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

Nice. Asian = slapsticks.

 

Have u noticed that by changing a haircut and growing short beard Arriola became Eden Hazard lookalike now? And i mean his appearance, not his skills of course.

 

Is there a need for cold beers tonight?

Why yes, our 1990's dominated U.S. National Team is playing tonight. One must drink to forget how terrible our player pool is. It reflects Project 2010 so bad that Qatar is mentioned in the same breath as our squad here in 2019!

 

I agree, and concede its never been easy against the minnows. But I feel like if Berhalter was ever going to make a statement these next 2 games are it. Beating a bad Guyana team and then getting some small modicum of revenge against T&T sets him up for platform to build on. Struggle in these games and his already shaky start looks much worse. I could easily see it being 2-1 but I really don't think we should be giving up even fluky goals against teams like this.

 

Well it wouldn't be BigSoccer without people completely bullshitting about the amount of soccer that they watch.

Though with regard to Qatar, I admit I don't know much of anything about their team or system, but I will say that counterintuitively, you're more likely to get more for your investment of resources in a smaller country than a large one when it comes to a federation's plans for glory. The "We just need to do what Iceland did and scale it up to a nation of 300 million" takes three years ago were ever so hot.

 

You mean Eden Hazard is now a Paul Arriola lookalike.

No?

 

I was thinking “chasing the dragon”

 

I am of the "best player uber alles" camp. I don't care where they play .... it just so happens that because the competition overseas tends to be of a higher caliber than the MLS ...that the better players play overseas. of your list up top - Brooks, Yedlin, and Adams are the ones that have shown quality fairly consistently (not withstanding Deandre's occasionally boneheaded play).

 

Definitely, and the Qatar model is not something that is going to give them long-term success. In a few years things will go back to normal, with the usual suspects (JPN, ROK, KSA, IRN, ATL) winning the Asian competition, and us back to finishing top or near the top in our region.

On the other hand the hubris and sense of entitlement of our fan base is off-putting. It's the pride of the ignorant.

 

I believe Hazard sported that look before Arriola. I might be wrong, did not follow DC games this season.

 

You mean pick fast, big and strong players and have them attack and defend like starving vikings?!?

I’m in.

 

We have enough Danes/Norwegians/Swedes/Finns to pull it off...

 

Nothing is black and white, except those two colors (and even then, true black is incredibly rare). Just because I don't hate everything Berhalter like you, doesn't mean I love everything. Ream is ho hum at best, Omar too (but way too likely to make a major mistake). There are plenty of other things I don't like, but I'm not gonna spend the next 2 hours trying to type it on my shitty phone.

 

Once again, and this is a truism anywhere else but here: that you play in a top league does not mean you're a top player.

Outside the richest clubs in the planet, everybody needs to complete the team with some fillers. Yedlin, Ream, Morales, Williams, Wood, perhaps even Brooks and McKennie, are "fillers." They may be good enough for a Top 30 team on occasion, but they are not top players, whatever the American-owned Sofascore/WhoScored tells you.

 

From what you've listed here, I'm now very concerned about our chances of even getting a draw, much less a win.

 

I think a lot of people got on board post-2010 when it seemed inevitable that we'd be ascendant and a soccer power in no time. It ain't that easy.

Sometimes I almost pine for the days when the "watches soccer to feel cool, pretentious and worldly" crowd shunned the USMNT in favor of the Azzurri or whoever they had an uncle's cousin's worth of ancestry with at the time.

 

"What if our best Minnesota Vikings played soccer?"

 

I am actually concerned that we will kick the crap out of them and folks will assume that GB knows what he is doing.

 

I thought that was just common sense. I think the bigger issue is that the majority of the MLS guys are just crap players.

 

Here's Guyana's final GC roster by team:
MLS - 1
USL - 1
CPL - 2
England 6th tier - 1
England 5th tier - 4
England 3rd tier - 2
England 4th tier - 2
England 2nd tier - 1
England amateur league - 2
Dutch 2nd tier - 1
T&T - 1
Domestic - 4
Suriname - 1

 

And the MLS guy is injured.

 

That is Busthalter's plan based on his interviews for past few weeks - beat minnows and prove critics wrong.

 

No, it just means the player is used to competing with and against top players at a high speed of play. It doesnt sound great, but it is our best option when you compare that to the MLS fillers who are often overwhelmed at just the concacaf level.

 

The Vikings were good at sports, don'tcha know?

 

Yet you still prop up MLS and its players. It is very confusing.