I've always liked Cooper and when he plays his game he is effective and influential on the game. That usually equates to goals. Cooper is not a #9, though he has the body and the look. For whatever reasons, he's not that guy to post up and back a defender down to stretch the field out. When he has that space to move around, side to side, coming from an angle that's when he's at his best. But it's not in the traditional sense of a second forward either; simply because he doesn't "buzz" around the field. He works in a relatively confined, yet effective channel. That's why he's been the absolute perfect partner for Henry. Henry can drop a little deeper, maybe a little wider and it sucks and pulls the defense one way which allows Cooper to get into those channels he's comfortable playing in. If Klinsmann can find a why to utilize Cooper in this way, I'm all for a call-up. Maybe it could work with a Demspey pairing up top. Who knows. But Klinsmann if uses him as a #9 I'd rather see him back at RBNY succeeding than with the Nats being uneffective.
It's still to early in the season to see how Kenny ends up, but with that kind of skill he deserves a callup if he finishes near the top of the table. Remember, he had a pretty good strike rate for Nats already. I just don't think Bob wanted him in his scheme.
If Klinsmann were announcing the rosters this week, Cooper would deserve to be on it. But, a lot can happen in a month. If he's still scoring in early May, then, yeah, he should be included.
The NT is not a gold watch for your club career. It matters for precisely f***-all what you do for your club except that it's evidence of what you can do when you put that USA shirt on and play at international level. So the parsing of that evidence is entirely appropriate. We've come to discount goalscoring when it happens in MLS vs other leagues. (Anyone prefer Chris Wondolowski to Clint Dempsey? He has, after all, scored a couple more goals over the last couple of seasons. Hell, Terrence Boyd has zero professional goals. Surely Justin Braun is better than him.) Why wouldn't we parse more finely than that to look at what effects your teammates might have on your total?
Cooper has looked good for the Redbulls thus far. That said, Henry has been on fire both scoring and in terms of creating and Cooper has been the primary beneficiary of that (Cooper's goal versus Dallas and his first versus Columbus come to mind). I would want to see more from Cooper over the course of the season before I'd vault him over Herc and Wondolowski who have been prolific and productive for some time (the latter of whom plays with no one with the passing skills of Henry or Marquez and yet equally as productive).
I am truly straddling the fence right now when it comes to Cooper. He is playing well, but I still have my doubts. If only we could call up Henry to go along with him I would feel much more confident.
Cooper's problems in the past have generally had less to do with his ability to play soccer as an individual as they have with his ability to fit into the structure of a team. I've not seen enough of him at Red Bull to say if that has changed or not. But, it does beg the question if he is to be called up, where does he fit into the scheme of things for the US? Because while I think it is certainly reasonable to say Cooper deserves a shot with some good performances, I think we can likely all agree he's not the guy you must have enough that you tailor the rest of the tactics to fit his needs.
I think Cooper is a player who particularly plays well with better players. He won't try to be all over the field making things happen because Clint and Landon will be occupying those spaces and roles.
It's fine if that is the position you want to take, but then you have to be consistent with it both ways. While it's nice to parse the effect that Henry is having on Cooper, we should also be discussing his effect on Henry. I mean, Henry never scored in THIS league like he is scoring now with Cooper on his side. 7 goals in 5 games? Cooper has alot to do with that. And indeed he (Henry) looked completely ineffective with Agudelo as his partner in game 1 of this season. It seems to me that Cooper is showing that he can work very well with high end talent, which is precisely what we would be hoping for at the National team level. Of course lots can and most probably will change. Neither Henry or Cooper is going to keep up that pace. It's pretty much impossible for them to do that. However, throwing away Cooper's part in what the team is doing as just an ancillary effect of Thierry Henry being there would be disrespectful to Cooper. He's played a huge role in Thierry's success as well ... and even Agudelo conceded how Cooper allows them to play better after his (Cooper's) sub role in the first game of the year.
Are we actually going with the argument that Cooper is the one making Henry a better player? Problem there is we have a whole career to look at with both guys. Also, the numbers don't really support your contention of the pre-Cooper Henry. Henry was third in the league in scoring last year, only two off the lead. As I recall, that includes a really cold/not-yet-integrated start, followed by scoring at a strong clip the rest of the way. But it's mainly the principle I'm arguing here. Of course you can take a closer look at a players goals to see if one player was better set up by his teammates than another. If I have an actual gripe about a Cooper conversation, it's that we have a conversation about a guy (and we do this for lots of guys, I think it's a verifiable pattern) who gets hot for 6 weeks, and we'll throw out years of ambivalent data in the process.
Let's be realistic about who Red Bulls are beating. An expansion side and a Crew team that is trying to incorporate a bunch of new players (You think Olave would give him 5 seconds in the box to shuffle his body around like the first goal against CLB?). If Cooper can fight his bad tendencies against a solid defensive team we can start to have a conversation about him MAYBE being called up.
The Henry argument only goes so far, because with the national team Cooper would be playing alongside guys like Donovan, Dempsey, Altidore, etc. And regarding the Wondolowski comparison, he has played with those same guys on the national team. But how many times has he scored? Missing an open net from 3 yards away on a perfect cross from Jozy in the Panama game comes to mind here... I'm not trying to say that Wondo should be written off either. Just that if he and Cooper continue to score at more or less the same rate in MLS then Cooper should have the edge with the national team because he's already showed that he can score at that level. Wondo has yet to do so.
My comment about Wondolowski was headed the other way--ie we use him as proof that MLS scoring isn't 'worth' as much as scoring in tougher leagues in terms of evaluating NT potential. And rightly so, given all the guys who couldn't make that transition. Cooper has only four goals in international competition. They came against Denmark's B-squad in the Camp Cupcake friendly (what was then the annual Scandinavian crap friendly), a home goal against Guatemala in the 2010 WCQs, a penalty against Panama in the 2009 Gold Cup, and a 90th minute open-netter against Honduras in the same tourney. It ain't exactly sterling competition, and if we were going on his prior NT record alone, there's not a ton there suggesting we've been remiss in overlooking him these last 3 years.
If you want to...........you can note that the goal against Guatemala was a meaningless game. It was a qualifier after we'd already gauranteed advancement to the Hex & Guate was already eliminated. Our roster for that contest included such luminaries as John Thorrington, Drew Moor, Troy Perkins, etc. Kenny's gotten very few chances to show what he's capable of doing with our "A" team. A lot of his caps have been of the camp cupcake or the 2009 Gold Cup variety. (which was a real reserve roster.) I don't know how to really analyze games like that. How do we know how a player is going to do with the USMNT if we don't surround him with Donovan, Dempsey, Bradley, etc? I mean, the 09 game he played against Honduras in the Gold Cup we used Jay Heaps, Logan Pause, Davy Arnaud, Santino Quaranta, etc. Kenny came on in the 86th minute and converted a penalty in stoppage time. What does it mean as far as determining whether Kenny is "USMNT-worthy?" Nada. Absolutely nada.
There are maybe 2 locks at the moment, then from like 3-6 with forwards it prob goes by potential and/or who is hot, who is scoring. I knew these threads would be bumped and people would talk about Cooper, why shouldn't they if a forward is scoring? But, in the end you might be discussing a player who doesn't make the bench despite getting a callup to a camp. So everyone dissects it, but in truth will a Cooper play vs Scotland or Brazil? Or would Jozy and Gomez play instead? So Cooper and maybe another forward makes the 23 but see's like 10 mins if that, of course not guaranteed to make the game day squad.
It's indeed hard to know, but it's understood that not many guys are gonna get that chance with the A-team. (If you can find them, maybe you can hire. . . the A-Team.) In that post, I'm responding to the claim that Cooper has 'proven' something over <insert MLS scorer here>, which he really hasn't. It's not damning evidence against, it's just not real evidence for. The closest you're realistically going to come to strong evidence is club careers. And I'm saying that MLS is not all that strong a league to leverage a NT career on. I'm a defender of the league from people saying it's complete crap, but of the guys who have aspired to serious NT roles, whose only real club CV is a couple of strong MLS seasons, more guys have failed than succeeded at taking that step up. (And fwiw, which is not much, if we're comparing MLS careers of late, Wondo's is probably a little better; he doesn't have that year in Portland to explain away. The few seasons in which he's played, he's scored. For his entire career, he has .587G/90 min, as compared to Cooper's .468.)
Roy Lassiter, Jeff Cunningham, Jason Kreis, Wondolowski... Doesn't always work from MLS to US internationals.
In '06 Cooper had 11 goals and 4 assits in 27 games worth of minutes; in '07 4 and 2 in 11; in '08 18 and 3 in 30; and in '09 7 goals and 1 assist in 14 games worth. He's clearly more than a 'hot striker' and his ability to score goals is not due to Henry. When he's been healthy and in form he's been performing whether with ManU reserves, Dallas, or the Red Bulls, or the National Team.
Rinse and repeat. We have no quality international strikers. Therefore, we have to go with who is hot and might make the final transition to at least an average international forward (consistent play and scores a few games in qualifications). All of them have faults and all of them could have rational arguments for being given other opportunities... Too often people post that "X" should never play for the US. Until we have a player pool of internationals and some depth, this is a false statement.
In 339 total minutes of play (1 goal every 85 minutes). In 27 minutes on the field. In 76 minutes on the field. In 43 minutes on the field (Cooper earned that penalty, BTW). In 4 minutes on the field. No, the competition was not great, and it's certainly fair to point that out. But I don't see why that should count as such a big strike against him, since it wasn't his fault. Bradley used Cooper very sparingly and reluctantly, even when he was fit, and most of his appearances were as a sub. Of his 10 caps only a couple are starts, and I don't believe he's ever played a 90-minute game for us. But he still showed excellent production when considering how little he actually played, regardless of the competition.
You're right, that's not great competition. Welcome to CONCACAF. For us to qualify, those are exactly the type of teams we're going to have to beat. Completely agree. Our midfield depth is improving. As such, we can afford to play either Dempsey or Donovan up top to partner with Altidore. So what we really need is striker depth. A striker to step in when someone's injured or needs a rest. And who will that be? We've got a lot of candidates. - Gomez is on a scoring binge in Mexico, certainly could be him. - Agudelo and Bunbury were the 'it' players a year ago, but both have underwhelmed for club and country. - Sapong and Boyd are the new young hopes, but need to keep backing it up (Sapong's having a nice year so far) or actually start earning playing time (Boyd) - Buddle's still around. - Wondo...people act like he got his shot and he blew it. Personally, I don't know. Missing one sitter I don't think should count for everything, and other than that, he hasn't had much run with the full Nats. He certainly seemed to have a nose for goal this past Camp Cupcake, he forced at least one really nice save. - Beasley, Feilhaber and Adu are other attacking options we can use if we want non traditional forwards or a 4-5-1. But Benny and Freddy haven't done much in MLS to warrant call ups, and while I wouldn't inherently be opposed to Beasley, I'm not clamoring for him And then there's Cooper. I think he's definitely in the conversation. After all, unless someone comes out of nowhere the next couple months, we've got to call up at least two of the above guys, right?
Like I said in my next post, I don't think it is a big strike against him, only that the post I was responding to claimed he'd proven something compared to other candidates. I don't think that's really accurate or fair to 'the field.'
The problem with judging Kenny Cooper is that he was doing quite fine until 2009 when he killed all his momentum by transferring to 1860 Munich. A bad move because he could have made the 2010 WC team if he waited a year.
Kenny Cooper has a good goal scoring record at international level for the few opportunities given. The only player in the pool with an the excellent record against sterling competition is Clint Dempsey. Honduras made the '10 World Cup and the '12 Olympics. They've a quality program. Compared to players like CJ Sapong and Wondolowski[8 caps combined and 0 goals], Cooper has proven something.