Profile of Andrija Novakovich (also posted at 2013 Northern Ireland Milk Cup): http://www.ussoccer.com/news/u-18-mnt/2013/08/novakovich-continues-quick-rise-with-us-u18-mnt.aspx
No surprise, Green has been performing too well to not get called up to a Germany YNT. He'll be one that if we ever get, it'll be some years down the road if he never becomes good enough for their NT.
No reason to get too worked up about this. It's the same story -- if we want elite prospects to play for the US, we need to develop them ourselves. Let's embrace those who switch over to us, but mooching off the German system can only take you so far. Green is German-raised and German-developed. If he's good enough, Germany deserves to have him more than we do.
.... and meanwhile we will likely lose out on kids like Zelalem, Fagundez, Najar and others who grow up through our system. The issue is really not nearly black and white. If we lose out on Green, it would be a big loss to our potential player pool, regardless.
I really don't want the ussoccer to become dependent on guys developed in European setups. It looks like we will be depending on them for this cycle and next but things have got to get better because it won't always be this easy to poach players.
Apples and oranges. I don't know Zelalem, but Fagundez and Najar are not citizens or eligible for a US passport .... and never were. Different situation altogether. But I agree with Balerion. Crying over guys who were developed almost exclusively in other places isn't necessary. We need to focus on player development here. Plus, I think we simply overstate the potential losses anyway. Every decent player who gets away seems to be huge to the fanbase. It isn't.
What about crying over guys who were developed almost exclusively here, where our player development focused it's energies, but because of paperwork, we are unable to benefit from?
I know Zelalem played youth soccer in Maryland but was he ever involved in the German youth setup before he went to Arsenal?
I think that's much more reasonable, actually. I think it's a real shame that there's a <1% chance that Fagundez will play for us. Our immigration system is a self-imposed problem, unfortunately. In some ways, it's good that Fagundez, Najar, and Zelalem won't play for us. If we could mooch off of the Germans AND the informal coaching ability of first-generation immigrant dads, we'd truly never put forth any effort to actually develop the coaching in this country.
Too late. Close to 2/3 of our USMNT was taught how to play by immigrant parents. We can't underestimate the importance of the immigrant to our national team system.
I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. As we are the USA, "melting pot" of the world. We are the home of the immigrant. We need to get used to losing players to other NT's. Because its going to happen often. And as we get better, we're likely going to lose better players. Rossi, Subotic, Najar, Fagundez, etc. were just the beginning.
Yes, and it can be both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, immigrants continue to come here, and many of them bring a love of soccer, ot at least a familiarity with it. On the negative side, there are still many areas of the country where soccer has had difficulty penetrating the culture, particularly in areas where familes have resided for generations, and where immigrants are not usually found.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. It's clear that the influence of immigrants is extremely important to our national team system. That's a good thing, but the implications -- that our general level of player development is poor enough that those with soccer expertise in the family are hugely advantaged -- is a negative and an indictment of the system at large. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of good American players who are neither Germericans nor second-generation immigrants. But global soccer is tremendously competitive and we can't afford to ignore any piece of the puzzle. Hopefully our growing reliance on Germericans doesn't lull us into doing just that.
Unfortunately this is a fact right now due to our lack of development of a soccer culture in this country. (Obviously, over time this will get better.) Soccer, unlike most other sports requires a player to start playing+learning at a very early age, and spending alot of time playing+learning at a very early age. If soccer were something you could pick up as a teenager or even at age 10 our USMNT would be a heckuva lot better.
But if we focus too narrowly on players like Green, then we miss the point which is to develop players ourselves. The ironic thing about all of this is that by focusing less on guys like Green and concentrating on developing our own, domestically trained players, we actually increase our chances of getting a guy like Green, who will be more attracted to playing for us because we will have a program that he is more likely to play for. We could still probably get him in the long run but, if we do, it will because Germany, the more attractive international program, passed on him. Sometimes you just need to put your nose to the grindstone and get better, letting the results fall where they may. Our problem is that we don't do that enough, instead relying on players that we didn't really develop or who fell in our laps. Those guys are a great bonus to get, but not a recipe for sustained success. Heck, some posters even list duel nationals as players we "developed". By the way, I highly question listing Andy Najar as a player we developed. He played two years in the Academy before he was signed and one season of high school soccer before that. He developed his game in Honduras. His development as a professional was in DC, but isn't that the case that a lot of young international players develop as pros in other countries, including ours? If we are going to claim Andy Najar as ours, can we really claim Rossi who left our country at a similar age as Najar when he left Honduras?
We focus on guys like Green, because they are good. The US federation does not sit back and make it a policy of sending over American soldiers to create dual nationals as part of a strategy to populate the US national team.
I just don't get the obsession with them. Sure he is good. It would be great to get him. But I can't feel disappointed when a German kid who grew up in Germany and learned his soccer there wants to play for Germany if they will have them, but is willing to play for us if they don't want him. I would be surprised if this wasn't how it worked out. That means that, the better he plays as a professional, the less likely that we are to get him. It isn't a matter of us going after him more. We have our place in the process and the only way to change our place in the process is to get dramatically better at developing players domestically. It is hard for me to feel very disappointed when we lose these dual nationals. It is always great to get them, but it is kind of like winning at the craps table, I hardly get a sense of accomplishment from it - it is dumb luck to a certain degree. Honestly, it feels a little like the people in youth soccer who play early developers up front and hoof the ball up to them so that they can out run/out power normally developed kids to the ball. We are constantly trying to win in the short term by bypassing being good at the game. The international game really is all about winning so I can't say don't go after them, but I don't see how obsessing about them makes us better.