccer?’ I’m going to get a hundred different answers. And it might be based on ethnicity, where you grew up, even geography. All of these different things.
“So I’ve argued that the homogenous nature of some other countries and cultures just in population in terms of size are much more manageable. And there is a collective understanding and, more importantly, an agreement in this is how we’re going to play. But getting 11 men to represent this great country of 350 million people, and all be on the same page, that is very, very difficult.”
Lalas doubled down, arguing that the team might be better off being less inclusive. That, instead of embracing the country’s diversity, perhaps the solution is to pick players from the same region with shared upbringings and a common worldview.
“I’ve argued before that maybe our best route to actually being better from a men’s perspective in soccer is actually being more exclusive, not being as inclusive,” Lalas continued. “In that if you went to the New York metropolitan area or Southern California and you just took players that all grew up in the same area, had all this shared experiences, maybe that would be better in terms of an understanding.
“This melting pot fallacy that I’ll be the first to admit, I bought into. And I’m not saying it can’t happen. It just takes a lot longer and with a lot more work. And especially when it comes to a national team, you don’t have time to be able to do that.”
That theory falls apart when you consider that one of the most dominant international teams of this generation — France — won the 2018 World Cup with a roster comprising players from vastly different backgrounds, ethnicities, and life experiences. Kylian Mbappé, Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kanté, and countless others didn’t grow up in some shared suburb with the same coach and identical worldview. What they had was a clear identity, a strong system, and buy-in across the board.
Lalas’ argument doesn’t explain why diversity works elsewhere. It just highlights that the U.S. hasn’t figured out how to make it work here.
And this isn’t some new revelation from Lalas, either. He made the same argument in a 2017 New York Times interview, again on the Men in Blazers podcast that same year, and once more in 2018. At this point, it feels like his go-to talking point — a stump speech he dusts off every few years, despite the backlash that always follows.
Back in 2017, SB Nation’s Stars and Stripes FC already did a thorough job of tearing Lalas’ argument apart.
He discounts the way that being from an underrepresented background in the upper levels of soccer in the U.S. excludes players by means that are beyond their control. By conflating social diversity and variation in soccer styles, Lalas is masquerading exclusion as colorblindness.
The evidence is against Lalas and Arena. Before the 2014 World Cup, the Washington Post published a study that concluded, “There is a positive relationship between diversity and performance that is visible even among the very best teams in the world. Teams that eschew international talent to cultivate solely homegrown are likely to come up short on the world’s biggest stage.” The article went on to say, “Surprisingly, we find no evidence of diminishing returns to diversity. It almost always helps to enhance the pool of styles available on the field.”
Perhaps the issue isn’t too many perspectives but rather the lack of a clear plan to unify them.
And if your takeaway is that inclusion is the problem, then perhaps you’re not identifying the root cause of the failure. Maybe you’re contributing to it.