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

i don't get too wound about the ranking -- more concerned with wins -- but we barely beat Paraguay that Qatar tied, we both played Brazil to 0-2 scores, on paper we are in the same neighborhood right now. and they are winning in their region. advantage them.

now, it's probably a figment of hosting. every player they called for copa america is domestic. i would assume a la 1994 where we had the vast majority of players under USSF contracts, that they can probably camp a ton and gel together like a pro team. we have gone from naive and happy to be there to professionalized and would be above such seriousness, so you need the coach slapping them together to help the team rather than hurt it.

part of the reason i am crabby is actually the beaten down optimism that things SHOULD be getting better now. if we can get out of our own way. if i had no hope i would just shut my mouth. i don't think we are the equivalent of qatar but then you have to play the games right to get your pay off. this is the least organized and worst defensive team i have seen since maybe the 90s.

 

That’s all well and good but it doesn’t hide the vast majority of MLS/Championship/B2 players aren’t good enough to be “fillers”.

Zardes, Green, Roldan, Trapp, Lovitt, Lletget, arriola, Milahovich and Morris
don’t have the ceiling to even get a sniff of “filler”.

How many times do we have to see a minor league star flame out before people realize there’s a sizable gap between the levels: Ream, Wood, Jozy have all shown that the jump is substantial.

 

I think it has a lot to do with the average BS poster being terrible at understanding flukes and what actually constitutes being good.

Iceland is a good example. Almost certainly a fluke and not something to draw wide-ranging conclusions from yet people did just that.

 

A lot of it has to do with passports, actually. Yedlin got his shot because of the Latvian ancestry. Reggie Cannon doesn't have that luxury. Miazga got his Polish passport, Horvath the Hungarian one, and of course the Germericans have their German passports.

I'm certain several of our MLS guys could be ok fillers too, given the chance, if they had their passports. And the moment they're sitting on the bench of some Premiership bottom-feeder, people here will be clamoring for them to be on the NT.

 

More

Just going to memory hole the last Gold Cup eh.

 

We've won 2 of the last 3 Gold Cups.

Qatar had only advanced out of the Group Stage of the Asian Cup twice before 2019.

 

Passports matter when you’re under 18 or need to play in england.

I asked you this already and you came up with a very small list. Who do you think could earn consistent minutes on a mid-table team from our 40 man pool? Zardes, Trapp, Roldan?

Isn’t Trapp available on a free?

 

I mean, I think they're a great example of a tiny country punching way above their weight and they were able to develop a system that goes all the way down to the intro youth levels. Easier to do that when your entire country is only 350k people and most of them are in metro Reykjavik. By comparison that's a population that falls in size between the metro areas of South Bend, IN and Flint, MI.

 

I suspect any of the top 7-8 teams in Asia would love to switch places with the US/Mexico when it comes to WCQs.

 

Here are the slapdick Asian ELO rankings:

Iran, 22
S Korea 25
Japan 36
USA 39

 

Consistent minutes is the difference. I'm talking of fillers who play once in a while, or even often for a season. That gives me a longer list, with guys who can take the Hyndman/Williams roles of being in a top league but almost never playing in it.

So while I think someone like Cannon could get consistent minutes in a Premiership bottom-feeder (if he had the passport), I can easily see Trapp on the bench of one such teams. Or starting in the Scottish Premiership.

After all, if Perry Kitchen managed that much...

 

The old passport excuse. Only an issue if they sign with MLS who only sell for prices EPL clubs will pay. If a kid is halfway decent, it looks like he could find a Bundesliga club who would give him a shot.

 

But is it sustainable or was it just a one-off?

They qualified for one World Cup, finished 28th, and then were relegated in the Nations League with a -12 goal difference.

 

There is no way Trapp is making the bench of an EPL side.

 

I, for one, remember quite a bit of clamoring for Gedion Zelalem because he was at Arsenal. Now, I just had to look up "American at Arsenal" because, since his name hasn't been uttered in a long while around here, all I could remember was that he is one of the many "GZs".

 

You’ve moved the goalposts - you mentioned Yedlin, Ream, Morales, Williams, Wood, perhaps even Brooks and McKennie, as fillers and now you’ve switched to hyndman and kitchen.

Who is going to get a 1000 minutes as Morales did for a mid-table team for multiple years?

Finally, I want to make sure you just said that Trapp would make the squad for an EPL team - do you think he’ll get picked up as he’s available on a free, no?

 

This is simply your opinion with no evidence to back it up.

Asia is terrible in the World Cup. What other competitive matches do we have to go by?

 

It's mind-numbingly dumb how people here still dis Asia as if it were 1982.

Last World Cup not only our federation lost the playoff to Asia, but the teams #31 and #32 in the competition were from CONCACAF.

 

Or Spain, or Italy, or France. So, 4 of the top 5 leagues in the world, plus their lower divisions.

 

You really want to compare an academy player to Yeldin, Morales, Brooks, Williams, Ream and McKennie?

You’re reaching.

 

Actually you did, you brought up a discussion we had with different parameters as if it were relevant to what I was writing. To wit:

--here I'm stating that many more MLSers would be in top leagues in Europe as filler (playing regularly or not) if they had the right passports, which was the case of many who went there;

--our previous discussion, that had nothing to do with this one and I have no idea why it was brought here, was about what players in MLS I think could be playing regularly in a Top 5 league, which is a much shorter list.

I'm done with your topic. I was already done back then.

 

Almost game time! What I would go with:

-----------------Altidore-----------------
Boyd---------- Pulisic---------Arriola
-------Mckennie(8)-Bradley(6)--------
Ream--Miazga--Zimmerman---Lima
------------------Steffen------------------

Subbing Altidore out at half time if we're up by 2 goals, and Bradley and Pulisic out early in the 2nd half.

I expect Gregg to go with something pretty similar to this. My biggest hope is that he did away with the idea of having Lima play the "hybrid" role.

I feel like a lone wolf on this forum, being both excited and cautiously optimistic for this tournament

 

I didn't compare Zelalem to anyone at all, I merely said that because he had "Arsenal" on his training jersey there were a lot of folks here who were insisting he should get full MNT call ups. Where from that did you get a comparison to any other player?

 

i have decided that internal contradiction layer 1 is the people who want berhalter to play touch or possession soccer on this pool and then layer 2 is the ones who defend bradley to do so. if you want to play skill soccer up the field people should be naming some actual danger at mid eg Holmes Gall Green Pulisic some of the U20s. if you back both the approach he wants to take and the people he is trying to do it with you need to put the crack pipe down. spain didn't play tiki taka with a bunch of 6s. you can't play keepaway with hustle players.

with that i am shutting down and getting in a let's win frame.

 

Whatever.

You already stated that MLS is roughly equivalent to B2 and Championship yet now you think that average players in MLS (because we don’t have many elite American MLS players vying for Best XI) are now jumping from the second division to the first as “fillers”.

Also, Yeldin, Morales, McKennie, Williams (before injury) and brooks are all players who are/were playing regularly.