Results like qualifying for the WC and doing well once there matter, because it means they have the mental component too. If they only play nice in friendlies and throwaway games, but fail in the important ones, how can we know the trend won't continue once they are adults?
During this cycle, the U17s are 21-5-7 including friendlies. In so called tournaments, they have finished first in the Panama Invitational, Katalinski Tournament, Aegean Cup, and the Nike International. They came in 4th out of 16 at the Copa Mexico and showed poorly at the Nordic Cup with their second team. In tournaments with their presumed first team, their record is 14-3-2 (with losses to Brazil, Portugal, and Ecuador). In those 19 games, Haji Wright has 20 goals, Christian Pulisic has 12 goals and 9 assists, Pierre da Silva has 8 assists, and Joe Gallardo has 7 goals and 5 assists (in only 12 games). They are performing well in tournaments. This is a different group than the last one to fail to qualify for the U17 World Cup.
They hold promise, no one is disputing that. But I want to see them achieve something close to what Donovan's U17 got: fourth place in a youth World Cup. No one can deny that it was an important moment. The start of what has been, up until now, our Golden Generation.
If the claim is the level of talent on this youth team is unprecedented then reasonably the team should go on to win something. Enough individuals of sufficient talent should be available to win something. Donovan and Beasley lead the '99 group to 4th place in the WC and the U23s to 4th place in 2000.
Maybe, but there are always other factors. The current coach is a huge factor with this group. Its just a matter of when not if he'll do something to hurt this team. He did it last cycle and that was a big reason why they didn't even qualify for the U-17 WC.
Our team looks to be capable of that but if you saw the last 20 or so of the Panama game you saw some classic US soccer. Bypass midfield, play to our towering, physically dominant CF, try to win the knockdown, attack quickly, press if we lose it, counter hard on any turnovers won with the press, defend, rinse, repeat. That's not all bad, if we do this really well and add in a bit more class playing through midfield we're Dortmund or Atletico, Haji is our Costa and Pulisic is our Gotze... with the U-17s. Getting it to work together like that is something that has rarely happened with our youth teams.
Thinking more about the results side of this discussion, here is our performance in major international competitions; performance and games played are included for each tournament: I added the color highlights to track the progression of an age group. There are exceptions (Adu, the U-20 Wonder comes to mind), but the core of the player pool tracks from U-17 to U-20 to U-23. I included senior team results, but did not highlight, as key players' tenures last multiple cycles. A few things come to mind: - We're a fairly consistent U-17 team, with last year's loss to Honduras and missed qualification an outlier. - U-20 performance has been below historical average for the past three cycles. - Olympic qualifying is HARD, with only two teams from the region advancing instead of four for the U-17s/U-20s The other thing that jumps out is the squad list each year. Maybe 1/3 of the players on a U-17 team will be capped by the senior team, and via a general eye test on Wikipedia, it looks like that would be the high end for all countries. Further work would be to track the player turnover throughout the cycle. Finally, to bring this back to the question of the "Future of the national team?", I think there are actually two answers: 1) Will this U-17 team be the future? We'll see - anything beyond the Round of 16 would show progress (where have I heard that before...) History would suggest that 6 or so of these players will receive a cap, and who knows on the rest (the range is anywhere from "solid pro" to "completely out of the game"). 2) Will *all players* in this U-17 age group be the future? I say yes, because the number of players in a professional environment is higher than ever in this country. These happen to be the best 18-23 players right now, but they are not the ONLY players training at a high level.