Win-win situation, IMO. Advance another round in the playoffs or very likely be part of the November USMNT call up.
You can't spell "Playoff Fever" without "If I give up the goal that costs us the series, at least I can get a meaningless callup under Dave Sarachan, which is just as good!"
Clearly players do not think that it's better to lose, but every game and camp with the NT matters for players, especially for these guys in their mid 20's who are trying to establish themselves in the program.
I guess Jose Villarreal got cut today. Have to admit I like him a bit back in the day. That 2023 u20 team look more and more awful by the day.
You could argue Villarreal has actually been a good player all along, but one that the Galaxy never bothered to give time to. I think he can still have a good MLS career.
You could say that about some of the other guys they reportedly cut, too. #LAGalaxy have cut ties w/Jack McBean, Nathan Smith, Jaime Villarreal, Jose Villarreal and Raul Mendiola. Club declined further comment— Kevin Baxter 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 (@kbaxter11) November 7, 2017
These guys were all promoted from Los Dos. At that level they were productive. I wonder if this illustrates that the gap between USL and MLS is greater than many believe. I never understood the promotion of Nathan Smith. Unlike the others, his was not an athleticism or physicality issue. I thought he possessed enough of both. The problem is that he has no ball skills and the touch of a hippopotamus, plus his tactical sense was also not great. Not a good combo if you want to play 1st Div. pro soccer.
I still think Jose Villarreal can be a decent player. The others, probably MLS back up upside, and those guys aren't must keep players on your team.
Like FCD, LAG's first generation of homegrown players have mostly been a bust. I'm not even sure they're even backups in this league. Jose Villarreal had the most upside, but has never really seemed to advance. I think of Jose and Danny Garcia as similar types of players. Technical players, but didn't seem to be good enough athletes to play at the highest levels in this country. And that's not the start of some sort of rant about how US Soccer only promotes "athletes." You do have to reach a certain standard...............................and if you don't you better be Cuauhtemoc Blanco. As far as I can tell, Danny Garcia wasn't on a team in the USL after not being re-signed by San Antonio after the 2016 season. He appears to be out of the sport. He's married and has the cutest little boy. Jonathan Top also seems to be out of the sport. Moises Hernandez is no longer listed on the roster of Comunicaciones in Guatemala, so don't know what happened to him either. Ruben Luna is hanging on at Rio Grande Toros, but who knows for how much longer.................... Like many MLS clubs, the "success rate" of early homegrowns for LA has been really low. I don' tknow if this is what should be expected or something we should be depressed about. After all, the "success rate" of youngsters in Euro academies is really low.
He was given a number of minutes with the first team, but got injured every time he got the chance. My take on the Galaxy is that they're producing very good players, but not players who are exceptional at anything. The two players from G2 who are making it are Jamieson and Lassiter. Unless you're a fantastic player, you need a certain level of athleticism to make it in this league. And really, most leagues. I was watching the Galaxy academy play the Mexican academy teams and, on average, the Mexican players were more athletic.
Villarreal statistically did well in the minutes he got. I think they should've kept him, but if they didn't want to give him more minutes, I think he can get it elsewhere. The others ended up not being any good, IMO.
Villarreal seemed to have a great left foot. Average right foot. And sub average athleticism. Funny to remember how much we panicked about Mendiola getting his citizenship
Same thing with RSL. Guys like Nico Muniz, Benji Lopez, and Lalo Fernandez never really went anywhere. Donny Toia turned into a pretty good player, but only after he left the club and spent 2 years in the lower leagues. Kinda odd that Toia is now playing for the same manager that never gave him a chance at RSL. The first real HG player that RSL got solid production from was Jordan Allen in 2015. Glad signed in 2014 and only started really contributing last year. It's really a 5+ year investment to build a solid academy.
Oregon State's big striker Timmy Mueller, who bore a lifetime's worth of YNT snubs ("You guys talking about YNT snubs?") like a gentleman, is now a senior at Oregon State, where his teammates include ex-YNTer Jalen Markey. Mueller's 2017 line looks a bit strange to me, leading me to think maybe he's had some injury problems, though I could be wrong. He never really replicated his freshman goalscoring success. In any case, I assume he'll get at least some pro looks when done, if he wants them.
On balance the LAGDA has good coaches. However, I question their method of talent identification. They seem to go overboard with the notion that tactical and technical is everything, so who cares about athleticism.
Jose Villarreal could help a team as a depth player with potential, but his 2017 salary was $105K. Typically any team option will be at an escalator of the previous year and Villareal isn’t worth even his current deal. The rest are USL or tweeter USL/MLS types who just bounce around as the last guy on an MLS roster.
I don’t know the shape of the Galaxy DA pool especially years ago, but it might simply lack athletes with even rudimentary soccer skills. The better athletes who have even decent soccer skills have tended to pan out alright, but the best two Arriola and Wright did so at other teams. Zardes (if you even count him as a HGP) is MLS quality and BJIV is better than the players they just cut and has been derailed by injuries. I tend to agree though that technical skills tend to get overrate due to the physical early maturing athlete bully stigma, but unless you are pushing towards the world class level technical that it is hard to make a mark in MLS without plus athleticism at most positions. Lots of the guys LA signed early just seem like low reward types and if you are going to sign a guy early, I think you roll the dice on high reward guys even if the risk of them never amounting to anything is high ie Bryan Reynolds or Gianluca Busio.
I don't know much about the coaches. What do you think about Mike Munoz? Galaxy II look so unprepared and I'm not sure whether it's just because they're young or that Munoz is not a good tactical coach.
Munoz seems OK. I just think he got caught up in giving so many players opportunities, and that along with injuries created an unstable situation. It seemed like every Los Dos game had a very different lineup. Next season he needs to do a better job of balancing opportunities for young players, including DA players, with some team cohesion. I still go back to my earlier post- there are too many players both in Los Dos and in the LAGDA who have little upside, mostly due to athletic deficiencies. While it's true that examples of players that are not particularly quick or athletic who have played at a high level can be justified in not recruiting athleticism, my response to that is those players are usually extraordinarily gifted in tactical and/or technical ability, and I just don't see many of those players with the LAG specifically, or in the U.S. more generally.