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This policy may have had a secondary benefit: soccer and sports prowess. We saw in the last world cup that Iceland performed quite well in a tough first stage g

This policy may have had a secondary benefit: soccer and sports prowess. We saw in the last world cup that Iceland performed quite well in a tough first stage group against Argentina, Nigeria, and the eventual runners up Croatia. Iceland was my team since they made it in and USA, with a population 600 times bigger, did not. This prowess in sport was then attributed to their massive buildout of soccer pitches in every area, coaches for ages 5-10 to develop fundamentals, etc. There is a lot of potential in children, we can help them shine if we devote the resources! The USA has not done this, sadly most of the extracurricular funding is charity or is rich people giving their kids more chances to pad resumes for college apps.

alexpotato 6y ago
> This prowess in sport was then attributed to their massive buildout of soccer pitches in every area, coaches for ages 5-10 to develop fundamentals A key detail of the above is that most of the money spent was at the youth level and not, crucially, for highly paid coaches and administrators. In other words, you could be your full time job to be a youth soccer coach in Iceland whereas in many other countries it's a volunteer position e.g. Little League in the US. I always think of this story when applying improvements to technology processes or infrastructure. Specifically, which solutions involve "one big thing changing" vs "getting everyone to do a few small things".
loeg 6y ago
USA won the last world cup.
- ralfd 6y ago
  No the real one. If I enter “last World Cup” into a private browser window google shows me the result of the tournament people really care about, which was won by France.
- chmod775 6y ago
  What? The US never won a world cup. Not in 90 years. The highest position they ever reached was third place in 1930. And that world cup had only 13 participating teams. Edit/Correction: Apparently there's a woman's world cup which the US won multiple times. Maybe they can arrange to send that team to the other one too, to increase their chances /s

alexpotato 6y ago

> This prowess in sport was then attributed to their massive buildout of soccer pitches in every area, coaches for ages 5-10 to develop fundamentals A key detail of the above is that most of the money spent was at the youth level and not, crucially, for highly paid coaches and administrators. In other words, you could be your full time job to be a youth soccer coach in Iceland whereas in many other countries it's a volunteer position e.g. Little League in the US. I always think of this story when applying improvements to technology processes or infrastructure. Specifically, which solutions involve "one big thing changing" vs "getting everyone to do a few small things".

loeg 6y ago

USA won the last world cup.

ralfd 6y ago
No the real one. If I enter “last World Cup” into a private browser window google shows me the result of the tournament people really care about, which was won by France.
chmod775 6y ago
What? The US never won a world cup. Not in 90 years. The highest position they ever reached was third place in 1930. And that world cup had only 13 participating teams. Edit/Correction: Apparently there's a woman's world cup which the US won multiple times. Maybe they can arrange to send that team to the other one too, to increase their chances /s