Onto the next cycle. When does it start? Will Bradenton stay? Will Richie stay? Which players will be part of this team? @Real Corona can you please unpin the U-17 thread at the top of the thread list and pin this one since that U-17 cycle is over and the new one should be starting up soon? Thank You.
I went to an actual 2017 U-17 WC qualifier back in September, and can confidently report that we should be able to beat Thailand and North Korea.
About this cycle, I think the talent is better than last cycle. Carleton is already my favorite player of this group. He's INCREDIBLE. Other high level talents that could be with this team are Lederman, Goslin, Palmbaum, Konrad, Acosta, Villegas and Xuxuh @didi11, isn't this the age group where your son plays? Can you give us an overview on who you think are the best players?
Herein lies the problem with the USA program - we have more talent coming through our system than we've ever had before due to an ever-expanding interest in soccer from a young age group, yet our results are getting worse. I don't know a ton about the next u17 age group, but if Williams is the coach, I feel pretty bad for them. Also, I'm not annointing any player the "next big thing", but I do agree that Carleton is quite a promising prospect among others in this group.
Carleton is the best player by some distance. Then probably Acosta and Goslin. Xuxuh is younger, the best 01'er according to a lot of people. The whole team consists of players who dominate 00' age group so much that they all play up (sometimes by two age groups, Carleton, Durkin...). Most of them look like 18-year old than 15, to be honest, except Zico Bailey and Carlos Anguiano (Lederman hasn't been called up much lately). However, I really have big issues with the this typical USYNT approach, i.e. selecting the most dominating young players for their age group. As we have seen from US U17 WC team, these players looked like world beaters at U14-15 (a la Haji Wright), at U17 they look like clueless headless chickens. 15-year old Zidane was well disliked by many people. Sir Alex said Paul Scholes would never make it because he was tiny. By choosing the most dominating young players as USYNT always does, we would've missed Zidane, Scholes, Bergkamp, Xavi, Lewandoski, Suarez, and the list goes on. We have to select players based on speed of thoughts, technique, tactics awareness and creativity. Barca gives zero weight to speed, height, and athletic ability when evaluating young players. SKC U16 is doing well at academy. Their best players are all 00's. They have a couple of players on YNT. But to me, their best player is Max Rugova who has the best finishing skills of a top pro. I don't think he has a sniff of YNT because he's kinda skinny. I would take him over any forward other than Carleton. Well, he's on YNT but it's futsal where he is the best striker (pivo, whereas my son is the best defender or fixo). There's not a coach in US who would pick my son because he is slow and skinny. But he can do anything Anguiano does and is probably a better defender. My son is not pro or future NT material so it doesn't matter. As we have seen, if players are good enough to play at MLS, they won't help NT or even YNT much at WC. They may be serviceable and that's it. You really need international class (a la Pulisic) to make some difference. IMO, Blaine Ferri, Andrew Carleton, and Max Rugova have the potential. The rest are just like most current U23, U20, U17 players who are good enough to be on MLS and second division Euro teams. And we know how well that works for us lately
To me it doesn't really matter who the players are if we continue with Richie Williams (or another coach of his ilk.) I see very little improvement from our residency players from the time the enter to the time they leave. Some of them (Haji is the poster boy) look immeasurably worse. I'm in favor of shutting Bradenton down and having these kids train with MLS clubs. Perhaps the USSF can work with MLS to find semi-residential situations for the best prospects who don't live in MLS markets. Of course it seems MLS and Klinsmann (our so-called technical director) are at war with each other. Heaven forbid they put their differences aside and cooperate with each other for the good of the game. At the U17 level we should be focusing all of our energy on the development of players, not on results at tournaments. People talk about results at Nike friendlies, etc. like they mean a damn thing. Where is the development of these players. I see development from kids that stay at FCD, LAG, NYRB, etc. academies. Seriously, we have defenders that have spent the past two years at Bradenton that can't defend. Why can't our players actually keep possession? What are they doing down there? I don't get it. Two years these kids play with each other. A bunch of Nigerians get off a bus from different clubs, and make us look like we've never been on the same field with each other. Its unbelievable. I'm actually angry. We've spent a lot of money on Bradenton. For what? Maybe I'm just older than folks on this board and have been paying attention to youth soccer longer. It just seems like for decades now we've been making the same mistakes at the U17 level. The purpose of Bradenton was to fill a massive void in the late 90s. That void was the lack of any professional youth development setup for elite prospects. However we're now 15 years later and the setup doesn't seem particularly professional and doesn't seem to provide development. WHAT IS THE DAMN POINT?
The biggest issue with Bradenton is (regardless if we hired a great coach) is the lack of competitive games. They play a handful of little tournaments every year and scrimmages against the likes of IMG. The players in Bradenton have nowhere up to go either. At a club, they'd be fighting to break their way into a reserves from the youth team. However, the main core of this class spent not much to no time living/training full time at Bradenton the past 2 years: Pulisic, Haji, de la Torre, Perez, Barbir, Gallardo, Vazquez. Zendejas and Adams left once they signed their HG deals as well.
It really just is a question of coaching. I do believe there's talent in this group. A player like Zendejas looks better against adults at the MLS level than he did against teenage Nigerians. That's makes no sense. I understand that an "A-list" coach isn't going to take this U17 job. Oscar Pareja isn't going to leave FCD to coach the US U17s. We should be able to get somebody better than Williams, though. Somebody that is actually a youth development expert and can also coach the team in matches. We have a bunch of MLS academies that have sustained success. Hire one of those guys. Hire Luchi Gonzalez or somebody of that ilk for God's sake. And it should be noted that we actually do have Javier Perez on the US staff. He's a former youth development coach at Real Madrid. If we simply fire Williams and move Perez into that position, that would surely be an upgrade. That would require zero effort from the USSF. I happen to agree with your assessment of competitive games. We play a whole bunch of friendlies, etc. throughout the cycle and do well. Then when the games actually matter, we play like garbage. Those friendlies have almost no meaning.
See my answer here: http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...p-usa-vs-chile-10-23-7-pm-est.2025823/page-16 (post #380)
They celebrated their goals with the exhilaration you'd expect from a group that wasn't going to be sent to a labor camp. There were about 50 North Korea fans at the game--this was in Singapore, where the DPRK has an embassy, so they might even have been actual North Koreans.
SKC U16 lost to FCD today but Max Rugova scored again. He averaged more than one goal a game. I have never seen any young American player who is even close to have his finishing skills (maybe Gallardo). His father Edmond used to play for New York Cosmos and was the coach for Kosovo national team. Max is really good. Too bad no US coach realizes that.
Yup. SKC U16s gave FCD all they could handle. FCD won 4-3, but that game could have gone either way. The SKC U18s beat FCD 3-1. Great result from them. It was always going to be FCD's toughest game of the year. If they'd won this game, the FCD fans would already have started talking about an undefeated season. [Such is the level of hype about this group.] You don't want kids to just win all of their games 6-0. You want them to face significant adversity. I'm convinced that three years from now we're going to think of SKC's academy as being in the upper echelon of MLS. They're doing a lot of good work, and we should be seeing more of their players in US youth teams right now.