It also bears noting that he had 25 goals in 33 games last yr as an older player in U16 divison and as a younger player in the U18 division still has 10 goals in 17 games, still a very good strike rate.
Yeah, because a Furman CB would never get a GA deal. http://www.furmanpaladins.com/sports/m-soccer/2012-13/releases/20130103g2fflr
BTW, we don't know for certain that Haberkorn is transferring for "exposure" reasons. Any school that has produced Clint Dempsey and Ricardo Clark is going to have little trouble getting MLS coaches to come watch a well-regarded U20 YNT prospect play there. Madison and Berkeley are a lot different, culturally and academically, then Greenville, SC. If you've never been, Greenville is a very pleasant small town. If you're driving to Georgia or Florida from the NE, I highly recommend it as a place to spend the night. But it's also in the heart of a conservative state and Furman is a private, preppy (I don't know if the kids still use that term) school. To be polite, none of this is applicable at Wisconsin and Cal. I have no idea what Haberkorn's personality is like but it could be he wanted to be around a different campus environment that more suits him. Then there's the fact that the Big Ten and Pac-12 are better conferences than the Southern Conference, which was never as strong as the big conferences anyway, but has been weakened by defections of late. Maybe he just wants more games against better players. Also, John Trask and Kevin Grimes both have experience playing or coaching at higher levels so maybe that's an appeal. But, if all he wants is a GA deal or MLS exposure, I'm sure he could still get that at Furman. For the record, here are the schools that have had players signed to P40/GA deals as underclassmen. I left out JuCos and didn't count homegrown players or players who went to Europe or South America straight from school. And I didn't include players who skipped college altogether. You'll note, I'm sure, that Furman has had more GA players than Wisconsin and just one less than Cal. Virginia - 12 (Ben Olsen, Scott Vermillion, Brian West, Chris Albright, Michael Green, Kyle Martino, Alecko Eskandarian, Jacob LeBlanc, Hunter Freeman, Nico Colaluca, Bakary Soumare, Tony Tchani) Maryland - 12 (Judah Cooks, Andy Kirk, Danny Califf, Nick Downing, Clarence Goodson, Chris Seitz, Maurice Edu, Omar Gonzalez, Jeremy Hall, Rodney Wallace, Zac MacMath, Schillo Tshuma) UCLA - 12 (Carlos Bocanegra, Nick Rimando, DJ Countess, Nelson Akwari, Chad Barrett, Pat Ianni, Marvell Wynne, Tony Beltran (via St. John's), Chance Myers, Amobi Okugo, Chandler Hoffman, Kelyn Rowe) Indiana - 9 (Dema Kovalenko, Nick Garcia, Ned Grabavoy, Drew Moor (via Furman), Jacob Peterson, Jed Zayner, Kevin Alston, Will Bruin, Eriq Zavaleta) Akron - 9 (Steve Zakuani, Teal Bunbury, Blair Gavin, Perry Kitchen, Darlington Nagbe, Michael Nanchoff, Kofi Sarkodie, Zarek Valentin, Darren Mattocks) North Carolina - 8 (Tim Sahaydak, Chris Carrieri, Logan Pause, David Stokes, Jamie Watson, Dax McCarty, Enzo Martinez, Mikey Lopez) Wake Forest - 5 (Sergi Daniv, Brian Carroll, Michael Parkhurst, Corben Bone, Ike Opara) Clemson - 4 (Eric Quill, Scott Bower (via Stetson), Ricky Lewis, Nathan Sturgis) UC Santa Barbara - 4 (Eric Avila, Ciaran O'Brien (via San Diego), Michael Tetteh, Sam Garza (via Denver)) California - 4 (Stefan Frei, Andrew Wiedeman, David Bingham, Christian Dean) Furman - 3 (Ricardo Clark, Clint Dempsey, Walker Zimmerman) Saint Louis - 3 (Brad Davis, Will John, Tim Ward) Santa Clara - 3 (Ryan Cochrane, Steve Cronin, Amaechi Igwe) South Florida - 3 (Christian Jimenez, Anthony Wallace, Dom Dwyer (via JuCo)) Connecticut - 3 (Shavar Thomas, Andrew Jean-Baptiste, Andre Blake) Cal State Fullerton - 2 (Joey DiGiamarino, Brian Dunseth) Cal State Northridge - 2 (Juan Sastoque, Willie Sims) Central Florida - 2 (Sean Johnson, Deshorn Brown (via Mobile)) Creighton - 2(Tyler Polak, Eric Miller) Louisville - 2 (Andrew Farrell, Marlon Hairston) NC State - 2 (Ubusuku Abukusumo, Shaker Asad) Portland - 2 (Kelly Gray, Nate Jaqua) South Carolina - 2 (Josh Wolff, Brad Guzan) American (Antonio Otero) Cal State Dominguez Hills (Kei Kamara) Cincinnati (Josh Gardner) Columbia (Matt Napolean) Duke (Andrew Wenger) Eastern Illinois (Jason Thompson) Florida International (Alen Kozic) Hartford (Damion Lowe) Illinois-Chicago (Baggio Husidic) Michigan (Peri Marosevic) Ohio State (Roger Espinoza (via JuCo)) Oregon State (Danny Mwanga) Penn State (Corey Hertzog) Rutgers (Dilly Duka) San Francisco (Rob Valentino) San Jose State (Isaias Bardales) UNC Greensboro (Rusty Pierce) Washington (Chad McCarty) Seton Hall (Sacha Kljestan) Southern Methodist (Ramon Nunez) Stanford (Chad Marshall) Tulsa (Ryan Pore) UNLV (Danny Cruz) Virginia Commonwealth (Jason Johnson) Virginia Tech (Patrick Nyarko) Wisconsin (AJ Cochran)
^ I was going to say, if you want to look at player development, here in Wisconsin we haven't exactly provided a lot of key MLS players. Who knows what his situation is. Maybe he hates his coach, maybe his girlfriend broke up with him, maybe he wants a degree from a more prestigious university, maybe he really would rather hang out by the lake in -10 degree weather with 20 mph winds in January training.... wait don't let him read that part.
Rubio Rubin talks about Utrecht & the U20s http://americansoccernow.com/articles/for-rubio-rubin-it-s-all-about-the-red-white-amp-blue
I noticed this blurb in a Dallas Cup article: http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/04/09/08/47/140409-u20mnt-dallas-cup-roster-release The next event for the U.S. U-20 MNT after the Dallas Cup will be a domestic training camp held at North Carolina State University in May. News to me anyway.............................
The team is starting to take shape. IMO, this is how I see the team right now. 4-3-3 GK: Steffen RB: Moore CB: EPB/Haberkorn/Redding? CB: Miazga? LB: ? LCM: Acosta RCM: Hyndman CAM: Flores LW: Rubin RW: Arriola CF: Spencer The team seems to be missing a LB and two CB's. Acosta can play LB, but he seems to be the anchor and #6 of the midfield. Who else is a natural LB besides Requejo? CB looks like another problem spot. There are very few pro options right now. EPB and Redding are two very promising younger players, but would be playing up a cycle. The age-eligible CB's of this group seem very underwhelming. I'm leaving Green out because even if the USA does qualify for the U-20 WC, he probably wouldn't play in the Gold Cup and U-20 WC.
I have a feeling that Russell Canouse will be a starter on this team. I've seen his name thrown around as a potential captain for this team, actually. Agree that that the defense is uncertain. There aren't many pro options and Ramos hasn't yet looked at a broad pool of defenders. There's the Dallas Cup group, and then Donovan, Fracchia, Lillard, and Markey. If defense continues to be a weak point, Ramos would be smart to pay close attention to the NCAA ranks this fall. The mistake that U-20 coaches always seem to make is that in areas of weakness, they just run with the status quo guys and don't make enough effort to uncover emerging talent.
Tyler Turner is a '96 who has played every minute of four matches at RB in USL Pro this season. Don't know if that makes him an automatic starter for this group, but I suspect that there would be at least some clamor for that if he were an MLS signee on loan to a USL team who had done the exact same thing, rather than on contract to the lower-division club. (Technically of course the fact that OC will be in MLS next year makes him a bit of both.)
I suspect that the upcoming May camp will be a lot of domestic talent that the staff wants to mine. We're not done "casting the net" by any means. Let's not forget that the player called up the most over the first year of the last U20 campaign, and who actually served as captain of the squad, was Boyd Okwuono. And he didn't end up making the WC roster. There's still some twists and turns to come.....................
I think you might be right. He's a DM, and I wasn't sure if Tab would be willing to play with two #6's instead of a #6 and #8. Canouse as the #6 could free up Acosta to move to LB where he is needed.
I agree. I think Acosta needs to play LB because the other options aren't that good, but I don't think Tab Ramos is going to want to move Acosta out of the DM role. I think we'll see Acosta at DM and some one else at LB. I hope I'm wrong though. The options at DM are pretty good. Delgado and Canouse can both play as DM's.
Not sure I agree unless they are about the same ability at that position. DM is more important than LB so you put the best DM at that spot. If ability is the same or very close then sure you do that. Thing is a lot of these guys aren't ready to play against this level of competition and it showed yesterday. Hopefully they got their wakeup call and will pick it up the rest of the way.
The problem with that is that nobody can play LB. It will turn into the type of weakness that CB was last cycle with Torre back there.
Acosta is potentially our best player, and if your best player is best playing in the middle of the park, then you don't move him. If experimenting at LB, I'd rather see some RB like Tyler Turner or others ahead of Acosta.
Good Point. But if Acosta is 80% better than any other LB and Acosta's replacement at DM is only 2o% worse we'd be 60% better as a team. We have no LB but we have some pretty good DM's. Its about putting our best team on the field not putting our best player in his best position.