He has always been in the bag for Sacha and he doesn't really comduct interviews. He is not involved in the majority of Extratime Radio's interviews (I can't remember the last one where he joined in).
Hamid, Horvath, Steffen I do wonder had we qualified, if either of those could have beat Guzan for no.1 spot we see ENGLAND finally dropped Joe Hart. And went with 3 green options. Like 10caps of experience between the 3 chosen.
Doyle's got the spine of the team mostly correct. Some of his wilder picks are the spots on the field where a lot of us, and probably Klinsmann and Arena too, would have been throwing their hands up in despair due to all the injuries. To me, it's a sad irony that the two best American players right now in that 32 and older range are the perennially excluded Kljestan and Feilhaber.
he clearly made this as a joke I mean he made obvious decisions that were trying to give you hints it wasn't serious. Like amon plays on the left...pulisic prefers the right.. also he clearly went out of his way to make sure mls was represented at every position, and that atleast half the team was mls guys. I mean think about a simple position like cb...there was no way on this earth that Ike opara was going to go over omar g, there is no way that brandon vincent was going to make the world cup squad, he also had to move tyler adams to rb just to find an mls backup for yedlin. doyle is terrible
Considering current form and injuries as well as the cycle as a whole, I would have gone with this: GK: Howard, Guzan, Steffan CB: Brooks, Besler, Miazga, CCV FB: Yedlin, Adams, Lichaj, Acosta CM: Bradley, McKennie, Nagbe,Trapp W: Pulisic, Arriola, Saief, Weah ST: Wood, Altidore, Dempsey, Dwyer 7 Alternates: Hamid, Cameorn, EPB, Johnson, Roldan, Lleget, and Sapong Line-up in a 5-3-2 with Wingbacks ------------------Howard------------------- ----------Miazga-Besler-Brooks Yedlin----------------------------------Saief ---------Bradley-----McKennie----------- -----------------Pulisic----------------------- ----------Wood---------Altidore------------
That's the million dollar question. My thoughts. Of the U-23s, Pulisic and McKennie are guaranteed, and Adams is very likely. After that, I personally would pick CCV, though for Arena/Klinsmann he would be 50-50 (it's tough to see Arena picking a second young center back, and Klinsmann weirdly hated the English Championship). Of the 32 and older players, Guzan makes it for sure, Dempsey might survive only because of injuries, while I think one of Feilhaber or Kljestan make it as a backup attacking midfielder because of injuries. With all the current US injuries, the big question is how a US manager would chosen between borderline MLS Zusi types and young, untalented, and unproven Weah types to fill out spots 15-23 in the squad.
I really appreciate your post, but I was referring to which WC group. Like would we be in the same group that Panama got or would our previous round of 16 finishes at the last 2 WC's have gotten us a better seeding?
Based on our rank of 27 we would have been in pot 3. No way to know where we would have been drawn. How is the seeding decided? The seeding for the 2018 World Cup draw is based on the FIFA ranking for October 2017 . There are four seeding pots, each containing eight teams. Pot 1 contains hosts Russia and the highest ranking teams, with the next eight highest ranked teams in Pot 2 and so on. http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/worl...need-to-know-ahead-/76h460tngg911m214y8fmv3bp
He made a really compelling case for his picks. (Any good writer would, I guess, but still.) I've been warm & cold with regards to Sacha over the years, but he obviously understands quick passes and playing players into space better than most of our offensive midfielders over the years. (Michael Bradley in Brazil was offensively horrible.)
We would have sent a crappy team with an old keeper and a back line filled with more holes than swiss cheese. Then we would have lost 3-0 to Belgium. 2-1 to England and 1-0 to Tunisia due to a penalty to pour more salt in the wounds.
It is crazy to think how poor our best 23 is performing right now... Michael Bradley - having to play CB now because he can’t play in the middle anymore, and doing a horrible job at it. Geoff Cameron - injured? And relegated. Jozy Altidore - injured and not playing worth a damn. Tim Howard - has to be very close to retirement Clint Dempsey - age has finally caught up. Fabian Johnson - no longer a regular for club and always looks like he is about to die on the field. This does not even look at the players who were called up with extreme regularity such as Beckerman and Wondolowski who can barely play anymore. These were supposed to be our KEY players. ....This is why it’s a HORRIBLE strategy to enforce the rule, “young players need to earn their spot”. It’s obvious young players need to earn their spot, but what has not seemed obvious to US coaches is it’s absolutely imperative to project your team to peak at the right time. Hopefully, we never see this problem again, and we don’t keep calling in already non-performing dinosaurs. Sarachan isn’t the coach I want for the next cycle, but I will credit that he has at least funneled out the non-performing dinosaurs. For 2022, the perfect example of this is Tim Ream. Ream will be 34 in 2022 although he is playing lights out right now. A good coach might not totally ignore Ream, but will use him to be a bench enhancer not someone who will take away opportunities from promising prospects, such as playing ahead of Carter-Vickers, Miazga, or Palmer-Brown. If Ream is called in, it should be to help those players develop as Ream is most likely going to regress in 4 years.
Yes, as a Fire Fan I have mixed feelings about old Dave Sarachan but I have to say he called up a Roster that has my approval. A bunch of younger players who need a chance.
--------------------------Sargent/Dom Dwyer(9)---------Pulisic/Weah(7/11) -----McKennie/Roldan/Zardes(10)----- Bradley/Trapp(6)-----Delgado/Parks(8) --Adams/vfana-(off/def)----------------------------------------------------------Yedlin/Lletget(def/off) --------------------------------------------Besler/Ream--/Miazga----Parker/CCV --------------------------------------------------GK: Guzan, Steffen, Melia p.s. edit: for those who feel the squad is too young I would say "fine, put in the squad we fielded against Trinidad"
This is spot on and a really perplexing consideration - had we actually qualified for the World Cup, I wouldn't be feeling too optimistic about our prospects given all the injuries and poor form among our "regulars". In addition to your list, here's the current status among several other 2017 regulars in our pool: Bobby Wood - had a bad year for Hamburg, scoring only one goal John Brooks - missed most of the year due to injury Jordan Morris - injured and out all year Omar Gonzalez - only started and played in about half of Pachuca's games in 2017/18 Apertura and Clausura seasons. Kellyn Acosta - just returned from injury and not yet back into form Christian Pulisic - I wouldn't have worried about him in Russia, but he did have a form dip with Borussia Dortmund during 2017/18 and his club numbers (goals/assists) didn't improve significantly from 2016/17. We likely would have been in serious trouble in Russia, with a roster that would have relied on newcomers and unproven talent to compensate for all the injuries + "key" players who are out of form.
I gotta wonder if bad form for some players might have been due to poor morale after us not qualifying. I do wonder.
For me, Guzan, Hamid, Horvath Brooks, Miazga, Lichaj, Palmer-Brown, Cameron, Ream, Yedlin, Villafana Pulisic, Nagbe, Bradley, Corona, Johnson, McKennie, Acosta, Parks Altidore, Wood, Dempsey, Sargent,
I would think that the World Cup Qualifying failure depression combined with the lackluster play of Dortmund, and changing managers/selling top players, had a big mental impact on Christian. He has seemed dazed more often than not since last fall. He definitely needs some time off. I'm not a tattoo fan, but he appears to be delving into the working class players ink thing many players delve into these days. Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi didn't have any ink... until Messi's tax evasion trial was about to start and suddenly he pulled a Kobe Bryant and got lots of ink to show that he's the common man's man. Christian's arm on Monday looked like it had fresh ink from the previous few days and maybe going under the needle is what he is turning to to distract himself from his depression. It's better than addictive drugs (I guess). Hopefully he gets the rest he needs and starts off his new season with a different mindset, because on Monday, he was about the 6th or 7th most dangerous player on that U.S. Olympic-level squad. (And he is WAY better than that.)
I wonder what it would be like to see Landon Donovan and Christian Pulisc playing together for the national team.
Doug McIntyre of Yahoo! Sports published an article projecting the 23-man roster Bruce Arena would have selected had we qualified for the World Cup: https://sports.yahoo.com/usmnt-players-selected-world-cup-213430363.html. It's a good (though, depressing) read and I think McIntyre's predictions of what Arena would have done are pretty accurate. A few differences between McIntyre's projected Arena roster and the one I predicted Bruce would have selected: McIntyre thinks Bruce would have selected Omar Gonzalez as a backup CB in place of Geoff Cameron. In retrospect, I think he's right. McIntyre thinks Bruce would have selected Tyler Adams as the backup RB over Eric Lichaj. I don't think Bruce would have demonstrated that much flexibility, but he did convert Tony Sanneh into a RB in 2002. McIntyre calls for Bruce to pick Sebastian Lletget as a midfielder, over my pick of Lichaj as a RB and Adams as a CM. McIntyre thinks Bruce would have selected an injured Jozy Altidore over Dom Dwyer at striker. McIntyre suggests Altidore's foot has been injured for awhile and he would have delayed surgery until after the World Cup had we qualified. Aside from that, we shared 20 of 23 picks channeling our inner-Bruce. As for me, here's who I would have picked for our 23-man roster: GK Guzan, Howard, Hamid Hamid narrowly makes the roster over Zack Steffen, mostly due to experience. DEF Yedlin, Brooks, Besler, F.Johnson, Lichaj, Miazga, Gonzalez, Villafaña Geoff Cameron misses out due to injury (with Omar Gonzalez the beneficiary). MID Bradley, McKennie, Pulisic, Kljestan, Nagbe, Saief, Acosta, Arriola Tyler Adams would have been my final cut from the roster in favor of Kellyn Acosta (who I realize has just returned from injury). Benny Feilhaber would also be an alternate. FOR Altidore (if available, otherwise Dwyer), Dempsey, Wood, Zardes In my alternate universe as head coach, playmakers such as Sacha Kljestan and Benny Feilhaber would not have been alienated from the US team set up. Fabian Johnson (despite his poor season) would have been told to play LB if he wants to start. I would have considered lining up in Brazil with a team like this: -----------------Altidore/Wood----------------- Pulisic------------Kljestan---------Nagbe--- -------------McKennie----Bradley------------ F.Johnson-------------------------------Yedlin ----------------Besler---Brooks---------------- ---------------------Guzan-----------------------