it's a passive position. he's merely a passenger to what others hand him. i could understand a coach arriving on day 1 moaning about the cupboard being bare. you work with what is on hand. but if i give you developmental control, and i give you the team for 6-7 years, and your complaint is my team is not good enough, you're part of that problem. he had years to find left backs and new central mids and center backs and whatnot. IMO he wasn't that impressive in his first years, he got credit for brazil, and then as that group got too old he had no clue how to adjust. if you have the team from 2011 on, if in 2016 you are not sure who your backs or mids are, that's on you. you could have "made" one in a few years. by objective measures this team right now is probably the widest spread it has ever been, players all over as opposed to a domestic team with a sprinkling. more pointedly, this year specifically would lead one to question whether the rote choice of signing at Dortmund or PSG automatically makes you awesome. if they instead signed at Fulham many would be less impressed but probably better served. it wouldn't be so much of this god awful question of do i start a lesser MLS player who does play versus do I start some European who looks better but rides a club bench? it's great that the team is more and more valued to allow that choice. but that choice is not necessarily playing out superior for those players.
the shorter version: was Jozy helped by Sunderland? Dempsey at Spurs? they did what coach said. did it work better than A-Zed or Fulham? not really. it's a myth you're pushing. to be fair, i want players abroad early like Weah, to get that training. but if your team doesn't want you to "graduate" to their first team core, back the hell out and on to someplace that will use you. this is the landon/mcbride trajectory. and in 5-10 years those same big clubs will be back knocking without a hint of irony. as i have hinted at with weah's strike rate, i think his issues say more about PSG or celtic on a title run, than about the player stuck in the numbers game. but that game exists at those clubs and so ambition has to be balanced with realism.
When JK said that, he was right. No American had really accomplished anything in World Football. No American to this day, has been pivotal to a Champions League winner or EPL Winner. Pulisic was a pivotal player for a DFB Pokal Cup win, but I doubt that is the kind of thing JK was talking about. If Dortmund somehow pull it out on Saturday, he should get credit as he has carried them this month. I'm not sure Mexico even has had many players that have left that kind of mark. Maybe Marquez at Real Madrid. Dempsey has probably had the best club career of someone born in the USA and developed in the USA until Pulisic. But Dempsey was a good player on a mid-level team in a league that was not the best at the time. People to this day will still argue whether Donovan or Dempsey had a better club career. Donovan left no mark on club football worldwide. Howard at ManU could've, but he refused to get better. With his transfer Pulisic has made a mark of that kind. No player at the time of JK's quote had come anywhere near that. Do we think that Real Madrid has ever considered an American for a buy ever? Fabian Johnson had rumors but he didn't come close to that in the end so I kind of doubt that was real interest. He was also developed in Germany.
"making a mark"? who cares. i think that comment was particularly unfair to dempsey - as i think what he achieved was very admirable and even noteworthy. he scored the gamewinning goal over liverpool that kept his team in the EPL, he was a top 4 scorer in the EPL - as a midfielder - that's pretty big time - he chipped juventus in the europe league QF to help lead his squad to the finals that year. an american midfielder leading his unheralded non-big 6 EPL team that he saved from relegation to the euopa league finals isn't enough for you people? there are other american players who have done something in the sport - whether that was club or country - reyna named world cup best 11, for example. he was magnificent in the 2002 world cup. there are others as well..... but i think when you think about bradley and jozy coming back to mls - it angered JK b/c he knew it would mean that they wouldnt be as sharp and in that sense he was right...both of those players have been shrinking violets who have not shown up when the chips are down. some of the players under JK deserved some "tough love" imo......
But JK didn't show the tough love. Did he give real competition to MB in his second cycle just as his concerns were coming to fruition? Nope.
I love Dempsey, but don't you think there are 1000s of guys with a resume like that? Dempsey would be on the All-Time Best 11 for Fulham according to some fans of the team. That is an accomplishment, but Brede Hangeland would also be on there. Would you consider Hangeland to have "Made a Mark" on world soccer? I guess where you put the bar is the question. I would consider Klinsman, the player, as having made a mark. Has any American player had the career of Klinsman? Whomever he was trying to insult or whatever other context, just the straight up observation is what I'm discussing. No American has made a mark yet.
its not mutually exclusive...he valued "proving it" in europe so much that it even applied to the players who had given up for easy mls money. if there had been other midfielders who had "proven" what MB had in europe...there wouldve been serious comp in JK's team....but there wasn't and thats why he lamented MLS buying up all the big USMNT players during his reign.
Who was he going to replace him with? Diskerud, Acosta, Nagbe??? His play dropped off, but he was still much better in 2016 than 2017 when he became very complacent.
If Klinsmann was truly worried about a decline, he should have tried a bunch of other players but he didn’t try even one. I’d have put Williams and Morales before the ones you listed personally.
Just because he was worried about a decline (which there was), doesnt mean he still wasnt the best option. Didnt he try both of them? I would have liked both to have been involved more.
I’m pretty sure Bradley played close to, if not all of 90 minutes in every single game. Not trying out lineups excluding a declining player is bad coaching. Making him earn his place may have pushed Bradley to play better but that was never attempted. For all of JK’s talk, he didn’t walk it in this regard.
I thought Marquez was at Barca? But yeah, he was very good while he was there and in his prime. But he was not 'pivotal' to Barca winning all those trophies. It was Ronaldinho, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, etc.
Frankly, no. Dempsey went through several managers at Fulham and had to regain his spot with each one. As soon as he got a new manager, he was relegated down a few rungs and had to earn his way back to his position as one of the top players for Fulham and when he finally got a run for a few years, he established himself as one of the best players in the premier league. You can argue that there were other players better but there are not 1000s of players that can say they are/were one of the best players in the premier league. As Adam Tash says, he was one of the best scorers playing as a midfielder. His production went way down with Spurs but his role changed too. He was second fiddle to Bale and was still second leading scorer for Spurs (if I remember correctly)...again as a midfielder. When you add in what he had to overcome as an American at the time it raises the stature of his accomplishment. As far as Klinsmann's statement about Dempsey, it was true to the extent that he never did reach the pinnacle of the sport. I still think it was somewhat unfair to Dempsey but I doubt Dempsey let it bother him too much....he had to put up with worse.
Here is the list of callups and minutes at CM from JK's second cycle. He didn't even try one??? Looks like a bunch of players to me. MIDS / D MIDS: 16 3247m(44) - Michael Bradley (1987, 31)-[Toronto FC] 1711m(30) - Jermaine Jones (1981, 36)-[Colorado Rapids] 1122m(32) - Mikkel Diskerud (1990, 27)-[NYCFC] 1075m(32) - Kyle Beckerman (1982, 36)-[Real Salt Lake] 526m(20) - Alfredo Morales (1990, 28)-[FC Ingolstadt] 479m(13) - Danny Williams (1989, 29)-[Reading] 334m(11) - Joe Corona (1990, 27)-[Dorados] 275m(6) - Sacha Kljestan (1985, 32)-[NY Red Bulls] 270m(19) - Darlington Nagbe (1990, 27)-[Portland Timbers] 154m(21) - Perry Kitchen (1992, 26)-[Heart of Midlothian] 68m(2) - Emerson Hyndman (1996, 22)-[AFC Bournemouth] 47m(6) - Wil Trapp (1993, 25)-[Columbus Crew SC] 17m(4) - Caleb Stanko (1993, 25)-[FC Vaduz] 0m(2) - Matt Polster (1993, 25)-[Chicago Fire] 0m(1) - Dennis Flores (1993, 24)-[Club Leon] 0m(1) - Fatai Alashe (1993, 25)-[San Jose Earthquakes] 1609m(36) - Alejandro Bedoya (1987, 31)-[Philadelphia Union] https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/usmnt-player-pool-for-the-2018-cycle.2008440/page-21
You would recall better than I would but was there a game where Bradley was available and wasn’t played for the entirety of the game? Klinsmann (correctly) stated that he thought that Bradley could lose his edge but when did he actively look at alternatives that didn’t include him? In other words, even after complaining that it would be bad for the USMNT if our core player moved to a lesser league for stupid money because he wouldn’t be as sharp, he still started every line up with Bradley as his core building block.
Unfortunately, we did not have a 'much better' option than MB at the time. If Adams and McKennie were in the picture, they would be starting in our midfield. Klinsi love guys playing in the CL.
We didn’t even try to look at combinations that excluded Bradley. We had Williams, Morales, Jones and Bedoya as options to mix and match. Am I convinced they were better? Nope - but if I had publicly complained that a player may be slipping (and he was), I sure as hell would’ve explored my options.
I am one of the biggest MB critics, but the fact is there wasn't a player starting on a mid table EPL, La Liga, BL, or Serie A team at the time that could push MB to the bench. Yes, we could give Williams and Morales a bit more minutes; but the point is there wasn't a CL caliber midfielder available at the time. I am not saying MB was CL caliber player during this period, but there was absolutely no one screaming "I am a big time player, I should be starting for the USMNT".
My point is that Bradley also wasn’t screaming "I am a big time player, I must be starting for the USMNT" and Klinsmann thought this but yet did nothing to alleviate the issue. Furthermore, pushing him as a DM was particularly a poor decision.
And if you are simply "one of", I am the biggest! But I can't argue with much of this. The one issue I have always had the last 4-5 years is why not rotate the squad more? Klinsy did that initially, and my sense is it might have lit a fire under MB, or he was still good/young-ish, and won his spot back. Why not continue with that? For all MB's merits during his peak years, and moreso during the last 5, I have never seen him provide anything really game changing. At least with Jozy you can say "welp, nobody else is scoring goals like he is". That's an argument. With MB it was always "welp, he plays 90 minutes, and he's captain, so ummm, that's that". Just because someone is old and given the armband doesn't necessarily mean they are invaluable. He was valuable 5 years ago, but not indispensable. People got that confused (and are somehow still getting that confused, which leads to my more crazy conspiracy theories about caps record, etc).
Thank you! And as of today, we are still not looking at other options or combinations. It is still the stinkin' MB show. I am also frustrated that 3G is not doing the same thing with the CBs. We are supposed to be deep at that position, at least in the potential US player pool, but are not looking at which combo's work best vs certain opponents, which pair of CBs are our clear #1s and should be getting invaluable playing time together, and who are their backups pushing for the starting position? Instead time is wasted and another negative message comes from the new coaching staff with the inclusion of and the starting of Omar G. I only joined this forum but I was excited with the hiring of 3G and beginning a new cycle w/o MB. Until a USMNT roster is announced that excludes MB we will never be a serious rebuilding program. I am aboard with you as the biggest critic to another cycle being wasted on a proven loser. I would rather lose the GC while watching a more exciting style of soccer being played by the talent that we believe will be a major part of the next WC cycle. Let them grow together. Find the pieces that need to be added over the next few years. Build the roster depth. Integrate the YNT talent. Send a more positive message to the players that this is a new era and everyone will have an opp to compete regardless of club. Earn your call-ups and be ready to compete and proudly wear the shield! Exactly what I will be excited to witness in the upcoming U20 WC.
The data is in the link. JK called Bradley to 44 of 52 camps. He also called Yedlin into 44 and Zardes into 39. Bradley was 26.5 yo (the same age as Trapp is today) and had not declined. Your outrage seems misplaced given that 5 years ago when JK expressed his concerns you said you totally disagreed with Klinsmann. The truth is a prime-age MB90 was a player to build around. JK was correctly concerned that instead of getting better Bradley would stall by dropping down to what you term the "minor leagues". The fact that his level slipped did not mean he dropped below his competitors even at the end of the cycle. Other combinations were tried. The first set of post-WC matches featured Mix, Bedoya, Corona, and Morales sharing the center trio of the 4-3-3 (Williams was hurt). Do you forget the attempt to play Jones and Bedoya in the double pivot v Brazil? Bedoya, Williams, Morales, and Kitchen all got shots in 2015. Morales got a start at GC2015 (Williams was again hurt). Replacing a 33+yo Jones was Klinsmann's biggest challenge for his 2nd cycle, not replacing a prime age MB90. The irony is that the US media and fan base mercilessly skewered JJ for much of his tenure. It was not until JJ absence that suddenly MB90 "declined".