Honest question...Do we possibly overrate our players?

[olephill2]

If you hate Bruce and Bob so much, Klinsmann, by the way, isn't the answer, seeing as he learned pretty much everything he knows about coaching from Bruce Arena and Frank Yallop.
What? Players can't learn about coaching from watching and observing their coaches during a playing career? You don't think Klinsmann learned a thing or two about coaching from his days at Inter, AS Monaco, Tottenham and Bayern Munich?

[Alberto]

The reality is that we do not have any real proven goal scorers. We cannot come by goals in the run of play easily. Most goals come from set pieces. We now have a number of players past their prime or with a loss of form. Not having Cherundolo hurts.

Beasley is measly and has no business playing for us again. Let him get back to Holland and let him smoke all the weed he wants. The guy is worthless now.

Mastroeni, Bocanegra are all at the point where their best years are behind them.

Except our keepers and a select few field players like Cherundolo, Dempsey and Bradley the rest of our European based players are intermittent starters or ride the pine or play in second tier leagues like Belgium. US field players use to go and play significant minutes in Europe, now most ride the pine. This is troubling as it hints that we may not be as good or that the US is no longer the flavor of the month in Europe. I believe it's the quality of the players. It also does not bode well that our two brightest young players in the attack Adu and Altidore played virtually no minutes this past season.

That says it all.

[colins1993]

I feel the the players themselves overrate their performances.

Leave the ego in the locker room please.

After watching that debacle Wednesday night I got that sinking feeling in my gut that the national team is reverting to its "old boys club" mentality it had under Steve Sampson circa mid-late '90s----

i.e. "Our positions are secure, I'm the best, thus there is no need for me to give 110% when I put on the national shirt"

Play with some friggin HEART will ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[deuteronomy]

. Our perception is clouded and we don't have a good sense of reality when it comes to our player pool. It's not an easy subject to put our finger on. To me it's scary when I look at a player and I couldn't tell you if I (or we) underrate or overrate him. That tells me we are littered with inconsistent players and that's an issue. That is the issue, I'm afraid.

Yes, we overrate our players.
The sad fact is GK is the only position where we have players who are more than just utility-type players for their clubs. None of our field players are anything special. None of them would start for any of the teams above us in the FIFA rankings. Most of them wouldn't even make the bench of those teams.
Ramos, Perez and Reyna were special players who could make the U.S. team dangerous. We sorely lack that kind of player nowadays.

There was a thread on here about 6 months ago inquiring "Which US players would start for a Top 5 team?" The concensus by those who posted was none. A few believed Howard might have a chance at starting for Brazil or Argentina (Howard, as much as we appreciate him is not mentioned as one of the top goalkeepers in the world) We probably don't have a single player at this level.

When the range was enlarged to the top 10 teams the concensus was that Howard had a good chance to start for Holland and Germany. Gooch would have a chance to start for Holland who has some central defending issues and Donovan might get some minutes but was not a likely starter for anybody.

We have no forward in our player pool among the top 100 in the world.
They might not even be in the top 200 in the world.
Our top field player, Landon Donovan, has not succeeded in three efforts in the Bundesleige.
Our best field players in Europe Dempsey, Cherundolo, Edu, Bocanegra, Bradley and Spector are role players at best on their respective teams. Altidore, Beasley and Adu don't see much of the field. Onyewu is a very good, useful player who will probably get a nice contract in the coming year. It's not like he doesn't have some holes in his game, either.

There was another Big Soccer thread about a month ago. Something like "Where Do you Rate the USA team in the world?" 5% voted us one of the top 10 teams. Around 55% were convinced we had one of the top 20 teams. 34% voted us a top 30 team and 7% had us as a less than top 30 team.

We have never defeated Costa Rica at Saprissa, never defeated them in a qualifier. They are currently ranked 41 in the world by Fifa. Their best players play in Belguim.

We love our players, They are ours. Certainly, they were not that good Wednesday night. Overrated? It depends upon who is doing the rating.

[Clint Eastwood]

There was a thread on here about 6 months ago inquiring "Which US players would start for a Top 5 team?" The concensus by those who posted was none. A few believed Howard might have a chance at starting for Brazil or Argentina (Howard, as much as we appreciate him is not mentioned as one of the top goalkeepers in the world) We probably don't have a single player at this level.

When the range was enlarged to the top 10 teams the concensus was that Howard had a good chance to start for Holland and Germany. Gooch would have a chance to start for Holland who has some central defending issues and Donovan might get some minutes but was not a likely starter for anybody.

We have no forward in our player pool among the top 100 in the world.
They might not even be in the top 200 in the world.
Our top field player, Landon Donovan, has not succeeded in three efforts in the Bundesleige.
Our best field players in Europe Dempsey, Cherundolo, Edu, Bocanegra, Bradley and Spector are role players at best on their respective teams. Altidore and Adu don't see much of the field. Onyewu is a very good, useful player who will probably get a nice contract in the coming year. It's not like he doesn't have some holes in his game, either.

There was another Big Soccer thread about a month ago. Something like "Where Do you Rate the USA team in the world?" 5% voted us one of the top 10 teams. Around 55% were convinced we had one of the top 20 teams. 34% voted us a top 30 team and 7% had us as a less than top 30 team.

We have never defeated Costa Rica at Saprissa, never defeated them in a qualifier. They are currently ranked 41 in the world by Fifa. Their best players play in Belguim.

We love our players, They are ours. Certainly, they were not that good Wednesday night. Overrated? It depends upon who is doing the rating.

Pretty much spot on. There is a subset of US fans who have expectations for these players that are completely out of whack with reality. Sure, coaching is also an issue, but I'd say 90% of soccer fans in the world whine and complain about the manager. It's just part of the gig. Every Spanish fan I talked to thought Aragones was a bumbling moron, and then...........poof...............now he's a genius.

Our talent level suggests we're a good team, capable of beating anybody.............but also capable of losing to anybody. Our team right now is veeeeeeeeeeery young. A good portion of these kids like Altidore, Davies, Adu, Wynne, Bradley, Torres, etc. have never experienced anything like what they've seen in El Salvador and Costa Rica. Sure, they've been in pressure-packed situations in both international and club football. But the intimidating environments we encounter in central american world cup qualifiers takes it to a completely different level. It shouldn't be surprising that our first couple of forrays with them down there have been a challenge. Remember that we could have easily lost down in Guatemala, and struggled in Cuba to get a result.

Our real problem is our "A" team strikers aren't doing the job. McBride was never replaced. Post WC2006 our top strikers seemed to be Eddie Johnson, Taylor Twellman, Brian Ching, and that gang. None of them have assumed the mantle. Ching does his job well, but will never be confused for a guy who's going to accomplish anything against the Italy's and Brazil's of the world. I'm really happy that Bob has brought in Conor Casey to this squad, because he's looked great in MLS. We've got in-season MLS strikers who can do a better job for us than these Euro guys like Altidore that haven't played in 2 months.

[Clint Eastwood]

I feel the the players themselves overrate their performances.

Leave the ego in the locker room please.

After watching that debacle Wednesday night I got that sinking feeling in my gut that the national team is reverting to its "old boys club" mentality it had under Steve Sampson circa mid-late '90s----

i.e. "Our positions are secure, I'm the best, thus there is no need for me to give 110% when I put on the national shirt"

Play with some friggin HEART will ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think this is true at all.

This was one bad game. No need to throw our players under the bus, and question their commitment. I question their talent-level, but not their heart.

[ty webb]

I don't blame the players.

They were put in a bad formation, with multiple players out of position, and with poor player selection. Teams look completely lost when the tactics are wrong. I think that is what we saw.

No adjustments were made. The confusion was all on Bob.

[Plan B]

Like everyone, we overrate our players, but I think we do more than most nations. Some of this is just being Americans and expecting to be the best at things, but some of it is down to:

1. We overrate the importance of youth tournaments
2. We overrate friendly results and other small sample-size moments
3. We have a highlight-reel mentality when it comes to analyzing our players. So Adu pulled off a neat trick in an age-restricted tournament against Brazil-- obviously he's going to become a star.

most of all

4. The 2002 World Cup-- where we were assisted by luck, being underrated by Portugal, very good tactical decisions by Arena, and most everyone on the team playing to their best-- somehow made people think we were on an uphill road, or had arrived.

Lots of nations put together similar runs in major tournaments, but it doesn't indicate sustained quality, or a turning point in their development as a soccer nation. 2002, in particular, was an odd outlier for a number of reasons.

In the end, in the past five World Cups, we've come close a few times to not qualifying from a relatively weak region with a relatively easy road to the finals for the two/three teams expected to get there each time out. In the finals, we've won only two of 15 games in group play-- and both times the other team scored an own goal. (And once so did we.) We're 2-10-3 over that time, having scored 13 goals and allowing 28.

Over that time, we're also 0-2 in must-win games needed to advance. Fortunately, we were bailed out once. Most nations need luck and hard work to succeed, and we're one of them.

[m vann]

I don't blame the players.

They were put in a bad formation, with multiple players out of position, and with poor player selection. Teams look completely lost when the tactics are wrong. I think that is what we saw.

No adjustments were made. The confusion was all on Bob.

This is where I slightly disagree. I believe the players deserve a huge part of the blame, probably equal to Bob. These guys are international players and several play in arguably the biggest leagues in the world. They should be able to play a multi-facet game. They should able to recognize and adjust themselves tactically during the course of a game to fit certain situations. I agree that they were put in a compromising position (with formation and player selection) but ultimately it is up to them to perform. They dropped an egg. Trapping the ball, passing the ball, failing to mark up, failing to communicate, failing to recognize spaces; that's on the players. This is where we failed miserably. Bob can't do anything about that. He's defenseless. That's not to say Bob didn't have blame; he most certainly did. We are throwing everything on Bob but the reality is that this match was a collective f*** up. Equal blame all around. I'm neutral on Bob. He has his negatives and positives. But often time he gets thrown under the bus when the players seemingly get off Scot free. I think we can all agree that more pressure needs to be put on our player pool and management staff in order for our national team to progress.

[Flyin Ryan]

Plan B: 2. We overrate friendly results and other small sample-size moments

The only way #2 will ever be fixed is we have to play in a more competitive confederation, and we're not allowed to move to Europe. The only way I ever see that happening of playing "more meaningful games" is to merge CONCACAF and CONMEBOL to have a kind of Pan-Am confed (I'm sure Mexico would be on board, the Caribbean not too much; FYI, this could only happen after Jack Warner died). That way we can have a larger and more important regional tournament on a regular schedule (a la UEFA), instead of what we have now with the Gold Cup which is pretty much a randomly-scheduled glorified friendly tournament that no one cares about.

Let's admit that international soccer in this country only has relevance in three instances: any time we play Mexico (because both sides desparately want to win), World Cup qualifiers, and the World Cup itself. For all everyone talks about the 2007 Copa America and how it was important to do well for example, the only people I think that paid attention and cared about that tournament were BigSoccer posters.

[deuteronomy]

I don't blame the players.

They were put in a bad formation, with multiple players out of position, and with poor player selection. Teams look completely lost when the tactics are wrong. I think that is what we saw.

No adjustments were made. The confusion was all on Bob.
LOL, Did you post on the player ratings thread? Who were the players you thought were outstanding? If players don't execute, somehow they are absolved of blame, and all goes to the coach?:rolleyes:

Remember the uproar here when we beat Guatemala 1-0, never having won at Estadia Mateo Flores before? There were just as many "Fire Bob Now" threads then as there are now. For some reason, our players weren't doing jago bonito and it was all Bob's fault.

Is it Bob's fault the USA has never won at Saprissa? Certainly, it is cam't be any players not performing (sarcasm meter up).

[ty webb]

LOL, Did you post on the player ratings thread? Who were the players you thought were outstanding? If players don't execute, somehow they are absolved of blame, and all goes to the coach?:rolleyes:

Remember the uproar here when we beat Guatemala 1-0, never having won at Estadia Mateo Flores before? There were just as many "Fire Bob Now" threads then as there are now. For some reason, our players weren't doing jago bonito and it was all Bob's fault.

Is it Bob's fault the USA has never won at Saprissa? Certainly, it is cam't be any players not performing (sarcasm meter up).

It is Bob's responsibility to put the players in positions to be successful. I think Bob's tactics and player selection were poor, which lead to a complete break down early in the game. The players had little chance to succeed and that falls on Bob's shoulders.

No, it is not Bob's fault we lost. It is a tough place to play, but I predicted Bob would play a defensive formation and we would get a draw at best. It is; however, Bob's fault that we looked so unorganized thoughout the game.

[KALM]

This thread gets made once a month, and I'm never a fan of it. The reason is nobody ever clarifies exactly what they think our collective expectations are for this team, or how highly our fans supposedly overrate the men's national team. Because of that, some people end up tearing down one strawman after another, in an attempt to convince everyone else that we don't have top 5 or top 10 talent, even though I can't imagine that any signficant number of posters actually believes we do (personally I think it's just outside of the top 20, but with very little separating teams 15-30).

Arguing that we don't have players on top Champions League teams amounts to the same strawman argument since about HALF of the players who start for knockout stage Champions League teams hail from just THREE countries - Italy, Brazil, and France - and the other top 10 nations round out the majority of the remaining players in those starting lineups.*

Nations outside of those top 10 often have 1 or 2 players starting for top teams, but it is hard to know whether 1 or 2 standout players can make that great of a difference on a squad, when the remaining talent in those nations is roughly equivalent to or below ours (and honestly if you look past the one or two stars and go through each World Cup squad player by player, most of them will look a lot like ours).

*I'm using only starting players as my standard for evaluation, because several players (such as Howard at Man U and Donovan at Bayer) have expressed enough of a distaste towards sitting on the bench at top clubs, that it is unclear how much the absence of players riding pine at top clubs can be attributed to talent or preference.

[Clint Eastwood]

I think we massively over-rate the gap between the USMNT and our CONCACAF brethren. All of these nations have the chance to beat us. We could play very well against Honduras and still lose. Hell, we could struggle with Grenada at the Gold Cup with guys like Shalrie Joseph and Jason Roberts.

Really, the BigSoccer USMNT boards have these massive emotional swings. When we beat Poland on the road all of a suden we're all on a massive high plotting our glorious path to world soccer domination. Then we lose to Costa Rica on the road and our players are all heartless, our coach is a moron, and the whole USSF is incompetent.

I still see no reason that we can't qualify comfortably for this world cup. If we get the win against Honduras on Saturday we're in good shape.

[ty webb]

Exactly right KALM.

I think most of the fans here don't overrate the players.

[ty webb]

I still see no reason that we can't qualify comfortably for this world cup. If we get the win against Honduras on Saturday we're in good shape.

This weekend's game is definitely the key to a chance at a comfortable finish. A win and we are in business. A loss would cause a struggle to the end.

[KALM]

4. The 2002 World Cup...
You're using the past 5 World Cups to suggest that 2002 was an outlier, when every indiciation is that the USMNT of the past decade bears very little resemblance to the USMNT of the 90's.

I stated in several previous threads that ELO consistently ranked the US in the mid-low 30's during most of the 90's, but that somewhere around the turn of the century the US cracked the top 20 for the first time and stayed there consistently for the next ten years.

Whether you agree with ELO's rankings or not, it seems apparent that something big changed around 9-10 years ago, and that the appropriate sample size from which to draw conclusions would be the past 10 years rather than the past 20. And in that sample size, we have a WC QF appearance and a group stage exit, along with a Confederations Cup 3rd place finish and a group stage exit.

Those are the only major international tournaments with which anything resembling our first choice team has been involved during that period. From that, there's no way to know how much of an outlier 2002 was.

[ECUNCHATER]

Like everyone, we overrate our players, but I think we do more than most nations. Some of this is just being Americans and expecting to be the best at things, but some of it is down to:

1. We overrate the importance of youth tournaments
2. We overrate friendly results and other small sample-size moments
3. We have a highlight-reel mentality when it comes to analyzing our players. So Adu pulled off a neat trick in an age-restricted tournament against Brazil-- obviously he's going to become a star.

most of all

4. The 2002 World Cup-- where we were assisted by luck, being underrated by Portugal, very good tactical decisions by Arena, and most everyone on the team playing to their best-- somehow made people think we were on an uphill road, or had arrived.

Lots of nations put together similar runs in major tournaments, but it doesn't indicate sustained quality, or a turning point in their development as a soccer nation. 2002, in particular, was an odd outlier for a number of reasons.

In the end, in the past five World Cups, we've come close a few times to not qualifying from a relatively weak region with a relatively easy road to the finals for the two/three teams expected to get there each time out. In the finals, we've won only two of 15 games in group play-- and both times the other team scored an own goal. (And once so did we.) We're 2-10-3 over that time, having scored 13 goals and allowing 28.

Over that time, we're also 0-2 in must-win games needed to advance. Fortunately, we were bailed out once. Most nations need luck and hard work to succeed, and we're one of them.

Well said and yes putting together good runs does not result in better runs from there on. Just ask France in 2002.

[casoccerdad47]

Amen Brother.

Coaching in America has barely improved over the past 15 years or so, while our players are continuing to get better and better. This is not just on a national team level, but its apparent in just about every level of soccer throughout the country. We need an infusion of new ideas and tactics in our management of the game and it should start from the top. I, for one, would love to have Klinsmann come in and revamp the entire system of US soccer. Whether that would be remotely possible with the bureaucracy we have set up at USSF, remains to be seen.

Does anyone else see a contradiction here? The players are getting better and better while the coaching has barely improved. You're guilty of either overrating our players or underrating our coaches. Having said that, the coaching at the youth level certainly needs to improve. The MLS needs to follow through on their academies. There is some movement at the youth level with some of the bigger clubs, nationwide, becoming academies. The success of these efforts will depend on the quality of the coaches employed by these clubs. We may need to look beyond the borders of the US to make sure we are getting the best available coaches for both our youth academies and our professional teams. p

[ty webb]

Does anyone else see a contradiction here? The players are getting better and better while the coaching has barely improved. You're guilty of either overrating our players or underrating our coaches.

Really?

Gansler 89-91
Milutinovic 91-95
Sampson 95-98
Arena 98-06
Bradley 06-?

Where do you see improvement?