Pre-match: 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group Stage: USA vs Guyana

He might figure his chance of joining England's team is just as good as our chance of being good...

 

I kind of included us in those teams too...Though we seem to be getting less and less athletic in our youth ranks every year, so......

 

Once again, nobody that is unhappy with this roster cares about being great this year. How many times do we have to say that? Has one person said "this roster sux, we would trample Mexico in the finals with our U20s"?

No, we all expected a continuation of the call-ups by Sarachan, a mixing in of top veteran player (Jozy), and better coaching.

Instead, we get McKennie, Pulisic, and 18 average to below average MLS players.

 

In the women's game, this year size is virtually everything.

 

Totally true. But I would argue that we know the ceiling of several roster fillers for Berhalter this time around and it's not pretty. 3 years before the WC this is the time to gamble on youth to see if their upside isn't better. Roldan, Ream, Lovitz, Morris, Zardes, etc. have marginal ceilings for the international stage. Past time to move on from them if we're targeting the WC, which I would argue with every fiber of my being that we should be targeting.

 

As subjective as regular shit on TV. Just think of it as "Gayana got talent" or "Voice".

 

I appreciate you backing up your answer substantively.

I fall into the "patience" constituency for whom you have disdain, so it's likely we have (and will have) disagreements, but it is welcome to see a poster backup their perspective with specifics while leaving out the vitriol.

Now we can go back to arguing...

 

Plus, it's with birds, which makes it better.

 

Anybody on this thread really think Mihailovic is better than Julian Green or Darlington Nagbe or Kenny Saief? I don't.

 

I've always been in a weird place w/Donovan.

#1: I completely understood why Klinsmann idiotically removed him from the team for the '14 WC (I 1000% believed it was to leave his imprimatur on the locker room, his stamp of fundamental, and core authority, that would theoretically unify the team under his unquestioned authority. Anybody could be cut. It served his purposes that way. It also underlined his requirement for 100% commitment by ousting a player that wasn't fully committed.

#2 I thought Donovan was the most deserving of a long break from the USMNT of any player in history. I watched the USMNT pretty consistently starting in '97, and ridiculously consistently by 2000, missing almost zero games that were televised across the following decade and once Donovan became a regular he pretty much never missed a USMNT match ever. I would love to see how many total USMNT's matches Donovan failed to play in between February 2001 and February 2012. Other than Cupcake games (I can't remember if he played them, I think not), I don't think he missed more than the fingers on a hand. I thought it was a HUGE mistake that Arena and Bob failed to give him bits of time off during that era because he was being way way way overplayed for a guy with his mentality. I just didn't see coming a near total retirement from soccer/USMNT coming so soon after WC '10, but I definitely think he was mismanaged. He desperately needed time off and NEVER got it.

So it's odd, I understand what Klinsy did and why, and tons of coaches will and do do that, and #2 I think Donovan was 1000% justified in taking a break, numerous times between the ending of WC '06 at bare minimum and the arrival of Klinsy. I think we might have gotten more Donovan, and no break if he'd gotten more time away from the game. Instead we just wrung him dry until he had nothing left to give.

 

I saw the first half of USA,Chile. USA was simply too much woman on average.

I like the idea of using our huge, well fed population to bully our opponents.

 

Too bad. If MLS players were any good as full professionals, European teams would be signing them.

 

Man, this is just begging for a snarky comment

 

https://sbisoccer.com/2019/06/usmnt-aiming-for-repeat-of-gold-cup

note the repeated references to "pretty football," "play from the back" (both backs say it), or "develop our style." i didn't obsess over how berhalter said he would want to play -- i wanted to see it for myself -- but is this matching what he said or did we sell one thing while pursuing another?

 

Saief is injured.

 

We should take over sumo, too.

 

I wonder what percentage of people on this board even realize he plays in MLS now.

 

Como te quiero, huevón. Bien molestón eres.

 

On loan. A loan that's ending.

 

https://www.ussumo.org/

 

You know what pisses me off?

That in the Gold Cup we have to wait until the semis to watch a game with the intensity of this Chile-Japan in Copa.

 

Exactly. Do people bet on the Voice? Do they know how easy it would be to get set up? It's cool, but it doesn't seem like a good opportunity for a fair wager is all.

 

I think that El Salvador and Curacao have been playing pretty darn hard.

 

And Haiti/Bermuda was "intense". Maybe not "good" but "intense".

 

Absolutely.