First MLS playoff hat since 1999 . . . http://www.cbssports.com/general/ey...nets-mls-postseasons-first-hat-trick-since-99 “Last night and today I was thinking a lot of this through and the reality was … this could have been my last game forever,” he said to the LA Times. “There's a lot of things that were out of my control tonight. The one thing that was in my control was how I played.” Donovan extended his MLS record with 25 postseason goals in 38 games, banging home the first score with a header in the 10th minute. Ten minutes later he proffered an assist to teammate Robbie Keane. Early in the second half Donovan blew past National Team keeper Nick Rimando with a hesitation move, looking no part of his 32 years of age. “I wanted to have fun tonight,” he said. “If this was going to be my last game, I wanted to enjoy it. And more often than not when I enjoy the game, I play well.”
Note that Donovan's assist was #13 of his career, bringing him within one of Mauricio Cienfuegos' record of 14. If only he'd been playing like this before he decided to retire.
LD, based on his track record of playing in international tournaments would have provided some insight on what to expect from him in Brazil. Anyone who would look only at his play before camp and not at his whole track record would prove to be shortsighted, at least.
This is so out of character for Donovan. He usually disappears in big games. It's so sad that, at the end of his career, he's finally learning to step it up on the big stage. He had a history of playing like this in big games, JK would have surely put him on the WC squad.
Donovan now has 25 goals in the playoffs. The next closest player is Ruiz with 16. The next closest active player is Mike Magee with 8. He now has 13 assists in the playoffs. One behind Cienfuegos for the all-time record. He holds playoff records for shots (107), shots on goal (53), multi-goal games (5), game-winning goals (10) (the next closest payer has 5), PK goals (6) , and hat tricks (1) (tied with two other guys). Even if you were to take away his PK goals, he would still have three more playoff goals than the next closest player.
Pretty sure he scored 134 MLS goals and 57 USA goals before he decided to retire. Or are you saying that the standard for Landon Donovan is entirely different than the standard for others? What is the standard Donovan has to meet before he retires? How about the standard Jozy Altidore needed to meet? Clint Dempsey? What about Chris Wondolowski? Julian Green? Aron Johannson? but, you're saying Donovan has to meet a certain standard, before he retires? Really?
Don't be obtuse. My comment was about Donovan's anemic play in the first half of the 2014 MLS season. He scored as many goals yesterday as he did in the first 4 1/2 months.
Your comment is so even-handed. The first game in MLS was March 8. So there were not even any games played for half of that time. I guess all the MLS players on the USMNT really sucked for the first two and a quarter months of this year.
You think I'm the one who is being obtuse. How many goals did Chris Wondolowski score in the first half of the season? He's still getting called in, btw. How many goals did Jozy Altidore score for Sunderland last year? Julian Green? So, you are basically saying that Donovan gets held to certain unmeasurable (anemic) standard, while playing injured with tendonitis and in basically a new position, and (by the anemic standard) others get a pass? Somehow, the leading scorer in USA, USA World Cup, and MLS (now) history gets held to a specific standard prior to the World Cup, which others do not? It might seem that one of the other players (by the anemic standard) might have been the more likely cut.
In spite of lousy service and missing a bunch of time, Wondo had 6 goals in 11 games for San Jose in the first half. We needed Altidore's hold-up play regardless of whether he would produce goals. No, I'm just saying that I think Donovan had an anemic first half of 2014. I don't think that was the only factor in his omission, but I think it was an important one.
Your factual inaccuracies continue to undermine your argument. Donovan had 3 goals and 3 assists in his first 9 games of the season. Wondo had 5 goals in his first 9 games of the season. He scored his 6th goal on the first game back after the world cup.
As best I can tell, my posts were factually correct. They were also clear and consistent about their frame of reference: the first half of the season. ... and why exactly did you choose 9 games? At the time Donovan was omitted from Klinsmann's squad, he had 0 goals and 2 assists in 7 games. Worse yet, both assists were against a pathetic Chivas team. Over the entire first half of the season, Donovan had 3 goals and 4 assists in 15 games. Not a single one of his goals or assists came against an opponent that went on to make the playoffs. Around mid-season -- well after the World Cup was over -- he decided to retire. And suddenly the fog lifted and we started to see Donovan at his best.
And here is where the old cliche about form vs class comes in. You are not really arguing that Landon Donovan's inclusion on the US World Cup squad should be evaluated based on 7 games at the beginning of an MLS season, are you? The greatest player in US history, only age 32, coming off a 2013 year in which he lead the US Nats in assists and was second in goals scored, and carried a B-team to the Gold Cup title? Yet, those 7 games are the true measure of what Donovan brings to the table? Are you really asking folks to agree with such simplistic shortsightedness? Or are you just playing devil's advocate?
OK. I understand what you're doing now. I chose those 9 games because they were games BEFORE the world cup started, and thus pertinent to JK's selection decision. You, on the other hand are randomly changing time periods to try to fit the data to your pre-determined conclusion. The point is, that only an idiot or someone with a strong bias makes a decision like the exclusion of Donovan based on a tiny sample size when an enormous amount of relevant data is available to that person. If JK said that the day he made the cuts, Brad Davis, Chris Wondolowski, Graham Zusi, Julian Green, Mix Diskerud, and Aron Johanson all played a little better than Landon Donovan in practice, and therefore should go to the WC instead of him, you would say that he was an idiot. With the amount of data available on all those guys, just taking 10 weeks worth of that data to make the decision is really no different. It makes no sense. It is not objectively supportable. The only reason you would contort fact and logic to support that decision is if you are not very smart, or you are trying to support a decision that you came to for completely different reasons. The latter is what mainly happens in this thread. People want to believe that JK was not biased or stupid, so they are casting about for a way to justify his position.
Also, find Jurgen's quotes saying something like "we're not going to judge a player we've been working with for years based on his performance over the past couple months."
To some extent, I am playing devil's advocate, but the case isn't as weak as some posters want to make it. Who were other great US field players who went into a World Cup at the same age, and who hadn't shown good recent form? The ones who come to mind are Ramos in 1998, Reyna in 2006, and Pope in 2006. Not exactly an inspiring list.
Don't waste your keyboard clicks...all shred of sense has departed that ship . I brought up the exact same reasoning on post #2928, yet @Hararea keeps going in circles. At this point it's kind of like a toddler holding their breath in a showdown to make the parents give in.
Two points: 1) There has never been a player with anything close to Donovan's quality and productivity in the USMNT pool. He is a unique case. Therefore, it is stupid to arbitrarily guess that, at the age of 32 he will suddenly not be able to play the game anymore. 2) In the case of all of the players that you list above, they were still among the best players in the USMNT pool. It would be stupid to exclude them just because they were not as good as they had been in the past.
His best asset is his brain but the way that manifests, the greatest threat he presented, is a world class transition into counter attack. He is an awesome defensive contributor, then can get one touch on the ball and completely open up the field, change the game. With such speed that the very best players in the game did not know what hit them. I'm sure Beckerman - who is also underrated in what his vision, anticipation and skill can create with one touch - laments not getting more time with Landon as a teammate, rather than an opponent subjecting him to an impossible night's work. Look at the way Robbie Keane did the same: one touch and he's peeled off and gone like he was never there to make that touch. He's already in a dangerous place. Beckerman and Donovan could have suffocated opponents and connected in transition, played short-short-long, and landed highlight reel through-balls and chips all day.
Had Klinsmann taken Donovan, his style would have been an exact copy of Bradley's: hitting fast on counters, what we call "transition play." JK left Donovan also, I think, to try to differentiate himself from the guy before him. The results were quite ugly to watch.
I come to praise Hararea, not to bury him. He does have a valid point that the insult appears to have lit a fire under Donovan. Of course the appropriate response it to note that actually making the squad over Donovan does not appear to have caused any of our players to step up to the next level™. What was Klinsmann whining about last month? Anyway, the argument over whether Donovan would have made the team better is over. Obviously he would have. All that's left is to point out that we were lucky and a do-over with Donovan on the squad might simply have seen Ghana gets its act together and send us home even earlier. Or to argue that it wasn't as obvious at the time. Here I do fault Hararea a bit because if we are going to speculate on reasons, he has left unmentioned that Klinsmann has a long track record of screwing the tallest poppy in the bouquet. But that leaves the other argument which is rarely brought up. The "national team" presumably "belongs" to the nation. Yes that can be and often is a farce all over the globe. Nonetheless, as a fan, I don't care if Donovan went to Brazil and was absolutely useless. He wouldn't have been any worse than Diskerud or a number of players who did play. Instead we are left with an unforgivable insult to Donovan personally and to the fans generally. I can't wait for der Tag that German eccentric is shown the door.