Can Lletget make it back to the national team this year? Will Zardes come back from obscurity? Will anyone else on LA emerge to be a national team star? So full of questions with the brightest hope being Lletget. One note: those that said that the USMNT missing the world cup was "good for them" - I had an interesting conversation at work this week. I work for one of the major sponsors of the World Cup (I'm no longer at EA but somewhere else), and they are struggling to get the US to pony up marketing dollars to support their worldwide campaign. Our Latin American region has contributed, as has Europe for obvious reasons, but even with the Hispanic market the United States has poured way less dollars into the campaign this year, which means fewer dollars promoting the game in the US. And by fewer dollars I mean tens of millions. A major TV campaign that would have aired a ton here, won't. It also won't feature any American athletes for obvious reasons. An example of monetary repercussions of the miss. It's real, folks.
Couldn't reply to the 2017 thread, and my immediate thought was I somehow got banned. Panicked a little bit. Anyway, I am starting to understand USA fan's disappointment with seeing Zardes in an XI. After our disaster last season where he played defense, midfield, and striker, and managed to look bad in every spot, I really wonder how he starts for the national team. I mean he wasn't even good enough for our club. Did he just suddenly refind his form? Would rather have seen someone else out there.
January camp starts are based on your form in camp. Presumably, it was good. Sapong with a good start, same with Opara. EDIT: I know Sapong is older, but he has looked very very good in his starts. He'll be useful in this cycle. Won't make the WC, but will be useful.
Meh first half minus some brightness from Sapong and solidness from Opara. Classic January friendly, but damn it's nice to watch soccer again. And see StubHub! EDIT: Oh, and a nice Hamid save.
Meh. Second half even worse than the first. I got to watch 90 minutes of soccer and Opara looked good. Steffen still seems promising. Adams seems like a headless chicken, but he's young. Morris still looks overly beefy but did some interesting stuff in the 2nd half. Apparently one of our next friendlies is France. *wince* Need to start showing some promise to get the bad taste out of everyone's mouths. Haven't seen it yet.
I didn't think that Zardes played well from an offensive perspective and got beaten badly once on defense. On the other hand while Arriola was much more dynamic and worked with Polster better, the right side became a defensive liability for the US in the second half.
Game was dreadful, and it's not surprising. Most of these guys are average to above average MLSers with a few good ones sprinkled in. Unsurprisingly the good ones (Opara, Hamid, Arriola, and Rowe) were the ones who showed they could play. Must be so frustrating to make a good pass and see Morris, Zardes, or Roldan completely mess up the first touch. Morris actually has talent though. His runs off the ball are very intelligent, but his first touch, and finishing as really poor. I want to see more of Hamid, and I hope Steffen continues to improve. Other than that, I can't really justify playing someone like Opara over Gonzalez, Besler, Carter-Vickers, Miazga, Ream, Cameron, or Birnbaum.
Agree with most of the comments. Hard to take much from the game, between guys being inexperienced internationally, inexperienced with eachother and in pre-season form. Pretty inauspicious game all-around. I didn't think Zardes played particularly well.
I thought Morris was a cut above the rest - he was more athletic than most of the players on the field and actually created shots from almost nothing. The rest were serviceable for passing the ball around but few were a threat to penetrate and score. Well actually Sapong was the most athletic but he plays out of control most of the the time. Opara was solid but Zimmerman wasn't very good at all, nor our right fullback in the 2nd half (don't remember who) - he got embarrassed repeatedly. Hamid was Hamid - very good most of the time but still inconsistent. He was getting a lot of praise from the commentators for his nice kick save but somehow they didn't notice or forgot to mention that the shot was the end of a play started by a Hamid blunder when passing out of the back. Early on it seemed to me that there were no really dangerous attackers in this game and it was likely to end up 0-0. Turns out that with the pk we were a bit lucky that was the case.
The US backline stayed the same the entire match. So the right back was Matt Polster from the Fire. The biggest difference was that Polster often overlapped Arriola and Arriola didn't cover. By contrast Polster seldom overlapped Zardes and for the most part Gyasi played more conservatively. Note: I don't think Zardes played well, more that the US attacked more in the second half vs playing a counter attacking strategy in the fist.
I agree. It was evident that our midfield was leaving too much open space in front of and around Polster - he had little defensive help on his side of the field. Polster made the problem worse with some of his own positioning decisions. Worst I remember was him stepping up to a dribbler that Arriola (?) had pretty much covered while leaving an opposing winger wide open to receive a pass and get behind the defense.
Why do I think the thrown-together teams at the combine played more cohesive soccer than the Nats did last night?
Just remembered there is a game today. v. Paraguay. FS1 @ 4:30 PDT. I hear that Dave is trotting out a very young squad.
It's fun to watch - no egos involved. I'm liking this Saief guy, our No. 10. He's definitely a keeper out there.
Well, Dave may be giving us a look at the changing of the guard. Agree Saief was a standout. Thought he was playing outside, not as a number 10. In any event he was fun. In fact, the whole team was more fun to watch than the recent editions of the Nats. I know there was nothing at stake so they could play freely, but there was a certain joy of youth there that was attractive. I am actually looking forward to the coming friendlies more than the World Cup. And they were not contaminated by the Klinsi experience.
Future looks good as long as we get a good manager. Lots of young talents out there. Even if 1/4th make it, we will have a solid team.
Also really liked Saief. Had ideas and wasn't afraid to create. Also seriously impressed by Tyler Adams who I've now seen in CCL and here. NYRB have a talent on their hands. Steffen looked good, as did CCV and Miazga (minus a snaffoo towards the end). One player who didn't look so hot was Yedlin. Bobby Wood was clearly rusty so will cut him some slack. Overall, agree with the above, fun to watch and a bit refreshing that some of the vitriol was gone.
#U17 | Last game in Argentina! 🇦🇷🇲🇽 1-1 @Argentina's U17⚽️ @efrain_alvarez1 #SoyMéxico pic.twitter.com/v79vTkh5ts— Mexican National Team (@miseleccionmxEN) April 13, 2018 Not US flavor but
Given we have more MNT players on the squad now (and they're actually going to the WC) should we create an El Tri thread?
Actually a "National Team" thread might be more relevant. After all Zlatan could join Sweden and IIRC other Galaxy players have received at least occasional call-ups.
U-17 @LAGalaxyAcademy defender Kobe Hernandez went 90 minutes for the U.S. U-17's in their 1-0 victory over India today at the Sportchain Cup in Spain.— Adam Serrano (@AdamSerrano) April 16, 2018
🇺🇸👏 #LAGalaxyAcademy's Danny Vega, Christian Torres, Jonathon Lemus, Micheal Hernandez, Walter Portalos and Kai Djerbaka will participate in @ussoccer_ynt U-14's three-day training camp in Chula Vista: https://t.co/Q8SAfBBYFJ pic.twitter.com/klXFThAeBo— LA Galaxy Academy (@LAGalaxyAcademy) April 19, 2018
The U.S. U20 MNT is heading to Florida and Honduras starting today.Roster: https://t.co/HTSu7kjT4C— Travis Clark (@travismclark) May 9, 2018 Midfield: Alex Mendez (LA Galaxy; Los Angeles, Calif.), Aristotle Zarris (LA Galaxy; Sarasota, Fla.) Striker:Ulysses Llanez Jr. (LA Galaxy; Lynwood, Calif.),