San Jose and their mediocrity have no room for Akanyirige (or Fuentes) in their team today, despite other teams playing younger players. But they know better than everyone and their strategy has been working in recent seasons, so they know better than everyone else. Calvillo is on the bench, Yueill is starting. LA Galaxy are starting Vom Steeg and Zubak. Lopez and Arellano are on the bench. Brewer is on the bench for LAFC.
Unusual... Williamson has made the bench 1 or two times for the first team. Not sure why he didn't get the start
I think Pomykal is best in the center as a #10, but if he's going to play as a winger, I think he's best at RW. He's left-footed, so I think he does better on the RW cutting inside. Similar to Carleton, he's best in those half-spaces in CM. He's not going to stay on the wing, and run the line. He's a central player, whether you start him on the wing or centrally.
Interesting that Scally got subbed in in the 57th, while Sands got in in the 75th. Scally is playing right wing, which doesn't suit him, but I'm not complaining. He hasn't had much to show, but he's just so clean on the ball. His passes have been crisp and he thinks quickly, even if he is just a fairly plain player. He had one run off a corner that surprised me in how connected he looks to the ball while sprinting forward with it. He's also probably 6'0", pretty fast, and strong enough to look like an average college guy. Considering he's one day away from being eligible for the 2023 U20 World Cup, that's pretty amazing. Sands looks like his old self, also there's a little bit of a pep in his step that I don't remember. His first touch was a great turn and through ball to someone who wasted his ball.
He definitely doesn't look like he's 6 months from turning 16 y/o. Will be interesting to see how tall he ends up growing.
I'm a little confused. What are the rules to be eligible in the open cup? It's not like Marlon Vargas has any contract with the first team.
Clubs can use short term loans for players on their USL teams. Can't play academy players like Llanez and Mendez since they're not signed (no idea why this hasn't happened yet) to a contract.
You know, it occurs to me that our domestic baby Yanks get short shrift when they make their competitive first team debuts. Our guys abroad have their own threads and they get to graduate to the main YA forum. We should start doing this for our domestic players.
I'd be a supporter of keeping these threads like this because YA is 98% off topic. Each guy that has a thread invites too much random discussion. In these threads, it's easy to talk about the overall topic, which is often insightful and much more interesting. Also, I've always been a fan of the community over here. The posters are very informed, respectful, and always have something to add. And, most importantly, I don't have to open 45 tabs to keep track of everyone.
The counter to that is someone like Carleton probably should have a YNT thread as discussion of him clogs up so many others.
He already does: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/ynt-eligible-mls-players-2018-in-season-thread.2081314/
Building off what @TarHeels17 said, Scally is nearly an '03. Last day of 2002. He's over 11 months younger than Bello, over half a year younger than Alvarez, Busio, etc. And at that age, nearly a year or half a year can make a big difference. He's clearly no wide-midfielder, but I thought he held his own, which for a 15 year old in a match with MLS players, is very impressive. He had some nice sequences, and even though he's half the age of a lot of these players, its impressive that he stands out athletically. Scally's game reminds me a lot of early days Sergio Ramos when he was playing right-back. He's so athletically dominant against kids that he might be quicker to playing time than most players. And I think there's a chance he eventually moves to CB or DM, like Ramos did, but right now he's the best FB prospect in the system, as far as I'm concerned. Its worth pointing out that he was brought into the game before Sands.
Carleton is a different story. He's talked about enough around here that its not a bad idea, but even if guys like Sands or Goslin (to give random examples) are decent prospects, how often are they really talked about? Do we really need to create like 50 new threads when probably 40 of them won't have more 3 or 4 pages of discussion during the course of a year?
Not bad for your first Timbers goal of 2018, @kingjebo. 😍 #RCTID #PORvSJ #USOC2018 pic.twitter.com/Vk4PMiG8T2— Portland Timbers (@TimbersFC) June 7, 2018
Not really different for Yanks Abroad. The threads with players that end up not seeing the first team fall down the pages. Players who are more talked about end up near the top. I actually don't think its a terrible idea.
What does it matter? The YA Academy forum has 1,116 threads. If people want to talk about a player, who cares. If they don't, the thread will sink into the BS abyss.
It's actually much tougher to get updates on individual players when the MLS YNT Eligible thread is already 40 pages long and we're weeks short of July 4. The Youngsters in MLS thread is 224 pages. That's pretty much pointless unless you only want the last week's updates.
I thought Busio was really good tonight. Best I've seen from him. Lindsey was pretty good, and Kuzain was pretty invisible. Herrera was alright.
I’ll ask @bungadiri and see if this has come up in the past. It just doesn’t seem right to me that we have Academy threads devoted to the club careers of damned-near every single Yank playing abroad, but none for players playing in the US.
Scally, I didn't really notice, which isn't great but means he didn't look out of place @15. RedBull started their backups/third stringers. I was hoping for Mines but they called up USL Brian White ('96) to sit the bench instead. Redding apparently trains with the MLS side (from random twitter pics) but on the USL side he's behind HG Kevin Politz ('96) and 2 young foreign CB's (Ndam, Cameroon, 19 who started tonight and the 20yr old Ghanian who debuted last USL game).