Does USMNT suffer from systemic apathy?

i've already given my basic theory the "world class" argument is a snob exercise, but being practical about it, we recently retired howard and dempsey, and before that jones. bradley was close to that level but has fallen off. a couple years ago you could have said 3-4 people.

you then have at least 2-3 U20 cycles of quality working their way up and perhaps some after them. the leading edge/core of the team is young, steffen (24), mckennie (21), pulisic (21), adams (20). other emerging playes include sargent (19) and weah (19). these are still kids.

the counter-argument would be something like "but messi" "but rooney." it is true that a tiny tiny amount of players emerge as fairly fully formed teenagers. but if that's the standard most teams in the world would be frustrated by trying to produce not just world class but there by 18. there's a reason players like that are deemed special.

no, i think the "world class" argument is myopic. the absence of such players right now wouldn't necessarily even mean that we don't have them, it could mean they haven't fully developed. we also have been doing well at U20 with successive generations of people. i think what you are really seeing is that lull period c. 2011-2013 playing out into the veteran laden team. there is a lag. berhalter isn't helping the lag by slowwalking the young talent. come back in 5 years.

if you want to speed the process get on the coach's and Fed's a$$ to risk more younger players on the rosters. that will speed along the process and you might see some players flower. but if left rotting on the bench who knows, and i think at least one reason for our failure to convert U20s into senior stars lately is we slowwalk people and at a point maybe careers just stall. i think it is not predetermined and the right confidence and right career choices at the right time can help launch a player. conversely i think if you sign at the wrong place for money reasons and they don't play you and we won't call you, you rot, and sometimes people who rot never recover.

our reticence to go young is absurd. we are chasing mexico. go look at mexico's current roster and how many people 20-24 they run out. at that rate they will destroy us for years because they can call upon teams that can beat us, but are also investing in the generation after. we meanwhile are doubling down on midcareer and end career veteran players who can't beat canada. slightly more than half our last team was under 24. one could argue we are basically extending out the lost generation with our choices. who does that on purpose.

 

overwrought gibberish. freddy had 2 goals his whole MNT career. pulisic has 14 NT goals in 31 games, 11 of which were in games that count, and 7 in WCQ. he was the 3rd leading scorer in the region last qualifying round. pulisic had 19 goals for a b.1 elite team over 4 seasons, some of them as a starter. pulisic quietly has 4 assists for chelsea. he imo made a dumb career move to repeat his bench situation. beyond that, the story is he was sick for canada. he had 2 goals in the GC semi and another goal on cuba. he was hung out to dry by our tactics last week, not well, and double- or more-teamed. people need to take their pills.

this is one reason i hate the "form" bs. one does not go good bad good bad good bad in keeping with how each week goes. the same basic player should be there. he may get sick or rusty but short of an injury if you de-rust him the same guy should be underneath. he probably could use skill sharpening and confidence boosting based on how cfc is going. berhalter is not providing that in terms of tactics, supporting cast selection, or not subbing him out. pouring gas on the fire instead.

cfc isn't going to let him rot, i hope he gets sold or loaned out and that will fix his problems, as it has for other nominal epl signings. that and/or i can't imagine cfc puts up with the team sitting in 5th in the league and 3rd in CL group and potentially looking at non-competitive league status, and Europa ball this spring and next year. at this rate lampard will be gone in the new year and he will have a different boss who hopefully both sees pulisic's value and also at a more useful level recognizes he can play around the field.

 

Agreed. Many will get there backs up and get ticked, but he is dead on. Particularly with the US expectations. Why should we expect more other than the fact we are a really big country?

 

That was the past, look forward to the future.

Ask yourself, when was the last time he scored a goal for the US? Besides from that PK against Cuba.

He hast yet to score a goal for Chelsea.

Yeah, we all know he's already miles ahead of Adu in terms of past achievements...but don't let that fool you.

Even Neymar looks like an outcast these days.

 

I'm not sure that apathy is the word, I think some of them are there because they have been pushed to the top throughout their career, and find themselves here, in a position they may have never wanted.
To me, they do lack the drive that some past NT players have had, along with the perceived idea that we always want to emulate some other NT in style of play, which many of them may have no interest in. If only 12 guys are grasping the style that Gregg wants to run, then those 12 are going to see the field. If it's only 8, and they don't have a clue, but they're the only ones trying, those 8 will see the field.
I continue to think, there is an American style of play, but few have managed to even begin to find it, or even understand it might be there. I think there is, but I think we've choked it off for a while.
We could look at Italian defending, Mexican individual flash, Dutch skill and precision, German strength and speed, Brazillian flair (more past than present, I'm afraid), English grit, etc. find the pieces that fit, discard those that don't. I don't think we're equal to any of these nations, but finding common threads from each could make a formidable team. Being formidable is self motivating. Getting ground down trying to play "just like" somebody else is not.

 

personally i see pulisic as more in the mold of landon than mr. super technical he's being framed up as. a runner who can finish. pulisic is the guy who scored on chile on the little flick on breakaway. that to me is a landon play. landon also used to whack a few of those open shots right into keepers because he did it with volume (and some technique) more than exquisite precision.

i would go the other way on pulisic and say we should have him talk to landon and work on fitness. he is fairly fast and to me needs to be even fitter.

if you want precision machine or banger of shots, mendez or sargent. or you need dempsey spending several summer weeks with pulisic working on putting balls right where he means to. dempsey used to be a cutesy wing dancer and then he learned how to shoot.

i think some of the implicit drive here, to critique pulisic for what he seems to be and not to be, could be usefully redirected into finding other people that actually have those traits. the dead balls are crap. we don't get goals off curlers or 25-30 yard bombs. instead of moaning that pulisic isn't doing these things, go find ones who can. i think some of the young players coming up have some of these skills. and then pulisic doesn't have to be all things to all people and the team savior.

 

Scots generally don't sugarcoat a situation. We need more of that attitude at USSF.

 

he has an assist against liverpool this year, 2 goals in the GC semi this summer, goal on cuba, goal on trinidad, 3 GC assists, 7 goals and 6 assists across all competitions for BD last season.

if you put that resume on here and said this is a new up and coming kid we should promote, we'd bite.

no, gibberish. he made a dumb transfer decision and ended up orphaned in terms of advocates. that does not equal sucks. you note he's not scoring for cfc, but he STILL IS FOR US. he is giving cfc assists. he moves to the right place and this will be jozy or dempsey all over again. this is about fit. all he has to do is drop down a few clubs in the table and that will solve that. i am not going to erase a 4 year track record and continued production for the NT and say these 3 months now define him. that's absurd.

sorry, but this is snob talk to me where all that matters is are you neymar. you can be a darned good player and useful enough to us without being that. that's aspirational and not a reality based assessment. reality based assessment is until something else comes along he is the best player on the team. led the team in qualifying goals last time and was top 3 in the region. would any other team around, including mexico, be kvetching about chelsea??? mexico would be too bright to care about club ups and downs, and the rest would salivate at his presence. please.

 

let me put it this way. are leon bailey or alphonso davies subjected to fanboy bs for not being the dominant striker in B.1 and just being a dude there? do people at these other NTs wring their hands and cry that they aren't neymar in their club stats?? this is a huge part of the NT issue is the gap between some sort of fanboy wannabe image and working with reality, which is not as horrific as you want to make it seem. the coach is working in terms of some abstract concoction in his head and the fanboys give him constant cover moaning about how they want more world class players. such that now i'm watching people get out their sledgehammers headed for the best player on the team because he does not fulfill their vicarious wish that we immediately fill the CL and win the world cup.

if he could switch anyone else in the region would take him and start him, including mexico. the rest is noise.

 

in terms of "systemic apathy," i would assume it is a mix of things. one, i think we have pushed pretty over gritty to the point where this is no longer default or an easy switch to flip. in my generation if you didn't get stuck in you didn't see the field. and then along those lines, two, selection. if i watch holmes and morales cage fighting, and roldan, trapp, yueill, and bradley not, and you call the latter and cut the former, if there is a drift, you reinforced it by selection. if you put the fighters on a pedestal, cut the softies, or otherwise sent the message that's what I want, you'd find it quickly. some players might have more than others, and there might be fewer from generational drift. but they exist, they are just not gaining favor in selection. get adams healthy and get one of holmes or morales in and we will have some grit. that we have systemically de-emphasized a way of playing doesn't mean it doesn't exist, particularly in players brought up in other soccer cultures who still have the value where if you aren't tough and stuck in you won't see the field.

and to identify those bastions of horror tactics we would be ashed of: it would be england and germany. those brutes in every facet of the game. someone needs to pin them down and explain the virtues of dutch soccer.

 

personally i think the fish rots from the head. they are kids and still learning to play. if you told them to play more rough they would. some might be inherently softer than others but that's the coach's job to sort out. if you favor people who like playing their position in space and whacking 50 yard balls, that's what you get. if you favor the ones who play like old time crunchers, you would get that instead. whether because of injuries or what, he hasn't rewarded old fashioned crunching.

 

Pulisic has gotten a lot of justified criticism for his perceived stalled development, but I saw some positive aspects to his performance Tuesday night. He was trying to do too much, forcing solo dribbles and hopeless, dead end runs, but at least he was trying. When he was taken out he was angry and frustrated as he should have been. He has pride and wanted to win while it seemed others were complacent or resigned. With the skills he has, he will succeed if he is surrounded by other good players with a winning mentality and the ability to take some of the pressure off of him. He can't carry this team on his back under these circumstances, maybe never, but he has heart and talent. He is still so young, but I hope he doesn't get burned out by this toxic management situation and stays hungry.

 

Maybe it's because I only hang out here and not with fans at large, but I'm not sure who the delusional fans Burley bashes are, most people I know have been pleading for more pragmatism for a while now, ever since the Klinsmann honeymoon ended. Other than that, his reality check is welcomed. If only USSF were listening.

 

I actually think there is more anger than apathy.

They pretty much owe the fans a World Cup appearance, and most of the fans are still pretty angry about it.

 

I think you are both missing the point that the OP was making.

It's not that we don't have impact UCL players and therefore we're not that good.

Rather, because we don't have impact UCL players (like always), we need to have a chip-on-our-shoulder attitude.

I agree that's what we're missing and trying to elevate the more technical players (albeit not technically talented by UCL standards) seems to be correlated with players who don't feel they have to run at 110% all game.

 

IMO we have defanged the old concept of the American player in order to pursue the creation of the near-mythical world class player and then in reality only made the average player slightly more technical. We have not enhanced the top end player and if anything I ask myself where are the new Reynas and Mathises. We instead seem to create -- and, worse, the fans promote -- a bunch of mediocre two-way trash that doesn't defend rough and doesn't score or assist much either.***

I've said it a jillion times, most world cup winning teams pair the productivity needed to keep advancing with 11 man defensive organization and hustle. Germany, Italy, Argentina, France. You would not see the field loafing about passively.

The Spanish won once with basically a brief alignment of great players. The Dutch have never won a world cup. The 70s Dutch are in fact like a stereotype of throwing away team results to favor painting beautiful art. Kind of like some Brazilian teams seem more concerned with looking good than trophies.

Effort and team defense are tiebreakers among teams in the same talent neighborhood. Disarming those strengths is asinine. And the irony is, as I said at the start here, we (at least the current starters) aren't very pretty at all, and for all the effort, are probably UGLIER than when the project started. Contrast: JK's team right after he was hired. That ACTUALLY looked prettier.

***Is this because MLS buys its 9s and 10s? LAFC and LAG played an entertaining if defensively-inept game last night, putting up 8 goals between them. Review of the box score confirms that none of the goals were by an American, and only one American (Nguyen, too old for us to play) contributed assists. If the truly creative spots are bought, does that make us into the grunts?

The irony is that historically I don't think a supporting character would make the field neither offering some sort of offensive value nor being a stout legbreaker. What is these people's upside? And if you are upside shy where is the historical effort level of similar players in the past? Being a 8 who didn't hustle didn't use to be a NT career path. That would instead be "he got called up, made no impression, didn't hustle, disappeared."

 

yesterday on a different thread i explained how delegating development to the pro clubs, without putting resources into their efforts, is actually a regression to mean strategy. you get rid of the supplemental efforts that contributed to our past successes, and you delegate to teams that seem to not care to do their job right, with limited exceptions eg Dallas.

this makes sense as shallow mimickry of europe, which seems to be the hot trend the last decade here. adopt their goals, the exoskeleton of their formations, and the exoskeleton of their approach to development.

the problem being, we lack the underlying substance of what we are xeroxing. they delegate to the clubs BECAUSE THE CLUBS ARE TRYING HARD TO DEVELOP. ajax and such put resources into the effort. build infrastructure. provide schools. hire good coaches. etc. etc. they then have proven they can develop first team players for themselves and other teams. the strategy works, but not because we passively made an org chart decision based on ideological mantras, but because they put their money where their mouth is, which makes the choice wise. they then do development better than the rest of us.

what we've done is a xerox of a xerox of a xerox. delegate it and blow up centralization ie bradenton, before they actually had to prove themselves. that basically leaves clubs with spotty or bad development histories, in charge. this is ideologically justifiable. it is not practically effective. it is a regression to mean strategy, as is, because most of the rest of the world, much of which sucks at soccer relatively speaking, doesn't put effort into development, and just waits and sees what pops out the end of the process when people go pro. congratulations, in shallowly pursuing european mimickry you have instead weakened your system.

i see this dutch obsession the same way. a coach with limited grasp, and fans holding onto shallow ideology, have touted (and seized the apparatus) ideas they do not fully get, with downsides they don't admit, and as a result the team is going backwards, not forwards. they are dismantling what did work, and was fully understood, for stuff that we don't have the players to execute right now, and which they don't really know what they are doing.

we need to get back to doing things we understand fully, with players who are suited to those plans.

the effort level thing to me reflects not really knowing what we are doing. who on earth tells players to be that passive on purpose. if it happens once maybe the players came out flat. this is intentional. this is like someone with a naive 6-4 eredivisie game idea of soccer got hold of the NT. as you probably see, as a result we clobber bad teams worse than ever but are getting worse at playing good ones.

 

The apparent apathy, imo, is more related to players having to take time to think about the next move.

Imo, also, the more technical players have not been elevated. Baird, Roldan, Lovitz, and Zardes are not particularly technical.

 

amen.

in a fair world GB would be fired.

but in a slightly less fair but still pretty fair world he would have to provide a new list of more suitable players to play his style. it amazes me more snobs haven't picked up on this and complained. "you said you wanted x. i want x. where is my x." he offered you pretty possession soccer. where is it. when JK brought in a new style -- at first -- he also brought in gringo kljestan etc., touch players. who tries to play possession soccer with hardhat guys. [he then figured out we weren't good enough creating chances in the box that way, and switched to his 3 DM negativity.]

in particular, he lacks the Higuain from his Crew team. the sycophants parroting the deep playmaking 6 ignore the engine for the Crew was never Trapp. they had a purchased 10. that 10 was good for roughly 10 goals 10 assists a season. don't pee on me and tell me it's raining. your 6 is good for like 2 goals 2 assists per season. that is the engine for a moped or smartcar not a ferrari.

i would play a different formation with different people but anyone who knows soccer should be like wow why do you run out a 433 talking mess about a more technical player and then pick 2/3 of the mids who aren't attacking players.

 

3G could've brought in Nguyen, Lletget, or Ledezma. It's odd that someone who depended so heavily on a specialist 10 at club level won't use one at international level.

 

fair enough.

The point I was focused on was that we need nail-eaters if we’re not a team with superior technical abilities.

 

thinking about this at lunch, i had an epiphany. i've argued if you want to change how we play go back to age 10. but how does a team that as a matter of ideology delegates development to 24+ clubs, and has dismantled its national youth team residencies, actually in any comprehensive way "change how its players play the game.?" setting aside the question of whether academies have earned the role given them, you delegated away teaching to 24+ teams that may have as many as 24 of their own ideas how they want their academicians to play. those ideas are their own, not based on what USSF wants. kind of like when we were kids, one select coach might implement an english style for his select team, another guy more german, another guy italian.

in throwing in the select discussion at the end, i acknowledge it has always been this way, to some degree. however c. 1990-something we did the residency at IMG/bradenton such that there was a point all this heterodoxy got homogenized. once in the residency they could try to make you play a particular way they wanted. at pain of being kicked out of the team. bradenton is now gone. where in the process can we say, i want you to play this way if you want to be on the team, and control it? saying you want prettier soccer is, so what, if you have no control over how they are getting to you. i can just as easily say i want the system to produce me "Pele" or the ever-sought but somewhat mythical "world class player." i have just as much power to get that end result.

mind you, i would assume the YNTs still meet for camps here and there during the year. week here, week there. but that would mirror the senior team's brief window into its players. the primary developer is the team they go back to. they can tweak things or give you stuff to work on, but they aren't your regular coach. there is no residency.

this also explains much of the focus on formations and systems. if for ideological reasons i concede away the ability to develop and control the players in the pyramid, the part i can control is how they line up on the field when they show up for camp. there i am boss. now, that formation may not match up with what they play the rest of the year, are used to, or are suited for. but that is where i can exercise power.

that is, unless i exercise centrality and control backwards into the process. if you wanted to change how the best domestic players play, you would have residencies and/or USL type teams where you concentrated your choices and taught them Our Way of Playing. this would also result in the players ahem looking like they had played together before.

again, i feel like few are actually thinking through, ok, this is the end goal. this is how i practically get here. this is where the current structure is at odds with what i am trying to achieve. this is how to change the structure to achieve what i want. we instead have whole hog adopted a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of a british system without thinking below the surface about how it would actually work.

it's kind of like when you ask a berhalter fanboy what the plans a and b are for how this team will score goals. they can quote the mission statements. they cannot explain the actual concepts. and then the team itself looks like it's confused how to score other than get it wide and cross. hmmm