On Acosta - he may just be clearing the deck for Trapp. Getting rid of Acosta will allow more minutes for his by Trapp. Thats my guess. We will be Trapped to death until it becomes obvious he isnt good enough.... then well see what GB does
It's true what you say about Petke in the playoffs, but at the time I wrote that off as player-manager whatever. But two managers in a matter of a few months taking a pass? That can't be ignored.
Acosta and Trapp don't play the same position. Acosta excels at controlling space. He does well enough against opponents who dominate the ball. But when the US needed him to get on the ball against the likes Guadalupe, he struggled mightily. 3G wants to control the ball as much as possible; Acosta is not a 3G player. If Marsh were the coach Acosta's odds of sticking would have been much better. There's not much an argument that Glad is better than the 4 CBs who remain in camp. His cut shouldn't raise eyebrows.
Yeah, but you already had an affinity for him, and their club coaches, national team coaches, media, plus advanced stats all seem to disagree. I think there's an argument against McKenize and Trusty. But they both have better trajectories. As for Long, he was MLS defender of the year. Zimmerman the highest rated American cb per WS. And both have been solid for the NT in a few opportunities so far. While Glad had a mediocre rating, got benched in the playoffs, and was released from January camp. Glad has zero argument against them. Hopefully he's more introspective about his stagnation than you and improves. Otherwise he's reached his peak because his physical tools are mediocre and he's just a fringe NT. No shame in that career. It's better than most youth internationals. You have to take performances at that level as mere initial indicators, but eventually adjust to the new info provided against men.
He's not a Marsch player either. He can't press and win the football. His tackle+interception rates in MLS and w/ the national team have been terrible. He lacks defensive and on ball anticipation. Maybe he best works in a counter style, but still isn't up to snuff imo because of the lack of steals. How long do we need to wait around to break, and can't we make our own? He doesn't make quick passing decisions or run with the football well to beat the opponent down the field. We've looked for how he fits for a long time and experimented a bunch of different ways. Time to come to a realization he just isn't anybody's type of player as a cm or fb.
Acosta had 10 recoveries and 5 tackles at Honduras during WCQing. He had 8 recoveries and 2 interceptions against Colombia. Pressing wouldn't be an issue.
Recoveries ain't s**t. And it's a wee, cherry-picked sample. He hasn't won the ball sufficiently for club or country in a larger one.
I never understood the argument that since someone has a consistent opinion on a subject, it means that their opinion should be dismissed. Am I a relative of Glad? Why wouldn't I want the best players to play for the NT? Why try to dismiss someone's opinion in that manner? McKenzie got benched last season, as well. Why didn't you bring that up? Players with a newer reputation get the benefit of the doubt often-times. Trusty is another player with a newer reputation. I think both had good enough seasons, but Glad was pretty good last season. Petke has shown numerous blunders in his decision-making. I would not regard what he does. I don't think many people watched much of RSL last season. Glad was good. Not as good as the season prior, but still considerably better than Trusty and McKenzie, in my opinion. Was Zimmerman better? Potentially. I don't think he clearly had a better season, but he had a good season. I don't see much of a NT ceiling in his game, so it shouldn't matter.
McKenzie was a 19-year old rookie. You're supposed to expect a learning curve. Glad is a couple years older and much more experienced. He's a vet. He also got benched toward the end. And McKenzie's benching is not relevant because I didn't assert he had a better season, just he was on a better trajectory. Why does Glad have an NT ceiling but Zimmerman doesn't? Zimmerman already didn't look out of playing against Italian players and the rest of the games he was one of the better players on the field. He's big, has decent mobility, and is decent playing the ball. Glad's analog is Ream. Being slick with the ball only gets you so far as a defender, and often gets you in trouble. Your main job is marking, and he leaves something to be desired in the department between his slender frame and mediocre quicks. He can just improve somewhat in the awareness dept, but he's already not bad there.
In two of his three 2018 starts in central midfield, Acosta's defensive activity numbers were better than those of other center mids. His main problem lies in not being able to sufficiently drive games.
That a player is let go early in this camp doesn't mean much. It could be simply that Berhalter needs a better view of other players, and the player who left is a well-known quantity.
Fair point but MB is still there and he’s a very well known quantity. I would think he’d be the first choice to send home if we didn’t need to look at known players.
I get what you're saying about Trapp and to some extent it may reflect that reflex, but he called up way too many DMs and in the process retained Bradley, Delgado, Lletget, Roldan, Canouse, Mihailovic. To cut Acosta you have to go down that list and literally decide Acosta is the worst, least suitable, most of out of shape, some variation on "worst." He only cut one. The other cuts were keepers or backs. The reverse of this was what I was getting at on Landon. OK, who gets cut to keep him? Rosters are always relative to someone else who makes or doesn't make it.
Y'all have an 8 obsession. You want 2 way mediocre mush. I am more interested in, is this a playmaker or scorer, or is this a ball winner. Cause what you're implying is he was a more active ball winner than most but dinging him for not also being a playmaker. The normal response in the specialist arena of international soccer is you play him at 6 -- unless he is literally a turnover machine -- and someone else playmakes. Division of labor. We are stuck in the same mental morass at back. First and foremost backs are there to defend. To pitch shut outs. Once you secure that specialism then you worry about tiebreaking among competent defenders about who can also go forward. We go about it backwards, identifying technical players or fast ones and then hmmm can they defend? And that's how you get Robinson, Villafana, etc. And 13 GA in the Hex. To make it relevant to USMNT now, there are a ton of DMs on the roster, not enough attackers, and basically so many I have to assume he's playing this same game of looking for jack of all trades. But the current problem is neither the technique nor the ball winning is very high level. OK, quit looking for mediocre hybridity. Get me people who can do their little job well. The team will magically start looking better when players are picked for being good at their specialties.
He was let go as they set the travel/game roster, not before. I never missed a travel roster in college. It is in fact ominous to get cut without a parallel PR announcement that Mr. Acosta needed to focus on getting his club situation sorted, and we expect to see him again next time. He retained a mix of longer term players, the new guard, and experimentals, including several players from his "cohort" in a sense. Roldan, Trapp, etc. It's such a mix it's hard to see it as "going in a direction." He was instead seen as less a leader than Mike, or less a potential future foundational piece than Will or even Roldan, and not a kid anymore to be kept around just to put on tape. That being said, if tomorrow they announce it was to give him space to sort his club career, then it looks different. But with this mix of players how do you not see it as unsuccessful competition or critical. And this isn't even the A team.
Bringing you into it at all is ad hominem and trying to discredit the message by attacking the messenger. The argument either holds water or doesn't on its own. You could be consistently right or vice versa, or used to be wrong and now right, or used to be right and now wrong. People get attacked for consistency ("agenda"). People get attacked for inconsistency ("flip flopping"). OK, on this issue are they right or not. Can they support what they say or not. Can you tear down the substance or not. The rest is audience engineering, or at best psychologizing why someone might be wrong headed. But to prove wrong headed it goes back to substance first.
Like I said buried in an earlier post, I don't agree he was "subpar" in terms of the games we have seen -- at least relative to the call sheet for this camp -- or was this done all on one camp regardless of recent history? The roster was nominally loaded but I am unsure how we get to the conclusion he's the worst of the list. I mean, reams on here have been written about how Trapp looked, and no one bothered discussing Roldan much other than to say disappointing. And I wouldn't mind him not being on a team so Canouse or others get a run out. But then leave him off. It doesn't ring true, to me, to pretend like the guy with a goal and a titanic tackle in recent games -- when many of the DMs (including guys called up now) looked like trash, makes sense as the cut. But maybe this is all on this camp, or system fit, or he is club shopping and needs a break. I'll judge the final product relative to what Sarachan's been doing or where it should be, but it's hard to believe this is a pure performance analysis, or that sufficient heed has been given to games the past year. If you were dumping the worst of the cap earning players for the past year it would be Trapp or Roldan, or maybe Bradley. Not a huge Acosta fan, but in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
That would be the better use of our and his time, honestly. I have been pushing the idea that these over age veteran leaders should either transition to coaching or show up either for pay or the good of their heart to give talks to the team in camp. The idea they merit a shirt to lead is dubious. The idea MB was winning while leading is dubious. The idea that a breaking down player is a leader by example is dubious. The idea that our increasingly professionalized young player pool needs professionalism lectures like the years of college players and new MLS is dubious. In theory MB could be there more specifically to coach up the DMs who looked sorry. But he was there last year for a week of practice/set of games and I didn't see improvement. To me it's a little selfish that older players who can't possibly contribute to the team in 4 years get to hog a shirt now as the price of advice giving. That doesn't sound like a team mentality, that sounds like the price of admission. If we need someone to lead by example it should be more like Pulisic, a player at physical and technical high levels who is relatively healthy. OK, watch how he trains. Bradley is falling apart. I don't want them imitating that. If he had any use it would be Crash to Nuke in Bull Durham if we thought we had a specific DM that has promise but needed tutoring.
Berhalter said he was going to give the vets like Bradley a chance to show they still can contribute. What we want when we change coaches is for a guy to come in with a clean slate and evaluate all of the players with fresh eyes. If those eyes tell him that Bradley is past it, then that's the decision we have to trust him to make. But his eyes might tell him that Bradley can still contribute. We'll see. Just in 2019 we have both the Gold Cup, the League of Nations, plus a whole bunch of friendlies. Our U23 team will ratchet their preparations for Olympic qualifying. Plus of course the U20 World Cup, and a lot of our guys are still eligible for that. A midfielder like Adams is eligible for all 4 squads. There are a ton of games. So it could be that the "A" team will go to the Gold Cup, and Bradley won't be a part of that. But maybe he'll be there for veteran leadership amongst a "fringy" group for the League of Nations. We need a deep pool..................
Given the way Glad's season ended; I don't think it crazy that he was possibly brought in to get a head start on his RSL training camp. Really, he needs to get back his starting job there before anyone worries about the USMNT. If this theory holds water, then either Stewart or GB think he has potential.
One time "leadership" is arguably still more defensible than some naive hope for "contribution" because if the role of the player is to contribute shouldn't that be framed in 4 year cycles? I would have liked Jermaine Jones to contribute towards a Russia campaign, but in practicality it didn't work. And the thing is any coach seeing a 32 year old player whose world cup would be another 4 years away (as Jones was in 2014) can foresee the problem. Bradley is 31. In 4 years, 35. I don't get building him into the foundation when as with Jones the piece you are sticking in a rebuilding team will be Jenga style yanked right back out in the next couple years. Put someone in who can be around in 4 years. Or audition potential somebodies. Bradley is already not Bradley anymore. I don't think Bradley Now is better than his competition, and his stats show it. I think Bradley Before was great, but that is irrelevant if this is on performance and not a brief leadership parachute in. His performance now, he is not as sharp an attacker, and jogs around and is a liability on defense. Demonstrable, people have broken down tape on here. Said it several times now, let the youth try and make their way for a couple years. Some selection of them is in fact the future. If in 2 years you feel lost for players at his position and Bradley is still playing, performing, and at the level, hit the bat phone. But to me bringing back Bradley is basically repeating Klinsmann's mistake of bringing back too many older players, most of whom either retired or faltered. In a 4 year cycle profession you should be anticipating where the team needs to go ahead in time and then if in 4 years the guy from the last Olympiad still has it, ok, get back on the train. But this is perpetuating a reason the trains didn't run on time by trying to convince yourself a player who no longer is what he was, is something more than he appears to be. It didn't rub off last cycle, and there is no sign it rubbed off in the fall. I don't buy a ton of games, because there are a ton of younger players. We called in a ton of CMs this time, and it's maybe half of them. There are more than enough kids (loosely, including Lletget, Saief, etc.) even if we rotated.