Last week, we launched a survey on key issues regarding US Soccer and a public vote on the US Soccer Federation Presidential Candidates. The poll closed at 12:00 A.M Eastern Standard Time on December 12th, 2017. The survey gathered over 100 opinions and we thank you all for your participation. Data Disclaimer: Hope Solo emerged as a candidate after a large amount of votes were in, therefore we did not alter the survey and add Hope Solo. Starting with the first question of the survey, we asked "Who would you like to see as the next president of US Soccer?" Six choices were made available to vote on (Steve Gans, Eric Wynalda, Paul Lapointe, Michael Winograd, Kathy Carter, and Kyle Martino), one name came out overwhelmingly on top. Former USMNT player and Fox Sports presenter Eric Wynalda managed to win an overwhelming 66.4% of the vote. Coming in second was fellow USMNT alumni and football pundit Kyle Martino with a mere 13.1% of the vote. Paul Lapointe rounded off the top three with 10.3%. The next closest contender was Kathy Carter (7.5%) while Steve Gans and Michael Winograd mustered 2.8% together. Keeping on the same topic, we then asked "Which candidate is most qualified to be US Soccer President?" The same six candidates were kept as options. Eric Wynalda won this round as well, getting 58.9% of the vote. Past Wynalda is where the results became interesting. Paul Lapointe climbed to second with 15% of the vote thanks to his longtime involvement in indoor soccer, youth development, and the UPSL. Climbing from fifth to third, Steve Gans, a successful lawyer in sports, won 8.4% of the vote. Kathy Carter of Soccer United Marketing (SUM) remained in fourth with 7.5%. Kyle Martino slipped in the rankings with only 6.5%, while former player Michael Winograd remained in sixth with 3.7% of the vote. Moving away from candidates to a more tense US Soccer discussion, we asked about Promotion and Relegation. The three options were "Bring in Promotion/Relegation as soon as possible", "US Soccer is not ready yet", and "It works elsewhere in the world, but it will not work for US Soccer." The results were in line with a public poll by Fox Soccer on twitter (78% were in favor of Promotion/Relegation). Beyond the Match's survey powered by AR Performance Analysis revealed that 70.8% of the voters want Promotion/Relegation as soon as possible. 24.5% believe that Promotion/Relegation is the right route for down the road but US Soccer just simply is not sustainable enough, while a minuscule 4.7% believe that Promotion/Relegation will not work in US Soccer. Keeping on the US Soccer issues, we moved on to asking about development. Specifically coaching and youth development. We asked "Is youth soccer development in the US working?" and "Is coaching development at an acceptable standard in the US?" We provided the same three answers for each question (Yes, No, and There are issues that could use improvement, but overall, it is effective.) For the third answer listed, we will refer to that as "Content" in the results. On the topic of youth development, just 2.8% are satisfied. 29.9% are content and a surprising 67.3% are unhappy. The results are similar for coaching development. A slight increase (3.7%) of voters felt satisfied. Content voter responses dropped to 20.6%, while unhappy increased to 75.7%. These results show the obvious concern and a new candidate should aim to reform both coaching and youth development to please the public. Finally, to conclude the survey we asked a very generic question with "Are you satisfied with the state of US Soccer?" You can guess the results. The biggest marginal victory in the survey revealed of 81.3% are unhappy. 14% felt content with US Soccer, while 4.7% felt pleased. To be honest, we were a bit surprised that 4.7% felt pleased, we expected less than 2.0%. This survey achieved many more votes than we could have expected and we greatly appreciated all who voted and shared the survey. The US Soccer Federation Presidential Election will be in February 2018, and you can expect more coverage from Beyond the Match!
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