{"id":72496,"date":"2026-04-23T06:55:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/donovan-or-dempsey-new-usmnt-retrospectives-lend-more-fuel-to-a-long-running-debate\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T06:55:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:55:32","slug":"donovan-or-dempsey-new-usmnt-retrospectives-lend-more-fuel-to-a-long-running-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/donovan-or-dempsey-new-usmnt-retrospectives-lend-more-fuel-to-a-long-running-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Donovan or Dempsey? New USMNT retrospectives lend more fuel to a long-running debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Clint Dempsey\u2019s docuseries and Landon Donovan\u2019s memoir show that there is no single path to US soccer stardom<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/mar\/31\/sign-up-for-the-world-behind-the-cup-a-newsletter-about-more-than-soccer\"><strong>Sign up for the World Behind The Cup newsletter<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back in 1993, Bora Milutinovi\u0107 offered a succinct diagnosis of the American men\u2019s soccer player: \u201cThis is the problem with these people: they don\u2019t have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What the then-US men\u2019s national team head coach meant, presumably, is that making it in soccer wasn\u2019t existential for American players, as it is for many others worldwide. Milutinovi\u0107 and his two brothers had been orphaned by the second world war and clawed their way to the Yugoslav national team and gainful professional careers. The players in the Serb\u2019s care at that time, by contrast, never had to worry about feeding themselves.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/apr\/23\/clint-dempsey-docuseries-landon-donovan-memoir-usmnt\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clint Dempsey\u2019s docuseries and Landon Donovan\u2019s memoir show that there is no single path to US soccer stardom Sign up for the World Behind The Cup newsletter Back in 1993, Bora Milutinovi\u0107 offered a succinct diagnosis of the American men\u2019s soccer player: \u201cThis is the problem with these people: they don\u2019t have a problem.\u201d What &#8230; <a title=\"Donovan or Dempsey? New USMNT retrospectives lend more fuel to a long-running debate\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/donovan-or-dempsey-new-usmnt-retrospectives-lend-more-fuel-to-a-long-running-debate\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Donovan or Dempsey? New USMNT retrospectives lend more fuel to a long-running debate\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}