uswnt vs china (ppl sold out)

Don't hold your breath for Rapinoe to change her decision making. I think it's something you give up for the type of skill that she posses. Sure, she should make better decisions.. but as far as I can tell, she is probably the only one on the team who is willing to consistently make those type of plays regardless of the outcome. And considering she is our most technical player, I agree that she should start.

If Pia was able to think correctly she would have done that by putting Lindsey on the roster instead of wasting a spot on A-Rod or Lloyd. The best passer and possessor on the team ... Just sayin'. Makes me shake my head.

Having a left or right foot isn't an attribute. RVP and Robben are pretty much left footed when shooting, get them on their right their not as effect as the favored foot. Being a two-footed player is attribute in terms of crossing and accurately shooting. If you said left footed distance shooter, that's an attribute. "being a score" isn't an attribute. Poaching is an atttribute, it describes an assest of how one plays. Being a scorer what does that mean? How does one score? How does that person play? An attribute describes someones play, what they do on a consisent bases, the fabric of them. These others attributes you said are attribute. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Ever hear of Germany's 23yo rising star, Celia Okoyino Da Mbabi? Right now she's turned into an absolute goal scoring beast for Germany, eclipsing anything produced by Morgan or her more established senior international peers around the globe, using many of the same one dimensional qualities the new U.S. golden girl is often praised for possessing too.

I have gone on record in the German threads, as a pretty vocal non believer in what Mbabi provides the German WNT stylistically, but in a similar fashion to Morgan, as long as she continues to dominate every game with her ability to finish chances, the optimistic calls for her to be already placed alongside the sports best female players, will become increasingly valid in the long run .

Even with their impressive strike rates, neither Morgan or Mbabi demonstrate the all round quality of the games best women, but in the men's game that never stopped one dimensional poachers like Gerd Muller, or Paolo Rossi, from carving out a highly respectable niches for themselves in the history books, so what do I know, right .

In league play, Robinho had 6 goals in 56 shots. Gomez had 26 goals in 101 shots. Gomez doesn't offer much outside his goals, but at least he gives that much. Robinho is overrated; creativity with little result to show.

Why do some people expect strikers to play like mids? Their number one job is to put the ball in the back of the net. There are no judging panelists on the sideline adding points to teams for aesthetic tastes. What's the point of having a player that can nutmeg three defenders successively if their strike sails over the net or goes limply askew? She may not be the complete all around player with every tool but she is not one dimensional either. She is second only to Cheney in assists this year. (14 goals, 8 assists ... Cheney has 10 assists).

And I'm going to post this just because:

Alex Morgan is an exciting player to watch and she's one of those players where the crowd holds their breath when she gets the ball.

Others have gotten offended when describing Morgan as a poacher. So I ask Beerslinger and you Reallyoldnorth and anyone esle is this fair to call her a poacher like Beerslinger23 describes? I've called her a poacher and have gotten killed for the remark.[/quote]

I don't know of anybody questioning Morgan's attributes, as you very narrowly use the word, except you & Newsouth. I have a much broader definition of "attributes" to include creativity, wanting the ball when the game is on the line, taking advantage of opportunities, both to score and to deliver excellent performances as a sub to force her way into the starting line-up. (Even forcing the coach to abandon her favored formation.) These non-physical intangibles are "attributes" in my book.

Can Morgan improve? Absolutely. Her first touches can sometimes be suspect, and she sometimes makes a silly bad pass when not under pressure. I'd like to see her work more with her back to the goal, but the wingers/midfielders rarely get her the ball in that position.

No, I don't see Morgan as a poacher. Much of Morgan's work are the long runs and finishes 1v1 or 1v2, which I'd like to see her and the team get away from, which will come when the dinosaurs are finally gone. Standing around waiting for the ball to fall to their feet or the GK errror, that's Lloyd or Boxx.

Morgan has extremely quick feet. Is that an attribute?

I didn't realize I wasn't listing attributes to Morgan's game when I said what I did. Someone is splitting hairs.

Morgan's game looked very complete last night; whether the team is playing China or Brazil, that's saying something considering the performance of some of her teammates.

I don't recall each item or person on the list 8MaCookies made, but Morgan's ability to play with her back to goal looked good last night. Her passing was accurate and well paced; I can only think of one glaring occasion when she didn't connect a pass. Her first touch and decision making with the ball at her feet looked good too. If those aren't attributes, call them qualities or abilities, whatever you like. As another poster said, she buts the ball in the net. Something even more important, she forces defenses to decide: do we use more people to mark Wambach or Morgan?

no, but using one foot especially well is.

i agree.

that's why i said - her ability to hold defenders off, her efficient use of her left boot, her scoring, her speed....

you have the right to use the word the way you want to on a bs message board after all. but yours is an extremely limited use of the word "attribute". you seem to be the only one using it that way.

No, I don't see Morgan as a poacher. Much of Morgan's work are the long runs and finishes 1v1 or 1v2, which I'd like to see her and the team get away from, which will come when the dinosaurs are finally gone. Standing around waiting for the ball to fall to their feet or the GK errror, that's Lloyd or Boxx.[/quote]

1st off Reallyoldnorth and Luvdagame, I'm not using the word attribute with a limited mind set. I know what the word means. What's her creativity, does dribbling thur a player(s) or create runs off the ball like Chic? You've not answered the question, finishing is not an attribute for a striker it's expected period. Having a good left or right foot isn't an attribute, being a 2 footet player is, being a distant shooter is an attribute. Taking advantage of opportunities isn't a different attribute it's not even an ability, it's cheap way of describing when someone does something their suppose to do or is capable of doing that's routine. Being a sub isn't an attribute. Once agian, I'm not saying I don't like Morgan, I'm asking what are her attributes/qualities. I've pointed out plenty of example attributes and you've talked around the subject.

8MaCookies, you should probably let this one go. The word "attribute" has been muddled too much. Besides, things like taking advantage of opportunities is an attribute. I recall Arod skying a good opportunity last night. Finishing and having a good right or left foot may be expected, but many do not possess them.

You can continue to harp on attributes, but it's meaningless. You are just using the term differently than everyone else. Morgan's job is to score goals, and she has done a better job at that than any other player on the team this year. She's doing her job, without any attributes. I'll take that over a striker who can dribble past the entire team and then shoots wide.

You can say you don't like Morgan, but your blatant bias against her is clouding your judgement. If you took off your blinders, maybe you'll find a decent player who actually does have some "attributes".

I for one personally love it when the US plays the long ball to Morgan in a 1 vs 1 or 1 vs 2 counterattack situation. This tactic has worked against decent teams like Canada and China and against really good teams like Japan and Sweden. If the opposing team is foolish enough to bring everyone forward, then the long ball to Morgan is a great idea that I hope the US team keeps in their bag of tricks moving forward. This for me is a better attribute for the team than constantly shooting from outside and missing on 99% of their chances as most players do. Heck, even Marta is smart enough to dribble closer to the goal to take her shots.

The biggest attribute Morgan has is contorting her body in various ways to get off a shot. How many players (men or women) could've pulled off the side foot shot against Boston in the WPS league? Also, for all the talk about Schelin, she missed two very easy opportunities against the US when she couldn't lift the ball over the keeper's head, while Morgan scored twice in this fashion.

I know I get caught up in them as well but it's incredible how so many general match threads get funneled into these silly Morgan debates. It's always one of three people objecting to some praise or appreciation of Morgan that they think goes too far or even that she's overrated. Same two or three people. The two in this thread and our Brazilian contributor newsouth. Although Batfink to a lesser degree as he limits his forays into the uswnt forum and this palaver just fits into his pet "US doesn't play purty football" meme. Yet the main dilemma for the would be Morgan Hype Busting Syndicate is that very little of the praise she receives in these threads is unreasonable or extravagant. For instance, this all started with a fan in attendance at the match stating that Morgan did good things on the field other than just her goal strikes. Sure others that saw that match are free to disagree but it doesn't seem to take much to trigger the Hype Busting Syndicate's wet blanket tossing.

We rarely see Morgan combining in traffic, simply because she scores so many breakaways that it unfairly partitions the fan's attention span into there she goes vs. dang not yet. Compare her to, say, Feilhaber or (gasp) Brek Shea , or the way we say the "ball seems to get smarter" whenever it docks at ISS Adu. What, indeed, is her "game"? Trying to isolate Morgan's non-sprinting non-scoring plays is a tad like SOHO peering at the sun's corona in daylight. Still, we can hazard a rundown. (I haven't seen any of Morgan's WPS matches, so I'm missing ~1/2 of her data points.)

- Off-ball positioning. For a forward, this includes pressing the opponent's high trap line, timing your runs, and having the pace to win the footrace (Wambach fails here). Morgan is (as we know) stellar here, indicating a crafty mind, a good sense of field geometry, and probably a run-and-shoot wide receiver's expertise in pattern-matching opponent defensive shapes. A-

- Off-ball movement. Most useful here is probably spacing during non-breakaway possessions (since that's what a team spends most of its time doing). Morgan seems OK, filling the right space and keeping the ball moving. USWNT does not use her as the "QB"/#10 role (that's probably Cheney; Morgan is already the "WR"), so they ping to her only during a siege/probe.

Morgan's defense seems OK, not stellar: she's not an outright lunge-thief like Torres, and we don't ask her to clean up. She can harass anybody slower than her.

When Morgan isn't the tip of the spear, she seems to make the correct lane-runs. B/B+. We take 8Ma's point: these things are expected of any non-bench body, and don't (by themselves) earn you a stereotype.

- Single dribble-drive. I rarely see Morgan try this. She can receive and turn, shield from pressure, and fend off/circle away from 1 defender. But faced with a static 1-v-1, I think she prefers to pass away. (Unlike, say, HAO who always drives, or Lloyd who always shoots ) C. She might be more deadly if she could force defenses to worry about this, too.

- Simple pass. Pinging for possession. Also includes trap/receive, turning/shielding, and choosing when not to pass. B+/A-. She's quietly one of the most sure-footed players on the field: rarely clangs ball away, rarely makes rash runs that lose it. Can pass quickly with either foot and any foot edge (except backheel, we haven't seen her do that yet). Rarely gets caught on the ball: she either decides soon enough, or is quick enough to survive the pressure.

- Killer pass. We loves Michael Bradley because he shoots, he throws touchdowns, and he cleans up messes. Canada uses Sinclair Herself at withdrawn CF, spraying diagonal out-balls to two wingers. That's not Morgan's role under Pia. Rarely does Morgan ever hold the ball with any teammates ahead of her. The few times she gets deep wide and has somebody running the inside lane, she crosses well enough. C+ (mostly for lack of data, not all her fault).

- AWACS. Situational awareness, knowing where teammates are/should be, where they're going, and computing where the ball (and/or you) should go. This includes pinging to open players, through-balls, ball-dumps into space (defined as where the defense is weak), etc. A #10/"QB" does this all the time (and almost nothing else), but all great attackers do a bit of it. (Conjecture: Maybe a "poacher" is a player with AWACS grade of C- or lower but high goal production? Doesn't help anybody else, but gets himself into position.)

My impression from ~5 years of viewing (WNTs only; Cal @ WSU once) is that Morgan is above-average here. Even on fast rattle-ball pings around box top where she has no clear chance, she often gets the ball to somebody else to keep the chance alive. She rarely just loses it, or hoofs it out, and often heads or flicks it into a teammate's stride. Most recently, we saw glimpses of this late in CONCACAF OQ matches when both Morgan and Leroux were in, and had chances to ping to each other. B+, awaiting more data. Given that this skill set requires frantic-pace opportunities with Morgan not the tip of the spear, it seems to require that we've already subbed in several young'uns, which is pretty rare. (Peanut gallery says: Or, subbed out certain others)

Could Morgan play the Sinclair/Rooney role? At the moment, we have no data; that's not how USWNT is built. In 10 years, maybe she'll naturally transition to it.

- Shot artist. Rudimentary (mandatory) is, say, either instep, or foot-top, low with power. Better is knowing how to lift shots, understanding spin, reading the GK. Medium-advanced is exploiting spin: knowing the curl to the far post (Rapinoe knows this too). Not (needed) yet: opening hips wrong way on the run to curl far upper 90. (She already showed the same-way curl in the WC-20 final) Not shown yet: deep understanding of trajectories and how to create them. Then bicycles and volleys emerge as the simplest solution to get the foot to the ball, or crazy back-to-goal over-shoulder lobs to the far upper 90 (Argentina > Mexico few years ago?).

Morgan seems one of the top shot-students in this USWNT cycle, having already scored on the easy 2/3 of that list. She has her own unique trademark: the flying sidekick right outstep flick, done at least twice. That shows creativity (and youthful flexibility, both brain and hamstring). A-. Imagine Morgan, Heath, Leroux, Rapinoe doing trick shots after dinner with their rolled-up socks into the hotel garbage can. (Wait, they do. n/m)

Overall assessment: I rate Morgan in this cycle as an above-average (B/B+) possession forward (a fairly generic role), with an off-the-charts (A-/A) sprint finisher sub-role (although you might flip those around, given the ridonkulous bang-for-buck of actually finishing reliably). A possession forward inherits all standard forward-ish threats, but also is a net positive when you're just pinging around without a clear opening. (USMNT has a lengthy history of non-possession forwards ...) Beyond that, I think she's not had the opportunities/necessities to show otherwise at the WNT level.

The B+ possession is very useful, because it means Morgan surrounded with ~4 other good ball-control players (HAO, Cheney, Rapinoe, and say Heath, Leroux) has the makings of a maelstrom, where any of them are a threat to spring any other one. (Next cycle, we promises!!) Everybody carps about Morgan's A- sprinting as if it's the only thing she does, but it really does separate her from every other WNT's possession forwards. Offhand, I would say that there's a pool of 20-30 B+/A- possession forwards: Japan, Germany, the Nordics, etc. Any of them will maintain or improve your possession, could back-cut a sleeping line and hurt you, knows enough shots to make you shrug off the goal as a given. Among that pool, Morgan fits (already a high achievement). Then a handful of strikers have a huge "extra": Okoyino da Mbabi, Marta, possibly Sinclair (still pretty young!), Morgan.

A contrast that may (oddly) bring some clarity: Consider Japan's current forwards. What "game" do they have? I venture to say: by this reasoning, none of them are exceptional. Instead, they're simply all A-/A possession forwards. So they (and their 6+ interchangeable possession MFs) keep possession, feed each other, and if any of them spring any other one, you have Hope or just nod at the goal. Oddly, that seems to accurately capture how Japan has been winning for the last ~2.5 cycles (and I saw a fair bit of them in AFC WCQs while in Korea). (OK, maybe Kawasumi has mastered the trajectory-plotting, for head-down waist-high 25m half-volleys over the stranded keeper and dropping inches under the crossbar)

And finally: Aguero fed Ballotelli, kept running, took his shirt off. Other than that, what's his "game"? Yellow card to be enforced on Opening Day later this fall

I never said I didn't like her. Don't put words in my mouth and I didn't insult you. How about you stick to the arguement and stop insulting me, stop w/ the personal attack that has nuthing to do with the subject at hand, which was Morgans' play not the Morgan the person. 2nd Arod has miss sitter just like Wambach yet you bring up her name and not Wambach I wonder what bias you have. I never said Morgan doesn't have attributes, so once again stop putting words in my mouth that I never said. I'm not insulting you so why are you doing it to me.

Why don't you stick to the arguement. I didn't take anything away from her accomplishments, if you can read you would understand that. And you resort to insults to make yourself feel better ah? So it's not ok to question Morgan, Wambach, Rampone or Solo. But everyone esle is fair game?

Defensive shields have gone up, just like I expected.

I wanted to see how you would respond to a little prodding. Your answers never let me down.

So, back on subject...what attributes does Morgan have? You seem a little thin there. And I didn't mention Wambach missing sitters, because A) I know you love Arod so I was just ********ing with you and B) Wambach still finishes better than Arod.

I never disagreed that Arod missed sitters, I have never disagreed that Arod has to play better up top if she wants to play as striker. I argued that Arod is better as outside mid or CM/DM. Wambach does finish better than Arod. And Wambach misses sitters no different than any other player.

Read my full post, you'll see little in the way of "Hype Busting Syndicate" behaviour . My post was attempting to highlight the fact that there's another 23yo goal machine in the world of elite women's football right now, and this other player seems to be scoring all her goals with an even more annoyingly proficient display of goal poaching than anybody else too.

On the international level, Celia Okoyino Da Mbabi is proving to be a more lethal version of Alex Morgan right now, but few German supporters would be as brave as some folks here, to try and compare Mbabi with a player of the quality of Lotta Schelin . I quite clearly state that I don't hide from my opinion that Mbabi is limited, but I'm also ready to admit that if she and Morgan continue to score at their current rates, individual accolades will surely become increasingly likely, and valid, over the many years they still have to grow as players.

By mentioning the highly respected limitations of a Gerd Muller type of player, in a season where a obviously more gifted Messi has just broken the German legends single season club goal scoring record too, I was to try and bring a more understandable male comparison to a topic which is becoming more relevant to the visual identity to the women's game. Muller will be respected for the things he won, and the goals he scored, but he'll never be put next to a Brazilian Ronaldo in terms of quality, and in my mind the same ideals should be held for the women's game too.

I understand that Morgan has to feed of long balls and scraps, while Mbabi benefits from countless quality assists, but both these players show so many of the same characteristics, I personally feel it would be far more unreasonable or extravagant of me to change my mind on one player over the other, simply because I want to appease the natives .

I can see why they wouldn't. Celia doesn't seem to play like Lotta at all so that's very smart on their part.

At this point of her career it's unfair to compare Morgan's game to players with a lot more experience such as Sinclair, Marta or Schelin. For instance, Sinclair and Marta are probably the 2 most complete players we have in the women's game today. Marta can create chances on her own via her amazing dribbling skills, while Sinclair has the best all around game due to her field awareness. However, Sinclair has had over 10 years playing experience as a starter for Canada and various league teams to develop these skills. On the other hand, Morgan has only been a starter for 9 games! In those 9 games she has scored 12 times and assisted 4 times.

By finally getting this opportunity to gain this experience, Morgan's game has vastly improved from the time she was a sub. Her decision making and field awareness is leaps and bounds better than just a year ago. With more playing time she will continue to get better and better, where in a few years she'll be scoring with a lot more headers, with her right foot, making crisp passes thru the line of defense, and keeping possession of the ball to create better chances for her teammates. The field awareness and decision making will only improve with more playing time, but to compare Morgan to someone like Sinclair at this point of her career is completely unfair. The same thing applies to a young 23 year old like Mbabi. These players have the drive and aggression to perform well now, and will become more complete players with a bit more seasoning.

Let's not forget that it wasn't long ago that certain forum members labeled Morgan as a one trick pony that could only score on tired defenses, and should share subbing time with other young US forwards. Those same people were saying that keeping ARod as the starting forward was the way to go even though she averaged 1 goal per every 4 starts. I think Morgan has proved that she deserved the starting spot by now, so she should be given time to prove that she belongs with the elite players. She has certainly performed way better than expected for a 22-year old at this stage of her career. Heck, she may be on pace to break the all time USWNT scoring record in 1 year as a national team player, and in her first year as a starter! Does anyone know who holds the record now for 1 calendar year?

Akers. IIRC, Jenna Pel said that if she keeps up her current scoring rate, she'll end up 3rd best on USWNT single season scoring record. (2nd would be Abby from some years back)

Thanks Katreus, I'm surprised that I couldn't find any stats on the internet. It seems that based on your comments that both Abby and Akers had more than 20 goals in 1 calendar year, which is very impressive!

Akers had 39 in 1991, and Wambach had 31 some time in the early 2000s, I think 2003. I don't see Morgan scoring more than them. As Katreus said, she is on pace to become the third highest single season scorer. I reckon she'll hit somewhere in the 20s.