Hopefully we can keep the discussion focused on coaching rather than officiating What general conclusions have you drawn from this year's cup? I have noted a few trends. 1. The US player pool generally seems to have less ball skills than in the past, if you focus on first touch. This may be overlooked if you watch the moderate paced circulation and don't notice the inability of most of the players to control hard struck balls. Most of the hard struck balls are 1-touched to a team mate in the direction facing instead of being controlled. As a result, the US attack does not circulate the ball fast enough to break down packed defenses and is not able to penetrate through the middle. This could be just rose-tinted glasses I am looking through, but I think the present player pool also has less athletic ability. 2. Similar to US colleges and Title VII creating opportunities for women athletes to train and compete, I suspect the rise of professional soccer (MLS, NASL and USL) in the US has provided increased opportunites for CONCACAF men to train and compete. As professional soccer will likely continue to grow in the US, these professional training and playing opportunities for CONCACAF athletes will likely continue to grow. Professional opportunities are also available in Europe and South America, but few players from CONCACAF were to play there and fewer still developed there. While the creation of MLS was necessary to improve the US MNT's ability to compete in CONCACAF, I did not forsee in 1996 that increased opportunites might also raise the level of play in CONCACAF generally. 3. Jamaca in particular had a very impressive team--big, athtletic, and skilled. I kept looking for obvious weaknesses and found none. 4. Mexico showed improvement from 4 years ago. Their smaller size is still a weakness in set plays, but they otherwise make up for it with good organization and mentality. 5. While the US player pool, any player pool, needs a mix of players to pick from, the US pool, needs more players with speed and skills. Having one fast wide player on the field is not enough. Having one skilled forward and one skilled midfielder on the field is not enough. Having the skill to make easy passes at moderate pace is not enough. I don't know if the characteristics of the player pool are a reflection of the available players or just a reflection of the coaches choices. I do know this, the immediate competition is in CONCACAF, not Europe. Optimizing the team to play friendlies against European teams may be a mistake.
Our opponents saw we are weak defending the counter attack. So all our opponents tried it against us. And not that Our far side kids were too inside the field and too late getting more outside on the switch especially the black player with the yellow in his hair. He was good on attack good on defense. We only have one good passer on the team and that's Bradley. Unfortunately he get very tired in the 75 minute. The other lower end countries are getting better. We are not improving. Some of the subs we used in the last two games should not even been on the team. Want a use them do it in friendly games not in tournament games.
Agree with pretty much everything ya'll said. I thought we were poor the entire tournament. We weren't able to combine in the attacking 3rd through the middle very well. Once space was constricted, we weren't able to effectively take advantage of the small gaps/spaces (poor touch/control was definitely a culprit in this area). To make matters worse, we didn't attack from the wings effectively imo. Sure we found some space on the outside, but we were never able to consistently create scoring chances from out wide. Some of that is probably due to not having a true aerial presence up top. But I don't recall us penetrating down the endline into the penalty box that much either. Additionally, did we even score from a set piece/dead ball this tournament? That has been a staple of US Soccer, but I don't remember any set piece goals. Note that I did not watch the Cuba game and even if I had would not take that game into consideration as they were such a poor side. As ya'll have touched on, what was very alarming is the player ability/performance. It was hard to see where goals were going to come from during the run of play. I don't know if it was a coaching issue (bad player selection, players playing out of position, bad tactics, etc.), but simply put we just looked bad. We had countless horrible turnovers in the defensive 3rd where simple passes just went wayward or weren't controlled properly. Defensively we also gave up bad goals (goal off a throw in; goal when center back didn't track a run that he was staring at, etc.) Ultimately said, using the same personnel I don't really know what we could have done to have gotten results because the majority of the team simply didn't look up to the task. I'd like to think at this point in the maturation of the US program that we are much better than that when compared to most teams in our region.
http://www.concacaf.com/article/concacaf-gold-cup-2015-final-23-player-rosters-announced I think you really overestimate the number of MLS/US second division players out there for each team. Obviously US and Canada, but beyond that, Jamaica is the only team (along with quite a few from England) that has significant contribution. Guatemala and El Salvador had about 3 each.
I really think our National Team woes are due to coaching. Is there any reason we can't form a 30 player national team pool and make them practice and play together year round? These 3 week camps before a tournament aren't cutting it. While I'm sure that our National Team players would benefit from better development in their formative years, I have a hard time believing that they can't "catch up" to some of the better players in the world. Maybe never to a Messi, Ronaldo, Hazard, Rooney, Pogba, Balotelli level - But why are we so crappy? The players on our National Team (and those playing in MLS and other leagues around the World) are playing soccer EVERY day. Why do we lack the ability to be first to the ball? You don't need to be coached by Ajax at U8 to do this. Why can't we keep possession of the ball? Sure, ball skills and ability are learned at younger ages. But why can't Bradley, Beckerman, Bedoya, Johnson, etc play a game of keep away like other countries do? Simple one-touch passing and player movement is something that I would think can be learned by a 20 year old player who makes his living playing soccer? Why can't we finish by dribbling the ball into the box and making a few creative passes? Put Dempsey, Gordan, Johannson and Wondoloswki in football equipment and make them run through a gauntlet of defenders inside the 18 and just work on finishing all practice long. I'm a crappy soccer player. I stopped playing on a team as a kid in middle school. I wasn't great back then. But I've started playing a few days a week for the past 18 months. At the age of 41, I still suck, but I am probably 500% better now than I was 18 months ago. I think we need to stop blaming our youth development on the struggles of our adult National team. Maybe it's college soccer that's hurting us more.
Perhaps. My opinion is subjective and not based on any analysis, but I think 3 players out of 23 is a significant number--or even 1 player, if he is a keeper. While the US brought a lot of MLS players to the 2015 Gold cup, they were a fraction of the 45 MLS players, 7 NASL players, and 12 (current and former) USL players. In comparison, 14 of 18 Liga MX players were on Mexico's roster and only 2 Mexican second division players went to the gold cup. I wonder if there were more former MLS players there, like Andy Najar, former DC United homegrown player, playing for Honduras. To summarize, US professional clubs are contributing 3 times as many players as Mexican clubs. http://www.mlssoccer.com/goldcup/20...d-2015-concacaf-gold-cup-final-23-man-rosters http://soccertranslated.com/2015/07/05/liga-mx-in-the-gold-cup/ http://www.uslsoccer.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=32800&ATCLID=210186727 http://www.nasl.com/news/2015/06/24/seven-nasl-players-make-final-gold-cup-rosters
I have a couple of comments for you to consider. Training at the senior national team level is focused on team building. As for player development, they help the player set goals and provide training advice and education with the view that this will enhance the players development in his club environment. My impression is that the January camps were more focused on player evaluation and mentoring while the other camps were focused on team building for competitions. Reaching the ball first, keeping possession, penetrating and finishing do involve passing and moving, but you didn't expressly mention first touch and the soccer "brain" (tactical decision making). Those are IMO the two most important differences between the best attacking players and the rest of the world. Here is why. Regarding touch, the player with lesser touch ability requires more space and time to control the ball and maintain possession. This slows the speed of play and provides opponents more opportunities to win the ball. It is just not the receiving movements that are impacted. The pace of the pass has to be less too. This makes the attack less effective at stretching the opposition to create space and time, which the lesser skilled player needs more of instead of less. Touch is not something you can improve during the limited contact time that the National coach has. But you can improve positioning (training the brain), which will make controlling the ball and doing something effective easier. But a coach can only improve the brain, if the coach understands what good movement is. (That is the biggest failing of our youth development process. Coaches teaching the brain to make bad tactical decisions.) Regarding the brain, every decision both on the ball and off the ball can make winning the ball, possession, penetration, and finishing easier or harder for your team. Many of the plays that look easy are only easy because of the tactical decision making that lead to the play. It is all about movement, when and where. Sometimes the correct decision is not to move. You can have all the ball skills and athletic skills in the world, but if the soccer brain isn't developed too it means nothing at the international level. Regarding team building, I describe soccer as requiring 11 players to play as if they shared one brain. They cannot do that without two things. First is a system of play, which is merely a tool that makes it easier for the players to combine together. Second experience playing together. Playing experience is the advantage that club teams have over national teams, and why club competitons often provide better soccer to watch than the national-team competitions. It also explains why most national teams improve their play over the course of a tournament. When you start with zero experience together, every match makes a different. These comments don't mean that coaching is not important to national team success, rather I think coaching at the team-building stage is more critical.
our players are spending energy thinking about where they should be instead of instinctively just going to those places. that's less energy they have to play the game itself. you can see that in the poor touches and passes, the lack of concentration. i think the that's the biggest issue: we have to think about what we're doing instead of just doing what comes naturally. the other issues snowball off of that.
I just listed our 2006, 2010, and 2014 rosters side by side and it's pretty much the same? Minus we don't have a McBride level striker. Reyna's been replaced by Bradley. While Dempsey has taken over for Donovan. Guzan is also no Howard/Keller I think we're just as solid through most positions but, apart from Dempsey, lack that guy who can be a difference maker. I also think the women are a good example of what was possible. Through round robin and the first knockouts, they played ugly, typically American soccer. But then something happened against Germany. Ball was on the ground and they were knocking it around well. I think the men can also play this way, because it's the simplest way to play soccer. Someone just has to hold their feet to the fire and make them play this way.
My response to you both is in this quote: "Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult." -- Carl von Clausewitz Combining effectively is tough enough on a club team, but even more difficult with comparitive strangers on a national team.
True even brain surgery can seem simple to a brain surgeon. If I worked on man defense for two seasons with the same guys in every practice. We could play it and win playing it. But not with a national team because the players are not playing it with their club teams. I think Germany won the World Cup because most of their team was divided among two club teams Dortmund and Bayern Munich. Then they added dangerous players finishers from other teams.
I don't know the roster and training rules of international soccer... Is there any reason that Klinsmann couldn't take 23 players and make them exclusively USMNT players for a few years? Maybe loan them out once in a while to a team, but for 80% of their training and games, they are with the USMNT players and coaching staff?
A great idea but they make a living by playing for their pro teams. I guess you could take guys that wouldn't make a pro squad but then you're giving up on too much talent.
Isn't this a majority of the case? I think with Tim Howard, if we had, say, Luis Suarez we could've made it past Belgium and maybe another round.
It is a good suggestion, and no rule prohibs it, but... 1. Where would USSF find the money to pay the labor costs for the best players? (Assuming the players were willing to leave the clubs.) 2. You cannot take only 23 to have 23 available players. Probably about 35-40 would be a better group size. The push for MLS in the early 90's was so that USSF didn't have to do this for the men. USSF does this for the WNT when there is no women's professional league. A similar approach is to use all the national team players as a "club" in a domestic professional league. These ideas are more suitable for the women as no one is getting rich from women's soccer. In men's soccer, however, there is a lot of money for salaries and a big demand for the better players, e.g., internationals.
Most countries pull players from many different clubs. Spain also based its team on two clubs (Real Madrid and Barcelona of course). Of course the two club strategy works better if you use players from 2 super clubs, but still you get the advantage of their club experience putting the national team further up the learning curve compared to most other nations. Maybe someday we will be able to find an outstanding CB or striker pair at one of the MLS clubs.
Doubtful. Only because we are still relying on these strikers to emerge organically instead of "making" them. And, I'm afraid, from what I saw at State Cup this year (small sample size) is that teams are still relying on blazing fast strikers. And really technical players are "stuck" in midfield because they can make more of an impact there. Jozey is a classic case for me. He was prodigious scorer, until he wasn't. He ate up sub-senior competition because of his natural gifts but when he got to the big leagues he doesn't have the nuance and striker sense to score buckets of goals. We've had Mathis (doomed by an injury) and McBride, who IMO were really good strikers and finishers.
I'm interested by your comment elessar. I'm not involved with competitive soccer (especially cream of crop). Are you saying there aren't a whole lot of back to goal/hold the ball up forwards being played at that level? Genuinely curious.
If you want to call that type a "center forward", no I don't think there's any/many. If you're playing with a hold up striker then you have to have players coming from the midfield to combine with. You don't see that much either. It's either coming in with crosses or the forward outruns everybody, even his teammates. Every level, high school college, you see very little combinations in the attacking third. But if you're talking cream of the crop, I'd say there's probably at least two maybe three levels of play above where I'm coaching: top regional clubs, the DAs, and the truly elite players. We probably have 6 to 12 players club-wide that are developmental academy caliber but beyond that hard to say because I don't get to see the national pool. When I say "top regional clubs" their teams are stacked with players like our best ones at every position.
Shame they are still playing youth tactics which are based on exploiting early bloomers. Role-player-forwards like a "target" forward are just a crutch to make up for technical weaknesses. That should be limited to teams that need to win competitions. Ideally you want players who are well rounded and can play well with back to goal and facing goal too. They should be able to show as a target and also play like a second striker (or attacking midfielder) or wide like winger. So why train youth teams to specialize in "target forward" attacking systems. That is really a team tactic that benefits team development. It is not good for the players, forwards or midfielders, to specialize while they are still supposed to be developing as players. They should improve their weakness rather than just exploit their strengths.
I would add Charlie Davis to that short list. I had high hopes after the 2009 confederations cup. Probably everyone did. While he was below a lot of people's radar, I also had high expectations for Ben Olsen prior to his rebirth as a holding midfielder after the horrible ankle injury.
From what I remember of Charlie Davis was that, again, he's like the guys I described above. A lot of speed, not a lot of nuance. I do this simple test as my first look on strikers: how many goals do they score over their career. Are they consistent? Are they prodigious? Both? Davis, Altidore (apart from one season) they are anemic goal scorers. Players like Alan Shearer just knew how to find the back of the net. Miroslave Klose. Etc.
I think there are 2 basic types of finishing like there are 2 basic ways to penetrate: 1v1 play or combination play. As a result, you have some forwards who don't score often off 1v1 play, but score often by finishing passes to them. Sometimes they are called poachers. In any case, the abilities of your team mates and the style of play are going to determine how many quality chances a striker gets. So you can have strikers performing differently as far as goal production goes for club and for country. You also have the complication that top European clubs will have 3 or 4 top quality strikers and rotate them through all competitions. I would think the number of goals or shots on frame vs. chances would be a better indicator than total goals scored, but I suspect you would have to gather that information yourself. I did notice you said "first" indicator.
I think there is a reason why most American players can't score off 1v1 play. They can't beat people off their first step. Plus they don't have a great shot. Clint Mathis had that first step speed. Then he had another ACL and his first step speed went out the window. After that he had to rely another players pass to score.
Agree that I wouldn't train a youth player as only a target player. But I would think at that higher youth levels that players should be more than capable to play with back to goal at least some of the time instead of relying primarily on speed which is how I interpreted elessar's post. Unless you are one of the select few, at some point you aren't going to be that much faster than everyone else and if you haven't developed other areas of your game you are screwed.