For the parts of two years he played, Klinsmann was good at CAL. He should have stayed in in school but his dad got him a job in Germany because he knows all the coaches and I think they owed him favors. The coaches though have also said he isn't that good. I don't follow their league anymore but I'm sure Lima could probably play on a midtable club in the Bundesliga.
yeah there was one very important detail why Marcinkowski wasnt starting for the U-20s and Klinsmann was, cant put my finger on it though
A pretty low risk move (barring injury) for Lima. If he gets picked up by Hertha, it's certainly a move up. If he doesn't, he can still come back to the Earthquakes while gaining some experience/visibility. As OWN(yewu)ED said, you can't blame the guy from bouncing after a season like this. Plus there's no guarantee that the team will be a whole lot better even if we hired a good manager.
Well but then there’s this... Flying into the @ussoccer_mnt squad like... Congrats to Jonathan #Klinsmann who has been called up the USA squad! 💪#hahohe pic.twitter.com/Lt5WKzaZRt— Hertha BSC (EN) (@HerthaBSC_EN) November 12, 2018
I'm glad Lima gets an opportunity to play outside of the Quakes system for a bit, even if it's just so he can put the Stahre season behind him a little bit. He's definitely the only defensive player who deserves something like this, though honestly, I still don't think Lima has played all that well, even under Kinnear when the defense, as a whole, wasn't laughably inept. I have to figure that there's confirmation bias on my part where I'm really only seeing his mistakes, but I am a bit surprised at how much praise he's received thus far. From my perspective, I don't think the Quakes have much to worry about regarding Lima leaving right now. If Hertha makes an offer for him, they should absolutely take the money and reinvest that elsewhere. I think it's quite likely that he won't be impressive enough to worry about him leaving the Quakes, and I am actually very interested in seeing how Lima could improve under Almeyda. There is a lot of work to be done there, but he deserves the opportunity to improve, certainly.
Note there's a difference between "training" and a "trial"... yes it's *possible* that Hertha could like what they see and make an offer for Lima, but that's much less likely than if he went there on trial. Tons of MLS players do this, from Brek Shea at Arsenal, Zak MacMath at Everton, Graham Zusi at West Ham... Here's an article from 2011 about a dozen or so MLS players training with European clubs in the offseason: MLSers flock to Europe for training Most of them didn't end up moving overseas, and probably zero with the club they were training with. For players it's an opportunity to see what it's like abroad while keeping fit in the offseason. That's about it. Some did end up heading to Europe (Brek Shea, Tim Ream, Perry Kitchen, Andy Najar) but not to the same club they were training with. All this really tells us is that Nick Lima is at least considering a move to Europe at some point in his career, if that possibility is available to him.
Good for Nick to be pushing himself and getting experience in training with a different club. It can only help him with the Quakes. As already stated, this happens all of the time. Lima is a solid player with a good upside in MLS, but he is not ready for BL.
Totally agree with hc97. Nick needs more work on many things! All the praise all season had me confused, too. The Earthquake's season did not help him. It only allowed him to continue the mistakes in the areas he needs improvement, especially crossing the ball. There was no development demonstrated from the coaching staff. Training in Europe is a wonderful opportunity for him. Please send him back improved and more worthy of the salary increase he is receiving.
I agree with you both. Every team we played primarily attacked Lima's side, even tho you would have thought Shea would be the easier target. Lima seems to make about 3 mistakes every game. I think Lima's problem has been that he has not improved one bit under the Quakes. Plus now he's had a lot of little injuries, plus didn't he already have a sports hernia? So he's no longer trying to make long diagonal crosses. And as far as Hertha taking him-- have the Quakes lost a single player to Europe who didn't come from there in the first place? Even DeRo didn't make it...
Are you only referring to "top teams" in Europe? Corrales left to play in Norway for a few years before he came back with the re-birth of the Earthquakes. Also Joe Cannon went to France (for ~1/2 of their season) before coming back to MLS....
His trip there is described as a training stint, not a trial. He can't play or make the bench unless they buy him from us and sign him.
Lima is certainly a 2. Bundesliga caliber player and could stick with most teams there but the Bundesliga is a tier too high for him. At Hertha the competition at RB is Lazaro who is a young Austrian international that plays an offensive game just as Lima does but who is much more defensively adept and technically gifted than Lima. The LB is usually Mittelstadt, a young Hertha youth academy product that has come through last season and is still learning the position and would be a good comparable player for Lima to see where he is at compared to him if he has aspirations for a step up in his career.
Back in the day, seemed like it was not uncommon for our players to head to Europe after our season ended, and then they'd return in spring.
I saw Clint Mathis play in the Bundesliga and he was a great player during that period. Problem with him was his attitude but he was a dynamic player and scored goals and made things happen. I don't think Lima is anywhere near the player what Mathis was and players like Nick are a dime a dozen in Europe. They won't sign an American player who is playing at the same level as a German or European player is playing at. If Germany is anything like most of Europe, he also may not meet the UEFA foreign player quota as those spots are usually used for top foreigners.
Oh yeah, forgot about Eddie Lewis. He was out in the wilderness (stuck in the reserve team) with Fulham, but did fine once he transferred to PNE and other Championship teams....
Two reasons: Magnus plays in front of Lima and our defensive mids always cheat on the Shea side because of Shea and whomever we matched with him (pretty much none of them played defense). The other teams quickly realized Lima would get no support.
Of course whenever I say anything about a player, it’s my impression, or eye test. I can’t even understand most of today’s player stats much less look them up. Consider my player opinions to be equivalent to Falvo-light
You're definitely right about Lima not getting much support, especially from the wide midfielders in front of him. Eriksson plays as if he doesn't know defense is a thing, but that does not account for Lima repeatedly being beaten in one on one scenarios in dangerous positions. He has not demonstrated any improvement in preventing crosses in situations where he could have made plays. So maybe he gets put under more pressure and thus actually does okay, but there are some key issues with how he defends as an individual that I've been hoping to see get better and it just hasn't so far. That said, Stahre's team organization was so poor that I don't think even the best defenders in the league would have looked particularly good with the Quakes in 2018.
That’s a pretty good explanation... but even if Lima got hung out to dry more often, it seemed like he made a pretty good share of his own mistakes. That’s an observation, I have no stats to Back that up
well actually I was trying to think of a quakes player who got signed away from the quakes àla Alphonso Davies versus a player who left the quakes on his own to find a new team in Europe
As a general proposition, there is no data I'm aware of supporting the conventional wisdom that stats are a better verification than your own lying eyes.