I might be off, but I thought Kuhlman had slow speed of play (not a great touch or passing), a lot of turnovers, not great decision making. She worked hard though and was helping out a lot on defense. She's physical, but didn't have many set pieces to take advantage. I would just stick with Sanchez to 20s. That #10 for Japan was great (Fuka Nagano).
Tagliaferri actually has a higher upside than Kuhlmann does, as they continue to develop. Tagliaferri is more like Ashley Hatch in terms of the level of potential long-term Kuhlmann is more like Summer Green in terms of the level of potential long-term
I think Kuhlman fits what the 20s seem to be trying to much the same way Scarpa does. I could see her getting a reserve role.
The youth teams and youth coaches are a reflection of our current youth soccer environment. No accountability and lots of country club deals lead to athletes on the field with no soccer players anywhere to be seen.
Uh yeah not good enough athletes... The problem is player selection and leadership. They picked relatively athletic and relatively technical players. They were not athletic enough to beat a physical team and not technical and not athletic enough to compete with Japan. There are more technical and more athletic players out there. They even know about some of them. They need to make a decision on style of play and pick the kids who can carry out the vision. Not this in between soccer that kills the weaker teams, but can't rise to a challenge. I agree Kuhlman is at her ceiling. No idea why BJ thought it was a good idea to start one of their youngest players instead of one of their more successful ones in Tagliaferri. Only recently has Kuhlman even been a starter. BJ seemed to love Rachael Jones and then cut her the last camp. I think he is wasting USSoccer resources on kids who are early puberty and one dimensional. The full NT would benefit if they kept an open eye toward the late bloomers. I think I said earlier in the event that I was concerned that they would have trouble when they were compromised in time and space. The midfield got absolutely owned by both Ghana and Japan. Our answer was play over top to our great finisher. To little though there, when the midfield and defense are falling apart. A little move to create space with great movement off the ball and the Japanese always had options for a pass. Tight con Someone said Pinto stood out? Yes against weaker teams. Often has a poor first touch which further reduces her time and space. Not technical enough to manage the tight spaces the 8 must manage when faced with an athletic midfield that closes space down with speed or a well organized one that seems to always have someone where you don't want her. But she was great compared to Our #6 today. She just looked big and slow- Zero mobility. Did she touch the ball out there? Girmas speed covers a lot of her teammates weaknesses out there. But Girma needs to stop playing the ball out of bounds and start an attack. But then she would often have to play Howell. I think Sanchez may have the "it" factor similar to Mallory Pugh as a go at you forward. She may also have even better finishing ability. However I still don't see her have that creative spark needed in a #10 with impeccable technique and new ideas. Note to YNT coaches: they are out there to be picked; it's time to think outside of the box.
While obviously a very poor result, what concerns me is that this "team" was selected and groomed for the past two years for this tournament. All the hype and buildup of these players, and the best they could do when facing the pressure of Ghana and Japan was to send it long and hope Sanchez bails them out? That's so rec! We need soccer players to compete at this level, not just great athletes who are fast! Japan had plenty of speed, but it's obviously their technical ability and willingness to GIVE THE BALL UP to their teammates that exposed the US team. US players are so selfish with the ball and seem like they're trying to show everyone how much they can do every time they touch it, instead of building up or creating for teammates. The US may have beaten Japan the past few times they've played them, but if you watched objectively you could clearly see Japan was a superior team on the wrong side of the scoreboard. It finally caught up with the US. The midfield did great in the past few tournaments and against Paraguay....but if you go back and watch there was very little pressure on the central defense when playing these weaker teams. The play I saw most: Keeper/OB passes to center back who is uncovered....center back turns w/o pressure, takes a couple of touches w/o pressure and passes before anyone from the other team is within 10 yards, then next player boots the ball for the forwards to chase down......announcers gush at the "control and poise" of the central midfielder and how she controls the game. Uhm....where was the control and poise against Ghana and Japan??? There are players on this team who will probably be fine at the next level in some way (I see Sanchez as a potential star, but really nobody else is even close.) US Soccer really should hit the reset button and look at other players who might have slipped through the cracks when they were "evaluated" at 12 and 13 years old. (Sidebar: The "evaluation" process deserves serious scrutiny when so many players from one or two clubs are on the team.......)
This is a failure of epic proportions. You don't get to play garbage, negative, results oriented, long ball, athletic soccer and then say youth teams are desinged to produce a few players later on when it matters and results are unimportant at this age. That is only a valid point when you play beautiful, attacking, technical, skillful, simple and proper soccer. Essentially, had we scored on those definitly off side long balls and somehow managed to win, the Japanese could say "results are unimportant at youth levels, we are about developing players" and it would have been 100% true. Because real players are only ever able to progress and learn how to play properly when they are taught and asked to play proper soccer in a youth environment where technique is paramount and the mental, physical, tactical columns are nice bonuses, not where those come first. This is a problem from the top, to the youth levels, college, most definitly ECNL and on down to the other clubs and youth programs. One could hope we learn from this, but we won't.
Well, I didn't see a lot of their games--but I thought this was a very talented U17 squad. We mowed through a lot of our matches in the lead-up to the WC. It sounds like they got a bad draw, having Japan in their group. I don't know what kind of national youth reputation Ghana has--the men have acquitted themselves fairly well in World Cup competition. Are we supposed to believe their birth records? I could be wrong, maybe it is carping, but some of their players certainly look older than 16/17 to me. Would it be a shocker if they were older? Not to me. Or maybe we were simply a bit unlucky--it happens a lot in soccer. I'd be interested to know how Japan's youth national system differs from ours.
I think Japan are, in a nutshell, a tad more humble than USA. They're culturally a bit more willing to admit/accept that better methods exist outside their insular world, and they can swallow the bitter pill and go hire them. They did that a couple decades ago in soccer, targeting Brasil as a country to emulate, and then importing coaches from Brasil. Now the top-down training curriculum in Japan is probably much more uniform than in USA. I'd guess a typical kid runs more intense and focused drills, at a higher tempo, under the eye of coaches who themselves are all trained in similar ways. So clubs and high schools play the same way as YNTs and their WNT. When those kids get called in, it's just more of the same, only even faster and better. They probably have more (thousands of) hours of reps at their spots, and so they can use their YNT practice time on linking, combos, and pressing schemes. Our backline clearly doesn't have the thousands of hours, and so Snow et al. can't productively use his YNT time to train short-pass-vs.-close-press. I bet our kids have more competition hours than Japan's kids. OTOH, there's surely something like the fireman-drill-vs-close-pressure for small groups (5-v-5, one quadrant of field), in which FB + CB must play keep-away vs. 3 lunging pressers, and they've all done it for 50+ hours (5' intervals, 100 times per year x 6 years -- just guessing), whereas our kids and coaches have never even seen this drill, nor played against anybody who's ever done it. So we press them and they just smile like it's fun, they press us and they smile like it's more fun. Add this up for a few dozen other drills, and maybe they're a couple rehearsals away from same-day sight-reading a symphony, and we're ... using that time to play more games.
Japan is probably going to win the tournament--they are good. No shame in getting beat by, what, one goal by Japan. We also lost to Ghana, which proved its quality. They got beat by Korea, which is in the final against Japan--and Korea was gifted its first goal against Ghana when one of its players blatantly dived in the box, IMO, resulting in penalty kick and goal. Korea won it 2-1.
So your point is that they didn't really perform poorly and way below expectation? They were dominated dude.
No shame in losing to Japan. But that Ghana game.... And not just the result, but the way that they played was... not encouraging.
I thought it was an athletic failure. They weren't as fast as Ghana, and not really as strong either; and nowhere near as quick as Japan, and marginally slower there too. It wasn't a tactical failure IMO...
What!? I love reading your thoughts and posts, but that was very much a tactical failure! Ghana was definitely faster which is exactly why you need to play simple short passes to wear them out chasing the ball as opposed to the long balls we kept playing (tiring ourselves out). The Japan game showed these long balls were no accident, though at least tactically it was a better choice against Japan.
Failure technically. They couldn't manage the diminished time and space that the athletic Ghana players presented to them, and similarly their poor first touch, lack of precise passing, poor movement off the ball and poor vision didn't allow them time and space enough to play their possession game against the organized and quick Japanese. In both circumstances the kids panic and resort to "just boot it" kickball.
I'm watching the Venezuela vs Spain 3rd place game on NBCUniverso and the female commentator keeps crapping on USSoccer's youth development: "The US doesn't teach young players the mental aspect of the game." "There aren't enough minorities in US women's youth soccer...how will the US keep up with other countries if they aren't getting girls from the communities that care the most about soccer?" Something about club soccer costing $10,000 a year. "Deyna Castellanos plays at FSU...there are lots of college opportunities in the US...the other Venezuelan girls need to decide if they want to play US college soccer or if they want to play club ball." (Venezuela doesn't have serious women's soccer clubs...of course that didn't stop them from outperforming the US) The commentator states a college education is invaluable but implies there may be better ways for the Venezuelan girls to develop.
Since the interview touches on several topics relative to both threads, I also post it here: http://www.socceramerica.com/article/71034/april-heinrichs-on-under-17-world-cup-development.html