My goodness, this thread is a clusterfukk.
I'm going to tell a story right now, one which will illustrate the major issues with the athleticism argument, as well as what US Soccer development is lacking no matter what types of athletes play the game (as such, it'll illustrate some of the points of certain posters in this thread. More knowledgeable football heads, feel free to correct any of this).
So there's this kid, right? Lives in a very prominent South American football country, whose most prominent footballer is a scintillating, world-class (if slightly controversial) legend of the game still residing in the public eye of world football to this day. He grew up working-class, the son of a steelworker and a cleaner, in one of the most populous cities of this nation, known as that nation's Chicago. This kid starts playing football at the age of 5, coached by a relative of his. At the age of 8, he switches to the youth division of a very prominent club based in his home city, known as one of the best youth football clubs in the country, if not the entire South American continent. He excels, becoming well known as a member of this youth powerhouse, even gaining an epithet in the process. Everything seems to be going well for the kid.
At age 11, he gets a diagnosis: he has a growth hormone deficiency that requires treatments costing upwards of $900 a month to keep in check. A national powerhouse shows interest in the kid's skill, but doesn't want to pay for his medical bills. Seems as if things are starting to look a little bleak for our hero here.
Enter a European powerhouse football club. Some would even say THE European powerhouse football club. Turns out, our kid has relatives in this club's home country, and the club has heard about the kid's talent through the grapevine. The club's athletic director makes a trip to this kid's home country and checks him out. Impressed, the athletic director writes out a contract for the kid to join the ranks of this powerhouse's youth program on a napkin, even offering to pay for the kid's medical expenses. However, he has one condition for the kid and his family: "I will sign you and pay for the treatment of your condition, but you MUST move to work with us." The kid and his family agree, and he starts his training with this powerhouse across the Atlantic, eventually becoming one of the greats of his generation.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is Lionel Messi's story. More importantly than recognizing who's story it is, is recognizing that something like this could never in a million years happen in the context of US Soccer development, and probably won't ever happen for, at the very least, about 20 years.
Unlike this story, the story of a working class kid that had football brought to him at a young age and was allowed to play untold hours of football with the best of his generation, and eventually play understudy at Barcelona to the best of the generation before him, the story of an American soccer player more than likely follows this template:
-Upper-middle class kid needs to play a sport, chooses soccer.
-Unlike lower class kids, his family has the means to play the club fees, tournament fees, and the costs of the equipment needed to play soccer at the youth level which facilitates his entry into the game (talent is only a marginal requirement here, unlike in Messi's story)
-He plays at the youth level, more than likely plays for his school's team, and either goes in one of two directions if he chooses to continue his career at the professional level: goes to college to play, or, if he's lucky and talented enough, gets drafted to play in MLS.
More than likely, this player's development tops out here because, not having played with and against the best of the best of his generation, not having had elite-level coaching from the cradle on up, and not having played understudy to the best of the best of the previous generation, he does not have the basic skills needed to excel beyond the level of a third-tier league.
The difference between creating anything close to a Messi and creating a third-tier soccer player comes down to two things that the US does not have, and will not have for at least 20 years or so:
-A deep and diversified talent pool to pick from. This is the fault of the soccer federation and the American soccer culture in general, as here, soccer is seen as a sport for the moneyed class, and also has the requisite barriers to entry of a sport of the moneyed class. This is beginning to be rectified, with Klinsmann scouting German-American players for the USMNT, but until the second problem is taken care of, will not truly be solved.
-A developmental program which selects and trains players from a very young age (we're talking single-digits here, which is why the arguments about measurables and random tryouts in the hood are ridiculous. If you don't have the skills to take on the best of the best of your developing generation by about 14 or so, it's probably not going to happen for you. Probably meaning never), which reaches into the lover-class areas of the country and plucks promising talent out of their environments to play for the youth systems of elite clubs, play against the best of the best of their generation, and play understudy to the best of the best of the previous generation. None of this even remotely exists in the US, and probably will be extremely tough to implement because it seems as if MLS teams are sticking to the "players come to us" model of player of development, which will never in a million years work to create elite players, no matter how athletic they are.
Until these problems are rectified, US soccer at the national level will remain unchanged: we play hard against teams that are far more skilled than we are, and pull out wins and draws due to pure tenacity more than superior skill and tactics. That will take us to the Round of 16, maybe even the Quarters with a favorable draw, but nowhere further on a consistent basis. And this holds no matter how athletic the players are.
The show falsely claimed he had a higher vertical than NBA players, he doesn't, they were impressed by his vertical because to them it was pretty damn high, and all you soccer dudes have made it a point to use him in athletic comparisons to NFL/NBA players. Now, we have cold hard data on just how high he jumps and it turns into "well, he didn't train it" 
"
It don't work like that.
