Exciting young forwards coming through the pipeline

1. Terrence Boyd: Possibly on the fast track in the USMNT, just having been called up for the 5 match tournament which included 2 qualifiers. Big and strong with some nice skills and finishing ability as demonstrated with the U-23's. Boyd was recently capped and tied vs Antigua and Barbuda but was not named to the 18 man roster vs Guatemala.

2. C. J. Sapong 2011 MLS Rookie of the Year, apparently by a wide margin and led all rookie scorers in MLS last season with 5 goals and 5 assists. He appeared in the most matches for his team, Sporting Kansas City and scored in the Eastern Conference semi-finals against the Colorado Rapids.
Here is a highlight video of him from last season:


3. Andrew Wooten spurned the open market to sign a fresh 3 year deal with Kaiserslautern despite their recent relegation. Apparently, he had other suitors but re-signed for the opportunity to play first team soccer with his club. With Kaiserslautern II he managed to deliver 38 goals in 69 appearances since 2009. He may find himself in the ideal situation, perhaps starting for a team preparing to hopefully bounce back into the Bundesliga.

There may be other candidates. These are the three (and am aware there is a thread on Boyd) I am most excited about.

Just color me stupid, but I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.

The Sapong vid just shows him juking all over the field. Boyd is a BL4 player. I've never seen him touch the ball yet without giving it away.

Haven't seen Wooten. Maybe he's the guy, I have no idea.

Grin, I am being entirely serious. Thanks for your response.
I agree about Boyd on the senior level, but he has just signed an Austrian contract.
Jozy, actually, is in the same age grouping as these three.
Again, it is an unusual situation having some players coming through where we have historically been weak.

So Agudelo and Bunbury (off the top of my head) aren't eligible because we've been talking about them for so long (so to speak)? Or you're not excited about either?

lol, good point, still excited about Agudelo, he may end up being more of a winger. Bunbury for me, not as excited. Still hopeful.

No mention of Bijev?

Wooten plays for Bundesliga team Kaiserslaughtern. He was getting first team minutes, starting and socring and the tail end of the season.

My impression was that he played his way off the reserve team at the end of the year and was given the oppurtunity to start for the first team...where he subbed, started and scored.

This thread is "exciting young forwards coming through the pipeline"...I don't think we really need a seasons worth of first division experience to realize he fits that description

I would say he has more potential then any MLS forward just based the league and club he plays for and his position in the club (a fringe starter, but definetly in the 18)

For me, Boyd and Agudelo are by far the two forwards with the most upside in our pool at this time, not counting Jozy who I think still has talent he's yet to tap in to. Won't pick one over the other as they're completely different players with different skillsets but would wager both will be on the cusp of the final WC roster heading to Bra two years from now.

After that, Sapong definitely has upside but will need to see him mature a little more before thinking he can make it as a full international. He's also older than Jozy, and a few years older than Boyd/Agudelo, so I'm not sure how many more levels he can climb.

Then there's Bijev, who I follow as closely as possible given my other half is Bulgarian and she has also taken an interest in him. She wants BG to call him in as he did previously train with their U18's I think it was, but given BG's NT program is in shambles and he;s already part of our youth teams I don't think there's any way he considers playing for them. Hell, not even Berbatov will at this point. But this kid has talent, a flair to his game, a nose for goal and if I had to guess will be ready for the full NT around 2015-16.

As for Jozy, I consider him our best striker without a doubt, and Gomez the number two. Bunbury I think might be the most overrated attacking player in our pipeline. If we're talking about first touch, someone find a forward who's been called in in the last year or two with a worse first touch than Bunbury. I don't know, I jsut don't see the talent nor upside in him others do.

Let's not forget Will Bruin and Chris Pontius.

Bruin runs like a duck - but a very, very fast duck. He's improved his first touch and vision by leaps and bounds, and his off-the-ball movement is starting to look very Wondolowski-ish. He'll get 12-14 goals this year, and I'd wager on 18ish in 2013.

Pontius is a little older, but he's basically a mini-Dempsey. If he stays healthy he'll be the star of the January camp.

Also: Andrew Wenger. I still think he would have been a better defender, but he knows what he's doing in the final third. Two years away at least, but a very nice prospect.

Agudelo has the most potential to be elite. I think Boyd, Sapong, and Wooten can play in Europe and be successful and contribute to the national team. I would label them McBride's. Out of the three I rate Sapong the highest. It's probably because I've seen the him play the most but he consistently demands at least one CB's attention and he played pretty well in his only cap.

I have yet to see how Wenger plays outside of his goals. I looked at the chalkboard for his last game and he took a shockingly low amount of touches for a 90 minute player. He played in midfield last year at Duke, right?

Pontius is more a underneathe forward/CAM type. I rate him but he probably needs to make a move to get on the national team radar. I hope JK gives some shots to others that play in Dempsey's position.

I'm not going to includ Altidore with the rest of these guys. If would be great if we had one or two more Altidore's; guys playing well right now in decent leagues.

When you watch Wenger you see he knows how to move. He knows the game. I've been touting Wenger on some threads and people just go ballistic. You say "2 years away". We need to get over this prejudice. Check out the age of the German Nat team -24 - and
the age of the USMNT - 30. Germans debut for Nat Team around 20/21. We need to get a clue around here. Klinsmann says he is going to wait for people to "do well with their clubs" which doesn't cut it for me. I look at a player and I say "that's the stuff" and then I call him up to see if he can deliver against the top tier competition to a certain standard. If we want performance from 22 yr old Wenger at the WC when he is 24, we should call him now, not 2 years from now.

That's what Klinsmann did with Boyd he watched him in U23 camps last year and had people scouting him when he played for Borrusia Dortmund's reserve.

I rate Boyd and Agudelo the highest for this cycle also Bijev and Salgado for the next cycle.

I know it's crazy but who knows maybe Bijev can make it to the first team in Liverpool before 2014 or Salgado will score 15 goals in MLS next season we just don't know a lot can happen in 2 years.

Agudelo is the real deal. His touch and ball control is a class ahead of all the other young US strikers.

He's our version of Neymar

By all accounts Bijev is going out on loan again next season.

As far as I know Bijev made only a handful of appearances for Düsseldorf's first team this season in BundII. (wiki has only one. I'm not sure how accurate that is) He played 16 times for their reserves in the German 4th tier.

Basically he's a complete unknown. I can't put him in the "exciting young forwards coming through the pipeline" category until we actually see him do something.

A few years ago people on the Youth Nats board were talking about Conor Doyle (made some appearances for Derby), Bobby Wood (made some appearances for 1860), Adrian Ruelas (now at Veracruz), and several other kids as "exciting" prospects. They've pretty much fallen off the face of the earth.

People get waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too excited about reserve players/youth players. These players aren't better than MLS prospects just because they're in Europe. They have to prove it.

Things can change very fast. If Wooten doesn't actually start next season for Kaiserslautern in BundII, it's hard to start getting very excited about him.

Bijev had some bad injury luck, Fortuna got promoted and they may want him back on loan as a rotation option in the BL. I'd put him about the same level as Wooten or Boyd, lets wait to see if any of them can establish themselves on some type of first team. I'd love to see an American striker playing for Liverpool one day

I think he is getting loaned out again, but is this really true that Fortuna want him back?

I'll define "young" as a player who will be still under 30 come the 2018 World Cup.

Using that definition, here's how I rank the young forward crop (with age in 2018 in parens) based upon who I think is most likely to be on the 2018 team:

1) Altidore (28)
2) Agudelo (25)
3) Adu (29)
4) Salgado (24)
5) Kiesewetter (24)
6) Wade (21)
7) Wenger (27)
8) Boyd (27)
9) Sapong (29)
10) Bijev (24)
11) Koroma (23)
12) Wooten (28)
13) Bunbury (28)

I'll stop at a baker's dozen. It is a good, diverse group. The guys with real star power are generally very well known to us. But there could always be a surprise or two. My rankings are based upon a combination of upside potential and how close they currently are to that potential. Since I am projecting out to 2018, I give a bit more weight to potential than current level.

There are two wildcard players who I am tempted to add to the list, but won't. One is currently a college player. Another is a high school age player playing abroad.

I heard that he will likely be either in Germany or Turkey, not much more detail than that unfortunately