Yup, when it comes to keepers you only need one or two really good ones to come thru every decade. We don't need to panic about our keeping situation. Howard and Guzan have us covered thru 2014. We have a base of developing keepers behind those two. We only need to "hit" with one..........to be safe thru 2018-2022. Could be Hamid, Johnson, McMath, Cropper, Bingham, etc. Hell, Brian Perk played well when he got a chance last year for the Galaxy.
Yup. And if you add Altidore, Chandler, Johnson, Gatt, Morales, etc. to this U23 team..........we'd have had a talent gap on El Salvador's U23s as well. That was probably pretty close to El Salvador's U23s, but not close to the best USA U23 team. That's the great equalizer in CONCACAF U23/U20 tournamnents. I think there's a great level of over-reaction to a performance like we had in these qualifiers. We don't need to "overhaul" our system. Mostly because WE JUST DID that with the construction of the Development Academy, MLS academies, the implementation of a larger scouting network, etc. We JUST changed the coaching staffs of the U17s, U18s, U20s, U23s, and USMNT. There is already a revolution going on within our community. We need to give it some time. There will be ups and downs................ If Sean Johnson saves that last second shot by the Salvadorans (which I'm convinced he would have 95 out of 100 times)...........we win the group. Then people aren't talking about a "collapse," but the heart and guts these kids showed in their comeback against the Sallies. We then would have had a good chance of doing well against Honduras.
I agree that the long-term key is for more market incentive for player development- let MLS clubs find a way to make a lot of money off youth development and they will get better at it. As for this tournament, I see two additional points to keep in mind: 1. It's always tough to play in a tournament, especially with youth players. Our guys were not, for the most part, first team regulars and it showed. Slightly less, but more professional, talent may have made the different. 2. We got bit in the ass by having too much talent at the top. Johnson, Moralas, Chandler and Gatt would have made a difference-- they would have strengthened our defense quite a bit. Altidore would have been 1000x times better than Bunbury. None of them could get released. If Mix hadn't been willing to play his own way (he's a permanent legend for doing that), Gent wouldn't have released him either. Outside of Mexico, what other team had any major players withheld by clubs? These two points really tie together- we are still looking to European clubs to develop our best young players in the late teens to early twenties age range. We have quite a pool of talent at this age right now, playing for clubs in Europe who don't give a shit about the USA playing in the Olympics. And the truth is that our "second best" should have been good enough, but it's not a slam dunk.
Clubs already receive 3/4 of the transfer fee for selling HG players (which is more than they get for selling any other player on the roster). If an MLS club can develop players who are good enough to demand multi-million dollar transfer fees, the financial incentive seems to be there. For example, you can have a HG player who was signed to a GenAd contract and thus never counts against the salary budget. This player cannot be picked in the expansion draft (which obviously might be less of an issue going forward) and then the team can sell the player for a tidy profit which can be reinvested into youth development. The real problem is that it's too early to tell how well the MLS youth development system is working. The good thing is that different philosophies have already emerged...let's check back in 4 years.
I suppose we don't need to panic with our keeper situation but I see many technical and positional flaws in these young keepers (I haven't seen Cropper or Bingham) that it scares me. But I'm not panicked as long as the learn their trade OVERSEAS cause they ain't learning it here IMO.
He's also excellent on PK's...which is a bonus in tourneys. Honestly I have no idea why this guy isn't in Europe right now. Size shmize. He's an excellent keeper and could outplay a number of guys on a roster in Scandinorwaymark. Of course. I don't think that Porter is a bad coach. In fact, I think he does well to train young soccer players. MLS/International/TOURNEY coach? There is some learning to do. MLS is still in it's infancy in terms of the guys behind the scenes. At Red Bull we have a former NBA guy as managing director. He doesn't seem to understand MLS and people are getting upset about it. It's going to be like this for another generation until we have educated soccer people running everything across the board. It would really help if we could expand the rosters just a touch more and add more games to the reserve schedule. A lot of these young guys who aren't 1st teamers still aren't getting enough games. Young players need games.
Absolutely agree with this last statement. College players have more games a year then the reserves do...makes no sense.
Holden, Ream, Gooch, Beasley, Herc, Dempsey, Cherundolo, Guzan, Howard, Lichaj, Friedel, Bradley, Altidore, Corona These players none of whom left the US until after age 18 are playing(when not injured) in the MFL or UEFA top 8(2012) leagues. Development could be improved but let's not get carried away. As far as the autopsy. 1. failure to rotate players 2. Too much emphasis on 433. Notice Klinsmann quickly dropped 433 with the Senior team. 3. Unlucky with the keeper injury in the 3rd game. 4. El Salvador should have been down to 10 men.
Good point. What I think Nutmeg is advocating is to import the development expertise from the world leaders in this area. I believe that Vancouver, Toronto, and DC have all brought in Dutch leadership, but most MLS programs appear content to run things with whoever's handy.
I'm not sure I see a real need to expand the rosters but I definitely agree that having young players experience the pressure of game situations is important. Is the reserve league a 10-match schedule this year? Loans to lower divisions (Shanosky to Ft. Lauderdale, Salgado rumored to the RailHawks, etc.) are another option for players who need games.
If a team is hit hard by injuries and/or is competing in a number of competitions it's tough for them to field a reserve team. Red Bull last year had to cancel a number of their reserve games because they didn't have enough players due to injury and national team call ups. I think they may have added a few more this year. Good option for now, but really there should be close to a 30 game reserve league schedule so that there is greater opportunity for the MLS club coaches to work with their talent. Loans are good to get guys PT, but I'd rather see those players closer to their MLS clubs if possible.
Autopsy issues ranked in order of importance: 1) Lack of defensive talent. We fans have worried about this for a long time. There is not one sure-thing starting defender in the pool at this age. These guys haven't even locked down starting DEFENDER spots at their clubs. It's why most of the chatter about over-age additions revolved around defenders. It was the team's Achilles Heel, and was exposed vs Canada and vs El Salvador. 2) Several top U23 players were not available: Altidore, Morales, Williams, Gatt, and the unfortunate injury to Agudelo. Talent matters. 3) Goalkeepers under-performed. Both Hamid and Johnson allowed savable goals. They did not rise to the occasion, as other US keepers have in the past. 4) Poor player rotations. Porter could have done better keeping key players fresh. Of course, had he had all the top U23's (point #2), maybe he would have been able to rotate players better. 5) Roster wasn't a good fit for a strict committment to the 4-3-3. I'm not a huge fan of the 4-3-3, and this may have also been impacted by point #2 and the lack of some key talent. But some flexibility to try a 4-4-2 might have helped at times.
Keepers peak so much later than their brethren field players that it's kind of hard to predict what's going to happen post-2014. Twelve years ago, it was Adin Brown that was the starting keeper in the run-up to the 2000 Olympics. He was the starter in our qualifying campaign, and was really good. I was a big fan of Adin Brown, and I thought he was going to be a USMNT regular some day. http://www.soccertimes.com/usteams/2000/aug29.htm Unfortunately, Adin got hurt (his life story). Here's a line from the story above about our keeping plan when he went down: Andy Kirk probably will be called in as a third keeper behind Tim Howard of the MetroStars and Matt Napoleon of the Columbus Crew. Only old-timers like myself will remember that Andy Kirk was a keeper with our U17's and U20's. He was on our 1993 U17 World Cup team and our 1997 U20 team (where he started 4 games). He was a Project 40 kid, that played for both Tampa Bay and San Jose. And then..........disappeared. Napolean was Kirk's backup on that 1997 U20 team, and was also a Project 40 player in MLS. [We ended up taking Brad Friedel as an overage keeper for the 2000 Olympics themselves, with Tim as his backup.] So we just had the one develop as a USMNT regular, which will set us up thru the 2014 World Cup. If you had asked me in 1999-2000 I would probably have told you it was going to be Adin Brown. Hindsight is 20-20, and people will now say they knew it was going to be Tim all along. At the time we didn't. Tim Howard didn't become the starter for the Metrostars until 2001........................we had no idea how good he was going to be.
Just in case anyone was wondering what the casual sports fan's reaction was to the Olympic failure. http://nyc.barstoolsports.com/random-thoughts/we-didnt-even-qualify-for-the-olympics-in-soccer/ I got a few calls from friends who are not soccer fans. They had a similar reaction.
Just reminds me why the statistics show that soccer fans are much better educated than the general population.
Some good news to brighten the thread up: http://www.soccerbyives.net/soccer_...-presence-in-us-development-academy.html#more "U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday that the Portland Timbers and Montreal Impact have been approved to have teams entered into the Development Academy, giving MLS 17 teams in the 80-team academy system." "We want to put our players in a professional environment, and they need to be challenged at a young age to progress." That's what we all want!
This is exactly what the US should do. Look at Japan, they import many South American coaches all over their national team and club ranks, and in a short period of time they have reaped tremendous benefits from that, both in player development and style of play. Instead, here in the US, we keep on recycling all the mediocre youth coaches over and over again. When you have Kenny Arena as one of the youth head coach for the LA Galaxy, you know you are not going anywhere. Step aside and let the people who have the record of youth development lead the way, attach yourself to them and learn from it.
What formation were we playing against Italy? I've asked this elsewhere and no one seems to want to venture an answer.
Honestly to me it looks like a 4-4-2 like so, which one might call 4-4-1-1 but it's all just semantics. ---------9 ---------10 7-----8---6------11 2------3---4-----5 ---------1 We don't really have the wingers to play a proper 4-3-3.
Pretty much agree. I think when Dempsey is the #10, he plays it more like a second forward than an attacking mid. I realize it is all a matter of degree and semantics and these categorizations can change midmatch. But to me we were playing with two forwards against Italy. In addition, JK clearly was going with two forwards against Slovenia, Buddle and Altidore. I'm ok with 4-3-3 being our base formation, but we shouldn't so inflexible that we don't change things up from time to time, both at the senior and underage team levels.
A typical 4-3-3 would look something more like 7-----9----11 -------10 -----8-----6 sometimes the 8, 10 and 6 players line up flat, sometimes they do an upside down triangle, it usually depends. But the key more than anything is the wingers. They push up high right on the full backs. Ours generally don't do that, especially with Danny Williams (!).
"So, on top of kicking me out of the olympic quals, you're going to preach?" "No... it's the list of the countries happy that you've been eliminated." Mean, mean joke. There is talent. There is no first level talent. A little thought experiment-- The groups to qualify for the Hex for the 2014 WC are: Group A: USA, Jamaica, Guatemala, Antigua Group B: Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guyana Group C: Honduras, Panama, Canada, Cuba Now imagine swapping the USA and Mexico, and taking out Dempsey and Donovan, so that the best players on the field are the likes of Altidore, Bradley, Benny. Remember, only Top 2 move onto the next stage. How confident would you feel of making the Hex?