Goals, saves, passes and more: The top 10 plays from Week 15 in MLS https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/06/09/goals-saves-passes-and-more-top-10-plays-week-15-mls Armchair Analyst: A run through the final week before the Gold Cup break https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/06/09/armchair-analyst-run-through-final-week-gold-cup-break MLS goalkeeper botches easy pass, submits leading blooper of the year candidate https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/ne...ubmits-leading-blooper-of-the-year-candidate/ Ilsinho’s heroics cover up Philadelphia Union’s rough start against New York Red Bulls https://www.prosoccerusa.com/mls/ph...nions-rough-start-against-new-york-red-bulls/
How many howlers do we need to see from Zach Steffen to figure out that Bill Hamid was right? The argument from Beerholder is that Steffen is better with his feet. Funny, they say the same thing about Tim Ream....#notgoodenough
I would feel more comfortable right now with 40-year-old Nick Rimando in goal than I do with Zach Steffan.
The favoritism being shown to Steffen (who I think long term is going to be a great GK) and Will Trapp (who isn't even an MLS all-star caliber player and has no business wearing a US jersey) already has me doubting Berhalter. The fact that his plan is to play Adams out of position (one of the better defensive mids in the Bundesliga) just to make room for Trapp is a fireable offense to me. It shows a complete and total lack of awareness of the player pool. Leaving Antonee Robinson off of this squad in favor of some of the other outside back choices is mind boggling. Leaving CCV off in favor of Omar Gonzalez is criminal. Playing Tim Ream (one of the slowest guys on the squad) at Left Back makes no sense. Jonathan Lewis over Josh Sargent, especially when you left Sargent off the U-20 roster, is a terrible choice. It seems as though US soccer locked in on Berhalter more than a year ago, made no effort to seriously interview anyone else, and are now going to be his ride or die bitch until we crap out of World Cup qualifying again. And Berhalter seems to be on a mission to prove that MLS players are the superior option in all but a few cases. I'm an MLS fan, but there are 7 dudes on this roster that probably only belong on a C-team roster in a camp cupcake. He's making all of the same mistakes as Klinsmann just with different players. I just want a coach who understands that you can't implement a crazy complicated tactical setup in 15-20 practices a year with different players each time. I want a coach that will call up our best 23 and implement a style of play that best suits those players. I want a coach that puts guys in the positions they dominate at the club level. I don't give a crap if that guy is from Paris, France or Paris Texas. Stop trying to reinvent the national team with each hire. Player development happens at the club level. So the players we have are what they are. Develop a tactical style around that.
I hate our Gold Cup roster and I hate our player pool right now, but I'm also not exactly regretting missing the people left off. CCV had an absolute stinker of a game in his 20 min against Jamaica. Sargent, it pains me to say, hasn't made that step up from talented u-20 guy to full professional and looked just as lost against Jamaica as he did with Bremen in March where he was criticized for his inability to find the game (a problem that 40 year old Claudio Pizzaro didn't have with the same service after Sargent was benched). Zardes may have the soft touch of a cinder block but he at least has shown an ability find the ball. Robinson barely looked like a professional player in the time he was given Wednesday.
I'd still take CCV over Gonzalez, if for no other reason than one guy is 175 years old and has never really been that good for the US vs. the other who is much younger, playing in a much better league. Bring him for the learning experience. But beyond that, I'd argue that CCV is already a better player than Gonzales or Long, despite not looking great in a cameo appearance in a game where our team had already thrown in the towel. Sargent is still better than Jonathan Lewis. And if you didn't think he was there as a player. So much so that a late addition to the provisional roster beat him out for a roster spot, then Sargent should have absolutely been on the U-20 world cup roster. That's just bad management. And also, Sargent was the only player that looked to threaten the Jamaica goal at all that entire game. His hold up play was solid too. The rest of the team around him was absolute garbage. For Robinson, his body of work over his (short) career is far superior to Nick Lima or Adam Lovitz. Which doesn't even get into the fact that someone like Novakovich can't even get a sniff from Berhalter despite bagging 10 goals in all competitions this season (9 in the Eredivisie). Aside from Altidore, are there any strikers on this roster that anyone genuinely believes could score 10 goals at that level? There are better players available out there. Berhalter seems to be course correcting too hard back to MLS. Klinsmann often would rather play a 3rd division benchwarmer in the Bundesliga over an every day MLSer. Berhalter would rather play an inferior MLSer over a guy in Europe (unless that guy is named Pulisic, Adams or McKennie).
Nova's the one head scratchier to me. No idea why he hasn't gotten a better look. But basically no one in the pool really plays like Jozy so we basically scramble if he goes down... some things don't change. I don't put a whole lot of stock into the u-20s. It's a glorified scouting combine and the team wasn't exactly hurting up top. Hard to see what it does for Sargent, really. He already has shown he can dominate at that level, but hasn't settled his game in with the adult pros. He went 1:1 with Kemar Lawrence a couple times and got absolutely eaten for lunch. He could use a month off to hit the weight room.
That strikes me as a basic misunderstanding of what the U20s is for. The U20s is about getting guys discovered and hooked on with clubs so they can take the next step forward in their careers; it's a shop-window. Sargent already played at that level two years ago, and is already at the point where he is making first team appearances and what he does with his club is more important than anything he could do at the U20s (normally a player who is there twice would be a sign of stagnation). Sebastian Soto had a much better opportunity for career advancement at this tournament (and indeed he did well and might well use it as a springboard). A player pool is a numbers game, and by increasing the number of viable first team prospects, our U20 decision making was a success. He was utterly unremarkable, though you're correct that the whole team was lousy and it might well not be on him. The decision not to bring Sargent was supposedly about Lletget getting hurt, meaning we needed another utility man on the bench, not a guy who can only play one position. That decision could be wrong, it sort of depends on what you think the Gold Cup is for, whether it is for trying to maximize the chances of winning the Gold Cup, or advancing the program for the World Cup three years later. I happen to think more allowance should be made for the latter, but Berhalter thinks he can do that with Sargent in the Olympics, and he's the one who can get fired for Gold Cup performance, not me. The first half of that is clearly wrong; we've seen Robinson and Lima in similar contexts and Lima has been better. Right now Robinson has little going for him apart from pure speed. His decision making is just not very good. Lovitz I give you, he's a very ordinary MLS player. We have a defensive midfielder who scored double digit goals at that level. Novakovich is silky on the ball and a decent finisher, but for what it's worth his first step is not very quick (not a surprise for bigger guys, but of course Nova doesn't play with his back to goal like a lot of those guys do), and that might be what the coaches (plural, as it's not like he got a lot of run under the last two regimes) are looking at, not that it's necessarily the right choice in terms of his overall skillset. I'm mostly with you on that, the guys I would 'miss' are either hurt (Adams, Holmes, maybe Lletget although that's marginal) or actually did just play for the U20s (Weah, whose speed and moves would at least be a good bench spark; Pomykal, who I think is pretty close to being a senior NT player; and maybe Gloster, due to LB being a position of such chronic need and him looking pretty solid there).
First off, really good and thought out post. I don't agree with a lot of it, but I respect the thought process. We kind of agree here, but I Sargent stagnated in the second half of the season and could have benefited from playing against good competition at the U20 World Cup. If nothing else, it would have given him some confidence heading back to Bremen. Unremarkable, sure. But still the best attacking player we had on the field that night. And that's playing as a lone striker with no service from the wings and a midfield that looked utterly lost the entire night. I would argue that the Olympics is less important than the U20 world cup. I also would say that if there aren't enough players in the player pool to fit into the tactics that you'd like to play - so much so that you need utility players to be able to fill in for multiple positions - then your tactical set-up is probably wrong. Jack of all trades, master of none isn't really the strategy I want to be relying on heading into a major tournament, or World Cup Qualifying. Agree to disagree. Lima had done absolutely nothing at all to justify a spot on the roster. At least Robinson can stretch defenses with his speed. He has a much higher ceiling as well, which is all the more reason to bring him in and let him get more acclimated to the speed of the international game. Forgot about Michael Bradley's time at Heerenveen. Touche. To me...this is a problem with Berhalter choosing a system and then having to select lesser talented player to fit that system. It's one thing to do this at the club level where you can go out and buy players that fit your mold. The national team player pool is what it is and tactics should be designed to maximize the talent of the pool. Scoring has always been a problem for the US, and we have a guy that has been scoring consistently the last two seasons and he can't even get a camp invite. Andrew Wooten is another one who at least merited a camp invite based on how he finished the 2nd bundesliga season. I'm a big fan and advocate of the importance of MLS to the national team. And I argue with people all the time that there is a lot of quality in MLS. But this roster feels more like a camp cupcake roster than it does an actual roster we should be putting together for a major tournament. Especially when there are better options out there. It almost feels as though Berhalther is calling in these marginal MLS players to prove a point. Even if Tyler Adams was healthy, we know that Berhalter wants to use him out of position in order to clear space in the midfield for Will Trapp. I think Berhalter is a solid coach at the club level. But I think he's making a lot of the same mistakes that Klinsmann made with regards to playing favorites, putting guys in positions to fail, and simply using a tactical setup that doesn't fit our player pool.