There should be nothing controversial about saying that. He's been the best American keeper at the club level for the last five years. He also hasn't done as bad for the NT as some claim. He had one error in a match where he was completely out of form. Why is that acceptable for Horvath but it isn't for Hamid?
That's a great question. I suppose it's the hate that he didn't win the no.1 spot at his Danish club. He's shown that he's really good in MLS and he should be good enough at a club in Denmark. And solid enough against CONCACAF opponents.
I could care less about some Danish club. I love MLS but there is a development ceiling here and the logical next step to move on to a better league and challenge yourself. He waited until he was 28 to do so, not old by keeper standards but still 11 years after his first pro game. We needed to replace Howard eventually and the only other option was Guzan who was playing like shit for shit teams but Hamid was always injured. Every time we had a chance to bring him he got hurt. It was a running joke around here and eventually JK stopped calling since he seemed to be made of glass when we needed a solid keeper. The move to whatever team he went to looked good at the time but fortunately for the team/unfortunately for him they got hot with a hot keeper and didn't want to ruffle the feathers. I don't blame them but instead of loaning him out to another Euro club they dumped him right back at the same club he just left for the remained of his contract with them. Like we don't care about you anymore here's a 2 year loan back home. So my unpopular opinion is Bill screwed himself over by waiting too long. He has now been passed by a better version of himself that is not making that same mistake. We will see if his club choice was wise and another guy that overcame a bunch of adversity at his club and is now pitching shutouts in the Champions League.
The BS consensus forms; and, having Writ, Moves on: nor all thy Posts nor Wit Shall lure it back to change a single Mind, Nor all thy Stats wash out a Word of it.
He's made of glass, makes the same mistakes now that he used to make a decade ago, and he has never played on a team other than DC United, a fairly bad MLS team. He's analagous to Sean Johnson, plus frequent injuries. And now with Horvath and Steffen, we've got at least two younger goalies equal to or better than him. Not to mention, Guzan's got the better career, plays for a better team, and has maybe 1-2 more years left at a high level. By then, ZS and EH will be the established 1 and 2, and perhaps Hamid will be in that 3rd GK spot if Guzan isn't this cycle's Rimando.
I concur that Hamid should have gone previous. Anyone who followed him closely to determine why? Didn't he have interest after the 2014 season when he was Best GK? Was it the salary or perks of starting for his hometown club that kept him here?
Actually, Hamid has not been close to the best American keeper at the club level for the last five years. He has moments of brilliance, and moments of complete inanity. Often in the same match. He has not been the best American keeper in MLS, never mind over all. Do you actually watch him play?
Here's one... I don't have the faintest clue why so many people automatically believe that Berhalter will favor Trapp over all others What Berhalter's use of Trapp at Columbus indicates is that he feels/felt that Trapp was the best man for the job given his roster/resources etc. Ideally, every manager will base his personnel decisions on who he believes is the player that best fits into any particular role. It very well may turn out that Berhalter decides Trapp is the best for the job (I'll find that surprising) but I doubt that if he makes that decision, it will be just because he likes him better, or out of loyalty. Actually, if I was Berhalter, I might call Trapp up to the first few games and use him as a baseline. Berhalter should have an incredibly good idea of Trapp's strengths, weaknesses and overall quality...by having him at the initial camps (and possibly in some of the games), he can more easily evaluate the other competitors by seeing them under similar/same conditions.
I see a lot wrong with this post, but let me just ask you this question. Steffen plays in the same league as Hamid. He played demonstrably worse than him this season, despite what the hype awards say. The stats show Hamid was much better. How are you concluding that Steffen's better than him? Trying to claim Hamid hasn't been the best American keeper at the club level is an argument I'd like to hear the reasoning for. I'm not sure its grounded in much substance.
https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/keeper-xg-2018/ XG numbers for the last five seasons and where Hamid has ranked in the league. 2018: 8th-with less than half the minutes of most starters (-3.51) 2017: 2nd (-4.83) 2016: 11th (-1.40) 2015: 3rd (-5.89) 2014: 1st (-10.13) Which keepers have better numbers? Hamid has not once in those five years not been in the negative categories. 0 is the threshold between good and bad (keeping more goals out than you save), negative is good, positive is bad. To give an idea of Steffen's stats, Steffen was 1.64 this season and .01 last season. Hamid's worst number in his career is -1.40. We could go back even further. 2013: 6th (-2.34) 2012: 5th (-4.27) 2011: 6th (-4.55) This is a bad narrative.
Never said Steffen was better than Hamid, only that he and Horvath are at the least equal to him. I actually think Horvath is the most talented out of the three. He's a really athletic, long, and a great shot-stopper. He's just suuuper weak on crosses and he's reliant on confidence. A good GK can get scored on, wipe that away, and play well. Horvath seems to be very confident (not on crosses) until he lets one in, then he plays worse. But I think those are just things that you fix with experience. Once you've played professionally for a bit, you should be able to command the box better on crosses and corners. Steffen was not quite as good this year compared to his performance last year, but there's a reason he went on a shutout streak that matched Hamid's career high despite a down year. He's played far less aggressively than in the past, and he's been a far more vocal leader of his backline. It's a good skill for a young GK to develop, but it's no substitute for his shot-stopping, which took a fall this year. Yeah, he didn't face as many shots, but he didn't save some of the shots that he should've been. He'd be having a quiet game, then... bam, he'd let in a soft one that he could've stopped with a quicker reaction. I think it's very similar to Hamid's historical struggles. He'd stand on his head as DC was getting pummeled (and most of the time, they were getting peppered with shots)...and then let one through his legs, or give up a near-post goal when he should've had it. But I can tell you're more of a PER/WAR kind of guy, so we'll play with your numbers. Hamid had a good half-season for a red-hot DCU team that he knows fairly well, but he mostly doesn't stand out from his competition, even just going of x/G. Adding up the x/G's for the top US GK's in MLS over the last 5 years (this last cycle), here's where we end up: Hamid: -25.76 Rimando: -23.74 Melia: -24.70 Frei: -19.33 Robles: -6.01 I'm not seeing a whole lotta difference between Hamid and the best veteran MLS GK's outside of Robles over the last cycle. I do see that Hamid's certainly been consistent, and his only challenger in terms of longevity (Rimando, -31.8) loses to Hamid's (-36.9) when you extend the timeline even farther back. There's something to be said for holding down the DCU starting role for 7.5 years, but it's ultimately not enough when you look at the whole body of work. He was competing against Guzan and Howard 2 cycles ago. He doesn't stand out from the pack of MLS GK's last cycle, along with multiple ill-timed injuries and a loan to nowhere. And now he's fighting the best young GK in MLS (about to move to Europe), or a young CL/EL GK in the Belgian league. Not sure where his minutes were going to come from, because he still doesn't look like a snub to me (although IMO he looks better than he did before).
I'm not against the idea of Steffen or Horvath ahead of Hamid in the NT pecking order. Hamid is 28. He's currently in his prime, but might only have one cycle left. He's a keeper though, so an argument could be made he has two cycles left. There should be a competition, and the different trade-offs should be considered. it shouldn't be "this player is marked as having potential" while "that player is marked as being inconsistent, error prone, etc." We should all want to see the NT get good results. Pick the best players. I don't see the reason for the way some of these keeper discussions devolve. I'm not saying you take part in that, but some do. Either way, this idea that Hamid is inconsistent is sheer lunacy. He's as consistently good as it gets, as the stats I posted show. Those who have come to believe this narrative take out all these talking points that are either not true or deliberate distortions. My favorite one is that he makes the same errors he did years ago. How is that relevant if his total production is better than other keepers? Is that not true of other keepers? If they are producing worse play on a yearly basis, I suspect it would be. About the point of Hamid's stats, I didn't suggest that Hamid is much better than any keeper or anything of that sort. I said that he's been our best keeper at the club level in the last five years. I don't think thats controversial. Thats what the stats say compared to other MLS keepers. We've not had any keepers playing in Europe for the last five years. I don't know how he'd play on a team that doesn't give up a lot of good scoring chances. All we can do is judge how he does in the team he plays for, add up the production and see if that fits our NT. I think it does. I also think Steffen and Horvath fit in the NT. I just don't believe Hamid has found his way out of the NT keeper discussion, like some believe.
The Bill Hamid story is a parable about precision with language. Bill chose Midtjylland over Frankfurt because the people at the Danish club promised him that he'd start in the league. Frankfurt could only offer him the bench. And they came true: he started against Aalborg. One game. Then he went back to their reserves. What Bilal should have asked is not "Will I start in the league?" but "Will I be your starting keeper in the league?" It's all about being precise with language.
IF that is an unpopular opinion then we have a lot of popular idiots around here. A blind man can see that the Mexican League has many factors going for it that MLS is far from touching.
Was looking around for a place to drop Bob Bradley's quotes from an MLSSoccer story today. This thread seemed as fitting as any. He’s even willing to talk tactics at length with a few crusty old reporters near the tail end of a long SuperDraft in January – and he can’t resist taking aim at, among other things, the suggestion that LAFC play without a true No. 6 at the base of midfield and the idea that his USMNT were dour catenaccio merchants. “There's a bunch of dopes that years ago were on BigSoccer and are now on social media and they say things, and we have other dopes that can't watch a game and figure things out for themselves,” he said. “And then they write [expletive] like that, and you’re like, ‘These people don't know the [expletive] what they’re talking about.’ This is where we are, football-wise, in this country. “It makes no sense to me,” he said. “But listen, it’s not my job to go around and tell everybody what they should think. If you can’t see it yourself, I’m not going to tell you.” https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019...growth-and-bob-bradleys-expansive-vision-lafc
I think Bradley should find it bizarre that people think he;s such a defensive coach. With the US team, he mostly player with two strikers, his outside mids played with lots of freedom and were our primary attackers with Dempsey an Donovan on the field, and he played dual two way midfielders in the center that often surged forward. That is not a defensive strategy at all.
Excellency is actually GB's BS handle and he brilliantly lofted his pro-MLS balloon several years ago: "the core of our team should be MLS and we only bring in European players if they are superstars." In other words, just being a regular player in the major leagues doesn't cut it - if you're not rumored to be sold for millions to an elite club, back of the bus behind MLS for Euro-hags as "we've got MLS players who play that position."
Jurgen Klinsmann was right at the time, none of our players actually didn't do anything to appear on the global radar, yet. CP is hopefully breaking the boundaries. Maybe Adams too.
chicken and the egg. worth pointing out that blaming the talent when you work with a team for years is cheap politics.