There is segment in CNN regarding our boys, very nicely done. check it out http://startingpoint.blogs.cnn.com/...man-born-soccer-stars-choose-to-play-for-u-s/
yes very good, oddly, in the 1990s dooley and wagner, who are white were the first germans i recollect playing for the usa for 1998 qual. the maso twins whose dad is black and mom is white, STAED in germanmy when the dad retired, and spoke next to NO english i don't know if they were the first afrcican american germans, but somehow i think the coache is a major reason for some chooosing usa
They are called German Americans because it is commonly practiced to denote ethnicity first and citizenship second. To my knowledge we don't, or it is not common practice to denote citizenship first and ethnicity second anywhere in this country.
Erwin Kostedde in 74/75. Jimmy Hartwig in 79. A major reason for "choosing" the US is probably that Germany never asked them, or stopped asking (Jones).
But you could argue that all of them are German citizens (as well as US citizen) even after switching federations, which sets them apart from 99.9% of the German-Americans living in the US.
There's nothing to argue. They are all German citizens to my knowledge that isn't question. That doesn't matter to the linguistic norm of describing Americans of different ethnic background. When you use an ethnic modifier to describe a person, you put the answer to the inherent ethnic question first and the already assumed knowledge of citizenship second. Danny Williams is an American, so is Edgar Castillo. What is their ethnic back ground? Danny Williams is a German-American. Edgar Castillo is a Mexican-American. The American part is not that question, it is the assumption and it goes second. What they'd be called in Germany is a whole different bag of worms. Often times rotten worms.
How the U.S. Military Shaped American Soccer http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/u-s-military-shaped-american-soccer-82915/
I would just like to point out that without the German Americans, we would have likely finished last place in our group. Jones, Johnson, Brooks and Green were crucial to our quality of play.
Thats a bit of a jump. Jones and Johnson were brilliant. Brooks scored a great winning goal. Green scored a consolation. Who knows what would have happened without them?
Green contributed literally nothing to our advancement from the group. Fabian was proven to be replaceable by Yedlin in the Belgium game. Brooks played 45 minutes and scored a goal after being on the field and involved in the play in which Ghana equalized, but it's impossible to know how that would have changed with Gonzo in the game (who proved quite capable in his minutes as well). I'll give you Jones, but the rest of your premise is somewhere between completely made up and highly speculative.
True that, with out Green we lose perhaps 2-0, with him we lost 2-1; Not sure how crucial to our quality of play that is.
I laugh when fans call out our squad for the German/Americans but I've never known Germans to have last names like Jones, Green, Brooks, Johnson, Boyd.
I'm glad to have any eligible player on the squad but I can't assume we are in last place without the GA guys. Maybe we get same results from different tactics/ formations. JJ was good but without him, maybe MB is withdrawn a but and a better AM is on the field. Without FJ perhaps we see Geoff where he played all year. Goodson or Ream probably could have given us the same 45 we got from Brooks. All these guys are good pros that make the team better but none provided transcendent performances.
That and my more general point was that it's not like without those guys we'd be playing men down. Maybe without Jones, JK thinks he needs Donovan's veteran ability and Donovan has a great WC. Maybe Mix goes nuts, etc. Maybe Yedlin plays instead of Fabian and has an even greater WC than he did. Maybe Omar comes on instead of Brooks and scores. 2 of those guys had a great WC, and the other 2 had great flashes, but we can't say what would have happened without them.
Well by nature the analysis is speculative. But without the German-Americans, the roster would have been weaker. Here were the likely alternatives for each German-American: Jermaine Jones - Maurice Edu Fabian Johnson - Brad Evans Timothy Chandler - Michael Parkhurst Julian Green - Landon Donovan John Anthony Brooks - Clarence Goodson In that scenario, our line-up is probably something like this against Ghana: -----------Altidore-------- Bedoya----Dempsey--Zusi--- ------Bradley--Beckerman-- Beasley-Besler--Gonzalez--Cameron -----------Howard------------ I'd expect little offense out of that group, and we would have had only 2-3 good options off the bench: Offensive subs would have been: -Donovan, Johannson, Yedlin, Diskerud, Davis, Wondo Defensive subs: -Edu, Goodson, Parkhurst, Evans, Yedlin I just think Jones was crucial to our success (his goal against Portugal changed the tournament for us), and so did Brooks (brilliant header), and Fabian (his offensive runs down the sideline provided a good deal of our attacking threat in 3.2 games.) Would Parkhurst, Cameron and Evans had been able to make maurauding runs down the sideline? (Maybe Yedlin, but he also might have been burned defensively.) Would Edu really had been able to score the goal that Jones did, plus put in all that extra physical work? Would Donovan had more of an impact than Green? (Yes.) Would Goodson have scored the goal that Brooks made? (I don't think so.) Without Green, we would have lost 2-0 and the last 15 minutes of the Belgium game are painful indeed. Frankly, I think Jurgen would have been fired without all the input from the German-American players.
We could have used these guys in the seventies and eighties - might have qualified for a World Cup before 1990.
I'd like to point out that they were all born American citizens. Not nationalized. And, there were in fact nationalized guys that played for other teams in the WC.
Same goes for the Mexican Americans, and the Native Americans, and the Italian Americans, and the Latvian Americans, and the African Americans, and the Hungro Americans........