Outside of the big 3 teams, I dare you to name a quality striker in CONCACAF right now. Over the past couple of decades, it always seemed like teams had a striker or two that could score goals. Maybe their teams didn't have the midfielders to get the ball there consistently against a good team. But you always felt that one guy could put it in the net if he ever got a good chance. Look: Honduras David Suazo Carlos Pavon Carlo Costly Panama Blas Perez Luis Tejada Julio Dely Valdes T&T Dwight Yorke Kenwyne Jones Jamaica Deon Burton Lucas Shelton Canada Tomasz Radzinkski Alex Bunbury Others Carlos Ruiz Raul Diaz Arce Jason Roberts Nowadays ... Darren Mattocks is the top scoring active forward for Jamaica. Blas and Tejada are still kicking around, but they're past 35. Jones is a shadow of his best. Honduras have some promising kids, but aren't there. If Canada can get Larin or Cavallini up to international form, they have the opportunity to make a quick leap just because no one else in this conference can shoot. Four Hex teams failed to score a goal tonight. And you don't feel like any of them are due. The USMNT has done well to time its low point with the disappearance of CONCACAF striking talent. Because in other Hexes, I think we would be in real fear of missing the WC. I don't see that happening, simply because no one can score consistently enough to keep us out.
Most of those guys are starved for service, and their teams are bad defensively. Which is why defense wins championships, and qualifies you for the World Cup. Just to nitpick, Costly? Mediocre, but looked good compared to the other guys Honduras throws out there. And I think Kevin Molino is pretty good, though perhaps "winger" doesn't count as a "striker". I think the US, at its low point, is still top 3 in the region. That's why we're going to qualify, not because Central American and Carribean "also-rans" are at low points.
The top goalscorer in 2018 World Cup qualifying from CONCACAF is................................ .......................................Carlos Ruiz.
A lot of those historical players look good because of the quality of defenders they played against in CONCACAF. The only ones who had really good club careers are Yorke, Jones, Dely Valdes, and Suazo. Blas Perez: Moderately successful in Colombia and Mexico. Rather one-dimensional player; tough to mark because of his physical strength, but couldn't do much without service. Carlos Pavon: His stints in Europe were failures. At his peak, he was a decent Liga MX striker. Carlo Costly: He had his best club seasons in Poland, Greece, and China. In his one season in MLS, he scored one goal in 11 matches. Luis Tejada: He's played for 14 clubs in a 16-year pro career, and couldn't get a game for RSL when he was in his prime and they were awful. His best pro seasons outside Panama were in Colombia and Peru. Deon Burton: He played for First Division (now Championship) clubs and EPL relegation candidates, never scored double digits in the EPL, and his best season was 13 goals in the Championship. Luton Shelton: Journeyman in Scandinavia, scored most of his international goals against minnows that you'd rarely see make it to the Gold Cup. Tomasz Radzinski: Actually did have a decent European career, but primarily as a winger. Alex Bunbury: Spent the best years of his career at a small club in Portugal. I don't see these players as being far above their countries' striking talent right now.
Mexico's top two scorers (one with 3 goals and pick one player tied with 2) have 5 goals combined. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who is 25th out of 35 in CONCACAF in the FIFA Rankings, has two players with 5 goals each. Ruiz has 9 goals, which is tied for fourth in the world. The next most among players in the Hexagonal are 6 for Altidore and 5 for Dempsey and Pulisic. I wonder if a player has ever led his confederation in WCQ scoring without reaching the final round of qualifying.
Yeah, same thing came to my mind regarding these guys. Also consider that in his 56 caps for the Reggae Boyz, Burton scored only 12 times. Hardly an impressive strike rate. A couple of other Jamaican strikers that could have been mentioned: Onandi Lowe - had something like 23 goals in 64 caps (figures vary depending on the source). But again, his club career played out almost entirely in the UK and US lower divisions. Ricardo Fuller - had a decent club career in Scotland and the English Championship, but struggled to replicate that form in the Premiership (with Portsmouth and Stoke). And with Jamaica only managed to score 9 times in 73 caps.
It's actually not that uncommon in CONCACAF and AFC, because the teams in the final round by and large haven't had the chance to run up big scores on the tiniest minnows. Last cycle CONCACAF was led by Deon McCaulay of Belize, who also tied for top scorer worldwide. In the 2002 cycle, Bayazir Al-Said of Syria was joint top scorer in Asia.
I didn't mean to imply these guys were all international superstars. But even a guy like Tejada, for instance, has 42 goals in 100-ish games for Panama. He could at least put the ball on frame. Which I'm not sure too many of the current crop of strikers can do.
So much potential. I hope he is able to do it for CANADA I quite admire the likes of David Suazo. A bit of a goal-scoring legend at Cagliari in Serie A/B.
McCaulay was helped by there being a Group Stage before the Semifinals for World Cup 2014, which there wasn't for World Cup 2018.
True. I should also mention, though, Vietnam's Le Cong Vinh, who was tied for 2nd in Asian WCQ for 2014, just one goal behind top scorer Shinji Okazaki, despite Vietnam playing only four matches in two home-and-away knockout rounds. He scored all of his goals in Vietnam's 13-1 aggregate victory over Macau in the third round. In 2010 CONCACAF WCQ, top scorer Rudis Corrales played in the Hex for El Salvador, but scored all but two of his goals in a two-legged knockout tie against Anguilla (El Salvador won 16-0 on aggregate). Some of these early rounds can be really lopsided: note that no team scored 16 or more goals in the Hexagonal for 2010, and only one team scored 13 or more goals in the AFC final round for 2014. I missed another top scorer who didn't play in his confederation's final round: Sarayoot Chaikamdee of Thailand, who was tied for top scorer in AFC in 2010
You also had guys like Paolo Wanchope (Costa Rica), Alvaro Saborio (Costa Rica), Stern John (T&T) who had prolific international goal scoring records. Overall, I think CONCACAF is stronger than it was 10 years ago (teams like Costa Rica, Panama and Jamaica are decidedly better), and midfields and defenses are better, but there were more prolific goal scorers 10-15 years ago.
I think it also goes together with how soccer has developed. Not so much ago it relied a lot on the typical "9" who scored almost all the goals. Now the UCL winner has a CF (Benzema) that scored less than half of the goals than his winger (CR7). I see the games and it's clear that teams are relying more on creative midfield players, while some years ago they relied on right/left backs that could serve good crosses to Wanchope, Yorke, Suazo, etc. Either way, yes, the "killer" 9 is dying not only in CONCACAF but everywhere, now it's time to see which country adapted and has now the best winwers/ offensive midfielders to go ahead. I think Panama and Honduras have the advantage (even above CR), after the US and MX of course
I do wonder if we over-rate the quality of those previous CONCACAF forwards. I mean, Alvaro Saborio...................his productive years in club football were with Sion in the Swiss League and with RSL in MLS. Is Saborio's career really that much better than a current player's..........like say Blas Perez? Paolo Wanchope does have some good clubs on his resume. He's remember fondly as a character and goal-scorer. But is resume really greatly superior to that of say.............Kenwyne Jones? He played at Manchester City of 2000, not 2017. He played with them in League 1. Stern John had a nice career in MLS and in England (mostly outside of the Premier League). Great. Nothing to sneeze at. But was he actually a better forward than Cyle Larin? I'm not convinced. MLS is much better now than in 2000. I think there's a tad bit of nostalgia for previous generations of CONCACAF strikers here that may not be reflective of a drastic talent difference. Are people really looking back at Carlo Costly and Carl Pavon as "special?" The teams Costly scored the most for in his career were GKS Belchatow of the Polish League and Guizhou Hengfeng Zhicheng of the Chinese League. Carlos Pavon changed clubs 20 times in his career. He was passed around like an STD. He scored goals at small clubs, went to some big clubs (Napoli, Udinese, etc.) and did squadoosh. There have been some good CONCACAF strikers outside of Mexico and the US. Outside of just a few (Yorke, Suazo) I don't think the gap exists like some here think it does.
^Great post Very few CONCACAF goal-scorers were able to score consistently in big leagues and also in NT caps (even rarer in tournaments that mattered or against big nations) Even Suazo seemed to faulter with Honduras though did quite well in Serie A and B.
I found one! A 27-year-old named Sloan Privat of French Guiana. He's a Ligue 1 veteran with what looks like 30+ goals. He's only played 2 games for FG .... And he has 5 goals! And it was a brace against Honduras and a hat trick against Haiti in Haiti. They were Gold Cup qualies, so not friendlies, either.
It's possible we overrate the past generation of CONCACAF strikers, but the reality is that these guys produced goals for their national teams, regardless of their club productivity: Paolo Wanchope (Costa Rica) had 45 goals in 73 caps! Rolando Fonseca (Costa Rica) had 47 goals in 113 caps. Alvaro Saborio (Costa Rica) had 35 goals in 108 caps. Carlos Ruiz (Guatemala) has 68 goals in 132 caps. Carlos Pavon (Honduras) had 57 goals in 101 caps. David Suazo (Honduras) had 17 goals in 57 caps. Wilmer Velásquez (Honduras) had 35 goals in 47 caps. Dwight Yorke (T&T) had 19 goals in 74 caps, but also occasionally played as a midfielder. Stern John (T&T) had 70 goals in 115 caps. Luis Tejada (Panama) has 43 goals in 98 caps. Blas Perez (Panama) has 41 goals in 109 caps. Raul Diaz Arce (El Salvador) had 39 goals in 68 caps. By contrast, a guy we all consider one of the better CONCACAF strikers outside of US and Mexico (Kenwyne Jones) only has 23 goals in 82 caps, despite having an arguably more accomplished club career than many of the aforementioned guys. Some players kill it for their clubs and struggle to produce at the international level. Others are prolific for their national teams despite not always having the most impressive club career on paper. I don't see any current players in CONCACAF (outside of the US and Mexico) producing strikers who are scoring at these rates, with the possible exception of Kevin Molino. The quality of play in CONCACAF has improved overall since these guys had their heyday, but we still went through a period in the 90s and 2000s during which CONCACAF teams had strikers scoring at prolific rates.
who would you guys rank as the top 3 CONCACAF strikers? (excluding the USA/Mexico) Considering both club and national team or simply choosing only one fact of the 2 to make your decision.
That's tough, given the dearth of current forward talent. I'm sure there are guys I'm missing who are not on my radar, but I'd go with Cyle Larin (Canada), Kenwyne Jones (Trinidad & Tobago), and either Anthony Lozano (Honduras) or Nahki Wells (Bermuda), the latter of whom hasn't played much for Bermuda but has been a good striker in the English Championship. I'd rate all of those guys ahead of someone like Gabriel Torres from Panama or Marco Ureña from Costa Rica. I'm excluding Bryan Ruiz, Joel Campbell and Johan Venegas from consideration since they all play primarily as attacking midfielders, even though all are capable of playing forward. Otherwise, the first two would top my list.
Sure.................but you're providing statistics for these players at the end of their careers. That doesn't mean from a talent perspective that the CONCACAF forwards right now aren't as good as these. I'll pick somebody out of my ass. Bryan Ruiz of Costa Rica, who's kind of a secondary striker/winger. He's right now on 22 goals in 95 caps.......................and in Europe has played in the Premier League, Eredevisie, and currently is at Sporting in Portugal. Bryan Ruiz has scored multiple goals in the World Cup. He scored the game-winning goal against Italy at the World Cup! Bryan Ruiz has scored against their three biggest rivals in FIFA competitions (US, Mexico, and Honduras). I look at a player like David Suazo.............in CONCACAF he never scored against the US or Mexico. Of his 17 international goals, 11 of them were against CONCACAF minnows in WCQing. He really did a number on the Netherlands Antilles and Puerto Rico. Never scored a goal in any official FIFA competition other than WCQing. For instance, never scored a single goal in the Gold Cup. Now, I'm not implying David Suazo was a "bad" forward. He did really well at Cagliari in Italy. Lest we forget, he spent as many seasons in Serie B with them as in Serie A. He went to Inter Milan, and really did very little (partly due to injury). So is David Suazo really superior to Bryan Ruiz? Or are we looking back with rose-tinted glasses at the career of David Suazo and others? Maybe because people don't think of Bryan Ruiz as a "#9" they don't put him in Suazo's category. I don't know. So I'll pick some other Costa Rican. Joel Campbell is 24 years old, and has 14 goals in 72 caps. By the way, 3 of those goals were against the USMNT. He's scored goals in the World Cup (against Uruguay), in the Gold Cup, in Copa America, etc. He's played in La Liga, the Premier League, Ligue 1, and for Sporting in Portugal. When Joel Campbell's career is over are people really going to think he was inferior to Alvario Saborio? I don't think so. He still has a lot of years to go. I could go on, but everybody gets the point. I don't think the talent level of those guys you've listed there is better than we currently have. Most of them have great stats, but stats only tell part of the story.
Ah, good mention. I can't believe I had forgotten Fonseca. BTW, I always thought it was a huge mistake that MLS never landed this guy. And to think that he spent several of his prime years in the Guatemalan league (!) says to me that someone really dropped the ball.
Or that the rest of the World wasn't particularly interested in him either....................... Fonseca did very little in club football outside of Central America. HOWEVER, I think he won the CONCACAF Champions League multiple times. [Edit: Three times in fact: 93, 95, 2004.] THe problem sometimes I have with just talking about sheer number of goals is that a player like Fonseca racked up goals in the UNCAF tournament. If I remember correctly, something like 20 of his goals were in that tournament. He was a Belize-killer! Actually, Fonseca is a good person to compare Bryan Ruiz to as they're both secondary strikers. Give me Ruiz every day of the week in terms of talent.
19 of his goals were in the UNCAF tournament, of which 7 were against Honduras, 6 were against Belize, 3 were against El Salvador, 2 were against Guatemala, and 1 was against Panama. He didn't score against Nicaragua.