[NDR] 2018 World Cup Qualifying

I just read the 2nd round playoffs pots are done based on world ranking, is that correct? So you went through all of this qualifying and then it means nothing in the 2nd round?

 

Holy F***

 

When you only win 3 games in the Hex and lose 2 at home, you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Klinsmann put us in the hole and Arena ran out of ideas. I knew we were in trouble when Arena started blaming Trump being elected for motivating other CONCACAF teams.

And the players like Bradley should have shut up about Trump and figured out how to score instead.

Maybe we can do a US-Canada series next summer!!!

 

US Soccer needs to clean house. Arena and Gulati can go ******** themselves. The MLS model is not developing national team level talent. Time admit that. Arena's Pro-MLS cheerleading is a joke.

 

Go look at the scorers for Panama and Honduras tonight - 3 MLS guys (maybe not developed here) but Torres, Quioto, Elis.

I think some of this is overwrought because of the failure but a lot is on the current roster and Arena. We looked low energy in many of these qualifiers

 

Yeah, clearly that’s the root of the problem. If only Arena and the players supported our great president we’d score more goals than have ever been scored in the history of Concacaf qualifiers! Believe me.

 

It was lame excuses from a coach who always is hard ass on accountability. Focus sucked the whole Hex.

 

Judas Ortiz for USSF president!! He has all the answers LOL.

The "hot takes" tonight will be fun to look at in 5 years. Every time I hear about the "pay to play" system and how discriminatory it is, all I can think of is that If all this US talent was out there - regardless of income levels and race - wouldn't all the foreign and Mexican clubs be signing and developing these unknown superstars? If there was so much talent out there if you just funded the training, don't you think the big world clubs would have already done that? I know some have academies here but where are the players?

http://mobile.twitter.com/OrtizKicks

 

The positive for the Dynamo is that we should have Demarcus Beasley available for the whole 2018 season without international duty.

 

This is an interesting read

http://americansoccernow.com/articles/the-missing-years-u-s-soccer-s-development-gap

 

US Soccer hollowed out as development switched from Bradenton centralism to MLS and the rest training up our players. I agree with the comment that MLS is not producing YOUNG DOMESTIC QUALITY. Basically one round of decent college players each year and then hit and miss (mostly miss) HGP. Yes, our Hondurans "done well" but they are mid-career imports and not players we grew.

Of the players this team has grown, you have basically one senior callup -- Deric -- who did not actually get a cap, and a limited amount of youth NT. Multiply that by 20-ish and that's your US predicament.

We are being caught by countries that are just starting to break into world leagues and MLS and taking off. Like we were from 1994 on. But we have gotten enough money in the league, and expanded the foreign player slots, where developing domestic youth is just one player source. When the Dynamo needed to fill holes, we barely drew up on HGP. We just went and bought mid-career players. Unless you make it a priority on the theory that HGP is "your thing" -- like FCD -- developing players who might make the world cup is not your duty. Or at least ones who suit up in our uniform. A pro team give or take the roster nationality rules doesn't care if the players come from Honduras or will play for USA. They care if they can ball and whether this team wins.

England and some other mature soccer nations have this issue. They allow enough foreign players where domestic talent is squeezed down. They have the money to hit the market. They'd often just as soon buy someone now as wait 5 years for their system to produce a worthy left back (for example). Foreign talent may even be cheaper than domestic. The club teams have also squeezed out the other development avenues (as MLS is doing with Bradenton and college). And if you notice, England hasn't done much of anything in decades. High level pro league, moderate level country results.

I think the end of Bradenton was a mistake and/or I would be looking at reviving whatever that minor league team was that we had in the 2000s or so made out of US youth NT players. If we're going to obsess about rights the MLS teams involved could loan their kids out officially. But right now the homegrown development is sputtering, the talent level is dropping, and a quiet thing that happened yesterday is not one German dual national was brought in to patch the roster holes. You can argue that hmmmmm maybe this is what we look like based mostly on domestic players without our history of bringing in mid-career dual nationals.

And some of it is coaching. I mean, I can name 2 wingbacks from Klinsi's period who got left out so I could watch Villafana give up a cross and goal and Yedlin look awful. Gonzo was a nightmare and I know that is not as good as is possible. Nagbe quit earning his spot games ago. He ran out the same lineup as Panama and they looked gassed on a wet, heavy pitch. He seemed content to play for a tie and then Gonzo kicked it in his own net and Jones further dug our grave. Howard should perhaps have had both but then who has earned his replacement.

What started out fast -- and we were starved for success -- sputtered out into Klinsi-esque favoritism for players who didn't have to earn it. Despite how Gold Cup went, it was illusory because most countries sent their B team, and we didn't really find new blood -- particularly in the back where it was badly needed -- in the group round.

 

If there is a positive, Arena would probably have continued with most of his roster conservatism on to Russia and we'd have been buzzsawed there. To me it felt like it was building to 2006 anyway. This will not only clear out the front office and coaching deadweight, it will get a fresh coach in sooner, and get the roster churned faster. I agree Arena ran out of ideas so people willing to try them will be replacing him.

Will that fix all our problems? I'd say a more competent and less risk averse coach could have qualified this player pool as is. Whether we return to the top, different question, that was a product of producing Beasleys and Donovans, and you have basically one player that level (Pulisic) produced in years. If that's all you can do you will fall back to the pack, that is becoming more highly professionalized and cosmopolitan. And where a MLS player has to beat out Hondurans and such, Hondurans can default to their own league and be ok.

 

At least now the rest of our nation knows what it felt like for us Houstonians when our Houston Oilers shat the bed and blew their best chance at advancing to a Super Bowl, there in 1993.
One just can't believe the score unless you sat there and watched it for yourself!

 

I find the factual aspect of the article, the year by year stuff, interesting. However, it may to some extent just circularly reflect our sticking with an ageing team and not trying younger players like Parker. Who then don't show up on the year by year. Does the year by year reflect lack of talent or the unwillingness to try it in favor of 30 year olds.

I also feel like he's pointing his finger at the wrong U-20 coach. The dates don't match up. The U-20 by nature is under 20 players. So subtract 20 from a year and you get the birth year. Duh. But when he points the finger at Rongen, he presided over a lot of good years and was gone by the '91 age group that competed in 2011. The author muddles the critique of that because while the 2011 team didn't qualify -- perhaps a bad sign -- the negative ebb in terms of personnel being promoted to senior team is the next two tournaments where we actually did better. He actually shows a few '91/'11 people panned out. It's Ramos who initially sucked, and the reality check on that has not yet played out because his players are still young enough to often be treated as "prospects" and not judged as "players" so while Pulisic has done well we can't quite rip him for Zelalem or others who have prominent niches but not actual pro success.

I mean, to me part of the problem is all the Hyndman Zelalem etc. who aren't turning out. And particularly the lack of new backline players. Pulisic has turned out as a young player but historically this has been a team with more people like that each cycle. I think hype and "oh he's playing for x club" have kind of overtaken whether any of them actually turn out. Where before it might have been half an 11 every 5 years taking off, it's like Pulisic and that's it. Where are the rest of them?

At least one thing that concerns me is they seem to have fallen in love with undersized waterbug central players. Where is the Bradley or Jones, the physical forces, or the athletic players who might handle senior play? It's a bunch of runts. These people are not built for CONCACAF unless you go back down the Klinsi road of reconfiguring it into a free-passing team, which might or might not be a competitive strategy in the region with our player pool and the way the rest of the region wants to play.

 

Hell, while I think the talent he chose to call up was marginal and made the result a risk, I am curious how that game turns out if he simply runs out a fresh team on a heavy field. But the lineup as with the callup sheet reflected "if we don't make it I am going down with tried and true," which I wonder about as a concept because the premise rings truest if you in fact don't make it, at which point the choice is least defensible.

I'd be curious how many players he turned over in other Game 2s in the 2 game chunks of this cycle.

 

When your back is against the wall and you turn to Benny Feilhaber, there is a ********ing problem.

 

Lesson learned, when your arch rivals is on the ropes in qualifying you don't help them out by scoring on Panama in the last game. Thanks for the return favor Mexico!

Sportsmanship and fair play in other countries is non existent because of the internal pressure, corrupt officals and money involved nothing will change and the USMNT must become so improved that all the above won't affect the result.

Even though we can complain that shenanigans happen when you go to these smaller countries to play. We didn't deserve to go - we only won three games total, lost twice at home, and didn't win away at all. Mexico dealt with it and finished on top.

Klinsmann started this slide with his poor coaching, tactics and development of players before the last world cup in Brazil where we under performed.

Coaching blunders by Bruce - especially on the defensive side helped do us in. Ream does not have enough quality, Omar is a liability at times, and we still don't have an outside back playing consistently well. If your defense is that prone to error then you have to cover it up somehow with a different approach.

Concacaf has improved by greedy MLS owners who snatch up more regional players at the expense of home growns to be more competitive. This comes at the expense of the domestic player and strengthen the national teams of our competitors. It is not strengthening the US player pool. We need to follow Mexico's example in restricting more foreign players as well as export more players to better leagues than ours.

USSF needs to fire Gulati and spend more to improve refereeing, improve coaching, and build more soccer fields in rural and inner city areas.

 

Omar is a liability all day. Knocks cross in his own net. Gets beat other games. How many times on a break is he, instead of holding ground and defending, instead backpedaling furiously hoping someone arrives with enough speed to stay with HIS man.

That to me was Arena's Bornstein or Kljestan, his loyalty blindspot.

I expect him to evaporate under the new regime. He was that overrated. There will be intense pressure on the successor to fix the defense, and I think some people like him, Villafana, Zusi, and Ream didn't belong there and will poof disappear. I expect Cameron, Brooks, Yedlin, FJ, Chandler, Lichaj, etc. will get a brief window and if they have an off night (as they are all prone to do) they too will disappear. If the new coach has a brain and is nonAmerican I expect you will see a lot of new names because they aren't going to repeat the last 2 fired coaches' mistakes of cycling through the same crap short list over and over. You'll see Parker, Palmer Brown, Carter Vickers, etc. If they aren't from here and don't have loyalties they are not going to cycle among some domestic coach favorites list even if the problem continues. They will keep digging and digging and cycling and cycling and moving players back until they find 4 that can play. Unlike Bruce they will not have the crutch of one year to D-day to use as a conservative excuse to try and plow through with more of the same minus Germans.

 

The US has no business playing in the World Cup if they can't tie T&T, but in what universe is this a goal?!?

 

I think this is, for the most part, dead-on right.

 

Based on the Guatemalan referee's position it appeared his view was completely blocked by the prone Panama player. Or the referee's vision was obscured by an anonymous deposit into his bank account earlier in the day.

 

we are fcked for the future as well.

missed back to back olympics.
hardly any young talent on the WC squad
college talent is sub standard vs world competitive leagues
MLS academies are average on their best days

US soccer and MLS do ok at the business side but terrible at recognizing and developing young talent.

next four years are gonna be terribly rough

 

He almost scored on that header to be fair. I blame the whole team for that loss. Nobody was great that game.

 

I'm not overly worried. We'll make the next World Cup. Hopefully, we completely start fresh and can cut the old meat like Bradley. It still won't be great, but at least we can move forward now.