Just toughness alone won't buy you very much in this league for very long any more--it used to. Nowadays, you need a soccer IQ and for most positions some talent. Thankfully we've evolved to where smart, and talented players thrive too as long as they will put the effort in (you can't just be Valderama at the end of his career any more). But soccer smarts do matter more and more every year. Figuring it out has a lot to do with it. The defenses just learned to make contact with him before he can initiate it. They learned he'll take too many touches. They learned if you put a good jumper on him he can't win any balls in the air. It doesn't take that long to figure it out. Besides which people need to admit he just wasn't that great in 2009. Like Bobby Convey said, we were "terrible." Colorado knew Ryan Johnson wasn't going to score last night failing a major defensive error--anyone who scouts our team would know that. It's pretty rare for a light bulb to come on this late in a player's career. I don't think it's going to happen for him. Stories like Dane Richards are uncommon where you can simplify the game for the game for them and make something out of them that's not been there before. But RJ doesn't have the tools to work with that Richards does anyway. Between season 1 and 2, they tried upstepping his fitness hoping Lima-sizing him would matter--remember when Frank was convince size was everything. This year Frank thought teaching him the game would matter. What's left to try? You can't teach quickness, you can't teach jumping ability, and he just doesn't have it when it comes to reading the game. Maybe he can do okay for Jamaica against CONCACAF island competition, but he can't in MLS.
I think it's pretty cool that Ryan is scoring internationally. That's his third goal in like 10 caps, having already scored against Argentina and Costa Rica.
Ryan was playing better for us at the end of the season. He just needs to find his mojo. He may never be a starter for us again, and he will likely never hit eleven goals again, but he can still be a useful player for us. At least, he'd better be. GO RYAN!! GO QUAKES!! - Mark
Apparently it's playing against Caribbean-level players, which seems about the right level for him. He can use physicality there, at least until teams figure out that if you contact him before he contacts you, he's easy to defend. And the fact that he's too slow a decision-maker, doesn't hurt him as much at that level.
In fairness to Johnson, he did score against Argentina while with his national team. It could be that the system suits him better.
We saw that goal....it was a lucky loopy header on a caught out goal keeper. It's not system, it's speed of play and whether you can make a decision quickly enough.
I'm not trying to change your opinion of Johnson, which is well documented. He did not have a good season with the Quakes. He did have a good season with the Jamaican National team though, and to write it off as just being against Carribean-level opposition isn't quite fair. He had three others in 2010; Argentina, Costa Rica and Guadalope. These are not poor teams. Johnson did find some of his mojo playing with Jamaica.
Do you really need to bring a third color to the black & white portrait of Johnson? Is that even allowed on BS?
Sorry to murky up the waters. Since this conversation started he's become an assist machine by the way. Four assists in the last two games. I caught one of those games, and KMJvet is right that the level of play was not quite as strong as MLS, but it wasn't USL-1/NASL level either. Johnson's movement off the ball was much better than we saw during the season. He really combines well with Dane Richards.
While I'm not a huge fan of Johnson, I think he is a better player than many people give him credit for. And I still think he could find his scoring form again, I think this year he almost gave up on shooting and was looking to pass and play out wide rather than attack the goal. Some of that was driven by Wondo's success in finishing, some of that I think was driven by Johnson's loss of confidence in his scoring. I just can't believe that a guy who scored 11 goals in a year is going to continue to be such a non-threat for another year. To get some data on this, I looked up all of the guys who have scored 11 or more goals in MLS in a season over the past 10 years. There are 42 of them, and I would only say that two of them were "one hit wonders" - Galindo and Carrieri. Galindo had some injury issues, Carrieri never did much after his 11 goal season with the Rapids in 2002. I don't see anyone else on the list that you wouldn't say has at least had a solid career in either MLS or elsewhere. I guess you could argue about Findley, but he did play in the World Cup! My point is that it seems much more likely, statiscally speaking, that Johnson will come back and score more goals than it is that his 2009 season was a fluke. I really think people are writing him off a bit prematurely. Here's the list (with the number of times they've scored 11+ goals). Donovan (5) Cunningham (5) Ruiz (5) Twellman (5) Angel (4) Razov (4) DeRosario (3) C Gomez (3) Ching (3) Casey (3) Buddle (3) Cooper (2) Emilio (2) E Johnson (2) J Moreno (2) D Ralph (2) Spencer (2) Chung (2) Graziani (2) Wondo Cummings LeToux Saborio Montero Schelotto Findley Wolff R Johnson Galindo Guevara H Gomez Noonan McBride Preki Kreis Faria Carrieri C Henderson Chacon Serna Conteh Cerritos
#10 on the list may make a certain BS poster's head explode! http://www.socceramerica.com/article/40704/forward-wondo-a-wonderful-revelation.html
"Johnson's lack of scoring doesn't worry SJ's Yallop" (SJEarthquakes.com - Friday, 4/15/11) GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Too bad it's not Europe where making public comments in support of a player or a manager by their boss means they're about to be shipped out or fired.
"Earthquakes' Johnson re-emerging as attacking threat" (SJEarthquakes.com - Wednesday, 5/18/11) GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
If only we could all receive such generous assessments. No goals in what, 30 games or so, and he's "re-emerging as an attacking threat"? (Yes, I know, the assists, the assists, but the lack of goals is mind-boggling).
I don't think it's that odd since he's not that good of a striker. What he's good at is overpowering opponents and getting the ball to others who can score. 2009 probably made people expect too much out of him goal-wise. And even when he did score back then, he was still often just overpowering opponents and bundling the ball in the goal. Anyway, good assists = goals.