+2. I love how thorough he is, and can't imagine how deeply he digs into this stuff, life with a toddler, 160 students, and family obligations means his heavy lifting is greatly appreciated. I just wish the other issues didn't crop up so often. I appreciate the hell out of his knowledge base, and insights. I just wish all of us in general could remember to be less prickly, and more open minded. Disagree thoughtfully and with consideration, and own when you're wrong, or at least, using a poorly considered argument. Giving up on Haji Wright too early was just one of innumerable bad takes I've had in nearly 20 years on these forums. You stay long enough, you're going to be wrong quite a bit, and I greatly appreciate how much I learn from all of you, and how often ill informed takes of mine are flushed by better thought out and reasoned takes I read from so many who post around here. I greatly appreciate it. I've never viewed the back and forth as a zero sum game somebody has to win, but rather as an opportunity to learn, and gain greater and deeper insights.
If we are looking to play a 4-3-X variant then I think you start with Adams and McKennie and look to add a more attacking piece /goal scorer in front of them. My instincts are to start with Pulisic in the #10 role.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing - this site would be boring if it was all kumbaya. That being said, there are people who love to argue for arguing sake and some people like to provoke others. My personal pet peeve is hypocrisy - those who post based on their opinions and then get offended or go on the attack (on posters rather than on opinions) when other opinions oppose theirs.
Maybe he is our next Bobby Wood. Moore showed he wasn't completely out of his depth at the international level. That is so much more important than his club situation and what his coach thinks. This bias against players is just to justify playing MLS players. People here lose their minds when it is suggested that it isn't good for our players to come to MLS. If we are going rule out players based on where they play, the bar should be set higher than MLS. The American players in MLS aren't good enough to get us go the next level. The quality improvement seen in MLS is mostly due to bringing in foreigners. Our MLS guys didnt look special against panama and costa rica. DHC thinks our identity is focusing on defending and countering. I think it is about looking for players from anywhere and recruiting to our best players on the field. We used play college kids and aggressively recruit dual nationals. That is what got us to 2002, but we put less emphasis on it after then. I think people got delusional about where we were and were worried about how outsiders perceived us. Our coaches should scout and monitor all of our players and just pick the ones that give us the best chance.
If guided by what GB did in the Cupcake matches I would put Weah in the Baird FR role. We have to see if Wood/Sargent/Arriola of even Fab could play FL. I believe if given the chance Fab has the technical/tactical/coach-able attributes that GB says he is looking for and would be perfect at FL in a classic 4-3-3
who here didnt have CP, Mckennie, Adam's, Miazga, Sargent, Weah, Steffen, etc? The problem is he didnt have any of them as his top guys. He wasnt high on CP until until the rest of the players played poorly at the world cup. Being pessimistic about small technical players trying to play in England doesnt seem like some special foresight to me.
I think that is a pretty good place to start. I personally see Pulisic more as the type you want to get the ball to in dangerous positions more than the person getting the ball to others in the same way you might look at Donovan and Dempsey's roles. Both could play in either spot but Dempsey was better closer to goal (IMO) and Donovan needed the space and had better vision to pick out others. I would like Pulisic in a withdrawn spot with freedom to roam. I could see 10 by commitee as some have hinted. (McKennie and one other? or two others with McKennie and Adams playing some other way. I think the three you mentioned are shoe ins but how they are used will depend somewhat on what he decides the rest of the guys can do. Arriola and Pulisic on wing? Arriola and someone else on wing with Pulisic as a withdrawn striker? Perhaps Adams and McKennie as "wide central mids/wingers with a two guys given the playmaking role? possibly Pulisic one of those? A lot o possibilities and one think I kind of like right now is I fell like I don't really have a real clue to what Berhalter's plans are. It's kind of like Christmas...will we get another LIma type surprise in the way Adams and or McKennie are deployed? (not meanining they will play LB or RB but will play an unconventional role in midfield) The uncertainty makes speculating more fun...not necessarily because it makes me more likely to be right but because there are more possibilities.
Agreed, but it's not happening with civility, we can argue points with civility. I may be guilty of this too, I don't know, it's something I try to work on.
I dont know why so many people insist he is only a wide player. I thought the floating role under two forwards was perfect for him in 2017. He continues to grow and think he should have a bigger role. Adams as the #6, Mckennie #8 and CP10. Three of Wood, Altidore, Sargent and Weah up front. Here is CP yesterday against Bremen doing the same things he did against Hondurus... A brilliant run and finish from Christian Pulisic! pic.twitter.com/rA18N81eJj— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) February 5, 2019
Best 11 right now...Bradley in some of these lineups...wait, wut? If true, and if WCQ matches involve anyone better than Panama, be prepared to once again fail to qualify. Didn't you Bradley lineup folks see enough backpassing in the previous stretch run failure? He's too ponderous to compete against even average skilled midfielders. Given his age, he is only going to get slower. ANY reasonable best 11 lineup w/o MB90 is an improvement.
As you know, because we have had disagreements in the past, Klinsmann was not my favorite but he is the first NT coach to play him in a "free" role underneath the striker(s) and that was a very good choice. I know he did it vs CR (not sure if he did it before then. Arena continued and Pulisic was our most consistently successful player throughout qualifying.
CP played in the free role under Woods and Altidore for the first time against Mexico. He was moved out wide once we went to four in the back but still drifted inside often in that game. He played out wide at Costa Rica and was ineffective. I dont recall his role at Panama (set up Dempsey for only goal), but Arena wasted him out wide at Mexico and Honduras. I thought Klinsmann handled CP well through 2016 up until the costa rica match. I think both coaches were wrong putting him out wide.
do you think the 6 or so bundesliga coaches who play him on the wing are wrong too? does it bother anybody that the only people who seem to think pulisic is a 10 are us soccer homers? look, i get that we dont have 10s. but we dont have a left back either, and hed probably be a much better left back than a villafana cause hes a much, much better soccer player...but that doesnt make him a left back either.
Too many hi skool players on these boards with the prejudice that wingers do damage from a wide position. Ronaldo was a winger for Real Madrid, ffs.
I am a sucker for the debate...... I try to do it respectfully and with support for my arguments. What have any of these players achieved that is materially more than what Carleton has achieved? If you take it all in proper context, Andrew Carleton stacks up well against just about anyone as a potential top 11 player as either a wing or a #10. Let's take Arriola, since I think that is the most likely player to take AC's spot in the 11 (outside of Weah, who I have addressed over and over...). When Arriola was Carleton's age, he was just about to start his career at TJ, where he played 20 mostly as a sub. I think AC is on track for a little better than that and will certainly score more than the one goal that Arriola got that year. Also, considering Carleton already has a few MLS appearances and a bunch of USL minutes, you would have to say that he is ahead of where Arriola is. Now, let's project over the next 12-18 months, since that is the time that I think is when things become critical for selecting the squad that will get us to and play in Qatar... Arriola played five games his second year. Maybe he was hurt some that year, but he only ended up scoring four goals over eighty games for Xolos before moving to MLS. I expect AC's career to move in the opposite direction. If he's in ATL for four years, he will have scored a boatload of goals and be heading to a bigger club (even if he does not reach his full capability, this is probably likely). I know this is a projection, but that is what player evaluation is all about, and Carleton's play on the field suggests that he has a much higher ceiling that Arriola. There are two other big factors that lead me to believe that besides just my instincts after watching them play. First, is their roles on their respective youth national teams. Arriola was decent on bad USA teams while AC has been stellar for a very good team. Secondly, there peers have experienced completely different fortunes. While Arriolas mates have struggled for playing time on top teams, Carleton's contemporaries are faring much better. These things do nothing to qualify Carleton's quality as a player, but I think that clearly takes care of itself (unless you just don't like game breaking attackers with flair and creativity in your team). This is just the case of Carleton vs. Arriola, who has a pretty decent case to make. Not many of the other players in the pool have nearly as strong of a case. Thus, I believe that within the next 6-18 months, Carleton will be a big part of the national team.
I just watched Wild Paul Arriola's goal v. Costa Rica. Carleton isn't scoring that goal. Why are we comparing Arriola to Carleton. It's befuddling.
Some guys have their fans in here: Brooks, Arriola, Marky, Carleton, Yedlin, etc. So whenever you criticize such guys even a little, you get four or five guys jumping on your neck. You have to learn to ignore those who are "fans" and come to the board with well-established biases.
I won't try to speak for bsky22 but I personally like Pulisic as a central player beneath the forward(s) that has freedom to roam wherever he can find space. I don't consider him a 10. Dempsey, in my opinion played a similar role and I would never call him a 10. I would not say that the German coaches are wrong for playing him on the wing but we also don't have the same quality of players on our national team as they have available for Dortmund.
I've noticed a trend with Puli, let's see if it continues: when he gets hacked hard and the ref does nothing, he disappears for a good while.
Starts playing safe, passing it back instead of going on his beloved dribbling runs. Eventually the others stop passing to him because he's always sending it back. It takes him about 20 to 30 minutes to recover.
Arriola scored that on pure athleticism. That is his strength. I could also point to five times he lost possession or blew opportunities that Carleton would have done better with. With Carleton in the those two games in place of Arriola, we create more chances on goal, in my opinion.
The point is not that you believe Carelton to be an elite prospect who's on the cusp of becoming a star (in 6-18 months). I don't believe anyone has really argued against you that it's possible. The point is this: this thread is the best XI RIGHT NOW and there's not a case to be made that AC belongs on it RIGHT NOW. AC has work to do to make the U20 team, according to his coach so the thought that he's best XI RIGHT NOW is a highly "uniformed" opinion to use your phraseology. Arriola's performance in the past year is better than AC's. Weah's performance in the past year is better than AC's. Sargent's performance in the six months is better than AC's (although i think it's early for him). Your point comparing Arriola when he was young to AC is irrelevant to this thread. It would be entirely relevant if you were to start a thread titled,"Carelton's ceiling and future potential" which is what everything you discuss is about even though it's not relevant to this topic. Take a deeper look at grandinquisitor28's excellent post.....