PBP: 2019 CONCACAF U17 Championship Semifinals: USA vs Canada 5/14 5:30 PM (ET)

I always hear “teenagers recover faster” and it always makes me think of the ‘17 u17 CONCACAF final, when it looked like all our players were running in mud. The same thing happened when England ran circles around us in India a few months later (that England team was better than us and may have run circles around us anyway). Fatigue happens for everyone and there isn’t some magical ability to recover that you automatically have just because of your age. You see it if you watch these tournaments and pay attention to each individual players’ performance from one game to the next. The ones who have put in the most minutes are the most likely to have bad games later in the tournament. That’s why I’m somewhat concerned with Leyva, because I though he had his worst game yesterday (although he was still pretty good).

Personally, I wouldn’t have started Reyna and maybe not Busio. I also probably would’ve sat KHF, but after watching the game a couple times, this was little more than a training exercise for him. He didn’t run much at all. Busio on the other hand, was all over the place and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some serious fatigue tomorrow.

 

The level of play has a lot to do with it. The higher the level of play, the more taxing the game. If you stack games on top of each other, the players learn to adjust by resting during the game.

A great example of this are restarts and transitions. When you play at a lower level, these are opportunities to rest your brain and body. When you play at the highest levels of the game, these are the moments that you use to win the toughest games. At a high level of play, a player’s intensity increases during these moments. At lower levels of play, players take these moments off for the purpose of extending their brain and muscle endurance.

If we want to increase the level of our players, we simply must lose our tournament mentality for youth soccer. It was fine when youth soccer was not attached to the professional game, but now, with our dramatically increased expectations of our youth soccer products, we need to look past other American youth players or even CONCACAF opponents. We need to look at top European youth players, who murder us in these moments.

45 high level games with rest and purposeful training in between per year is best. If these games are too easy, that is where players will know they were not pushed and will ask for more games without needing a full recovery window.

 

no highlights friends?

 

Mexico game is at 7

 

Highlights:
https://streamable.com/yqd4i

KHF highlights and lowlights:
https://streamable.com/ddd50

Busio all touches:
https://streamable.com/a6xc3

 

I think all this talk of Reyna being selfish or having low IQ is overblown. This is a 16 year old kid who has probably been the best player on the field in 99% of games he's played in his entire life. It is perfectly normal for him to be selfish at this stage of the career. He will surely learn the need to rely on his teammates more as he moves up the professional chain, playing with and against more talented players.

I'm also betting Vicky is encouraging him to be selfish with the ball against this inferior competition.

 

Who is Vicky? Wicky, the coach?

 

Reyna wasn’t even the best player on his own club team, IMO. I thought Scally consistently outplayed him and provided more of the offense than Reyna from RB than Reyna would provide from attacking midfield.

 

First I’ll say that just about nothing makes me angrier than a player taking a bad shot when they can square it for a teammate for an easy finish. When someone on my team does it I yell a string of obscenities/insults and occasionally hit/kick an inanimate object. When it’s the other team it’s a similar string of insults but this time done out of schadenfreude. Goals are so valuable that making the correct call here really separates attacking players.

When I’m closely watching a game I am evaluating what each player does based on the options open to them (and hopefully based on the team and opponent’s setups) and the risk/reward presented. The best players see the options and balance safe/cumulatively positive decisions with taking risks when the reward is worth it. They have to understand their own capabilities, their teammates’, and the opponent’s to do this.

My theory about Brek Shea, when he looked likely to leave Dallas, was that he frequently lost focus and failed to consistently make/see positive decisions in a way that would run afoul of a European manager, who would insist on holding him to a higher standard. That he could fail as an attacker and end up a LB. My hope was that, despite going to England, he would learn enough about using his talent to be a dangerous north/south winger.

To me what differentiates Reyna (beyond the ability to execute and psychological makeup) is that he sees the options much better. He is just trusting himself because he can dribble 4 guys from a standstill, tightrope the end-line, and clip a left-footed ball onto a teammate’s head in the 6. He can learn to balance risk and safety, it’s a common progression for young attackers. Strangely enough it seems to me like BVB has taught Pulisic to go the other way. What can’t be taught is the ability to consistently break patterns and the opponent’s structure to produce chances for himself and others.

 

I’m using the German pronunciation brother.

 

I certainly share your general frustration with overly-selfish players who pass up good opportunities for their teammates. Dempsey, despite all of his talent, was often guilty of this sin.

But I am not overly concerned with a 16 year old prodigious talent having a selfish streak. I try and stay away from other sports analogies, but Kobe Bryant was crazy selfish and made lots of dumb plays at 17-18 in the NBA. He learned to play with his mates much better as his career progressed, averaging nearly 5 assists a game. It is something that can be developed.

 

Your opinion is certainly a minority one. But I think you understand my general point.

 

I do understand your point, but why do you think it’s a minority one?

 

Kobe was crazy selfish pretty much his entire career. He could’ve averaged twice as many assists and had a much better shooting percentage if he would’ve passed the ball instead of taking fade away 20 footers when he was triple teamed.

Dempsey is probably a better comparison. That part of his game definitely drove me crazy. With Reyna, at this point, he doesn’t really have even the most basic idea of when to keep the ball moving and when to go 1v4. That is definitely the type of thing he can work on and improve, but as it stands, you can’t go try to play against Bayern with that mentality. That is concerning for me. And he hasn’t really improved at that in the last 2 years. This has been a consistent problem with him. Still, he is young and now is the time players make the big leap, so hopefully he does.