For me what's exciting in such a list after such a disaster in 2017, and such a borefest last night is the sheer quantity of options. If you look at 97351's list in the Youth Forum, or anyone elses, you start seeing the sheer depth of talent in the youth program finally begining to show after such a disappointing stretch from 2008-2014. Over the last couple of years we've seen a gigantic pile of prospects flow up the system, heck, as infuriating as it is, Gonzalez himself is an example of such talent and he's just one of many, many talented players. I didn't even include in that list guys like Palmer Brown, Carter-Vickers, Tyler Adams etc because they're on the defensive end for the most part. The focus here is forwards and midfielders who contribute more consistently to the attack, an attack that is worrisome at this stage (especially at forward). There are two keys to my mind: #1 Quantity: Granted it was in reference to the NFL, but it still matters in sports in general, and Thaler's study which revealed that in terms of the NFL Draft, it wasn't the talent of the GM's, or how high a particular pick was, over time, that determined success, it was the sheer quantity of prospects acquired via such selections. the more you had, the more overall success you had, the fewer you had, the less success you had. Everything else was white noise, whether your GM was a genius like Bill Walsh, or a total embarrassment like Vinny Cerrato. I think the same theory applies across sports. And what's really huge to me here is that other than Forward, we are pumping an absolute ton of youth prospects of quality into the MLS and out to Europe over the past four years or so. The sheer quantity generally insures that we'll get more hits than times where there is a dearth of quantity and quality like 2008-2014, where at times it seemed like we had more NFL prospects (Josh Lambo) than soccer prospects. #2 Quantity of Quality The second part is that so much of the depth of talent actually looks, real, real good. Now granted the younger they are, the more liklely it isn't going to work out, but regardless, there are several talents that to my mind (considering we don't play a legit match for 18 months, and we don't play a qualifier for essentially about 2.5 years or so) could be getting minutes with the seniors as soon as that Confed Cup comes around. At Forward (the one problem spot): I really am very excited about the possibilities with Josh Sargent (looking very good so far, maybe the heir, a decade later, to McBride (although not the same player obviously), and in addition to Sargent, there is Weah (who also sees a lot of time at Winger). He's shown his ability in flashes for the kids, and moreso with PSG. Lastly there is Wright who could be a winger as well. For him, it really does seem to be a question of what's going on in that heart, and head. If he puts it together, he could be a monster, so far that hasn't quite happened this year, after having an exciting '16-'17. After them we've got a tier drop before you see another bunch, Ebobssie, Akinola, Vasquez, Reynolds and Busio. I honestly think these are depth guys, basically a whole bunch of bullets in a prospect gun, and maybe one fires that you'd never expect (like Parks, who seemingly nobody was aware of two years ago, but is now one of our most exciting central midfield prospects). They're all very young so there's a lot of time and if any figure it out, they could help a ton. For now, I'm not confident to put my vote behind any of them, but they've got time and talent. Central Midfielders: That's the one saving grace in losing Gonzalez, yes we lost our one most natural and supremely seemingly talented 6 in the system, but if we were going to lose a top guy, at least it was at a position where we have a ton of contributing talent already and developting talent with tremendous ceilings, as well as somewhat high floors. Here we've got McKennie whose already in. We've got Gio Reyna, who looks like John O'Brien/Claudio/Clint Mathis/Donovan to Pulisic's Pulisic. Too early to tell, he's so damn young, but when you read up on him, and watch some of the clips out there, and see scouting reports, Reyna really, really looks like a guy who may end up having more momentum at 17 than even Pulisic did. He's that good a prospect. In addition to him you've also got Carleton, perhaps a boom bust pick, perhaps not (97531 certainly thinks the world of him and he has an early eye on talent), you could see at the World Cup in October that when given space, Carleton is absolutely ruthless in terms of tearing apart teams with his passing and vision. It's playing in the compact, cluttered spaces of concacaf and the oversized midfields of Europe, and rough midfields of Latin America that it could be more difficult. If he can learn to play just as well in small spaces. Look out. We've also got a nice pile of excellent prospects that are a bit further away like Pomykal, and others like Hyndman that have fallen behind. At the back end you've Parks, Nyeman, Durkin, Sands, Booth, just an absolute ton, and at the top, I watch Parks and Durkin and just have a hard time seeing them being failures as long as they can be healthy. Nyeman looks absurd, but he's really really young, only what, 17 by the time we play the Gold Cup? That's a long road, but so far so good. Behind guys like that, and Booth who just got Bayern Munich to sign him (they must have LOVED what they saw with him in smaller tournaments considering how little he played at the World Cup, perhaps another example of European Scouts seeing more in our own players than our own coaches who are around them all the time saw-Wouldn't be the first time). In terms of wingers/left and right mids we've also got a ton of prospects, one of my favorites being Taitague, a couple of forward prospects like Akinola and Wright have actually been used as much or more on the wing than at Forward. In addition to them we've got Tillman who looks ready to file a one time switch, Amon whose getting first team minutes, Manneh who signed up with Pachuca, interesting prospects like De La Fuente, Llanez (pray we hold onto him), and a veteran in Saief whose legit, but was injured just as he was making his way into the full US side after switching to rep us over the summer. For me, I suspect somewhere between 5-10 of these guys are going to become senior regulars, or at worst, bench options. I'll be wrong on some and right on others, but I think that's fairly reasonable, there's a chance it's higher, I don't think there's a chance the # is lower than 5, and I think 5 is almost certainly far too low a #. That's exciting to me. If they're healthy, I definitely think somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 of these Forwards, 3-5 of the central midfielders, and as many as 4-6 wingers competing for jobs on the left and right sides of the midfield depending upon formation. None of this takes seriously into account, Zelalem, one of the top prospects three years ago, but now having fallen on hard times, or Siebatcheu, a guy who would instantly be the best forward in the program since McBride/Donovan/Mathis, the second he filed a one time switch (if he did). So for me, focusing on playing a baton down the hatches, defensive, structured and compact game moving forward for the 2022 campaign doesn't make sense considering where the talent is that's bubbling up. The bulk of the elite prospect talent in our "farm system" and in our "Yanks Academy/One time Switch Academy" our central mids, wingers, and to some extent, sound, and technical centerbacks and fullbacks. The bulk of them actually can play the game on the ground, and won't be same old, hoof it up, 1980's/1990's, and 2011-2017 era American soccer players. Just think about the central midfield talent we have 19 and younger: Pulisic Carleton Reyna Acosta Pomykal McKennie Durkin Booth Nyeman and Zelalem and Parks, two 1997's. I need to do more homework on guys like Pomykal, and I haven't seen enough of Booth or Nyeman, but all of the rest are smooth on the ball. So who are their potential outlets if they graduate to full senior camps? Saief, Taitague, Wright, Amon, Tillman, Llanez, De La Fuente, Weah, Akale, and many more that have just started to make it already over the past year or so. The bulk of these guys are highly skilled on the ball, technical players. They aren't athleticism first types like Akinola. To my mind, the reality that so many of these guys are skilled and comfortable on the ball, that a guy like Sargent is so smooth with the ball at his feet in the box, that we really should be building our team around them and some of the current guys 25 and younger who can cut it, rather than look at the largely embarrassing options we saw last night, and react to that by immediately building the highest walls we can construct in front of our goal so we can continually try to win games of the sort we played against Belgium in 2014. That's not the future to me. To me the future is with Pulisic, Sargent, Wright, Llanez, Weah, G. Reyna, Carleton, Amon, Tillman, Taitague, McKennie, Parks, Durkin, Nyeman and yep even Zelalem types and beyond. We've got the kids w/this talent. We are going to have to trot out lesser options over the next year more often than any of us want, but I don't think that should dictate our vision for the 2019-2030 era. If these prospects succeed at anything like the rate that the bulk of our 1997-2007 youth team prospects did, we're going to see at least a half dozen or so options infused into the midfield and at forward that can play Pulisic's game, or at bare minimum, not totally embarrass themselves trying to play the kind of game Klinsmann tried to bring over here seven years ago. I'm pretty excited about the future. Miserable with the present no doubt, but the future, there is a lot of options coming up, a lot of talent. Far too many won't make it due to injury, bad luck, or just eventually petering out as prospects do, but with the sheer quantity we have now, as well as the quality, some are going to make it, and I'd be stunned if it wasn't far more than we saw over the previous decade, and even a bit more than we saw during that '97-'07 youth tournament era.
Juan Torres is another young CM, who plays in Belgium. I'm pretty sure he is behind Parks and McKennie but better than the others.
Thanks for referencing that. I wanted to focus just on guys I was to some extent aware of, and with Torres. I simply didn't know enough. I'm sure there are other guys I didn't think of as well. The one positive that comes to mind for me going forward is the depth of prospects we got and the relative quality of them as well. It just feels like 2015-present is much closer to what we saw 1999-2003+2007, as compared to what we saw from 2008 till around 2014. It's where the hope lies, and to me, the focus should be at the senior level. There are some hold overs we can keep from the '18 failure, and some guys we just might have to (as much as I want Altidore escorted out, it makes no sense considering the lack of talent at Forward, as much as I want Bradley out, unless we got completely outside the system across the board, he'll probably be in a transitional role at least through 2019). We've got some pieces already, and those kids are the future, and to my mind, there are several guys that are exceptionally exciting in the midfield in particular and also on defense. As long as we can have a better run of health than we did with a lot of our best young players post 2007 (thinking guys like Gyau and Renken in particular off the top of my head), I think we'll have a real nice young squad going forward starting around the winter of '19-'20, and it's critical that people coming in get guys like Hugo Perez back, and punt the guys in place and the guys still with roles that don't belong (Rongen etc).
Nice list and appreciate the thoughtful post. I'm hopeful that a good portion of these players will pan out but that's not usually the case. Furthermore, IMO, if we don't have a broad depth of players with these skills in the major leagues (Big 4), we're not ready to switch to an attractive/attacking style competitively in a tight WC/WCQ match as it's a big shift for us and doing it too early is what cost us our trip to Russia IMO.
Costa Rica has a population of less than 5 million people, and they are the best team in CONCACAF year after year, IMO. Why is that? Iceland has roughly 300K people and they are in the World Cup. Uruguay has 3 million people and they finished second in South American qualifying, drawing with first place Brazil away. Why is that? How do these countries create so much talent with such small populations? We need to study what they do and emulate it. In a country of 330M+ people, we ought to be able to put out a side where all 11 players play in top leagues, but we can't do that. Why is that? There are major failing within US Soccer and they need to be addressed, top to bottom, starting with youth development. As far as style goes, I would like to see us play as an attacking team, but one that has good balance between offense and defense. I want to see us take the game to the opponent and make them feel uncomfortable.
We always talk about the US having 330M people. How many of that number are truly invested, with their heart and soul, in the sport of soccer? It quite literally could be less than the population of Iceland. Great, tons of kids play the sport. Tons of parents pay to allow their kids to play the sport. They couldn't give a rat's tail about the game outside of wearing yoga pants on the sidelines every Saturday. The kids play the sport for the two or three hours they either practice or play in a game. Otherwise they're on their Ipads playing Minecraft. As the old saying goes, quality over quantity. We have more soccer players registered than the population of Iceland. They're in, we ain't. The vast majority of who we consider soccer people in this country have no real affinity for the sport.
Hi Mr. T. Hope you are well. I throw out the 330M figure to start the conversation. It's hard to know the exact figure who play soccer, but I've read that there are about 16M youth players in the US. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/227428/number-of-soccer-players-usa/ There are about 3M officially registered players. Let's guess that 2M are male. We can't get 10 exceptional male field players from that pool of 2M? This is a systemic organizational and coaching problem.
I'm well, thanks for asking, hope you are too. I agree that we should have enough numbers to find a couple of good players, but we haven't. My question is this: a huge part of training kids is technique. Technique is built be hours of work, and dedication to improvement. How many kids are out there in their back yard working outside of practice? How horribly painful is it for youth coaches to get kids to pay attention long enough in practice to even get them to understand a drill to improve technique? I get that it is certainly a coaching problem, but you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink.
Donovan connected the defense to the offense. For confirmation of that, ask Tim Howard. The '18 cycle savants under appreciated that aspect and talked about "creators". We still haven't seen Delgado. When he is mentioned people go into all aspects of all players in the pool with all sort of of excuses and at the end one is left still asking oneself, "so who will connect the defense to the offense"? P.s.edit: A second guy who appears to be headed towards carrying out that function is Parks. We'll see how he pans out at higher level.
"Moreover, there is enough tantalizing talent much like the senior squad, for some people to preach patience and sing the praises of our "progress", despite the actual evidence. This super awesome U17 group finished third in their group. There are 4 teams in a group, they finished third. The game against Paraguay was majestic, but the ones before and after it were pathetic. Finishing third in a group of 4 and getting smoked on our way out is our identity? Well, Spain got smoked by England in the final 5-2. Spain's goal scorer just got sold from Barcelona to Dortmund www.goal.com/en/news/borussia-dortmund-barcelona-sergio-gomez/15i6tizbhcfqh11zbncynlnjfkBorussia Dortmund have signed Spain youth international Sergio Gomez from Barcelona on a long-term contract. The Bundesliga side activated the release clause in Gomez's Barca deal, reported to be in the region of €3 million. Gomez, 17, was a member of the Spain side that reached the Under-17 World Cup final in October and scored his side's goals as they went down 5-2 to England in India. We cant really accuse Spain of lacking coaching talent.
Question: What does "officially registerd" mean? Does it mean they play/are registered with a team that plays in a ussf recognized league? AYSO, club, USL, some Sunday leagues etc.?
I think it's those kids registered with one of: USYSA, AYSO, US Club Soccer, and SAY. The USA has more registered players than any other country on earth, and we win feck all. Ask yourself why.
And what is your point? Spain kicks ass at the senior level and occasionally underperforms with their youth, like losing in the FINAL. Their coaching is generally fantastic and occasionally pedestrian. Their talent is nurtured and trusted to come good the world over. We consistently underperform at all levels, our coaching sucks and our individual talents are not trusted for good reason.
The players who have better technical skills for our pool don’t have outstanding technical skills relative to the rest of the world - what’s great for the US is just good but not great for UCL teams. Each one of these players also has a weakness in grit and bite that has kept and will keep them from becoming elite. Our national team character has been built around grit and desire - I would not trade that off for technical skills (although clearly I’d like to have both but that’s not happeneing any time soon).
Our athletic players don't have outstanding athleticism relative to the rest of the world and well beneath technically. Mckennie and Adams are players worth getting excited about, but not near Kannte and Pogba or Witsel and Fellaini. Our technical central midfielders lack much to their game and wont become elite unless they improve on those areas or find a way or end up in a system that can cover their weaknesses. We are too young of a soccer country for me to think we have a team character and the teams have differed over the years. In 2002, we started Agoos, Lewis, O'Brien, Reyna and Mathis at least once. What made that team great (greatest in my mind) is that they were so balanced. The point is to build the best team, not pick the best 10 players that will get results. We also play in two different worlds. The best team for the world cup probably isnt going to be the best team for concacaf. I think we dont limit ourselves to charactistic/style and focus on building and cultivating a balanced pool over the next couple years. Every player needs to improve technically, tactically, physically, mentally, etc. We need to raise the standard in every way. Hopefully, at least one of the technical cmids will add enough bite to their game or will reach an elite level in some other category such that devising a system to cover the weakness is worth it. Hopefully, guys like Adams tighten up there touch and comfort playing in tight spaces. I'm ok if in the end we take one technical who is on the bench for a certain situation, but not accepting that we can only defend and counter until we have X number of players at a certain level. I do think we need to strive for more and think it will make us a better defend and counter team if we end up going that route.
@DHC1 .... If we can play lil wil trapp as dmid over and over again, I think can start trying these younger more technical players higher up the field. I think Adams would be much better in that role and that kid playing in Scotland in Adams role.
Watch the Brazil game. Without an international level creative difference maker like Donovan or Dempsey or Pulisic that's who we are. Try hards who string the odd sequence together with a threat on set pieces. With one of those guys we're that plus 3-10 more dangerous attacks. When a team can put 3 of those guys on the field at the same time then they have a puncher's chance if the worker bees are humming the right tune.
for me, athleticism is the key trait. when people outside of the US think of american athletes, they think spectacular athleticism. although that is attributed to the mainstream sports here, it can transition to our national soccer team too and i think it has to be the foremost characteristic of our style/identity. make a lineup filled with above average to elite athletic players who have respectable first touches and IQ, complemented by a pride in moxie and toughness that means no diving and embellishing injury as well as rarely getting run off the field and consistently giving elite teams all they can handle. i'd love to see the US lead by example in cutting out all the petulant bullshit that repels so many sports fans from this sport. i'm excited to see pulisic, weah, sargent, mckennie and adams play together in the near future. there's enough promising U23 talent to keep me closely following our national team. we could see something like this in the olympics, given we qualify: ----------------- weah ----- sargent ----------------------- pulisic robinson - mckennie -- adams ---- dest ---------- epb ------ miazga ----- ccv ----------------------- steffen that's just guys who are training/playing with the senior team already, and all but a couple are tremendously athletic, all pretty trustworthy with the ball at their feet. plenty of prospects who could break through by then and supplant some of these guys. this is why i answered yes to the poll recently created on here asking if you're excited about the future.
This is from the Ben Lederman article. "[In Belgium] it's much more direct, I think. Three passes, you're already in the other half," said Lederman. "Long balls... it's a different game, more tactical as well. In Spain, there's much more possession, much more build-up [play] and creating chances from possession. Here it's much more physical." http://www.espn.com/soccer/club/uni...dermans-career-was-almost-ruined-at-barcelona I simply don't understand why we are so focused on playing a Spanish/South American style as it simply doesn't fit our team or our soccer heritage (English/German mix). we stink at it and are so far behind other teams. It's baffling.