I have always followed the youth teams closely... That's why I see the same pattern of overhyping that occurs every cycle. I'll give Weston McKinnie because it looks like he's starting to bud for Schalke. But as far as everyone else, it's same old, same old. We've always had promising youth players. Hell, Preston Zimmerman? Everyone thought he was going to be the star for Hamburg. To be more specific, Gedion Zelalem was supposed to be the next Cesc Fabregas... hell, look at much you've hyped Juan Agudelo and Wil Trapp... two players who will never be contributors for the national team. Luca De la Torre was probably one of our most technical players in the last tournament, but I guarantee he's Luis Gil 2.0. Moreover, Brooks Lennon has a low ceiling, IMO, and he's been one of the most productive MLS youth prospect we have. Carleton can barely even crack the line up for Atlanta United. Additionally, our goalkeeping situation is in panic mode, IMO. No one is even close to Tim Howard's talent level. Lastly, let's look at our latest young player to really step up, Kellyn Acosta... by all means, he's probably our most promising youth player (outside of Pulisic, of course) and yet people have torn him to shreds for his performance in the Gold Cup. We are still all too reliant on Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, Tim Howard, and Michael Bradley. Those are going to be huge shoes to fill. I'll concede that we seem to be producing more youth talents...which is a good thing. But that's probably more related to MLS expansion than anything else. Nonetheless, it's just over optimistic thinking to think we are the verge of a golden generation. I'd love to be proven wrong, but we're going to need to step it up before we make any claims of future greatness.
Quantity is a quality in and of itself. Youth players fulfilling their potential (or the potential they appear to have at age 16) is always a crapshoot...but the more rolls of the die you get, the better. If you have 1 or 2 Carleton/Wright/Sargent type players, as has often been the case for us at any given time over the last decade or so, there's a good chance they won't pan out. But when you start getting 5, 10, or more of those guys every 2 years, your odds that at least 1-2 will develop into elite players skyrockets. (IMO, this is the theory behind Chelsea's sign-and-loan strategy. Most of those guys won't develop into players good enough to start for Chelsea, but if you've got 20-30 guys out on loan at any given time there's a good chance a few will--and the ones who won't will still mostly develop into solid pros good enough for a mid-table club or a club in a lesser league--think Miazga--who you can then get a solid financial return on.) ETA - And agree that it's largely related to MLS expansion, but that's not a bad thing. Atlanta in particular is going to be huge for the national team program--with the maturity and growth of the sport in this country over the last 20 years or so the bulk of soccer talent production has shifted from traditional soccer hotbeds like St. Louis and Kearny, NJ to the same areas that produce the bulk of our talent in the other outdoor sports, American football and baseball--southern California, Texas, Florida, and now Georgia. Look at the amount of NFL and MLB talent that comes out of the Atlanta area...soccer will be the same.
Sargent may be a couple years away, but he is - by a good margin - the most coveted striker the US has ever produced.
I prefer Wright to Sargent, if we are picking a hypothetical U-20 team. I prefer Wright's game to begin with, and he's also two years older with more high level experience. Thats not a slight to Sargent though, could play two strikers, and maybe he's in it.
Sargent seems impervious to the pressures of playing up. Kids like that who make the most of their opportunities get put on the field because they reward their coaches.
Yedlin was a surprise to many. It's easy to see in retrospect why he was brought in. The team needed explosiveness. JK gambled on Yedlin, and it paid off for him. Yedlin was one of the reasons the US got out of the group. He created chances. Now, you look across the player pool and again the team is lacking chance creators. It's not far fetched to believe that there are some who we will see brought in over the next few months. It should be nice to see Saief with the first team.
Not on BS, maybe the biggest surprise is the the last manager actually pulled the trigger. People were lower on Brooks because of his poor showing against Ukraine. Chance creators are rare. For instance Saief has 15 goals and 9 assists in 73 games worth of minutes. What's changed cycle to cycle is the depth and the amount of quality players.
Can I say Kellyn Acosta? I know he disappeared at times in this Gold Cup but I say he matures his game knowledge and field awareness and becomes, at worst, the first option off the bench for one of those central midfielder spots.
You can.........but I think the argument can be made that he's already "broken out" as a USMNT player. He already has 14 caps and has started a Gold Cup final and WCQer at the Azteca. If we think of the "next Kellyn Acosta" in terms of that position I think we're looking at Weston McKennie of Schalke or Tyler Adams of NYRB. Both are two-way midfielders that should be competing with Kellyn in the coming years. Strangely enough we have a lot more young depth at that position than we have at the #6 position, which used to be a real strength in US youth teams. That's actually a positive sign as our elite central midfielders are now being developed to be playmakers as opposed to just "destroyers."
Gotcha, I'll let you speak for me then, I'm just not "in the know" in regards to the young padawans coming thru the ranks. Throw some more names out there for me to keep an eye (or ear) out for. You mentioned Weston McKinnie and Tyler Adams. Don't we have a young CB playing at Tottenham?
We have a board where we talk about all of these young players in youth national teams if you're interested! https://www.bigsoccer.com/forums/youth-national-teams.255/ Yeah, I think Cameron Carter-Vickers is one of the kids most likely to get capped soon.. He was called up by Klinsmann to a camp, but wasn't capped. He's an English-American dual-national, but he's played for the US U18s, U20s, and U23s. http://beta.goal.com/en/news/us-pro...t-step-at-tottenham/70el8ly2tf8e1cnty2efrcnxb I guess the other youngsters on the verge of USMNT callups (other than the aforementioned McKennie and Adams) are Justen Glad of RSL and Erik Palmer-Brown of SKC. Palmer-Brown was voted the best player at the recently completed CONCACAF U20 Championships. He was on loan at Sporting in Portugal last season, and did very well. They had an option to sign him, but inexplicably chose not to. Thus EPB returned to MLS, but is stuck at SKC behind two good veteran CBs in Besler and Ike Opara. Basically, he's waiting around until his contract runs out. Glad doesn't have the upside of EPB or CCV , but he starts as a 20 year old right now in MLS. He does everything well, but he doesn't JUMP off the screen like Palmer-Brown does. He has the look of a 15 year MLS legend that may not make the move to Europe. The name that's being mentioned a lot in this thread is Josh Sargent. A US U17 that just played up an age group with the US U20s at the U20 World Cup. It looks like he's about to sign with a big German cclub. Werden Bremen seems like his choice, but he hasn't actually signed yet. He also has apparently already signed on with Nike, which tells us something about how he's viewed. We have a lot of youngsters playing in reserve and youth teams right now in Europe. But few that seem on the verge of busting out to immediate USMNT success like Christian Pulisic had. Folks have been talking about forward Haji Wright of Schalke, winger/forward Mukwelle Akale of Villarreal, winger/fullback Josh Perez of Fiorentina, Marlon Fossey of Fulham,........among others. Its a big year for these kids as they're ~20. Time to stop being considered as prospects and start achieving things. The kid that's disturbingly fallen off the map is Gedion Zelalem of Arsenal. A year ago we thought he was on the fast track to the USMNT after he switched allegiances from Germany. He fell out of favor at Arsenal, has been loaned around without making much of an impact, and just tore his knee up at the CONCACAF Championships. Bummer.
Fossey is my dark horse for Russia. He plays a position of relative need and he adds something that others do not. Where Yedlin is blazing speed, Fossey is deliberative probing and creative service. He'll have to be a better defender though, and if hes getting minutes at Fulham next season, he'll be looked at.
If we're strictly talking no caps or even friendlies for the full men's team the five most interesting names to me right now are( not necessarily in number order): 1) EPB - circumstances with Porto and his contract to SKC are holding him back but I expect him to move this winter and really fast track his career. 2) Shaq Moore - was abjectly terrible for the U-20 team, saw his deficiencies, took a huge risk and went to Spain to work on those desperately needed technical skills and now finds himself 2nd on the depth chart at wing and fb at Levente. No idea how much game time he'll get but any La Liga appearances for him would be huge. 3) Wes McKinnie - going to get minutes for the first team at Schalke. How many will be up to him but they're looking for their Goretzka replacement and he could be it. 4) Mckenzie Gaines - a burner at wing just sold to Darmstadt in BL.2. Excelled in pre-season now he just needs the coach to give him a chance at the first team. 5) Josh Perez - rumors are the owners of Fiorentina are going to gut the club for profit before selling. If true several vets in front of him are going to go and he may well get his chance to start earning minutes with the first team rather than just bench filler.
I don't know why Glad would never leave to Europe, unless he didn't want to. What separates Miazga at this age from Glad? I don't think its much, I think its the perception around the other CB's in his birth year.
Ah...........Emo!!! One of my favorites as an FCD fan (he came out of the FCD academy). He had a nice year in 2016 at Rangers in the Scottish Premier League. Really did well for them as sorta a playmaking central midfielder. Seemed to be a fan favorite. Unfortunately he got a foot injury at the end of the season. Without that injury, we may have seen him with the USMNT in some capacity in the spring/summer. He certainly has the potential to be in that Acosta, McKennie, Adams, etc. battle in the years to come. Still only 21 years old. He's returned to Bournemouth in the English Premier League for this season. Its a big year form him to prove he belongs at that level. I'm not sure if he's 100% recovered from his injury, but he seems to be back in training with them. I've looked for his name in the lineups for their pre-season friendlies, but haven't seen him listed. 886579816891330560 is not a valid tweet id
I'm not sure he has that upside of Miazga or EPB or CCV. I'm no talent evaluator, though. I see him more as a Matt Besler or Matt Hedges MLS-lifer. That's nothing to sneeze at. Those are USMNTers. Besler had opportunities to go abroad, but stayed in MLS as SKC showed him the money. Hedges will probably be the same. We've got a bunch of CB prospects in that sorta step down from EPB/CCV. I'd put Tommy Redding, Auston Trusty, Miles Robinson of ATL (who I like even though we haven't seen much of him this year), etc. in that group also. BTW.................I'd put Walker Zimmerman in that group with Miazga, but I'm admittedly biased.
I like Miazga's game, don't get me wrong, but whats so great about what he does? His performances have been very good, which has earned him his way throughout his career. Miazga's taller than Glad and better in the air, but besides that? I like nearly every other part of Glad's game better. There's not actually one part of Glad's game that I don't like, he's just not very flashy, and isn't one of these great aerial CB's, although I think he's underrated in the air. If Glad can continue to improve, I think in another few years he could head to Europe, I even think he could go now, although he doesn't seem to have the interest yet. I think he's been effected by the perception around EPB and CCV, mostly EPB. When teams come to MLS and are looking for a young CB, it starts and ends with EPB. When teams are watching our U-20's, EPB and CCV are the starters, they are the big names. Glad's lucky if he can play out of position at RB (like he did) to get into the shop window or maybe someone gets suspended for a game (like CCV did). Nothing Glad can really do about it. He's presently not as good as either, not as talented as EPB, not as flashy as EPB, not as big of a name as either, but he's a really good player, and once he gets out of EPB and CCV's shadow, I think he'll be able to go to Europe, and have a lot of success in one of the top leagues in the world.
Shaq Moore is certainly one to keep an eye on. If he starts getting any playing time in La Liga then he starts being considered for callups. As we know, fullback isn't the deepest position on the USMNT (on either side). After Yedlin and Lichaj, things get fuzzy at right back. Unless folks like the Graham Zusi experiment, that is. There are a couple of other fullbacks for us to keep an eye on this season. Olosunde at Man United, Fossey at Fulham, Robinson at Everton (LB/CB apparently), Cannon at FC Dallas. Adams of RBNY and Josh Perez have both played as right wingbacks. When Fossey went down prior to the U20WC, it was kind of a hole. Ramos didn't prepare well for that possibility. I'm not quite sure what's happened with Toni Suddoth of Stuttgart. We called him up to a camp, and then didn't hear much about him again. Woooow @Sh4qMoore!! Woooow Barbosa!!🚨 https://t.co/dtI0zuKqDP pic.twitter.com/0yPfKiEOyI— Levante UD (@LevanteUD) July 30, 2017
This is where we seem to lose the majority of our "top" prospects under the age of 20. We need to be pushing through more prospects with the high pedigrees that Haji, Mukwellw, Gedion, and Josh have. We will never be an elite soccer nation until we consistently have can't miss prospects. We have truly only had three in our history.... Christian, Landon, and Demarcus
That 18-20 year old range has been a problem in the US for 25 years. I used to call it the "dead zone" in our developmental model. The development academy is all well and good (and will improve as time goes on with increased investment by pro clubs).....................but its basically meaningless if kids get "stuck" from a development point of view in the NCAAs or on MLS benches. In theory the advent of reserve teams and USLPro teams, and the continued fleshing out of our 2nd and 3rd divisions will help with that. As far as "can't miss" prospects, we've had plenty of guys that have been labeled as that. Few have developed into that in real life. The key for our elite of the elite of the elite prospects is to get them into the right environment. Each player is different. There is no 100% guaranteed formula for success. Even going to the same club. Pulisic was a highly touted U17 that has had amazing success by going to Dortmund. Junior Flores was a highly touted U17 that has completely stalled at Dortmund. We've had players go to the Premier League/Bundesliga from the NCAAs (Dempsey, Cameron, the list goes on), we've had players go to those leagues thru MLS (TIm Howard, Beasley, and company), we've had players sign directly in Europe out of U18 programs (O'Brien, Pulisic, etc.). And we've had demonstrable failures thru each of those routes as well. Pulisic has an advantage that other elite prospects just don't have. Pulisic has a Croatian passport which allowed him to start training at Dortmund as a 16 year old. That 16-18 age stage is really vital in the development of players. Josh Sargent, Andrew Carleton, Jesus Ferreira, etc. have to remain in domestic development programs in that time. I know we talk all the time about sending our youngsters to Europe as much as possible, but the USMNT is only going to go as far as our domestic development programs can take us.
Suddoth signed a contract extension in the winter, but then Stuttgart decided that he wasn't in their plans by the summer. He just moved to Pforzheim in the (fifth tier) Oberliga.