The increase in MLS academies is probably the best way to get higher level competitive games for the kids Isn't it?
Richards played for the U19s last season and is currently playing for Bayern II who currently play in 3 Liga. Richards has all the athletic and mentality tools but he has been with Bayern for 18 months and still has not "adjusted" to becoming a BuLi player. There is a significant difference in level between MLS and the BuLi. I am not sure why posters continue to down play that fact, just ask Khiry Shelton, Russel Canouse, Jovin Jones, Joe Gyau, Przybylko, and others who could not garner success in BL2 yet are lock starters in MLS.
A throwaway comment on the very good Yellowall Podcast has had me thinking. Basically, what they were saying is that in the Bundesliga and World Club Football in general you have the best players. But players can be the best by being elite in an area. That whole clubs are formed for elite physical players or elite technical players. That the top of the game are teams with elite physical and technical players. Examples: Schalke are built around elite physical players. Dortmund is built around elite technical players. Bayern Munich is built around players that are both elite physically and technically. Now, that is not to say Zardes could play for Schalke, there is a technical level required. But it does explain some questions people ask... "Why can't Timmy Chandler perform for the USMNT like he does for Frankfurt?" "Yedlin is an EPL starter, why does he pass so poorly" Frankfurt is a team based around elite athleticism. Every player they have is a unit. They use that in their game plan to great effect at times. Chandler fits in there. But when he came into the USMNT, and was expected to pass and move like Fabian or JJ, who similarly were, "Bundesliga starters," he was a little off. It could also be that these types of players need equal or better players around them to get the most out of them. The same can be said of Yedlin. Newcastle and Sunderland are not Man City. They have mostly elite athletes and defend and counter. Morales is also more of a physical player. Pulisic has stamina, speed, but not size. But he is a both player but not yet physical enough for the very top. He has the will to get there. Short players can be physical and impossible to knock off the ball (Messi, Hazard), he can get there. McKennie plays for a physical team. He still has very good technical skills, or he would be playing for a worse physical team. But I think people expect Pulisic level touch and he doesn't have it. Nagbe would be a technical only player. Gotze, Reus, Sancho, Guerreiro, Weigl, these are all highly technical players. They are fast and can sprint for days. So, they have a minimum elite physicality. But they would not be mistaken for a Frankfurt player. Dortmund tries to overcome this with having physical players centrally like Hummels, Witsel, Delaney. Just like Schalke needs some technical players like Harit centrally. Just working through it for myself. Most MLS teams have Americans with good physical skills and a few high priced foreign players that are highly technically skilled.
not if your academy sucks. there are more Texans SC players who have been in MLS (eg Holden Quill Torres Shea) than Houston Dynamo academy (Memo is the highwater mark). players like the Servanias and Cappis have fled here to play elsewhere. it is a wise choice if you are FCD (Richards, McKennie, etc.). or RSL. or certain others. not sure if people realize it but there are traditional clubs in the academy leagues. the theory is what you suggest. in practice certain teams take it very seriously, and some academies aren't even the best select teams in their areas.
Some posters but not I. That is why I said FC Dallas academy and that he never played a minute in MLS. Richards skipped the MLS level which would have been a big jump up from the academy level. if he doesn't get time soon we may start wondering if he would have been better off playing a year or two in MLS before moving. Julian Green is a cautionary tale on what can happen to you at Bayern. Alphonso Davies is the more inspirational tale. Which will Richards be?
Landon, Pulisic, and others have been brought in as age group guys and did well. so first team minutes in bulk are not necessary to be NT value. that's not true in scientific terms. it's true as personnel conservatism which is setting arbitrary lines and saying i will assume until x you aren't ready. we have had a few players succeed without crossing that line yet. what is the point to the line other than playing it safe? and if this is a friendly what is the downside to any risk? part of the flaw here is elevating metrics or arbitrary lines over the eye test. if you went by the eye test a short list of U20s excelled. 5-6. bringing back in their club status is basically trying to question what your own eyes told you. this leads to the absurdity of excluding age group big prospects at elite clubs in favor of aaronson. who got cut for that same YNT. "but he gets playing time on his first team." also, we seem to ignore fairly blatant hints a player has been deemed worthy by his club. soto has seen some first team minutes for hannover. sargent was already with the first team last season. once they are crossing that threshold, do i really have to wait til they are a regular to see them? that is equating all minutes regardless where, and also in emphasizing first team minutes is ignoring the eye test.
Interesting but Schalke does not have elite physical players compared to the rest of the BuLi. Chandler performed very well for Nurnberg before moving to Frankfurt. He has been a lock starter for several coaches/styles during his BuLi career. He is disliked by many US fans because he initially balked at committing to the US due to Nurnberg pressure. Morales is not considered unusually physical for a BuLi CM. IMO, the segmentation in the BuLi is strictly based on quality. Bayern, Dortmund, and even Schalke in that order can buy the best players that are available to the BuLi clubs. That is just how the ecosystem works in the top 5 leagues.
richards looked like one of, if not the, best U20. regardless of club situation. why can't we then pluck him for the NT as a pipeline star who performed to expectations and let his club situation sort out on its own timescale. did green's situation affect his 2014 value? did pulisic's trajectory affect his 2016 value? i can't care so much about club situations if i am ignoring how he looked in a US uniform out of deference to club form. which is backwards of how NT should operate. why can't i be ahead of the curve -- beat the club to it -- as opposed to waiting for their stamp of approval. bluntly that approach, to me, feels lazy. it takes work to do what JK did and anticipate the market. does jamaica care how much PT bailey gets? if bayern sat davies would canada feel duty bound to follow their lead? this is absurd. talent is talent. put him out there and see if the U20 performance translates. what's absurd is aaronson gets his shot before people who beat him to the U20 team, just because he lucked into a more pleasant club situation. and the approach is further absurd because at a certain level all these accumulating "choices" should suggest one of your players is taken more seriously by soccer eyes. the U20 staff favored certain people over others. foreign clubs thought more of certain players than others. i realize not everyone turns out but it is a tad cute to be like, i will ignore bayern and my U20 staff, and listen to the Union and a U23 appearance. at a certain point it should then be why bother with YNT and ODP if everything gets overrode by your professional career situation once you sign. that we will toss everything the pipeline coaches evaluated, or we saw at the youth world cups, and take the one who gets to a starting job first. you're ignoring that whole process and you're punishing ambition. to be clear, i distinguish scouting from starting. affiliations and performances should help get you in the door, or we have screwed up our player identification processes. then whether you play well should decide if you stay.
Not one of the guys you mentioned walked in as a MLS starter. Pryzbylko got loaned to USL and got his break when the starter got deported. Jones looked to have been a regular in the B2 as well as MLS,
Shelton wasn't a lock starter in MLS. Canouse got moved to rightback. Jones is a utility player for the Sounders. Joe Gyau plays for Cincinnati. Przbylko was a pickup by someone with deep knowledge of the talent in B2. And the Union played a two-striker system for much of the season.
MLS players with little overseas experience have shined at international level. The individual 's situation is most important.
Higher technical level ** Higher intensity Faster speed of play ** Stronger mentality/more focused Everyone is trying to be the best they can be (not true in MLS) All opponents are competitive (not true in the DA) I only buy the two ** and the reality is they suffice to make the team level of play higher. I think it's the opposite of what you're arguing. We have the requisite mentality and intensity. That's why Germans sign us in bulk. The question is if everyone there hustles and is fairly professional, what else do you offer? The hint is in the ** -- they are looking for the ones who can play technical or play fast. If you can't/won't hustle you are probably already gone. But even if you have that, if everyone else does, it's not a selling point unless you are Adams-special. It also helps there that there is no work permit issue. Our participation in the UK would be massively different if you didn't have to meet the work permit or have the right passport. The distinction between signing and success here should be considered. That they keep signing Americans should be seen as a stamp of approval. They obviously think we have the right professionalism, mentality, and something else, to bother, versus signing other people. That they don't all turn out, well, you'd have to compare us to some average someplace in terms of how many do they wash out in general, or from specific countries. The U20s take some crap because a few players each time wash out of pro play. But this is a fact of life, and the number to me seems to be decreasing as the team professionalizes ever more. Which verges on, well, duh. If you increasingly play with players signed by professional teams, as opposed to college kids, more of them will pan out to be career pros. Duh. They're almost already there (or already there).
The individual's performances matter more than anything. If they looked good for the U20s that alone should get them a trial with the senior team, particularly at need positions. if they are one of the stars of the youth world cup what do i care what bayern thinks? That sounds a little too much like someone who wants to be thought of well in some sort of fraternity or club. I want to be smarter than some club coach who maybe is fired next year but whose decision to slow-walk my prospect I trusted this season. I feel like analytics are taking over from the eye test. The game is then to say the age grouper has nothing to analyze. That's because you're looking at the spreadsheet and not watching them play. We then favor people who have first team stats -- even if it's MLS time -- because they have something to analyze. Even if they got cut when they tried out for the same team as the foreign player who signed at a big club that has a longer ladder to success. To me this is precisely how you fritter away the benefits we should be getting from having all these people in demand to sign abroad. You demand mid career bona fides and go back to MLS who have them. That being said, this is why I suggest players be smart and calibrated in their professional choices. Right now signing for a big club isn't paying off in terms of playing time, and for those not already incumbents on the NT, you get shuffled behind players with less talent based on analytics. Yes, we're punishing ambition to some extent, but a wise response once you see this happening is react and adjust.
Green and Richards are different from Davis. Davis was purchased for $22MM as a full pro while Green came up through their youth Academy and Richards was bought as a youth player and started on their U19 team. Richards already has other teams in Europe offering to take him on loan or purchase/buyback simiilar to the offers given to Green. That is the typical route to end up on the Bayern first team. The Green cautionary tale is to leave to a level where you will get playing time which Green refused to do. Schopf was the other Bayern II player signed by Pep in 2013. He never played a single minute for Bayern and left to BL2 Nurnberg where he played for 18 months and was bought by Schalke mid season.
Davies was purchased for $13.5M with performance incentives that could reach $22M to Vancouver. Obviously, he must be reaching at least some incentives.
He was solid under Sarachan and had C'ship interest, until that England match. But my comment concerned the club and development environment a player is in.
Within a short adjustment period, Davies, Adams, and McKennie moved from MLS/MLS academies to lock starters in the B1.
You dont think the following matter? Why is it that american soccer fans think soccer is the only sport that competition doesnt matter? Higher intensity Stronger mentality/more focused Everyone is trying to be the best they can be (not true in MLS) All opponents are competitive (not true in the DA) As for mentality, you are kidding yourself. Our players in MLS have become soft. We saw it in the last 4 games of the Hex and we have seen this year.
Davies is not and has not been a lock starter. Suspensions and injuries have led to the point that Alaba is starting at CB. This has Bayern scrambling to fill a FB spot and that is Davies. If Sule (sp?) doesn't get hurt or Hummels wasn't sold or Hernandez didn't get hurt, he would be playing on the same team as Richards or getting late sub minutes as a winger. McKennie played a year of U19 ball. Adams is the outlier in every discussion of this type. There has been nobody else who has done what he did last year.
With TAM, there was probably going to be real pressure on jobs in the league. Especially for the boat load of Americans that are on cheap deals as roster filler. That would have put Americans that actually start with no scrubs underneath them not able to take their job. That has all been offset by rapid expansion. With the salary cap and other rules, there are still more jobs than actual good players. Without expansion, Lovitz would be looking for a USL job. If expansion ever stops, you might get a European style competition for every job (well, at least 5-7 jobs per team) after 4-8 years.
The idea everyone in MLS, a pro soccer league, is not competitive, and is not trying to be their best, is laughable. You're really just trying to sneak in several times under the rubric of several categories -- in a debate on how the leagues compare -- the conclusion that you think one is better. That may be true. But that is not scientific. You don't get to argue B.1 is better as a subcategory of proving B.1 is better. This is circular and assumes the conclusion. Go find some actual other metric we can measure. MLS remains a physical league. Whether the league is physical is distinct from whether you think the NT is physical enough. I can be physical in one place and under instruction not to do so in the other. I can be physical and not be chosen by the coach. For example, players like Morales in the pool exist. But the coach has publicly said I want a more technical, passing 6, not a cruncher. At that point the softness you're discussing is a selection issue and not the absence of anyone fitting the bill in the pool. You chose your way to softer. This may not be "Jones" but there are people who will get stuck in. Ditto in the back. There are people like Opara and Parker who will leave an imprint. If you call Ream instead, it's not that MLS is soft, or that the team is soft, it's you picked in a direction. You basically want the team soft. But that doesn't make MLS soft. Re competition, there are plenty of Americans on loan, on a bench, or not dressed, signed in big leagues. Competition doesn't inherently lift anyone. Competition is you versus someone else for time. There are losers each time in competition. Competition does not always favor you. Competition may slow down your career trajectory relative to some of your peers. You may struggle to break into your first team until age 22-23. The big club snob may be like no big deal, it's a tough place to get in. But that may, in a pro-veteran, pro-playing time NT environment like now, basically burn a cycle of your value. Meanwhile Aaronson gets brought in to play your position. Why? Because he's playing already. It's bizarre, perverse, but also has a logic. If competition inherently lifted you, in some measurable way, you wouldn't have an Aaronson problem. I mean, my impression in college was the people who played progressed faster than the ones who didn't. I felt like the people who eventually broke in at big programs would accelerate faster, but you had to cross the threshold. Mind you, I think there are Weahs who can play well despite sitting a lot, but there are also Woods who lose confidence and struggle. And you can insert morality here and say "well, one competes and the other doesn't," but that's a moral judgment. You were claiming competition itself does the job. In reality I think you're saying that if you have a certain attitude you would benefit from the squad competition. That's not the same and not universally applicable. Some players need confidence and the feeling of trust. Others are like, well, I will show you. One size doesn't fit all.
Uh, Davies is not going to be playing with Richards no matter what and Adams wouldn’t be a lock starter on a team like Bayern. Having said that, both players have acquitted themselves very well.