Well that is a low bar. Outside of Long and Altidore, none of them looked like they really belonged. It was a pretty talentless bunch that was tough to watch. Once Arriola and Morris had run around a lot Bradley had turned the ball over and got best multiple times against Mexico, there was nobody on the bench I wanted to come in beside the lone non-MLS player.
You are welcome to your opinion of course but the thought of expecting to lose to any CONCACAF team at home is sad and bodes poorly for qualification (although we should still qualify).
It’s not about “expecting to lose“. It’s just understanding that sports teams WILL lose games. It also depends on the opponent. Lose to Mexico? Not the end of the world. Lose to Trinidad? Panic button.
You are welcome to your opinion but for me our expectation is to beat Mexico at home if we expect to be a team that can exit the group stages at a WC. Losing to Mexico at home is terrible - “end of the world” is hyperbole.
Two Things: 1) progress isn't linear. People tend to focus on what they view as the first couple of conditions and the final step. The first couple of conditions are a) population (of players, boys of a certain age, etc) and b) money. Focusing on this leads to the age old question of why isn't the US, Japan, S Korea, China, Canada, Australia, etc good at soccer? The final step is top flight league quality, opportunities in that league, etc from which to assemble a national side. Do we have enough spots for domestics? Why aren’t they shining? And so on. The sausage gets made in a bunch of middle steps. Those middle steps drive the output much more than any of the three things I mentioned. 2) other countries are improving as well. Especially in South America. Or a country like Belgium. Or hell, even little tiny Iceland. Because they already had the ingredients--or the potential to easily acquire those ingredients--in all of those intermediate steps to make more (and better) sausage. If you were to contrast the US to countries that have really stepped up their game in the past 15 years or so, we have a ton of production bottlenecks. They don't. Because decades of culture, infrastructure investments, institutional knowledge, etc. And as soon as transfer fees really took off, it made a lot more sense for them to put down the final ingredient (financial commitment), leverage all of their infrastructure (club footprint, tacit/institutional soccer knowledge from the ground up, etc), and produce players capable of generating really nice fees. The ROI began to make a lot more sense once two things occurred: Bosman got lifted and the talent in the former Eastern Bloc dried up when investment did, punctuated by their last great generation c Nedved. It was a big vacuum that was begging for Latin America and medium sized Euros (like Portugal, Switzerland, and Belgium) to emerge. What we need, working backwards from MLS...and I'm simplifying steps here: 1) a good footprint of reserve and 2nd tier (USL) clubs providing a high enough quality standard so that we can more reliably assess a younger player's ability to make the jump to MLS regular/key sub category. 2) development academies of sufficient maturity to enhance the quality of the top 5% or so of the "standard" club players. 3) grassroots/early stage teaching that emphasizes technical development/spatial understanding rather than score. 4) a better tacit understanding among U littles of what soccer "is/looks like". Which unfortunately only comes when enough adults have played the game at a fairly high standard. Improvements at each step compound and provide exponential quality growth at a benchmarked standard. All of those take time. What this kind of looks like, focusing only on the earliest two steps. The traditional/status quo/current path: imagine a metro with 24 clubs. Ignore recruitment, youth academies, and all that to make this simpler. Each side of town might have 500 kids scattered across 6 clubs at any age group for whom soccer will be their “primary” sport. U7 U6, U8, whatever. After a few years we take the top sixth of those kids in those leagues on the Westside of town and throw them on club teams. 14 kids each for 6 clubs. In theory, they’ll progress more quickly than those left behind because they’re more technical, think faster, etc. And now they can work together to develop patterns, learn to play faster, experiment to understand concepts collectively, etc without the less skilled kids bunking up their ability to function collectively. Around 14, the top 2-3 players from each of those 6 clubs will play together. We’ll call them Westside United. The top sixth of that original one sixth. The middle half will continue on with reconstituted teams. The bottom third of that original one sixth culled from rec leagues will drop out. Now what happens with better tacit understanding (via cultural immersion) going in, better grassroots coaching and better coaching at the tween/early teen stages? The amount of quality produced grows exponentially. If you move the entire initial rec group (before club teams are formed) a half a standard deviation up the curve, the quality of your initial club selections goes up tremendously. Your initial 1 in 6 recreation player standard would be found in 1 in 3 players. Or said differently, your new 1 in 6 standard is as good as if you only took 1 in 15 kids through the club process under the current situation. And because those players are already better technically, and with better coaching focusing on technical/tactical/cognitive things (rather than winning), they’ll progress more than our current club players do. Another half standard deviation of relative improvement from 9 to 14 means that the baseline club player, at 14, will be actually be better than the fringe player who currently runs off to join Westside United at 14. Maybe not athletically, but in all other respects. The pool has grown 7 fold. That has follow on effects for academy type players from 14-18 too. Because everyone is playing at a higher standard, they are a bit closer at 14 to a “finished product”. It is easier to determine if someone’s athletic superiority will translate to higher stages of the game. It’s easier to determine if a player is at their cognitive/tactical limit. Kids whose brains simply can no longer keep up as the game is played more precisely and more quickly. It is also easier to see if a kid who doesn’t athletically shine, but who just “gets everything”, will be able to continue to use those marvelous feet and that marvelous brain to keep progressing. When you have that type of player (and club) density, and more or less that’s what the Colombias, Belgiums, Chiles, etc have always had—it is much easier to “turn on the money tap” at the mid-late teen development level to produce quality. MLS isn’t the problem. MLS has never been the problem. No amount of foreign player limits, expansion, contraction, making the league better or making the league worse will solve that problem. Not more than nibbling at the margins anyway. The problem is everything well before then.
The Hex is a marathon, not a sprint, and road teams tend to treat is as such. They play more to keep a point than they do to take 3. The Gold Cup final is a pure sprint. Nothing to lose really. No long term implications on a table if a team comes out more aggressively, gets caught and loses. That's why a Gold Cup loss to MEX at home shouldn't bother people as much as MEX getting 3 points in CBUS or wherever in the Hex.
On top of that, using the Gold Cup as an indicator of how we will do against Mexico in 2-3 years is, IMO, silly. I would be surprised if there was ever a 4 year period in our soccer history in which the national team changed nearly as much as this one is likely to be changed. As much as people complain about the old guard remaining (I admit, there are a few), the team is very much different than it was at the end of last cycle. Never in our recent history can I remember so many young up and coming players. Not all will pan out of course but some will and they will push out some of the current players. Gonzalez will likely be the first to go. Bradley will probably take longer but his decline due to age will continue and eventually he will be gone. Arriola and Zardes won't "age out" but will be pushed out, or at least relegated to the bench by younger players as they make their mark. Someone, Gloster, Robinson or someone will push out Ream (please) and before you know it we will have Altidore competing with Sargent for the last spot on the roster. Meanwhile, while all the super young players are fighting to make the squad, the current "very young" players will stil be developing. They won't be the same players 3 years from now that they are now. (Adams, Pulisic and McKennie are all 20!) Josh Sargent is 19, Pomykal is 19, Think about that! Reggie Cannon is old at 21 but will just barely be entering his prime in 2022. You have to go to one of the elder statesmen like Tyler Boyd who is 24, John Brooks at 26, Aaron Long 26 if you want someone that will be in their prime in Qatar. (I am defining prime as 25-29ish years) I hope I am not wrong with my predictions. I really don't see how we will have anything but an incredibly young team in 2022. if for the wc in 2022, we have any more than 2-3 over 30 players and hopefully 1 at the most (Altidore), than we're screwed. If that happens, then I will admit that there really is a conspiracy to sabotage the performance of the USMNT.
I agree that we have an interesting a promising group of young players on their way up. But if experience has taught me anything, it’s that things often don’t pan out the way career trajectories would suggest. So, so many guys are going to get knocks they can’t recover from, club misplacements that stifle them, etc. Most of these were career altering injuries, but they’re all cautionary tales of extrapolating the future: Mathis, O’Brien, Beasley (who had a long career, but never really developed the touch to be the difference maker I thought he could have been), Feilhaber, Convey, Gibbs, Davies, Wood, etc. There’s a lot of “what could have beens” here. Particularly around the 2006 and 2010 cycles. Edit: let’s toss Spector and Holden on here too.
2-3 years? Doesn’t the Hex start in June 2020? The thought that losing a competitive home match to Mexico means nothing is flat out wrong. I still remember when we sent out a c team to the Gold Cup and got crushed by Mexico - it was the beginning of the (current) period where our home field advantage was effectively nullified.
So far, U20 Americans and Canadians in MLS have played 12,270 minutes in the league. With 211 of 408 games completed, that means they’re on pace to play 23,726 minutes, which would be an MLS record since the advent of the Homegrown Player Rule in 2008. pic.twitter.com/0avJxNmJyw— natfan9.bsky.social (@NatFan9) July 1, 2019
Yup. I'd just add on to say that MLS is an entertainment BUSINESS. Clubs in MLS are developing domestic talent for one of two reasons. To aid in their goal of winning trophies and to generate income (ticket sales, advertising, player sales to Europe/Mexico). The development of domestic talent for the USMNT should be a happy byproduct of a healthy player development pipeline in MLS. FC Dallas isn't developing Reggie Cannon, Paxton Pomykal, etc. for the USMNT. They're developing them for FC Dallas. The USMNT profiting is of secondary concern to FCD. There's been an enormous investment increase from MLS over the last couple of years in youth and player development. So the talent is on the way. We're seeing it at a couple of forerunner clubs first (NYRB, RLS, Philly, Dallas, etc.) But there are a lot of clubs really investing behind the scenes. We're at the front of a wave. We have the tweet about with the amount of minutes played this year. Make no mistake: Clubs aren't giving kids those minutes out of the kindness of their hearts. The youngsters coming thru academies are much more "MLS ready" than in previous generations. Paxton Pomykal was more MLS-ready than previous FCD #10s like Danny Garcia and Bryan Leyva were. Jesus Ferreira is more MLS ready than Ruben Luna or Coy Craft. Edwin Cerrillo and Brandon Servania were ready for MLS play from day 1. Clubs aren't giving domestic youngsters more minutes because they want to develop them for the USMNT. They're giving them minutes because they're able to help them win MLS games right now in 2019.
That tweet has a great set of datapoints throughout. One of them that really caught my eye was the percent of minutes going to U20 by league. MLS is squarely between the Big 4-5 and the elite “finishing school” leagues like Belgium and the Netherlands. If more of the clubs can duplicate the FCD approach, that should boost MLS immensely. More U20s bringing the entire product up a notch in quality, which likely has the follow on effect of allowing others to more accurately estimate The translation of MLS success to success in the higher UEFA leagues, which then means more transfers at higher fees. For the sake of MLS and the MNT, that’s where this needs to go.
I am having a hard time reconciling a lot of views in this thread, but these two stand out. First, it is MLS isnt the problem, but then suggest MLS would be boosted immensely if teams duplicated the "best" team? MLS fans are constantly patting themselves on the back any time they do something well. The numbers improved from a horrible level. I'm not sure why the league isnt focused on being a development league, which is what they need to do to i,prove the quality of the league. Their minutes are well below the top developmental leagues, so they have a ways to go. Three teams make up over half the minutes. MLS is very much part of the problem. They have a monopoly on the sport and are only starting to figure some things out. I find it hard to think that they dont have an interest in the success in the USMNT as it benefits them in many ways, but even if you assume they dont, their lack of ability or slowness to solve these business means they are much further from the success they could have as a business. The league could be much further along if they had made many different decisions along the way. Their fans have no expectations and any improvement is celebrated. It is interesting to think where they would be if they had just followed the J League's path
The views aren’t inconsistent. In the former, I’m referring to the league itself. What happens on the field first team vs first team. In that respect, people really overestimate how foreign player limits and the like influence the development of MLS talent. What is important is everything that occurs from U littles on up to U19 MLS academy. And really for the most part U little to 14. In the latter, I’m talking about the pre-MLS first team development. FCD is not only a good place for mid to late teens to play. FCD is actually addressing (or at least trying) to address the problems I cited from U little all the way up to mid/late teens club play. They have over 200 teams with a more unified, development minded approach. The player density/education/footprint issue I was actually talking about. You knew that, right?
Actually, I didn't know (until I looked it up just now) when the hex began. The first game of the hex is in sept 2020 and it lasts for about a year. I was focusing on the world cup. Even looking at the beginning of the hex, that is still one more full season before it begins, which is a huge amount of time for a young player (18-21 yrs old). It can also be a huge amount of time for an older player. I never said that losing a home match (or even an away match) to Mexico was meaningless. I believe it is disappointing that we lost but at the same time I think it needs to be taken with the understanding of where we currently are in terms of transition and where we are in terms of the cycle. We can lose, which is disappointing but that team, even if it has the exact same personnel (which I doubt) will be a much different team than steps on the field in September 2020 and that team will be far different than the team that steps on the field in September 2021 for the last game of the hex...
We have about a year until our first meaningful match and that’s not much time to integrate a national team. We don’t have the luxury of screwing around with cockamamie setups and reliance on over-the-hill coach’s favorites.
You are absolutely correct about the hit/miss aspect of prospects and injuries are something that can derail a player that has everything else. The one thing that I would counter with is that now we are starting to get numbers on our side. In the past, we had a relatively small number of top prospects so that if one didn't pan (Sztela, Adu) or another got injured (Mathis, O'Brien, Holden, Davies et al) that had a huge impact because that player was often the only true new hope we had that year. Some panned out (Donovan, Dempsey, Bradley...) but overall an injury or just not working out made a big difference. Barring injury (which I admit is always a possibility), I think that the worst case scenario for any of the top young players that are established is that they stagnate or improve only a little bit. Out of Sargent, Weah, Soto, Pomykal, Richards, Robinson, Robinson, Sands, Ledezma, Leyva, Bello, Gloster, Dest, Araujo, etc I expect 1 (actually I expect more than one) to push their way into the starting 11. Barring injury I can see at least 5-6 fighting for a spot in the first 11 in 1-2 years. Overly optimistic? Perhaps.
The views here are exactly why we're losing. The SUMLS gang is the problem, moreso the SUM than the MLS but still. The boat anchor holding the USMNT back is those 2 IMO and while it's a recent phenom that we have our best talent scattered everywhere but the MLS, its still the elephant in the room that MLS fans are ok with as long as Morris, Lovitz, Bradley, etc 'star' for the USMNT. Losing is ok. As I recall, Egg stated he 'was going all out to win it' by leaving Sargent home, etc and calling in MLS scrubs. And let's be honest, the best in the MLS that can suit up for the USMNT for the most part are barely worthy of the 40. The real best leaves for Europe. Denying this and waving the flag in faux patriotism misses the point of athletics which is to get the best team possible and WIN with Americans. Going all out now means barely beating Curacao and losing again to Mexico's, this time to their B team. Come on EPL/BL seasons!!
You’re probably right. And I definitely hope you’re right. All of the guys I mentioned were at one point at least 1st team/key 2-3 off the bench options that didn’t really live up to their promise. For each one of those, there are probably 1-2 others that never really got it done period. Like the Karbassiyoon types. Granted, he was completely overhyped with the name “Arsenal” attached to his. But guys like that make me question if I’m seeing this new crop as objectively as I should...or not. It’s like being a Cub fan up until a few years ago.
Yep, they are constantly taking an exception to claim how great the league is and if dont ignore or deflect criticism, they will say it is because they are only in their 24th season. The league has made mistake after mistake and fans of the league will say there is no question they have got it right, just like they said 5 years ago 10 years ago, etc. I have always disagreed what with their approach has been from a business standpoint let alone as a USMNT fan, but I still supported them. They lost that support when Garber began to interfere with the USMNT publicly. It will be interesting to see how long they can stick with rosters made up of 75% MLS players. We know most of the ones we have seen arent good enough and of the 10+ prospects that were on our u20 team, only one was on an MLS team.
MLS is very much the problem. MLS controls the game in this country, so can they not be at the center of the problem. The league could be much further along, especially as it pertains to the quality of American players. FCD could have been doing what they have started to do this year, over 10 years ago. The majority of the rest of the league could have been doing it 5 years ago. The American players in MLS today are no better than the ones 10 to 15 years ago. How is that not an issue? Why is it that Japan has been steadily improving the quality of players? Roster rules, closed system, etc has been a hindrance on the improved quality of the players. Half hearted attempts academies, USL teams, etc mean the levels below MLS is hit or miss. All of these things are part of being in this business, but fans act like FCD is some great benefactor when they really are just not incompetent like most of the teams in the league.
I think those who have followed MLS for a long time understand how hard it was to do the things they did, which is probably why we have more patience. You were never going to have real academies until MLS was on a solid financial base, which required building stadiums. And as I've argued elsewhere, you needed Crew stadium as proof of concept, to get LA Galaxy stadium in suburban LA to get LAFC stadium near downtown LA. Each step takes time. Look how hard it was to get a stadium in Miami. They still haven't managed a stadium in New York. As for the academies, it's not yet clear that the Dallas approach will be a success, beyond selling off players. I hope it will be since you'll get the nice synergy of developing players -> winning championships ->attracting more and higher-paying fans -> money reinvested in team. But like I say, it remains to be seen.
there was a lot in your post to comment on, but this bit was the most important. it is actually making my point. MLS fans are on here telling us how successful the academies are but we dont even know the top ones who are head and shoulders above the rest of the league know what they are doing. There is a point where patience isnt the right answer.