I am frankly stunned as well, I thought this was the last one we could win playing like we do. The loss to Japan should be a wake-up call to the United States. A nation whose top women's league is semiprofessional just beat us.

Can we finally just admit that physicality and luck can only take us so far from now on, since more nations have caught up? Can we finally just admit that the "rich kids' game" approach to soccer has finally and totally failed?

Did you know that the L League, the top women's league in Japan, is a semiprofessional league, yet they have two tiers of promotion and relegation? You know, promotion and relegation, something American soccer is allergic to. Of course, Major League Soccer fanboys will say "the infrastructure is not there yet" for promotion and relegation for American soccer, despite little Qatar having such a system, with two tiers of 12 teams each.

 To develop the sport for the men, we must be able to have "superclubs." And we must start paying our top American players to play on such clubs in America. For the women, it's the perfect way to build teams at the grassroots level.  

The United States Soccer Federation, with their weak leader Sunil Gulati (who had a good view of the defeat), refuses to mandate such a system for the men, and of course dares not mandate it for the women.

It's interesting to note Gulati's conflict of interest working for a MLS team, who adamantly does not want to join the serious soccer world, preferring "McSoccer" to progress. Promotion and relegation shouldn't be MLS' call; it is Gulati's call supposedly.

Look at WPS attendance, you would think the attendance would be better than WUSA after learning so much about their failures, and it's far worse.

But that's not the only problem. A nation who treats soccer as the "rich kids' game" when it's the "poor kids' game" everywhere else can only succeed on the women's side for so long until other nations got more organized.

A story in Philadelphia (a city which is 43 percent African-American) noted that of the over 550 girls teams, only one had a majority of African-American players. Notice many African-American players on our team? We focus on "academies" not tied to professional teams, when high school soccer attendance stinks. It's horrible. Next time, without drastic change, it will get worse for sure.

Here's some free advice:

1. Start playing futsal everywhere. Notice how the ESPN commentators were raving about the short-sided soccer Japan's players had to play due to space issues? They're dancing around it; it had to be futsal.

Instead of overpriced soccer complexes (at taxpayer expense) which price a lot of African-American kids out of the sport, get futsal in every recreation center, every middle school and high school gym in America.

2. End these "academies." Focus on high schools for development. In high schools, the football coach runs the middle and elementary school program. This is why their attendance is so good on Friday nights.

No more "British camps" in the summer. No more traveling academies pricing kids out of the sport. From now on, the high school soccer coach is in charge of development of the kids at middle and elementary school levels. Those coaches will run the summer camps and futsal programs offseason.

3. Change when high school and college soccer is played. All states should play high school soccer in the spring for boys and girls. Also, colleges should be promoting soccer far better by playing in the spring and summer like college baseball does. Look at the attention college baseball has that soccer could be getting.

4. Promotion and relegation in American soccer. Finally. Both genders. Don't tell me it can't be done. Again, Qatar has two tiers of 12 teams each. Frankly, with the women's league done the way it is, now is the time to reshape the league.

5. Stop demanding overpriced "soccer-specific" stadiums and complexes paid by taxpayers. Believe it or not, your 8-year old Johnny's development won't be killed if he isn't playing on "FIFA regulation fields." Kids should be playing futsal in the early ages anyway, just like they do in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and every other South American country.

How many men's World Cups did South America win again (hint: the answer is nine)? How many did the United States win again (hint: the answer is zero)? When possible, look at newer artificial turf fields built on existing school property (that taxpayers already paid for) and look for "eco-friendly" cooler fields from companies like Mondo and GeoTurfUSA, so many outdoor sports can be played.

6. Fire Sunil Gulati. For a variety of reasons. Red ribbons are not acceptable to Americans—not the men's Confederations Cup Final (in which we choked a two-goal lead to Brazil) and certainly not now. Especially with the "trained flea" mentality of the current United States Soccer Federation. A campaign has to start now to have any chance to replace him (or whoever MLS boss Don Garber elects to replace him) by the 2014 election.

I started a "citizen campaign" to replace Sunil Gulati, and I hope I'm not the only one to wage such a campaign. Please visit www.dennisjustice.com, join the Facebook page and follow my Tweets @DennisJustice.

The other women's programs have caught up to us. The other serious men's programs aren't even paying attention to us, they only say nice things about us because we mean television ratings and jersey sales to them. Neither situation should be acceptable to us anymore. Ultimately, this is a leadership problem, and it starts at the top. We need "leadership, not followship."

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