Mentality is almost the entire game after the Championship/MLS level. The will to be the best, the intelligence to make the right decision, the mentality to get through the grind of a long season, the ability to make thousands of split second decisions correctly. Robinson is far ahead of Acosta in demonstrating he has some of these qualities. Acosta has shown poor discipline and has not spent an entire season on a team under tremendous pressure to get results every week for 10 months. Acosta can start right now in showing those qualities and getting his career moving forward and upward. Getting back on the field at RSL is a first step. He is a talent and Villafana needs to be pushed out sooner rather than later. I think Bello is a top prospect, but the key to prospects is to have a lot of them.
It's a weird affliction, this USMNT thing. Took me forever to get around to watching the Champions League final. I had DVR'd the game because my daughter had a ballet performance. (And she was awesome.) I managed to make it the whole day without knowing the result until the very last conversation of the day, when one of her friend's dad's who knew I was into soccer spilled the result. Still, even knowing the result, I normally would've been chomping at the bit to watch it off DVR at the first opportunity. But it took a couple days. Then US v Bolivia comes on. A bullshit friendly as we await the US-less World Cup. Helmed by an interim manager and featuring players (save one) who have never been "featured" in a linuep before. Captained by Eric f-ing Lichaj. And I'm glued to the tube watching it live.
Lots of promise with these young guys, I will let you all argue over who is best. I am just excited to see more Talent and Technical ability coming up that has been in short supply the last few years. Hope all of them continue to improve and earn PT with their respective club sides.
Villafana gets far too much flack. It's a combo of being affiliated w/ team failure, not being a spring chicken anymore, high potential, nor playing in Europe. But the reality is he's never played particularly bad in any individual game for the U.S. If he has some issues on d he contributes to the attack, if he has some issues on o he contributes to the d. And he's never a huge liability in either so as to be tough to overcome. He's been a decent player at historically the weakest position for the nation. If his parents would have conceived him earlier so as to be available during the end of the 2010 cycle, I think the conversation about him would be quite different. I think he should see a reduced role going into next cycle, but I wouldn't mind him hanging around through Gold Copa/America or even early qualifiers as LB depth and a steadying force. The hand-wringing about his presence on rosters should die down until then.
Same here. Right now, I almost don't care at all about the World Cup, when usually I'm a huge fan of international soccer in general (and I watched a lot of the games in the last two World Cups). Gotta say, I was extremely disappointed about failing to qualify. I only missed maybe 2-3 USMNT games since the 2010 World Cup. That's a lot of time watching games that end up not mattering in the end... After Trinidad, I promised myself that I wouldn't get that invested in USMNT soccer ever again. Why should I? I have no impact on the actual games, and I invest an inordinate amount of time discussing meaningless games against Bosnia, Paraguay, and Bolivia, or YNT tournaments/prospects... ...Promise broken, almost immediately...
Do you literally mean that? Do you think it is only "old people" who devalue Weah, Zelalem, Shea, Payne, Boyd, Aronjo, etc? Am I misinterpreting your post?
Yeah, I took off work early so I could watch it at 3:00 a.m. on Fox Soccer Pass. And I have yet to see the UCL final. And congrats to your daughter.
Now, whenever I'm having a lousy day, I can tell myself: "if could be worse, you could be Karius in that Champions final...."
Actually, it was a dig at myself. I'm old and entrenched, although I've been right a lot more than I've been wrong of late when evaluating young YA players. My two big fails were overestimating Green and Rubin. Whenever I've under-rated (compared to folks here) a Yank abroad, I've been correct. Not good. I know.
That just indicates that you, like all the rest of us, are human. (Except me. I'm old, and I'm always right!) Everyone makes mistakes in evaluating youth players. Regardless of what some genius BS posters say, even the professional scouts get evaluations wrong. Anyone who is predicting any 12 - 17 y.o. as being the "next Pele" (or Messi, or Cronaldo, &etc.) is going to be wrong an awful lot more than they're right. I'm happy to see all of these talented kids, and if they turn out to have a good professional career, I'll be happy. If any of them turn out to be a "Pele, or Messi, or Cronaldo" (especially playing for the US), I'll be ecstatic!
Frankly, I'm still sort of waiting for the next Donovan: a good but not extraordinary player, who however has the brains to elevate everybody around him a couple of notches. That's the sort we need, more than the star who can do a lot by himself but still fails when those around underperform.
I sometimes don't even tell people how much more American soccer matters to me than "important" soccer
Oh and Hyndman and EPB are guys I still rate highly. That they're not in better situations stirs my chip-on-the-shoulder and makes me consider that, indeed, there may be some anti-American bias in some European quarters. I've never seen Emo or Erik have a bad game, even in that Celtic match, Emo looked poor only by comparison to what he had done before. And he was the second replaced player because of a busted ankle. Actually, it's possible he got his ankle done early in the game and that's why he was off. He was over 3 months without playing because of it.
I don't think Sargent's ever going to be a player that looks like he dominates from minute 1 to 90. I've never seen him dominate a match at any level, and I've seen some much worse players than him dominate matches at youth level. He's not that athletic, he's not that skilled, he's not a 6'5 target forward. He has decent size, decent athleticism, good football IQ, a good holdup game and finishing ability, but nothing particularly great, except maybe the finishing ability. If Sargent turns into a dominant player, I think it'll be in a way where it doesn't look like he dominates, but at the end of the season, the scoring sheet says so.
Is he catching flack? All I said was that he's a below-average athlete for a full-back at the international level. I don't think thats untrue. I didn't say he plays poorly. He has a clear deficiency that keeps him from being able to be more than average (at best).
I liken him to Harry Kane. Not the fastest. Not the biggest. Not the most flashy but dear god get Kane with an eye to the goal and watch him be magical because his movement is so good that he gets just a sliver of space to unleash his fantastic finishing skills. At this stage Sargent is a poor man's because his movement and finishing aren't that good yet but Kane went through seven loans and huge progressions between 18 and 21. We have to wait and see on Sargent but I for one am profoundly glad as a US fan that he's at WB and not SKC. I don't expect him to achieve the level Kane has because it's rather irrational and depressing to hope he becomes one of the best strikers on the planet but the drive and desire can make up for average tools. We'll have to see.
This damages the idea I have in my head that everyone on Big Soccer lives in Los Angeles, Texas, or New Jersey. Everyone except @feyenoordsoccerfan, who I assume lives somewhere in Germany
We are everywhere.... like a plague. edit: Yanks Abroad has a thread on it. BSers Abroad, or something like that.