Reggie Cannon is the bellwether that should give even the most ardent GB supporter pause over GB's player selection approach. Cannon was on the January camp squad but did not get a minute of field time. Reggie handled it diplomatically saying in essence that the gimmick RB role was totally different than he was taught and would take him much more than 30 days. Cannon praised Lima's ability to adjust to the strange role. Cannon's club coach, and others, were more direct, questioning if the international game was the place to try to install a complex gimmick system. Cannon was not even on the original 23 roster. Canouse also did not get a minute of match time and was not diplomatic. Canouse came out and said that he was not given a fair chance to compete for the DM slot against Bradley and Trapp. Of course Kellyn Acosta was sent home from camp and has not been heard from since. We have a group of young, athletic, aggressive, modern, in-your-face players that we should be building the future around. Adams, McKennie, and Pulisic are so good that they can't be ignored but we should also not ignore players one level down because they don't "fit" whatever GOB "culture" USSF is trying to install.
- mexico was the last straw for me in the sense of it being like my 500th "cap" watching a roster with too many "experience"d, safe, no upside players and precious little danger/potential. its about leaving sargent out. its about not only having ream, but freaking daniel lovitv the only option behind him. its about still leaning on bradley, and having no options to correct that even if taking bradley out of a match were a remote possiblity (which i do not believe is or ever has ever been the case). yes, there were injuries. but trapp wasnt an injury replacement- how much would he have helped anything? down a goal and we bring on a roldan- whos not made a case for himself- as a winger for crying out loud. where was boyd? or even lewis? its the matter of what i see as us soccer picks vs what i described in my post, an overall philosophy of safe over taking chances on young talent. its not a huge issue vs guyana, but at some point youre going to go down a goal- safe and known and familiar doesnt do comebacks. - ok, writing off mihailovic/lewis- i mentioned some of that part of the pool id cut off just isnt ready, thats partly the case with both of them for me. specifially, mihailovic may just be on the wrong side of the ralston line- ive seen him play very well, look dangerous with the fire but for whatever reason it hasnt translated. in his (top of my head) 4 decent chances he looked completely decent in his first and markedly worse in each proceeding match (ending at disaster-ville). so as i said, sort out how we do jan camps and thats the next stop for him. lewis i just dont rate- and hes actually had a couple of productive appearances. but theres nothing that justifies his inclusion over amon, or sabbi to me. its hard to frame this as anything other than low-grade eurosnobbery but both of those guys ive mentioned have played against better comp (while lewis is only now getting playing time). im not saying you take a euro player over an mls player period, but lewis hasnt played in europa qualifiers, or scored multiple goals in (successful) relegation battles. gall, sabbi, amon have. i know its a very fine distinction, but its less the team theyre on than the level of competition they face. its just hard to buy that lewis totally would have dribbled that bald jackass rb. but amon has (close to, at least) elite pace. sabbi has scored bigger goals than week 8 against colombus. as ive painted myself into a corner by calling it- safe and familiar vs potential and danger. most importantly us soccer, historically, dont give us a chance to find out. - veteran leadership, gosh, thats hard to address succinctly. i think the easiest way to say it is we simply dont have 28 year old guys in their primes- we have older guys hanging on and kids. so lets take it seperately- brooks and yedlin are our "vets". i guess the next tier (strictly based on caps) would be arriola, pulisic, trapp? leadership isnt reliant on age/experience. i think adams has great leadership qualities. its tricky though. brooks, yedlin- do either of them strike you as captain-type players? call it a symptom of the lost generation or whatever, but i say go with the leaders on the team. i see pulisic as the dempsey option- your best player, you can say leads by example, but not a rah-rah (or even particularly even-keeled) guy. my pick would be adams. we have a lot of areas we are going to have growing pains and just have to take our lumps, and i think this is one of them. we wasted a looong time getting berhalter in. but to answer directly no, with what we have i do not see the need for "veteran leadership" both because its simply not there, and frankly youd have to shoehorn in an inferior player or name a guy that isnt really suited for it (ie brooks- and i could be wrong, he could totally be the leader of the locker room, i just dont see it). - determing who plays based on league. i think ive mostly covered that in other areas. i do think we lean too hard on mls. i hate "is 2bund better than mls?" pissing matches/dumpster fires, but at some point (the eredivise line maybe?) there are clearly higher levels. id says that not even arguable, but bs insists anything is. but even then we tend to be completely unnuanced and dont look at players individually. while, as i mentioned, i do give an edge/bonus evaluation points for playing better comp in higher level/stakes leagues you cant just have a formula you plug players into. when bradley was at roma, not playing a minute, he was still one of our best players. donovan never aspired/committed to higher club levels and hes clearly one of our top 3 players ever. parks and lewis- two younger guys a lot of people are invested in- are just now getting minutes in mls. and you even have cases like (god, i cant believe im opening this again) roldan or trapp vs morales. bundisliga starter vs mls starter, no question who you take, right? roldan couldnt sniff a bundisliga roster! morales would boss mls! but i could argue thats simply geography. if roldan were raised in germany college wouldnt waste (just one, in his case) years of development. hed be in some lower level academy working himself up. maybe he rides an ingolstodt wave from 2 bund to the bundisliga. morales was born (well, technically in peru) but grew into that- i promise im not completely dismissing him here, its just a discussion. but he didnt start in mls (or denmark or whatever), with poor academies, after a year/years in college and bundisliga teams made a determination and said "weve got to go get that guy". does that make sense? and league v league gets even harder when its a brondy vs a dc united. while i do see mls as a very good level- its not remotely a strong development league. mls has also historically, until fairly recently, been very slow to actually give young americans minutes, preferring more concacafy vets. still, theres no way to evaluate american mls attackers because the money goes to big dollar import attackers- they just dont get the chances. conversely, its a very good level for younger american defenders and goalkeepers. that goes back to my point about who you play against meaning more than who you play for. miazga, zimmerman- i think mls produces strong defensive players, tested against almirons and velas, rooneys and ibras. difference being i definitely prefer miazga because hes moved on to higher levels of play. and its simply not realistic to say, for a defender, playing in the eredivise or ligue 1 isnt a higher level than mls. they are similarly talented players but miazga has experience at higher levels, more exposure to diffent typles of play. i suspect zimmerman could do well against mexico. i know miazga can. but our attackers, midfielders? i think mls has a lot of (american, in this case) mediocrity. the verdict is a long way from being in on the migration of young american talent overseas (based in large part, i believe, on that lack of minutes given to potential in mls), but i am absolutely biased in this way: give me a choice between jon lewis, who couldnt get off the bench for nycfc and (skipping the obvious outliers in pulisic, mckennie, etc) and holmes having to fight for his job every day, over a few years in league one and the colaship, not even to the prem yet? im gonna go holmes. thats not a purely quality comparison of leagues- but in pressure, in stakes. but again, its incredibly nuanced, more about individual cases than we tend to make it. amon is more physically gifted than arriola. plays in fancy europe. id argue arriola is still the better player. there are obviously hardliners, but i think the majority of league vs league is just a necesary evil of having to use broad arguments sometimes. - sorry dude, i refuse to believe we are going to move on from bradley. omar and ream are annoying safety blankets, but bradley is the freaking north star to us soccer. id be less surprised by pulisic getting a cap in goal than bradley being on the '22 roster.
I don't think so. Cannon played vs. Italy and Peru under Sarachan and his hesitation in going forward was pretty obvious. He had to be pulled for fatigue against Peru (when Yedlin replaced him and gave up the losing goal in injury time). I believe he had to be replaced v. Italy as well because I think Moore shifted to the right from left back in that one. I think that's enough to give anybody pause.
whatever you say, delgado-lover, i wasnt even commenting on the content of the post. go bother someone else.
I'm more of a Lima guy, but felt Cannon should've been given run. Robinson is another example: he is a quality, conventional left-back who has been excluded due to the CB/LB role Ream fills poorly.
How much do you think Robinson's performance in the friendlies leading up to the Gold Cup had to do with Robinson's exclusion? He was pretty bad. Also I think Gold Cup was the kind of competition that equates pretty well to Championship level where Ream excelled and was MVP for Fullham.
Ream had a pretty good tournament. He was a calming influence and contributed in the passing game. I have no complaints about Ream in that tournament.
He wasn’t the only player in that group to struggle in his 1 game and several other bad performers were included. It was about poor roster selection. If we play a hybrid 4/3 backline we don’t need 6 CBs. And yes Lovitz is more CB than LB. he should have been brought as a young guy who could offer something different. He also showed well in some of his other call ups.
Berhalter will have to give up his obsession with only taking midfielders whose game is the final third. Somebody has to play the middle third. We had to drop Jozy into mid v. Mexico.
He played in one of the friendlies leading up to the Gold Cup. He was used as a kind of possession wingback against Jamaica. Not his position. Ream played as a CB in the C'ship.
Do you think with Arriola's performance wide left forward + defense, combined with Ream's passing + defense, was the problem in the final? They seem to be all over the hilites. Ream's pass to Jozy created the best chance in the game. Arriola is all over the hilites including a block on a Guardado shot that would have been a goal but for Arriola's tracking back into the box. The problem for Robinson going forward will be that managers worry more about losing their job if they lose games than they do about selling tickets.
Well, we've established he is not a possession wingback then. So you say we should judge him on his defensive prowess?
How about we list the duds that Beerholder brought who stunk it up or worse. The list is a whole lot longer than Bradley. To deny an MLS bias is to be an MLS fan. The garbage he dredged up from MLS was absurd.
Brian McBride gave his best xi and subs bench for the USNT, and he was shockingly liberal/youth-minded w/ his choices for a mainstream pundit. Here it is: --------Altidore----- ----Weah-------Pulisic -----Pomykal-McKennie Cannon---Adams--Yedlin --------Brooks--Long------ -----------Steffen-------------- bench: Horvath, Sargent, Boyd, Arriola, Richards, Miazga, Zardes There would be a lot more satisfied folks here if he had carte blanche over selection I'd imagine. Some critiques: Richards one is pretty aggressive until he starts appearing for some first team, doesn't have to be Bayern. Zimmerman has earned the benefit of the doubt. I think Lima and Novakovich are being underrated. Ditch Zardes. But I really like that he gets ideally Berhalter would play his 2nd best rb at lb, someone w/ destroyer capability at the 6, and 2-way players ahead of him to execute a press-counter. And that's a pretty strong selection going fw. As the TSS guys point out there's not much separation between playing your kids and a best xi for the U.S. right now. It's a false dilemma. So you might as well not deviate too much or it'll be a lose-lose scenario.
Pomykal does a good job patrolling the middle third defensively...he causes turnovers and does a good job of possessing the ball after he wins it.
Okay, I can see that. We definitely did not build a team just for upside and the future only. Would you be okay with the likely worse performance that comes with some of the youth? Our young players who clearly are performing very well were invited. It's the borderline players who were not. So it's less a question of philosophy and more a question of player evaluation? By the time the 40 man and 23 man were set ... Mihailovic and Lewis had both played fairly well and shown some potential. Amon was given a chance to compete but for whatever reason, could not beat out Lewis (though I can guess some of his deficiencies). I agree that both have not impressed -- DM has seemingly backslid -- but I think that we have to acknowledge that we tried some youth players. There's time to try some more. I would not mind Amon getting more run or Sabbi getting a chance, or Gall getting another look (I like Holmes more, but either one). That said, I do think that Week 8 in the Danish Superleague is not exactly any more convincing than Week 8 in MLS. So give Sabbi a shot ... but I also think for most of the people pushing Sabbi ... if he put 15 goals up in MLS people wouldn't be pushing him. I think it's something that is hard for a fan to determine both who has it, and the value in the locker room. As long as the plan is for those veterans to be gone by 2022, I'm fine with a couple of rosters spots being there. I am looking forward to Adams and McKennie taking over the roles. Or whomever. Well, let's hope I'm right. I understand the concern, but Berhalter has also been very clear that there were multiple people on the US roster that won't be there in 2022 that were there for leadership reasons. I suppose he could have just meant Omar and Tim Ream ... but I think he meant Bradley as well.
Just stop with the "Did you watch the game" drivel. Yes, I watched the game. I haven't listened to scuffed yet, but we had more than 2 good chances. And Mexico shot a LOT from outside the box. But they didn't have a ton of good chances. When the US shoots from the outside the box and misses, it's nothing. When Mexico does, everyone from Strong to every pessimist acts like that's a good shot. It's not. The US had a higher xG for a reason -- and since most expected goals models do a bad job or highlighting the number of defenders in the way ... it probably underrated our chances. When the US controls the game but can't penetrate the defense effectively, people whine and call it a failure. I don't think we played great against Mexico, but it wasn't the disaster people want to make it out to be. And we should have won. Two of our better finishers botched the game -- which speaks to our poor finishing. But we absolutely had the better chances. Anyone who watched would know that.