To American soccer fans who watched it, and likely to the American players and coaches who endured it, the night will forever be known as the Nashville Nightmare. The night a talented collection of American soccer players watched their Olympic dreams shattered by a surreal sequence that left every player stunned, and most fans asking serious questions about what went wrong.
There will be no U.S. men’s soccer team in London this summer. No pictures of teammates posing in snazzy Olympic outfits for the Opening Ceremonies, no career-defining moments on the field that help boost a player’s stock and catch the eye of international scouts. No opportunities to compete in the kind of event that can help you grow as a player, and fast-track your career.
The blame has been spread around, from Olympic qualifying head coach Caleb Porter, to goalkeepers Bill Hamid and Sean Johnson, to Major League Soccer, where not enough young players see regular playing time, and even to U.S. senior national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann.
As devastating as failing to qualify for the Olympics was, it is something U.S. Soccer can overcome, and something it did overcome in 2004 (and something Mexico was able to move past in 2008). Where missing the Olympics will hurt the most is in slowing the development process of a generation of American players considered one of the most talented in recent memory.
“The process for these players is getting even tougher,” Klinsmann said. “It’s getting even more difficult because they do not have the jumping board, or I called it a trampoline, of the Olympics. If you play in an Olympic tournament, this is a huge showcase. This is where the world is watching and evaluating you. So they’re missing out on that now. They don’t have that opportunity to really gain valuable experience in such a big competition, so they have to prove it somewhere else.
“Where can they prove it? Now they can only prove it in their club teams. The expectations now that they really perform on the highest level in their club teams are even higher.
“That means a (Juan) Agudelo, for example, has to play week in and week out with the Red Bulls,” Klinsmann said. “Brek Shea has to prove with FC Dallas week in and week out that he’s one of their best players in order to get a chance to become part of the senior national team. So there are many lessons that you take from the process of the Olympic team. It is a bit tougher than if they would have qualified obviously.”
Mexico and Honduras will be sending teams to England this summer for the Olympics, giving their best and brightest the invaluable opportunity to not only showcase their talents for the world, but to gain the kind of big-game experience that their American counterparts won’t get a chance to have. Opportunities this generation of U.S. players will never be able to replace.
"It's tough for guys like Bill (Hamid), Ike (Opara) and Joe (Corona) to miss out on the Olympics because not only are they missing out on the experience of being involved in a major international tournament, the only other showcase like it as far as scouts are concerned is the World Cup," said player agent Chris Megaloudis, who represents Hamid, Corona and Olympic-bound Honduran standout Andy Najar of D.C. United.
“For Andy (Najar), he will have a chance to potentially set himself up for a big transfer if he plays well at the Olympics,” added Megaloudis, a representative of the James Grant Sports Agency. “The Olympics are a special event and the eyes of the world will be on London.”
At the 2008 Olympic Games, the United States failed to advance out of the group stage but several players still did enough to impress scouts and facilitate transfer moves. Michael Bradley moved to German Bundesliga side Borussia Moenchengladbach, Maurice Edu signed with Scottish giants Glasgow Rangers and Benny Feilhaber parlayed his Olympic experience into a transfer to Danish side AGF Aarhus. Other members of that team, such as Stuart Holden, Sacha Kljestan and Charlie Davies, saw their profiles and stocks raised by their performances in Beijing.
As much as failing to qualify for the Olympics is a setback for American soccer, and the next generation of American talent, it isn’t something that is guaranteed to hold U.S. Soccer back. You need only look south of the border for a country that shook off the disappointment of missing the Olympics to revive its national team program.
Mexico failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics, and four years later boasts a strong squad, as well as blossoming youth teams.
“The Mexican national team program has shown us that not qualifying for the Olympics is not a death sentence,” Megaloudis said. “The Mexicans have moved on from their failures before the last Olympic games and are now potentially one of the best talent producing countries in the world.”
If anything, the failure to qualify for the 2012 Olympics should help shed some light on issues the American soccer system needs to address -- the most important being the need for young American pros ages 18 to 22 to be playing more regularly. As much as Klinsmann talked about the need for young Americans to fight for, there is clearly a problem, particularly in MLS where so many talented young prospects are left languishing on benches. If the USA's failure to qualify for the Olympics helps facilitate changes that give young Americans more opportunities in the future, then at least this spring's disappointment won't have been for nothing.
For the key members of the U.S. team, the disappointment of not qualifying is sure to linger, but many have already gotten back to the task of building up their careers. This past weekend alone saw Freddy Adu and Ike Opara impress in their first club appearances since Olympic qualifying, with Adu helping lead the Philadelphia Union to a victory and Opara helping keep the high-scoring New York Red Bulls off the scoreboard after coming on as a substitute.
On the same day, Brek Shea enjoyed his best game since Nashville, scoring the game-winning goal for FC Dallas. Just last week, U.S. Under-23 players Josh Gatt and Joe Gyau signed new contracts with their European clubs, while U.S. national team striker Jozy Altidore, a member of the 2008 Olympic team and a projected starter on what would have been the 2012 Olympic team, continues enjoying a breakout year with Dutch side AZ Alkmaar.
All those developments show that, despite the Olympic qualifying disappointment, the upcoming generation of American players does feature some very impressive talent. There is reason for optimism even if the pain of the Nashville Nightmare is still relatively fresh, having been inflicted just three weeks ago.
No, there won’t be a U.S. men’s soccer team at this summer’s London Olympics, but the collection of American players carrying that disappointment has already started working on trying to prove that one bad tournament does not define a generation.
