Pre-match: 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group Stage: USA vs Guyana

What many seem to miss is the recent efforts to close the gap in club can result in squeezing out potential country players. The Houston Dynamo have gotten back to inconsistently competitive fielding a team of 4 Honduran internationals, a smattering of other countries, starting very few Americans and offering maybe 1 player our team could consider. Ergo upping salaries and increasing international slots to chase MX does not actually result in international parity.

To me Europe and Mexico used to be "I want to play the career ambition lottery" and MLS was "I want playing time." Now, particularly for the attackers people want to spend DPs on, it's a lottery in MLS as well. You have U20s from last tournament like Carleton on the margins of Atlanta and playing sometimes USL. You have people on this current U20 team who really play USL.

I care about international soccer more than CCL so I would actually be fine with MLS taking a more constrained, slower approach to closing the MX gap that encouraged our teams to invest in domestic players. Way it's being done now encourages you to look abroad and that almost benefits our regional neighbors as much as us. While the snobs clown on MLS, CR, Panama, Honduras all have several people here taking advantage. For all the claims of conspiracies we in fact don't have the motivation of setting up a league to benefit the home country. It used to be that way but then we went for short cuts.

If you want to know how we got here go down MLS rosters club by club and see how many players you want, how many teams have nothing to offer, and notice if they have other regional teams' players instead. I still don't think that exercise explains how bad GB is but it gives you a sense of how the changed nature of the league has altered the pool within which we work. My Dynamo used to have 5 or so US internationals (albeit some only occasional bit players). It now has 1/3 of a lineup from Honduras.

To pursue international competitiveness you would scale back MLS international slots to 3-5 -- like it used to be -- you would incentivize signing NT players here, and you would work on the age 18-23 bridge where those players can get playing time someplace.

At least part of this is decide whether you want to catch up to Tigres in club or Mexico in country.

 

We are facing the 175th, 92nd, and 75th ranked teams in the world. We are ranked 30th.

I know that there is a huge PR effort by USSF to lower expectations but come on, this should be 7 points and win the group at a bare minimum. As a point of comparison the last A team GC we played in 2015:

2015A: USA 27, Panama 54, Honduras 75, Haiti 76
2017B: USA 35, Panama 52, Martinique NA, Nicaragua 105
2019A: USA 30, Panama 75, T&T 92, Guyana 175

 

Vermes would have been my choice for the job. He seems like a guy who can adapt to the situation and talent.

 

the issue is that you think you know who those players are, you don't have a clue.

'my experience as a kid'....oh god nothing like a 'coach didn't know how to use me correctly I was better then messi' argument. Almost all hs coaches are garbage...thats why they are high school coaches. Its like the saying goes about college football coaches about half are coaches and half are overpaid gym teachers. In hs its worse then that its like 1% are coaches and 99% literally are gym teachers.

 

Bad news for our opponents as Guyanese competitors fail to get the proper visas to compete here in the US.

This is unreal. Did you know this was a thing? A man has been arrested at JFK airport for “attempting to smuggle into the United States from Guyana 34 live finches concealed in his carry-on luggage, with each bird hidden within a plastic hair-curler. “ Here’s why: pic.twitter.com/wF1FSlkvmq

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) June 17, 2019

 

Most of us are far closer to that than Berhalter and that suffices. I was touting Holmes for months.

To the extent you are implying it is more than a half-rubbish team you don't know what you are talking about. It is a half-good team (offense) with a lousy defense and a decent keeper. That still should be enough to qualify in Concacaf and we can work on whether Richards and others can beat someone out in the back.

My point re riding talent is essentially that my HS lived in a hotbed but would ride the talent like a roller coaster while the neighboring school had more consistent success drawing off a similar set of players. Our coach won state once, which was basically gifted to him. The other guy won several times. Same kids from the same youth league. Our coach is still dining out off that state title even though the reality is he couldn't coach his way out of a paper bag. In a down ebb our coach would barely make the state playoffs. In a down ebb their coach would lose in the regional final. I had their coach -- who had children around my age who played select -- recommend me to colleges instead of my own. I did fine and achieved personal awards. I just am savvy enough to get that a reshuffle of a state winning club team should itself be competitive for state in school sports. Unless you f*ck it up somehow, eg, refuse to promote JV players who are all state in a couple years, refuse to start the same backline, go with a bad keeper, bench fast attacking players for attitude reasons (then play them in the playoffs and they have 5 goals in 5 games).

We were coached by a former college player. I think people underestimate the quality necessary to be a well coached team with value added. They punished Arena for losing 2 out of 18 (though a big two). We get Sarachan. People don't like that, toss him (rightfully so), but hire Berhalter. Gets worse.

This is not a coach riding talent. This is one literally frittering it away.

There are in fact gradations of pro coaches beyond mere gym teachers, this team should be top 3 on talent alone, and anything less is the coach letting them down. You put our best team out there in a no nonsense 451 or 442 and we would be in the final.

The people crying about the talent are crying relative to 1 team. 3 teams qualify. The 3rd regional team and on down are mostly domestic league, USL, lower league Europe. Even if you aren't sure about this bunch, a handful of them turning out decent and showing up should be enough for 3rd. The first place crybaby discussion is unearned arrogance. Get back to this is good enough to qualify and get out of the talent's way. The value added should only be needed to take points from CR and Mexico and play the sort of elite team we will see in the odd friendly or tournament round.

 

This ain't fantasy football.....mls stats mean zilch for USMNT.

 

a lotta if's in there.

why is the assumption that the spine MUST be from MLS?

Also - is it certain that of 2 MLS players that the one with the better stats will be the better USMNT option? I don't think so....

In fact, I think the one with the better MLS stats is frequently the worse option i.e. USMNT.

Now if you look at USMNT as a REWARD to players for how they do in club play...then fine.

But if you actually just want to win, again, MLS stats are not indicative of a player's value to USMNT. they should be...but they really aren't.

 

Waste of time. I will not watch this game. May or may not watch T&T, but will watch the Panama game.

 

the implication we have no talent misses what we did the past year-extended against portugal, france, mexico, etc. if you toss out the brazil type games we had no business playing, this was competitive last year in a way it no longer is. sarachan sure as heck wasn't "coaching" so there must be something there.

this should be, can we get a coach who can leverage us vs Mexico A, and those kinds of Brazil type teams. catching up that gap. instead we're back to can we beat rank and file regional sides.

 

I'm going to definitely give even 7 the side eye.

 

That’s a lot of Panama

 

club performance and stats should primarily be a "scouting" tool, used to assess who gets to try out with the NT. you are then "evaluated" with the Nats themselves ie the team we want you to play with.

this simple. the big league team is looking for someone to hit .300 in the bigs. so the primary metric is once you get there how do you hit. if you hit .050 after being a .350 minor leaguer, they send you back down, and maybe you get another chance later on. they maybe bring up the other guy hitting .325 in the minors next time, see if his skills translate better. you do not get to stay in the bigs forever hitting .050 based on .350 elsewhere. you do if you turn out a star, and you get a foothold if you can hit .250.

i feel like we are stuck in the rut where some quant perseverates that the .350 guy should be the better big league player. we are conflating scouting inputs like club affiliation and stats with showing up and doing the thing in The Show. worse, we wander into a subjective morass where Brooks, Yedlin, etc., the bonus babies can do no wrong, despite what's on tape, and yet we will flyspeck someone like Holmes coming in from less fashionable parts. what was done to Amon after his first game was typical. he creates danger and we give him grief the pass is a foot off. while some other guy shanks them in the stands. relative to the next guy, upgrade. you can fix a foot off easier than a stands shank.

this is not going to hum til we get a functional formation mated up with performance (NT) driven lineups. and i get that not all of the prospects are going to turn out, BUT MY WHOLE POINT IS SWAP THIS OVER TO PLAYING THE ONES WHO DO PERFORM. a lot of the people who look on the kids with skepticism don't actually want their favorites judged by performance. all I am saying is run the kids and prospects out and the Adams and Holmes go in one pile and the Robinsons and Lovitzes and Trapps in another, with some finality for a change. you do that even if you aren't sharp enough to get the lineup day 1 you will arrive there shortly.

at this rate it would take GB years to get this sorted right if ever,

 

Depends on what we’re trying to do. As is, we shouldn’t have a spine. It’s a rebuilding time. The spine shouldn’t be mid age to older MLS. It’s should be young talent and the majority of that young talent is in Europe. We’re looking for who the spine is going to be. There’s going to be a lot of turnover and it’s one of many reasons why a complex system makes zero sense.

He’s a goal every 2.5 this year in the MLS. And outside of that fluke goal he’s been extremely poor in a US Jersey. 7 goals in 45 games and a few of those 7 were flukey. That’s not good enough.

 

in context, since Copa America 2016:
Zardes
start VEN 0 goals
start CHI 0 goals
start ECU 1 goal
start CR 0 goals
start PAN 0 goals
start MEX 0 goals
sub BRA 0 goals
started B-H 0 goals
sub JAM 0 goals
start CR 0 goals
start ES 0 goals
start MART 0 goals
sub PAN 0 goals
start GHN 0 goals
start COL 0 goals
start ARG 0 goals
start ECU 1 goal
start PARA 0 goals
start CR 0 goals
start COL 0 goals

maybe we can schedule Ecuador every time for you.

his MLS stats also look different when you see that he and Trapp are in the top 35 field players on minutes played. so his 6 goals come in 15 games. he paces out to about 12-13 goals for a season playing every minute. that is actually a little underwhelming. Vela already has 16 goals in the same rough time period. Jozy has 5 goals in about half the minutes.

this is why i am a big strike rate fan.

 

It would be a realistic look at the program, if our best players weren't young spine players not in MLS. But those are our best players, and building around not-as-good-anymore or never-were-nor-ever-will-be-that-good is a misappraisal of the best use of the available personnel.

 

MLS players shouldn’t make up the spine of our team. 75% of our starters should be guys playing overseas. Then the rest can be MLS players. Mental quickness and speed of play is just too slow in the MLS

 

Funny. And. What in the hell? Why would anyone bet on which bird some guy or gal is going to say "sounds better?" You are basically betting on whether or not that guy or gal wants you to win or lose.