NEW YORK – The Catch-22 for U.S. men’s soccer in the Olympics is this: The better a player gets, the less likely he is to play.
And compounding the difficulty is a structural issue, according to American under-24 coach Jason Kreis: Major League Soccer does not adhere to the international calendar of a season that runs from August to May, leaving most of his players trying to regain fitness while facing opponents in midseason form.
The Americans failed to qualify for their third straight Olympics when they lost 2-1 to Honduras on Sunday. For the second time in three Olympic cycles, a goalkeeping blunder helped sink the U.S.