I think it would be interesting to come up with a list of players that you would give national team time to in the next 2 years and compare it to who BA gives shots to. Just to start off with the forwards I could see at least getting called into a camp: Conor Casey Santino Quaranta Edson Bundle Ed Johnson Brian McBride Landon Donovan Josh Wolff Clint Mathis Jeff Cunningham Taylor Twellman Chris Carrieri Devin Barclay Bobby Rhine Who else is there?
Tim Howard Nick Rimando Adin Brown (It he ever gets back into form) Steve Cherundolo Corey Gibbs (If St. Pauli can get promoted) Danny Califf (big, faster than Agoos but isn't everybody) Carlos Bocanegra Ryan Suarez Convey Nelson Akwari Brad Davis Olsen Kelly Gray (based on his play this season) Pablo Brian West (I have been impressed) JOB (apparently) Ed Johnson
That's one HUGE if, isn't it? is he even one of the top 10 MLS keepers? What about Cannon? Zach Thornton?
four good games does not make him a good keeper. have you seen his career stats lately? he's been terrible more times than not.
Indeed time will tell whether his good form holds, but it's not a question now of if he'll get it back (as stated by the poster to whom I replied) but rather whether he'll keep it.
we still hvae to qualify for 2006, which is not by any stretch a given. we should talk about a national team pool for 2004. beyond that is getting way ahead of ourselves.
four games doesn't mean you're back .... when a bad player goes through a hot stretch it mean's you're lucky. do it for a season or two, then you might have something. until then adin isn't a has-been, he's a never-was.
Only if you ask to mention Adu would you be out of line. Adu is a wild card. You can throw him into any topic, at any time. Otherwise known as the "Adu Doctrine"
I worry about defense when I think of the future. A good offense can work on chemistry. But defense and goalkeeper requires practice and time together. I suppose Bruce knows this and will work on getting the defense together first?
You guys seem to forget about Brad and Kasey. Keepers have much longer career-spans than field players. I wouldn't be surprised if Brad is still starting for us when Germany rolls around (assuming we qualify).
I hope I never see Nick "I am taylor twellmans bitch" Rimando in a Nats uniform. The guy is just not that good. Cannon, Howard, Thorton and I would even say Jordan are better than rimando. PLEASE NO MORE RIMANDO
What exactly don't you like about Rimando except for the fact that he makes some simply brilliant saves at times? Is it the fact that he isn't your prototypical "big" keeper like Friedel or Keller? One thing Rimando does very well is come off his line to snuff out scoring opportunities.. He's not nailed to the goal line like Friedel is.. Rimando is also is a very good distributor of the ball and good with the ball at his feet as well, both skills that elude Keller.. I'm not saying Rimando is the answer for the National Team but to dismiss him is not right.. I'd take Rimando over Jordan any day of the week.. Jordan gives up some terrible gifted goals at times, as do all keepers...
Please. Nicky is world class material. The only reason he counldn't deal with your bundesliga reject is because the entire team gave up on him. Its kind of hard playing 1v11.