I'm not sure what to think about being a leader/winner at a younger age group playing at a higher level with less team success I can see both sides and thought you laid out your point well.
I am actually on bsky side it will take another cycle to improve but long term focusing on age could work. could change the sport focusing on age appropriate teams not pushing kids to the top level not pushing them. relaxing the pressure allowing them to grow. also could really really make the college game important since kids wouldn't be national team ready until after aging out. Obviously would have to put in cutoffs as far as when age appropriate maybe like once team qualifies for wc it would lock in the age group.
Do we think Miguel Almiron was an 8 or a 10?? To me, Pomykal plays a lot like Almiron. With the high work rate, psuedo-10 looking to be increasingly how the position is played, I think the way Pomykal is being deployed is a good thing. That heat map is a really interesting graphic, and I think supports the idea that he is playing in a similar way to how Almiron played for ATL united. Maybe the goals and assists aren't there yet bc: A.) he just made a big jump in competition (similar to Almiron at Newcastle, although folks still think he had a good year) B.) the way this position is being played, yes, he is a 10, but one that plays much further away from goal than the way 10s have traditionally played.
now that I am on ur side how would you do the ages exactly when it comes to the world cup. I just think you'll have a tough time justifying leaving adams off the full usmt in Qatar and keeping guys like pulisic/mckennie out until really after qualification is over and not being able to use them in qualification for the WC. still...it could work.
1-0 US against the run of play. Break from Ledesma and great through pass for Soto to finish a one to one with the keeper. Weah is having a great game in attack and defence.
Closing one loop (of many), Ukraine beat Panama, Colombia, Italy and South Korea to win the U20 World Cup. Our theoretical route would have been: France, Ecuador, South Korea and Ukraine.
My two cents is both Luchi and Tab are playing a 4-3-3 with one defensive mid and two others that can do different things. I've noticed on multiple threads and on twitter that there is a lot of different viewpoints on which of those two are the #10 and the #8. Again my opinion and what I've read from Luchi is that they are 8/10 hybrids. One may play more defensively because of instruction or situation but seemingly either can do more or less because of the situation. Pomykal and Mendez are interesting because Pomykal covers more ground getting more forward and also deeper while Mendez is sort of a more offensive type because he's always looking for home run shots or passes. In the Dallas system he's nominally more of the ten because of always being paired with a more defensive 8/10 partner but it is more his partner than him as he usually plays the same (I'd like to see how he'd look paired with Roberts or Arranguiz as twin 8/10's). As for how many assists he has for FCD I don't know for sure if any of his possible assists haven't been converted but knowing their striker corp it wouldn't surprise me. Badji missed basically three sitters against OKC in the Open Cup Wednesday and any who've watched him know that's not unusual.
I don't doubt as usual you knew about him before I did but I've been on his bandwagon since his winning Dallas Cup run a few years ago. He was the best player in that tournament and I've watched since the early 90's and have never felt that way about any other American involved in that tournament before.
I also see both sides to this. I think the one point that may be the hardest to quantify is whether winning the whole thing makes every player that is involved think differently about their future chances. So many kids from that winning FCD Dallas Cup team are pushing ahead and I'm predicting Seattle will have a similar bunch from their recent MLS tourney win. The question is whether they are doing good a couple years later because they were just that talented or whether winning it made them readjust their potential and they pressed on hard in their knowledge of how they compared to their peers.
That’s a good point. I should’ve said giving him credit as being among the best prospects in the pool. There were some others that liked his game, but he was being criticized the last year or two for average performances in sporadic first team minutes. I think I was the only one who thought he was as good as any player in the ‘99 year, despite the lack of playing time. I remember some said it was crazy that he could be better than Adams. That’s not to say I was right or I haven’t been wrong, it’s to say I think I was the original big Pomykal fan of thinking he’s at this elite level that some now think he’s at. I was trying to make the point to that person that I’ve been going against the consensus in regards to this player for years, so I don’t care if someone cites the consensus about Pomykal.
Interesting that you mentioned Adams as I recently read somewhere that a writer compared his engine to Adams. McKennie was also a teammate and has a similar engine meaning it is becoming common for our young top players to not just be one dimensional ball winners or attackers but hybrids where that attackers win balls and defensive mids attack all over the field. A 4-3-3 with those three players would outwork any midfield they encounter and add some real offensive threats going forward. Will we ever see them start a game together?
I expected Ukraine to win this one. There's consistency in their program: their main team is also defense-first, and has given the world such games as the unforgettable Ukraine-Switzerland in 2006 --a game that answers the question "what happens when an immovable object meets another immovable object." We're a bit more schizoid. Our youth teams have a definite Latino flavor our main team lacks: we're more tactical, possession-oriented, combining, and even more capable of taking "la pausa" at the youth level. Such de-sync between youth and grown-ups is not a good thing, IMO.