I think our talent is improving but our local competitors are gaining ground even faster, largely due to MLS.
Little known fact, the Yugo was one of the first cars with airbags..........of course you had to blow them up yourself. How bad was the Yugo? Not only does it not exist anymore, Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore.
In MLS teams, the best players are the foreigners, so when we call MLSers, we're calling the less important guys from those teams, for the most part. In European clubs, our players tend to be among the weakest, if they play at all. They're only fairly important with their club when it's some second division one trying hard not to go down to the third, so we're calling more mediocre guys expecting them to uplift the weak MLS guys. But even that doesn't explain that a guy who's not getting minutes in MLS, Liam Fraser, looks so much better than Weston McKennie, a guy who looks decent (if replaceable) with a top 6 Bundesliga club. For that to happen, the coaching must be quite poor, in addition to the mediocre pool.
Earnie was used to having limitations imposed on him by his superiors before he even was hired by US Soccer.
There are better MLS players than Bradley, Trapp, Lovitz, and Baird. The problem isn't MLS, it's Gregg. BUT, a fun thing to keep an eye on over the next few years is the number of minutes American players are getting in MLS... as teams have started realizing how cheap South American and Eastern European players can be, the number of minutes American players have played in MLS has dropped substantially. Either the league needs to do a better job of incentivizing American minutes, or they need to put rules in place a la Liga MX. Either way, despite soccer being a multi-million dollar industry in the US, we're shockingly bad at producing good players.
I was counting Arfield as a winger. Let's call him a midfielder and that still means 4/5 MFs were MLS players, including TFC reserve, Fraser.
This. This. This! I can't put it down in such detail, but one single characteristic of our possession stood out like a sore thumb: A gobsmacking number of passes kept ending up half way between 2 potential receivers, and you could almost see the gears turning as each thought "is that for me?" Again and again, we had 2 or even 3 players defending a sole Canadian, and even when they tackled successfully, they failed to come away with the ball; again, none of them was confident enough to even play keep away 3v1. Current USMNT = Less than the sum total of its parts.
Go back to the Sarachan games. He played the young kids. We look fast and tenacious. Did you see Weston against France? This team is built for speed. Play the young kids, send balls over the top and let them run in behind the defense. One/Two quick passes and move the ball downfield in a hurry. GGG is a freakin' idiot. He truly has no clues. Soccer is a young mens game. Bradley is done. Write him off the roster list.
Completely agree on this. 20 years ago the one thing that the NT had was guys who would go all in on 50/50s. What we needed was more technical nuance. 10 years ago the cracks started showing and we no longer produced those players. However, two monsters who fought tooth and nail for every inch, Jones and Dempsey, papered those cracks. Once those two left the wheels have completely gone off the bus. Also Bedoya and Beckerman. Beckerman is also a good one to mention because even though he didn't have the physique to win duels he never made it easy. At this point, I think player selection should go like this. Bradley vs Yueill. Yueill does about 90% of what Bradley does with the ball but is superior in 50/50s (thanks Almeyda!) then he gets the start. Sargent, I love you, but Jozy is far superior in this without being excellent. From this point on this will be the first question I will ask about any player touted here. Can he improve 50/50s in the position? Every single one. Green. Can he improve 50/50s? Mendez. Can he improve 50/50s? Soto. Can he improve 50/50s? Nagbe. Can he improve 50/50s? Also, if Berhalter complains about 50/50s but does not use the superior 50/50 players then he needs to leave. We need to select for that passion and spend time with players showing that passion. Pretty simple for me right now.
Pele fought very hard against many from other nations for us to get the 1994 World Cup, they citied our lack of a first division pro league and passion for the sport. Well that was part of the package Pele sold, to see our nation with a creation of a professional first division in our nation. Fast forward to 2019 and for all the National Teams in CONCACAF, MLS has gone on to literally be the ideal tonic for our regional rival's woes of generating better and better pro talents in the beautiful game. Thus raising the level of players in their nation where Canada is now beating us after a 34 year wait! What is so striking is this very tangible upswing in young talent in MLS that is not Americans, it is our American men that are being left behind in our own region thanks to MLS!
If you say so. I think every player has a degree of pride for playing with the nats. They reached the top 23 of a nation, and want to do well to represent themselves and help their teammates. I just don’t think everyone is going to be a “HOORAH! AMERICA F YEAH” type of guy. Nor should they be. It’s not all about the “stars and stripes”
I looked back a couple pages and didn't see Doyle's analysis posted yet. I apologize if this is repetitive, but I thought it worth throwing out re: winning 50/50 balls. He says the stats were lopsided in Canada's favor (25 out of 39 in the 1st half) until they scored the 1st goal, and then they sat deeper, and the US got on the ball a bit more. It got me to thinking about whether the issue really does boil down to Bradley as the 6. I used to think that a lot of the Bradley bashing was somewhat warranted, but also somewhat over the top. However, as others have pointed out, the team was better with Sarachan, even though he had no discernible tactics. But he had Adams at CM for the most part and hardly ever (never?) called in Bradley. He did play Trapp quite a bit, but Trapp was usually accompanied by more of a ball winner at CM.
I probably shouldn't write posts when I'm busy, but to sum up my early thoughts, I think it's pretty rich for people, even people I highly respect, to be tweeting, writing articles etc about how "the talent just isn't good enough," throwing the players under the bus, just as Berhalter did last night when we know for a fact, that a huge portion of the top talents of the 1995-2001 generation flat out aren't called up and aren't a part of what Berhalter refers to as, "The Group," as in, his Camp Cupcake lifers with an additional 3 or 4 ringers out of Europe, you know, the guys that have now humiliated themselves in just four short months against the likes of: Jamaica Venezuela Curacao Mexico twice and Canada at home. AT HOME. This is "His Group," it sure as hell isn't mine, and btw, again, Kreis' group just decimated El Salvador 6-1 w/guys just not quite up to the Lovitz/Zardes/Roldan/Trapp/Old Man Bradley standard, and some of the key players are dual nationals we could have called up (you know. Ledezma of the goal and two assists in 45 freaking minutes, or Soto, who also scored, after having starred at the U20 WC). We're getting put to the sword by guys not getting minutes on overseas B teams, while stalwarts of our youth development system in the very same system logging 3x as many minutes, aren't even being called in, let alone started. It's one thing to say the talent isn't good enough, when your calling in the best available talent, and said players are god awful, it's another thing entirely when you're not calling in the best available talent, your forcing them to play in an unnatural and inflexible system and you're still blaming the player pool, instead of the hack coach whose never won a damn thing of consequence, has a sub .500 career record as a club coach, and has consistently refused to budge on his system, approach, First XI, and player pool regardless of the reality on the field, minute by minute, game by game, month by month and soon to be year by year.
It's highly feasible that a starting 11 of Euro based players, under a foreign coach would win a lot more games, while also being much more entertaining to watch than the crap we've been seeing the past 18 months under GGG. I firmly believe that SUM dictate the USMNT requires at least 50% MLS based players in the starting 11 at any given game.
I understand blaming everything on the coach and saying "if we only called so-and-so instead" is much more satisfying, because that means things could be fixed quickly by the right coach. But that is satisfying doesn't mean it's true. We could keep it going under any coach. Because there will always be some players who are looking good and are not being called, always.
What's true is that we're regressing with this coach. We're worse than where we were a year ago. Change has to be made.
i am convinced that part of the issue, beyond fed corruption/idealism/overoptimism is we now take every game super serious and so one can argue "you can't fire the coach in the middle of GC/NL/WCQ, etc." and since so much of it now counts it bleeds together. JK had GC/playoff/CA/WCQ. There becomes a foolish conservative argument against rocking the boat even as it takes on water rapidly and becomes unseaworthy on its own merits. Part of that is taking so many other items beyond WCQ seriously. If that's all we cared about, it would be nothing now but a question of whether we are right or wrong path to that, and not whether a decision would impact Nations League finish, or anything somewhat petty like that. Put differently, we now seem an odd mix of obsessed with vastly disparate timeframes: (a) tomorrow's game but yet also (b) long term horizon stuff like changing how we play. Lost is the in between medium-distance practical concern of (c) being ready come qualifying to get the necessary results. That seems implicitly subsumed in the longer term project -- "system'll handle it" -- or assumed optimisically under the arrogant believe this team will string wins like always, which is no longer objectively tenable. Broken record, but I vividly remember people during the JK era saying they would be content to trade off missing world cups to have the team play prettier. I don't know if this was explicitly adopted but the System Think seems to naively assume if we practice long enough at the tactics the results will take care of themselves.
This is the thing that's so infuriating. Why are the players down? 1. Could it be they've lost faith in their coaches ideas and their coach? How could that possibly have happened? I dont know, maybe it's the fact that the players know he's calling in his favorites, and is not adapting one iota to the data coming in from horrendous performances against Jamaica, Venezuela, Curacao, Mexico twice, and now Canada? 2. Could it be the coaches approach is forcing players to consistently slow down their play to think through what he wants them to do, rather than play naturally in a system they can relatively easily learn? These players aren't idiots, the best of them play for legit coaches around the world, FAR MORE ACCOMPLISHED COACHES THAN BERHALTER, they play for coaches and within systems that are well taught, and allow players to play to their natural strengths and mitigate weaknesses. 3. Are there ANY players under Berhalter's USMNT who look better for the USMNT, then they do for their clubs? How many of them look not only worse, but far worse, for country, rather than club, despite playing against vastly inferior talent to what they normally face off against? To me the players look demoralized. they look like players who play for bad coaches, when players know they are playing for bad coaches. they look like players that really don't understand what's happening and why it's so hard to beat teams of players they crushed before in concacaf youth tournament qualifying, or as compared to players vastly superior that they face off against in club play. They look like they're thinking too much, and not intuiting, they look like they're confused, and are trying to accede to Berhalter's structure, rather than naturally play within the flow of a game to the best of the ability, they basically look like dumb, poorly designed and manufactured Berhalter Bots, and they suck as a result. I'm sorry, I've seen them play with good coaches. They don't suck, Berhalter sucks.
Whenever there is a new coach, there can be an adjustment period. It can take time to adapt and gel. BUT there are so many red flags here, this will end in nothing but disaster. - A complete commitment to a "style" whether it is working or one has the players, or the time to implement it show a naïveté or stubbornness. Neither are good. - A commitment to calling in players who quite simply are not good enough. Every coach had their pet, but GB has 7. - A lack of anything resembling an attacking or defending plan. If you are scoring goals but can't stop anyone, maybe you lack balance. If your defending is good but you can't score, maybe you lack attacking personalities. When you can't do either on a team that has won in the past, IT IS YOU! -Every time he talks, he feels a need to convince everyone how smart he thinks he is. His system is so complicated, players who play at Top European clubs can't grasp it. It isn't the players. - We choose poor technical players and then ask them to play out of the back. The list could go on and on. - AND wait until he tries to implement a play it out of the back, possession style on the road at some of the fields at some of these CONCACAF locations!
Definitely. I'd take Sarachan over him in a wink. But even with a better coach, we're not set to recover our Golden Years.
I think we all knew what that was, we've all watched enough post-game pressers to know that schtickt. As a Redskins fan, it became a comedy routine, to pre-quote Norv Turner's post loss presser's, the classic, "what we do works," was his go to line, which is a passive aggressive way to say, "I'm a great coach, my players failed to execute my genius plan. They suck, not me." Berhalter's post game offering was, "the loss was about heart, not about me being a total hack, in way over his head even if it's only the local community pond level of concacaf, rather than the deep waters of the truly competitive international game. He was trying to blame the players rather than accept accountability for his crap 23, crap 11, crap tactics, crap subbing, and overall total lack of any ability as an international coach.
Garber and the academy director for LAFC have said: they don't care about developing players for the national team. The fact of the matter is that there is *way* more money in it for MLS to develop stars for the MexNT.
Since there are tons of post on what went wrong with the USMNT, here's my take on what Canada did right as it wasn't just the USMNT having a bad performance, it was just as much Canada playing a good game. Coaching Not sure if that was just Herdman or a combo of Herdman & Mauro Biello but the coaching staff utterly outcoached Berhalter last night. They studied the USMNT system and both exploited it's weaknesses and counter it. It seems that Berhalter's rigidity wasn't an overexgeration since we witness his inability to counter Herdman's tactic and made almost no adjustments. Tactics Although the formation was a 4-4-2, Herdman had them play as a 4-2-2-2 formation instead. When Mark-Anthony Kaye exited the game due to injury at the 5th minute, Herdman took the gutsy decision to stick to his plan instead of throwing it out the window by replacing Kaye with Liam Fraser who struggled at first to execute it but slowly settled in as the game progressed. 4-2-2-2 Formation "Box Midfield": This formation had 2 major benefits! First, It created a box at midfield ensuring that Canada would always outnumber the US midfield suffocating them and neutralizing their ability to generate quality plays. Second, it added an extra layer of players for the US offense to go through which made it hard for the US to breakdown Canada's defense. Canada's defense + Keeper Why did Canada lose to Mexico and Haiti at the Gold Cup? Because both understood how vulnerable the fullbacks were and attacked them relentlessly and they fell...enough for Herdman to give up on Davies as LB, Godhino's banishment from RB and Brault-Guillard not being called. Although Herdman made adjustments with Miller at LB and Laryea at RB, they are young and untested at that level. CB: Steven Vitoria is a clear upgrade on the error prone Doneil Henry which is another reason why he's been the central piece of his club in Portugal. 21 years old Derek Cornelius is a stud at the position. Fullbacks: Miller was good although not that busy and stayed back while Laryea used great judgement in his positioning when deciding to go forward. This gave Herdman the flexibility to change the formation to a 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 on occasions which confused the US. Borjan made the key saved Box Midfield Piette & Fraser/Kaye were great in transition, winning the ball (Samuel Piette is a beast also called the "destroyer") and helping the defense. Fraser struggled a bit by turning the ball over as he's a massive drop in quality to Kaye but played well enough once he settled in. Arfield & Osorio were clinical at passing the ball through the US midfield and finding space behind the back line. Their precision allowed to maximize David and Davies speed who were a nightmare to defend against which made it difficult for the US to press high as a turnover would have proved deadly...which was the case. Arfield and Osorio discipline must be applaud for resisting the temptation to play too wide. 2 strikers David and Davies...speed & skills. David should have scored in the 1st half. The back line was forced to sit deeper in their territory stretching out the US formation thanks to Arfield and Osorio's ability to find them behind the US line with through balls and diagonal passes. Davies most likely earned more playing time at Bayern with his performance while David should be in Bundesliga on the next winter transfer, Substitutions Subbing out both Davies and David for Hoilett and Cavallini allowed Herdman to stick to the same strategy while throwing fresh leg at a tired back line. Most were surprised at Cavallini not starting but he's a different kind of striker. David and David did tire out the back line and slow them down which was perfect for Hoillett who isn't that fast but technically strong while Cavallini is an "Altidore +" who can cut through the back line with ease. 2 possible adjustments to the Box Midfield, Berhalter chose the wrong one I was utterly puzzled by Berhalter's arrogance or "naïveté" in his tactics. His system is aimed to work against weaker nations but I doubt he did his homework on Canada at all. The midfield matches his and the offense is far more dangerous and yet, he had the team play the same way as they did against Cuba. Counter #1, Berhalter's choice: In the second half, he committed more players to midfield but they were disorganized and at time looked like a 4-2-4...which allowed Canada to rely on the back 4 to defend and when the ball went back to midfield, they outnumbered the USMNT midfield and took them apart as they were so stretch out which allowed the counterattack to be taxing on the US back four. Counter #2, the right choice that wasn't used: Surprisingly, the USMNT kept trying to attack in the middle, crashing against the multi layers of the 4-2-2-2 formation. Whenever they did make it, Borjan, Vitoria and Cornelius stopped them. Miller had a quiet night while Laryea had the freedom to play very high to support both Davies & David while adding to the numeric advantage at midfield. Things that were also lacking in the US game Lack of crosses and diagonal passes to try and break the Canadian formation Not attacking the sides enough Lack of formation discipline which saw the squad stretch out too often Aggression: Canada played hard and dirty which all those trips in CONCACAF for the Nation League qualifiers ended up being learning lessons. The USMNT never imagined Canada would play like this against them and they seemed caught by surprise. They weren't prepare for a more "CONCACAF style" of aggression last night. I always said that Canada will go as far as defense will hold and the same is true for the return game in November. There is depth up front and midfield and it will be interesting to see if Berhalter make changes or stick with the same strategy with different players. Knowing Herdman, he'll throw something else at the USMNT. Atiba Hutchinson or Stephen Eustaquio (Cruz Azul) will replace Mark-Anthony Kaye in November. Hoping that Herdman sticks with Vitoria instead of Henry. The USMNT will come out much stronger and it will be Canada's toughest challenge yet.