The best teams are a COLLECTION of talent. The teams that build around a single star usually suck. Neymar, ronaldo, messi all have ZERO world cup titles. meanwhile look at the teams that win world cups they have a lot of equal players who are all talented but no alpha. Look at germany 2014, spain 2010, france 2002, Belguim 2018 etc.... these are all teams with a bunch of different threats. opposing teams cant focus on just one player and hope to win like they could against messi, neymar etc the goal should be to get as many possible dangerous players on the field at once. (this is why i hated the 3 dmid approach under Klinsmann - it meant the US would start from a deficit i.e. # of actually dangerous attackers) I favor a FLAT HIERARCHY over the tradtional way the US has done it recently. Whereby the "spine" of the team (Bradley, altidore, howard etc) are favored and kept in the lineup no matter how they play. all that said, i think Pulisic is a great player and will be an important and most likely best player for years to come for USA. I just think it will be a huge mistake to make him the SOLE FOCAL Point of the team like Arena and JK seemed like they were doing. basically, a 6 headed monster is more dangerous than a 1 headed monster...
*watches as USSF builds the entire team and marketing around Pulisic for the next cycle.* *USA fails to reach Qatar on a last minute goal from St. Kitts and Nevis.*
You're a victim of the talent on hand. Pulisic will be the focus until there's more Pulisic level players. There's no one close.
he might be the best player but that doesnt mean building a team solely around him is the way to go..... he's good but he's not the only international level player in the pool. the USMNT just tied France in France without Pulisic in a game France wanted to win, mind you. the 2018 strategy was too reliant on Pulisic and CP and the team suffered as a result. the front 6 needs to be comprised of players who are ALL goal dangerous....like France, belgium etc....
I'm basically just saying build a circle shaped team not a pyramid shaped one...even if pulisic is the best player.
Brazil is a poor example for your point, as Neymar has a far superior supporting cast at the international level to Messi or Ronaldo and consequently are not as wholly reliant on him. As for the other two, if Argentina and Portugal had other players nearly as good as Messi or Ronaldo they'd be less one-dimensional. And keep in mind those teams made the last WC final and won the last Euro respectively. If guys like Weah, Sargent, and others turn out as well as we hope they will then we will not be one-dimensionally reliant on Pulisic. If they don't, then we will. At the international level, you have the talent that you have. If one player is head and shoulders above the rest of your attacking options, which at the moment Pulisic is, then you have little choice but to build the team around him.
I think certain players you can build a team around. Iniesta, Modric, Zidane...usually #10's who are the puppet masters. Pulisic is not that...he is a winger and these attempts at putting him at CM or a false 9 are going to fail miserably. Put the man at the position he is best at and plays professionally on a daily basis. Seems simple to me.
i wasnt impressed with Brazil....like at all. I was shocked to hear everyone think they were the favorites in russia because when i watch them play they are nothing special....and dont come close to the brazil teams of ronaldo, bebeto etc.... they sucked last world cup too the second neymar and that cb got injured. they lost 7-1 to germany....take donovan and altidore away from the USA ...they aint losing 7-1 to anybody! all i saw was funnel everything through neymar...it didnt work and never will. (at the world cup level...which is all im talking about...in friendlies an d qualifying it is fine but i dont care about those games). i disagree with you...there are always choices of how to build a team...even given the same players to choose from. in the USA, i think you have the "prevailing view" i.e. how teams are built....and i predict that the next coach will build a team around pulisic and cater everything to maximizing pulisic...which i think is a mistake. i much the prefer the "chain is only as strong as its weakest link"....over the "shine a spotlight on your brightest jewel"...if those analogies make any sense.
If we didn't play Pulisic centrally we'd have finished the Hex with far fewer points. We were atrocious when Pulisic was stuck wide and reliant on our hoofballing robots to get him the rock.
well i think there were other options in the pool....that couldve produced a much better team. but i agree that if you play the players that JK and Arena did....it forced Pulisic to carry the team. that's kinda my point though..... i just dont think that the problem was the pool...i think the problem was the coaching and the people picking the lineups/strategy.
I think you are stretching it a bit. Sure, France wanted to win but must of all they didn't want to get hurt days before the WC, besides we circle the wagons. Peru played them even for most of their game is Peru that much superior to us?
no i think this WC has shown that the gap between national teams is not what it once was.....i honestly think with the right manager, the USMNT couldve won this WC....at least made the semis over a team like croatia (speaking of which they could really use pulisic at the moment!) and once you make the semis...anything can happen. im not trying to use these recently friendlies as proof of anything.....maybe i shouldnt have even mentioned the france game. (besides i think giroud was trying pretty hard in that game) i was just trying to say that the USMNT wouldnt collapse if pulisic isnt there...there's plenty of other talent, imo. my point is just that building a team around a talismanic figure is not a good strategy. furthmore, funneling everything through 1 star is poor strategy - even for teams that only have 1 star player. the best teams are TEAMS. not a star with a supporting cast. and i think in 4 years time there will be plenty of players that will be ready to be pulisic's equal if the USMNT is smart about how they use the next few years and dont fall into the trap of putting pulisic on a pedestal and thinking/planning he will just carry the team.
LOL. Talent matters a lot and we don’t have the minimum efficient level to compete for a title. Would CP definitely start for Croatia?
The only point I see here, and it is valid, is we need an entire NT setup that favors form over "talent". Sure, Pulisic is the best talent we've ever had...but we can't just install him as captain and stick him in the lineup for the next ten years, no questions asked. We just did that. The biggest issue in missing this awesome WC was the sole focus on our "stars", or as BS supporters referred to them, "big guns",when they were more like water pistols. There was never a question the lineup would include Jozy (despite scoring in one Hex game), Captian Lion MB, one of the old man goalies, Backpass Beaz sometimes, Dempsey, etc. We were beholden to these guys because they used to be good. That can't happen anymore. We have dozens, probably hundreds, of players that could have qualified for the WC out of this pathetic region that gave the world Panama. Squad rotation and fostering competition means the hunger never stops, and while it might not be our "best" players selected, it'll be the most driven. Shoot, look at England. Ditched a bunch of the older guys, brought in younger, fresher, hungrier players, and are reaping the rewards. Bruce would have started Hart, Wilshire, Rooney, and Walcott.
England has the current champions in the U17 and U20 WC it was expected they would inject new blood into their senior team. My understanding is that very few youngsters from those championship teams made it for this WC. England will be a force to reckon with for the next 8 years or more.
Yes, they will be a very good team for the next decade. Not sure how that happened (if they copied the structural changes Germany/Belgium, and then France, undertook), but it is certainly impressive. Regardless, not really my point, as they will generally always have talent that is far superior to ours, at every age group. My point, and maybe I should have just not mentioned England, is that they won nothing/underachieved with their older, more experienced, more talented "Lions". We failed as well, in more spectacular fashion. Continued reliance on older players without competition, just because they were once good, or make this many millions of dollars, or played in Europe for years, or stopped 20 shots against Belgium 4 years ago, is not the way forward (and was never the way forward, something only a few people recognized).
The only structural change was to allow the wealthier clubs to raid junior clubs for a fixed fee. Tottenham created the model academy in the 1980s under David Pleat hence the domination of the English starting XI. I think Chelsea employs a throw the pasta against the wall strategy and see what sticks. They had 36 players out on loan last season plus a fully staffed U23 team. Which brings me to another point, using continental and international teams as feeder clubs, often in Belgium and Holland known for their world-class coaching. Liverpool use Genk, Chelsea Vitesse and CFG have just bought a big chunk of Girona.
a circle shaped team instead of a pyramid...awesome lol you have to depend on ur better players thats how things go you can't force guys that can't play to be better then they are.
i think you dont get how these coaches "solve the puzzle" of team building. they find their "stars" - their MB, jozy, and howards etc - then they find the role players taht fit around them. I'm against that approach. I think every player should be treated equally in the team-building phase...and that there shouldnt be a hierarchy within the team that comes from the top....WHETHER the players "deserve" it or not. yeah sure some players are gonna perform well and others arent....but what I dont want to see is that be the plan from the very beginning as I feel that the hierarchical appraoch to team-building inherently leads to that type of sitaution o the field.
no...dont build the team around anyone. build a team of equals not a hierarchy of stars-vets-rookies.
There is always going to be some level of hierarchy regardless of how you 'build' the team. You need the 'stars' its crazy to think you can somehow ignore them. the question is how would you pick ur team with this 'everyone is equal' I mean how do you pick players without some plan or stars. I mean pick a team like belgium...you would leave lukaku, debruyne, hazard, kompany, courtois out? who would you have in their place and how do you think that would work? I mean imagine france going into this world cup and saying 'team first we don't want to build around stars'...and leaving off mbappe, pogba, griezmann I mean do you think they'd be better?