I said that before U-20 WC which Josh scored a double in his first game and became the youngest American ever did that. Here is reason why: Normally our forwards belong to two camps--speed (Wood, Morris) and physical (Altidore), but rarely on smartness and positional sense (we talk about Clint #1 and Clint #2 here). But Josh is all about smartness and positional sense. That is why his ability to level up the age group (aka Donovan and Pulisic). Simply you cannot outrun and out power someone older. Of course I like Derrick Jones too. We haven't have those kind of d-mid for a long time.
Next cycle. Dude is not Pele or Messi, he's likely not even Pulisic. This is not a dire situation. I'm going to copy and paste what I said in another thread.
Yeah, he's an interesting/unique prospect for the U.S. That said, he requires a lot more proof than some good youth international games. He'd pretty much need to go absolutely nuts and be player of the tournament to be called off that sample. We've frequently seen how youth results haven't translated. Those from the 2007 WC were prime examples. Gold Cup spots are precious. It's 6 official games. Maybe if he's like 1st team All Tourney they could give him a look in January camp. I don't know what that would hurt since it's a few weeks, they take a ton of guys, it's only 2 friendlies, and an institution made for flyers. He needs to get in a pro setup if he reliably wants to vault rapidly and shockingly make the senior WC squad. However he achieves that, either bending and signing with SKC, or finagling his way into Europe before he's 18 somehow.
Entirely an act of desperation and grand standing. It basically tells every adult forward in our system, You suck so bad we have to call in a 17 yr old youth player.
Why should he get called in without a foothold at his pro club. I know he is heading to Bremen but still, there are others in MLS and overseas who have earned a look. He has not earned a look and we have many players to look at for CF already. Let him do his thing on the youth teams this year and head to Werder Bremen and begin his pro career like Pulisic did before we start looking past other players who have earned a serious look. He's just a kid and is unproven at the professional level although I think he has great potential to be a world class forward someday.
Sargent is playing in the U20 and U17 World Cups this summer/fall. That's enough. We have forwards like Agudelo that have actually accomplished something in first team football that deserve a chance to win a bigger role with the USMNT. Jozy, Agudelo, Wood, and Morris. Heck..........................have people looked at the MLS goalscoring charts of late? Sapong has the same number of goals as David Villa. Christian Ramirez has 7 goals in 11 starts. So if we're going to roll the dice on somebody, its probably on somebody that's scoring first team goals. I'm always of the opinion that USMNT callups are earned..............not handed out. If Sargent was Rossi and eligible for another national team, then maybe you could convince me.
I could see a case for January 2019 Camp Cupcake provided the Sargent continues to play well at the U20 and U17 World Cups. The pool is limited. The games are the most irrelevant on the schedule. It would provide him with a couple weeks of high level training at a convenient time. Laundry lists of players with no shot of doing anything at the full USMNT level have been called into that camp over the years. You could make a case that calling in a player like Sargent is better than calling in Jerome Kiessewetter or Khiry Shelton or Armando Moreno type who have been called into similar camps in the past.
If he is the golden ball winner or the golden shoe winner with 6 or more goals and the US team makes it to the final, then maybe Arena could call him to the GC. If he doesn't dominate the U20 tournament from here on out then Arena should wait on him.
Wood is more than speed; that is silly. He makes the best tactical runs of any of the USA forwards. Given his knee situation, I doubt he will play in the Gold Cup. I could see Sargent training with the team certainly. In camp, but not on the final 23 roster. I'd like to see what Sapong, Ramirez, or Dwyer could do.
This seems reactionary to me. I do like that Sargents game is based around good positioning, intelligent runs, and clinical finishing. But two goals in a U20 game is not enough to be called up to the senior team, no matter how well taken they are.
Shrug. Maybe not, but he'd still be ahead of Sargent in the queue................................ Arena has called up young'uns in the past who were just breaking into club football. But Sargent isn't even there yet. Its too soon. Bruce first called up Landon Donovan, who was clearly going to be a USMNT-caliber player, when he was 18. He hadn't played first team soccer yet, but had played a bunch of games for Leverkusen II. So I think we're probably a year too soon. If we think Sargent is in that category of player anyway................................. What's fairly clear is that Sargent zoomed ahead of the natural 18-20 year old crop of forwards who SHOULD have been starting at this U20 World Cup (other than Haji, who wasn't available and doesn't seem to be Tab's favorite anyway). Those 18-20 year olds still have potential, but they really haven't done anything yet (the Ebobisse types).
No... We need to be calling in players who have been on the fringe but who could make our squad more competitive. I.e. GK: Bill Hamid, Ethan Horvath, Zac Steffen RB: Timmy Chandler, Eric Lichaj LB: Jorge Villafana, Tim Ream CB: Matt Hedges, CCV, Matt Miazga, Walker Zimmerman CM: Kellyn Acosta, Danny Williams, Alfredo Morales, Cristian Roldan AT: Paul Arriola, Lynden Gooch, Kekuta Manneh, Julian Green FW: Gyasi Zardes, Aron Johansson, Dom Dwyer, CJ Sapong
Count me in the "let's look for special players" camp and not the "let's get a better idea of who are players 19-23" camp.
I don't think anybody would care if Bruce calls him up to a friendly. Not necessarily to play in the game, but to be part of the camp. We've done that with plenty of teenagers. He can't go to Europe to play club football until February anyway. The Gold Cup is a different matter, though. You're not calling up a 17 year old that's never played a professional game of any type to the Gold Cup, WCQers, or games that actually matter right now. Being able to score against Senegalese and Ecuadorian teens doesn't indicate anything with regards to his readiness to play against adult pros from Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, etc. I will say that most that post routinely on the USYNT boards were quite surprised that he was selected, quite surprised that he was starting, and then quite surprised about how quickly he's played well "up an age group." I'm not telling people to ease up on the hype. We just need to take this step by step here.
That's a tremendously non-sensible, pie in the sky p.o.v., that Klinsmann also employed, which led to getting embarrassed by minnows on our own homefield in the Gold Cup and being on the fringes of qualifying for the World Cup. Then he got blindly defended for it by posters such as you because the talent supposedly wasn't there, to not get out-shot 21:6 by Haiti, lose to Jamaica, by 2 to Guatemala, and by 5 in a set of qualifying games. You don't even know who are 19-23 and who are 4-15 without giving them opportunities. Klinsmann left players on the fringes merely because they were in MLS due to that being the domestic league or stepping down a level to the Championship because they made an appealing offer. That sort of prejudice is not going to lead to reliable assessment of where everybody actually stands. Not that 19-23 doesn't have value either. How many times do you need to see that it does after we suffer inevitable attrition before important matches? Doing things like desperately calling up a 17 year old u-20 for a tournament that will afford coaches 6 official games (7 total) to look at players generally is a recipe for failure and is not to be advised. Regardless if you think he looked like an impressive youth prospect, which I did. But that's all he is at the moment. Again, he's pretty much going to have to be player of the tournament to warrant a bump up to the senior squad. U-20 results have proven unreliable, a lot less so than MLS, Championship, Lowlands, and the like; in determining who'll probably translate to the senior team and now. If Sargent wouldn't translate now, then what is it worth? There's not even the risk we'll lose that ginger to Ireland or wherever his roots are from. He's a 2nd generation or higher American.
If Sargent keeps scoring then I may recount my original position. However, the logic still applies. We need to building depth on our squad not trying to do all this ridiculous fancy and unnecessary tinkering. It cannot be underestimated how badly Klinsmann hurt the development of this team this cycle. We have to make up the ground that Klinsmann neglected to care for: the development of our depth. For too long, guys like Eric Lichaj just went ignored. Granted, Lichaj isn't going to win the World Cup for us, but he's earned a chance to make a claim at being a squad member. Instead, Klinsmann kept calling in dinosaurs with zero potential for the strangest of reasons. We need to figure out who are squad members. Guys who can be trusted to fill in when a Jozy goes down and we look at the bench and say, oh crap, I didn't think of a replacement for him. Ultimately, there's a solid list of about 23 guys who are on the fringe, who could be important players for us in qualifying and the WC... So we need to find them out now, and not wait until next June. Sargent may be one of those guys, and if he runs away with it at the u20 World Cup then that would deserve a look, but we have all seen countless cases of the next Messi who falls flat. We do need to expect for the senior team, in important games, to have players who are not just the new talk of the town. To conclude, the Gold Cup is an incredibly important tournament for us. If we don't get the right new blood in this team, we are going to be in serious trouble. Every slot should be carefully considered for selection on ways to improve this team.
Most of our Dax-ish veteran role players, next year, will fall into the category of "just good enough to get you beat." Our best talent is over 32 and under 20. We should be looking there (the latter).
If the kid ends with 6 goals or more, I think he will be called to the GC, why not, he has nothing lined up until 18.
Because the NT is not a daycare. He needs to prove himself as a professional. He could score 10 goals, and it wouldn't make sense to call him up. We gotta get out of this mindset where people think its okay that non first team professionals are playing for our NT. It is highly unprofessional, and it makes a mockery of our NT. Once a player is playing games regularly or semi-regularly at a professional level, I think they can be considered. Until then, I don't think they should be considered. Saying that, I would have no problem considering Sargent (or other prospects of a similar level or better), if they were getting regular (or semi-regular) pro minutes and showing well. But none of these young players are yet, so we gotta wait until that happens.
I don't think I've been wrong either. I was consistently saying he was a good player at a time he wasn't making such a big impact for the U-17's from around November 2015-November 2016. He got very few mentions that weren't from me in the YNT forum up until then, meanwhile people were focusing on Ferri, Acosta, Goslin, etc. And in my opinion he's improved tons, but Sargent is not Pele. Sargent, McKennie, Wright, Carleton, Carter-Vickers, Palmer-Brown, Perez or any other you player someone might like does not belong on the NT until they demonstrate their ability on the pro level consistently. We can agree to disagree on this if you want.
Yup. Hypothetically scoring 10 goals against teenagers in youth events doesn't tell us a damn thing about his readiness to score goals against adult pros in a competition that matters. So no Gold Cup. Folks need to settle down here. Josh Sargent is younger now than the transcendent young player of our time was when he first got a senior cap...........Lionel Messi. Messi was 18, and had just broken into Barcelona's senior team. And keep in mind that Argentina was aggressively advancing Messi up age groups as he was also technically eligible for Spain. Pulisic was 17 I believe when he first was capped by the USMNT (about to turn 18). However, Pulisic had already demonstrated his ability for Dortmund's senior team. I'm not advocating that we ease up on the hype train. However, a lot of people are making grand proclamations about the kid after only watching two U20 World Cup performances and perhaps some games at the U17 CONCACAF Championships (even more meaningless). And perhaps only watching highlights of those performances. Can we just take a deep breath?