Given that their wingers play for Eintracht Frankfurt and Hoffenhem I wouldn’t take any bets he wouldn’t.
What are you even talking about. Most of our team are dual nationals in the FIFA sense. I suspect even Donovan has an Irish grandmother who could have gotten him an Irish passport or something. Altidore could play for Haiti, etc.
I think the gap can be explained by the switch in the primary method of acquisition from the superdraft to home-grown talent. 2012 and 2013 for instance the main way of acquiring players was still the superdraft but we also started to see teams signing a significant number of academy players. College grads would turn pro at 22 or 23 while academy players would sign at 17 or 18 years-old leaving a 5 year-gap between the two sets of players. Since then we've seen the average age of MLS debutants slip dramatically and even college players are entering the draft after their freshman or sophomore years. So maybe you could consider the early 2k teens a transitionary period, hopefully the outcome of which will be a whole new generation of international quality George Washington let us down by renouncing his British citizenship leading ultimately to the tyranny of the orange one.
I guess....when i watched Brazil this WC it seemed to me like everything on attack was funneled through NEymar....a lot of standing around waiting for him to do something "Amazing"...same thing with argentina and messi, imo..... whatever the case, i find it weird and hard to beleive that countries like brazil and argentina had so few offensive players look decent this WC..... my conclusion is that both teams thought messi and neymar would just do everything on offense....which is kinda what i am getting at with this thread. but maybe you are right and neymar and messi werent made the focal points of both of their teams and expected to do most of the work i.e. scoring goals for bith teams.
well i think the gap is based on less chances for americans in MLS in general. now that teams are bringing in more and better foreign talent to MLS and there are less open slots on the field for Americans, it's no surprise that less americans are breaking through in MLS.....did anyone honestly expect anything else to happen???
Donovan's dad is Canadian, Tim Howard's mother is Hungarian and Stuart Holden is Scottish. It goes on.
But as people have previously mentioned, there will be number 560 American (or nationalised) slots by 2022. I think the Red Bulls started 7 Americans last night.
The Union started 7 Americans on Saturday against Atlanta. There were a lot od American players on the field in the FC Dallas-RSL game too.
So I guess the question would be why are you for belgium building their team around their best players...but the us shouldn't do that. Also can you come up with a team that doesn't do that and has done well. great examples of teams not building around their best players belgium 2018: yeah they don't go through Hazard and De bruyne at all and they really don't try to get the ball into the big guy Lukaku and I mean that are focused on not getting hazard in space to run at defenders. Germany 2014: absolutely didn't play to their best players at all. Neuer stayed in goal no sweeper keeper for him, they didn't use the two great dmid Schweinsteiger and Khedira to be in front of the defense allowing the front four to attack and to use their passing abilities to start the counter. Spain 2010: I mean most people probably thought spain would play like barcelona and go with the tiki taka quick passing attack highlighting the skills of Busquets, iniesta and xavi all brilliant passers...oh wait they did play that way lol. I think you are confusing a few different things and coming up with a conclusion that really isn't a conclusion at all. I think you are watching a team like argentina and getting confused about what their problem is. The US needs to build around their best players. Every successful country does that and I think you are confusing that with 10 players standing around watching one player always with the ball. you have still failed to say how this would work. How would you empower player 23 lol? Players aren't equal and thats how life works sorry.
They sure went through marcelo and coutihno a lot...way too much to say it all went through neymar. Argentina's issue is that were terrible at dmid and had brutally slow cb. Also their three best players messi, higuain and dybala literally all play the same position and they couldn't figure out how to get them on the pitch at the same time. I know its easy in fifa 18 you just put two on the wings and it works great but in real life players play the way they know how and they'd just end up standing next to eachother.
Except the ones that went through Coutinho, Firmino, and especially Douglas Costa and Willian who were quite dangerous. Not sure which team you were watching, but it wasn't Brazil
To be honest, Belgium barely tried to get the ball upfield at all. They got their lucky goal and rode Courtois from there.
If we're throwing out players with a grandparent born abroad it might be tough to field much of a team. We'd even lose your beloved Zardes(Ghana) and Delgado(Mexico).
We're not "throwing out" players. I'm just suggesting some players are too good for USMNT and could be playing in the World Cup for other countries. Wouldn't you be getting a kick out of watching Pulisic playing with Modric v. England on Wednesday? Aron playing for Iceland in group?
Given the current state of affairs in our nation................Norway may in fact be a better place to live..........
My grandmother was from Wales but only because the nearest hospital was just across the border. She never admitted to it though, too ashamed.
It is instructive to see the difference between Ronaldo and Portugal and Messi and Argentina. Messi/Argentina seems to be what you want to avoid. Identifying a single player and then basing ever decision off of what that player wants. When the other team takes that player out; which can be done in a team sport, there is no Plan B because that player has never bought into a Plan B. Ronaldo seems fully bought into Portugal in a way Messi doesn't with Argentina. I'm sure some of the set up is tailored to him and he has a lot of say. But he is part of the team and if a team closes him down, he does things to help the team do Plan B. Pulisic is the focus of the thread but how we used him in this past Hex is not the problem. He was moved around and formations were changed not for him, but because of the players the team was built around: Jozy and Bradley. Bradley was the captain and the first name on the sheet. Every formation and midfield pairing was based on how he performed in it. If he performed badly, that partner was blamed and things changed to better suit Bradley. We ended the Hex in a 4-1-3-2, because Bradley simply couldn't play well in any other set up and... Because Jozy can't play well as a lone striker. Everyone knows it, it has been shown many times. So, every USA set up has to have two forwards. Who has played 4-1-3-2 at this World Cup? I can't think of any. What club team plays that way? Again, I can't think of any Champions League team that plays with two forwards and a single DM. Find a coach who shares a vision with the GM. Have them come up with a system. Find where Pulisic, and 10 other players, can play well in that system. Don't pick players that HAVE to play and then juggle everything around trying to get those players to play well. Pulisic's main strength is that he creates goals when he has the ball in or just outside the box. Getting him the ball in that part of the field can be Plan A and it should be. But just giving him the ball is not useful because he is not a player that creates in the center of the field. Or at least, to the level that his club would ever consider playing him there. As we are seeing with TFC, Bradley is still a good MLS player, but he wasn't a player to build everything around.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Daily Telegraph 18 MAY 2016 • 7:25PM The number of English players starting matches in the Premier League this season plunged by almost 15 per cent to its lowest-ever figure, Inside Sport can reveal. Following the staging of Manchester United’s postponed final league game against Bournemouth on Tuesday night, the overall figures for the campaign show that just 31 per cent of all starters were qualified to represent England. That is down from 36.3 per cent last season, with an average of just over 68 English players starting each game week, compared to almost 80 in 2014-15. The theory that a numerical drop in the number of English starters in the Premier League is detrimental to the national team arguably faces its biggest test, therefore, at the Euros. If England repeat their 2014 World Cup flop with a team including the likes of Kane, Alli and Vardy, the hypothesis will be reinforced. But if the squad secure the country’s first major quarter-final for a decade – or fare even better – it will provide ammunition to those who believe their fortunes on the international stage depend almost exclusively on the quality, not quantity, of players available for selection. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well it didn't work out at the Euros, but considering every England player is drawn from the Premier League they're not doing too badly in the World Cup.
At this point, serious players shouldn’t be spending time in college. There need to be enough development and academies for the serious players aiming to go pro to go that way. College soccer is a mess. Lose those five years and your potential is gone.