The obvious similarities are that both games look to win space on a given plane. In soccer, when you can expose an undefended flank, you’re usually running into twenty or thirty yards of space. Once behind the last defender, in theory, the attack should culminate with a goal. Due to poor execution with a shot or crossing ball, scoring can be thwarted. Still, once an attacking team has figured out the other team’s weakness, you can rest assure that the ball will find its way back over to that area in the following surge up the field.

In chess, an unattended flank can lead your opponent to an advantage in the match if he or she can swiftly occupy that area of the board with a dangerous piece like a bishop or a rook. Suddenly, if you’re not paying attention, or if you are simply outmatched, you can end up playing defense or over emphasizing the danger until you leave yourself open to another attack from the other side of the board. This mistake is commonly made by the novice player.

My famed mentor, Rocco Mitkov, often used war terminology to teach the game of soccer. He said often to the boys he trained, “Every combination or dribbling move gets you past another line of their defense. You kill two soldiers every time you do it.” Now that may sound a little gruesome, but to boys who often play war games on their X-boxes or in their backyards for hours, it makes perfect sense to them.

In chess, you must also rid the playing field of the enemy. Out maneuvering your opponent to strike his pawns down can lead to open shots at his king, queen, and their court. With a lot of the foot soldiers out of the way, the space on the board opens up and the attacking part of your game reaps ample amounts of aggressive possibilities. When you are staring at the board in that position, the game is immensely fun. Nothing brings a sense of satisfaction than seeing your opponent in a severely weakened position. With the right sequence of moves, an easy victory should be yours.

What separates players is this. Much like when you play chess on the computer, the various levels are discriminated by an individuals skills. This skill level is determined by the speed of play (or thinking) a player can engage in against the computer’s ability to play the game.

If you consistently play at the first level, it will take you a week or so to outwit the computer. Once you know how to win at that stage, it’s time to move on to the second grade. If for some reason you decide to leap frog to a higher level, in no way will you be prepared for the onslaught the computer will bring forth. As your consciousness and imagination have yet to rise to such a high degree of thought, you will quickly be embarrassed and your army will be discarded and sent to the graveyard of the game.

In soccer, though often two players have very similar skill sets, their thinking for the game distinguishes them from one another. In one example that I was involved with, I had one player who had refined skills as a player and a 4.3 grade point average in school. The other player matcher her skill sets but was only a 3.2 in the classroom. However, the first girl had a soccer IQ of about 1.6 on the field, while the other had the mind of a prodigy. It truly came down to how fast they could think, and what their imaginations allowed in regard to seeing combinations, to finding open players, and to knowing when to attack as an individual when the opportunity allowed.

With the first player, when under pressure, she typically panicked or tried to jam a pass through a defender’s legs. This resulted in a dispossession or a ricocheted 50/50 ball that the odds allow you to win only half the time.

With the second player, she remained composed no matter how intense the defending pressure was. In once instance, she simply twirled out of the gridlock she was in and then chipped a soft ball over the last defender’s head so her teammate could run on it. It was a brilliant move that only a player with a vivid imagination and a lot of confidence could pull off.

The great movie, Searching For Bobby Fischer, tells the true-life story of a chess prodigy named Josh Waitzkin. Told by his father, the prodigy has a penchant for playing speed chess on the streets with a well known local who takes a liking to him. To the consternation of his father, and to his teacher, the boy fights learning to play the game in the traditional tournament style of play. In one brilliant scene, the teacher, played by Ben Kingsley, swipes all the pieces off the chess board in fit of frustration. Though all the pieces lay on the floor, the teacher tells his student to study the board and remember where all the pieces were. In essence, he wanted the boy to clear his cluttered mind and learn to see the game without the players even being on the field.

In many ways, I feel that’s how the game is played at the highest level in soccer. The great players, and the great teams, distinguish themselves more in their sophistication for the game than they do with their actual skill sets. Using computer chess to compare an MLS team to FC Barcelona, you might say the MLS team is at a level 5 in their playing ability while the Barcelona boys are Grand Masters. That’s a world of difference. When you combine their training, their sublime soccer IQ’s, their skill sets, and the artistic prowess of Barcelona, it really doesn’t give the neophyte much of a chance in a match.

It’s not the fault of the American apprentices. In the short period of time we’ve been playing the game of soccer, we’ve fashioned a hybrid style of play that allows us to defend and counter attack in large areas of space. That’s no different than the way a rookie chess player looks at the board. They bunker in and hope the Master makes one grand mistake. When that doesn’t happen, the blitzkrieg is relentless and merciless and sends the lesser player home wondering what he was thinking when he asked for the match.

If the Americans truly want to compete, it’s time for them to search beyond the running speed and skill sets of their top players. In a big country, they have to find some wonder kids, who can play, think, and dream the game. It’s a hard chore, but then, and only then, will the playing field be even, and only then, will we ever be capable of saying the words “Check Mate” to a team of caliber at the end of a match.