PBP: 2018 CONCACAF U-20 Championship: USA vs. Puerto Rico 11/1 5:00 ET (TIME CORRECTION!)

Pomykal named Man of the Match. Not sure how Oscar could refuse to play him when he gets back to FCD. Hopefully this leads to a Pax getting out of his deal with FCD and going to Europe as he just got a new agent.

 

@Runhard Where has Pomykal been playing for the last month or two? He hasn't been making the FCD 18.

 

No where as far as I can tell. He's too old for the U19 DA and hasn't made the bench for Oscar. I think this is his first 90 minute game since Dallas Cup this year.

 

I know it's not like for like, but meanwhile Tesho's been getting regular minutes. Absolutely criminal...

And Badji?

C'mon Oscar.

 

I think Oscar has quite a bit to deal with the last few days after bombing out of the Playoffs. I doubt he is going anywhere but it can't be very much fun out in Frisco right now.

It's pretty clear for anyone looking Pax could have played 5 times the minutes he did this year and it wouldn't have changed much for the team. He couldn't have been any less productive than Mosquera (who I originally liked) or Badji or Tesho. As I've said before, it's not a fair fight out there in Frisco for the young HG attackers.

 

I think going into this tournament everyone circled T&T as the potential slip up game. However, Suriname beat the USVI, 13-2. I know nothing about this Suriname team, and the likelihood is that we'll demolish the USVI by a similar score. But 13 goals is 13, any way you slice it, so I would guess Ramos and his staff took note of that result.

 

Everything we know is that Oscar is still high on Paxton.
Paxton is the kind of kid right now that looks great against kids his own age, but hasn't looked good against adults. I'm not surprised that he looks good against Puerto Rican U20s.

When Paxton was given a chance to start some games midway thru the season he didn't perform well. Any impartial analysis of his performance in those games would say the same thing. That was against San Antonio FC and Minnesota. He was marked out of the Minnesota game by world-class midfielder Collen Warner, and didn't play a single attacking pass from the middle of the field.

Now, that's not to say the people Oscar picked instead of Paxton did any better. I completely agree with you. They certainly didn't. Lots of decisions to make this off-season.

One thing I do know is that the Chilean kid ain't chopped liver. Good competition.

 

13-2 likely speaks more to how bad USVI is versus how good Suriname is.

They probably have a pool of like 2500 soccer players between the age of 16-20 to pick this team from my assumption is the team is about as good as an pretty good HS team.

 

USL team was announced today on Facebook for FCD. Rumor is they are naming the roster this afternoon.

Worst case scenario is Pax is on that USL roster and it gives FCD and Oscar an excuse not to play him on the first team. Wonder if Arrainguiz or any other first team players are demoted to USL roster. (Tesho, Hayes, etc).

 

This is the rub. Pomykal danced around a little bit and played some nice passes, got the goal. But even against Puerto Rico he looked physically overmatched, couldn't beat his guy to the endline and spent a lot of time on the ground. He is straight-up minced meat against grown men.

 

Not sure how we could know what he will do against grown men as he hasn't got a chance to play against them. Every time he was on the ground it was a foul. Messi gets fouled a lot too. Skilled players just get used to it.

 

Against adults I wouldn't disagree, but he was dominant and constantly in behind Puerto Rico. The time he was down in the first half was after he took studs straight to the ankle. That had nothing to do with being overmatched. I didn't see the second half, so maybe there was something there that was different.

 

I would also argue that he was not bad against Minnesota. He wasn't great, but it was the type of showing that he could have built off of if he were given at least a few sub appearances.