Hey all. Discussion isn't allowed in the main schedule thread. Which is completely understandable. It serves the purpose of being quick and to the point with updates and news. Here is the most recent schedule update from there: So, in this thread feel free to discuss anything and everything with the schedule. If possible, could a mod move the unwanted clutter and discussion from the schedule thread to here? That would be a good way to kick start discussion. Although it appears that many of them were binned. I was talking about how awesome the France was to be scheduled on November 11th. Should be great for publicity and promotion as well!
I'll just say that schedule-wise I think perhaps we are starting to get into the habit of scheduling the biggest and best teams we possibly can and I'm not sure that's always the best way to go. Yes, you surely need to have games against big teams to see where you are and all that, but playing a full slate of games where we're always out manned isn't always productive. We need to toss in a few games against ruin of the mill opposition in some cases. Hell, right now with a team struggling to find its way and play a new style would be a perfect time to play some lesser opposition where we can try things out and experience some success and gain an understanding of how things should work and then move into playing a bigger team when we ramp up to proving we can execute on a lower level first. Instead, we're playing France in Paris. I know especially right now it is popular to say friendly results don't matter, but I think there is something to be said about getting some wins and helping the team build confidence and just letting them execute a game plan against a smaller team and see how things come together and then progress to trying out the ideas against better competition. Again, I absolutely think we should be playing games against strong teams, but I also think we get plenty out of games against lesser squads. We seem to always want to now schedule teams above us.
Some very good points. We'll be getting some of that though in our upcoming qualifiers. But those aren't until next summer. Unfortunately given the quality of teams in our own confederation I think the USSF feels that friendlies are the time to schedule tougher competition. Otherwise we'd never play anybody good except for Mexico and a few of the central american teams.
Good points, I agree with both though. CONCACAF teams aren't the best, and if we don't schedule harder teams, Mexico is the toughest competition we will have. Giving opportunities to the younger players to play teams like France, gives them a much needed experience going into qualifiers.
I don't believe there is any change here. But I'll just repost the schedule when I see him do it in the news thread. Or anyone can really as soon as they see it. So that way people won't have to refer to a different thread when commenting.
It doesn't appear that anyone is using this. People just keep commenting in the main thread. Ah well. It was worth a shot. Also, could we get the thread title changed to drop the year? McNaulty is linking here with the 2012 schedule as well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...une-2014-as-warm-up-for-World-Cup-finals.html Rumour: England @ Florida in early June 2014
Germany discussing plans on a 2013 summer tour: DFB manager Bierhoff: "We will rather not travel to Brazil though. The USA could be an alternative. This still needs to be discussed in detail [...]" http://www.dfb.de/index.php?id=511739&tx_dfbnews_pi1[showUid]=35194&tx_dfbnews_pi4[cat]=56