You are here  Inside the U.S. Team’s World Cup Training Regimen
World Cup  For all their feats of hustle and late-game heroics,
the fact remains that the Americans continue to wallow in
mediocrity on the world’s biggest stage. They’ve reached the
quarterfinals of the World Cup just once since 1930. As of
April, they were ranked 13th in the FIFA world rankings, behind
Switzerland and Greece.  The reality is that the best soccer
teams in the world rely on a much less hyperkinetic style of
play than the one the Americans excel at. In 2013, Paul Bradley,
Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Department of Sports and
Exercise Sciences at the University of Sunderland, led a study
on the relationship among speed, endurance, and success at
varying levels of the sport.  The researchers isolated factors
that included distance covered and sprint speeds as well as
total ball touches and successful passes. Bradley discovered
that teams in England’s League One and League Championship—the
Euro equivalent of minor leagues—cover