2019 U17 World Cup cycle

Discussion in 'Youth National Teams' started by kba4life1, Oct 22, 2017.

  1. butters59

    butters59 Member+

    Feb 22, 2013
    It's good, would be even funnier if weren't so sad.
     
  2. LuckofLichaj

    LuckofLichaj Member+

    Mar 9, 2012
    So is the comp Leighton Baines?

    I mentioned Dest because he’s a below average FB athlete. I’m bot sure that KHF is as technical as Dest. That’s a thin margin for KHF. He’d better be a once-a-decade type maestro out there to have an impactful international career.
     
  3. Gorky

    Gorky Member+

    Jul 28, 2006
    NYC
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Well this was a horrible disappointment.
     
  4. Clint Eastwood

    Clint Eastwood Member+

    Dec 23, 2003
    Somerville, MA
    Club:
    FC Dallas
    Its also important to remember that for a U17 World Cup, we had a very tough group here.

    I watched Mexico play..............the Solomon Islands last night.

    The 2015 U17 World Cup team also finished last with one point. Also a tough group with Nigeria, Croatia, and hosts Chile. [four players from that U17 team have at least one USMNT cap. Two are seemingly core pieces with Pulisic and Adams.] And that was a U17 team that trained together every day in Bradenton.

    Last cycle we chomped up on India in our opening game. Then got a result in a really close game with Ghana that could have gone either way. And lost to Colombia.

    I know we're disappointed with these results. The players are too based on their social media posts. But the U17 World Cup is a means to an end, not an end unto themselves.
     
  5. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I don't think it's fair to assess Pepi as having a poor tourney.

    Not disputing he didn't play well in the opener, though if Reyna didn't miss him making a run wide open in front of the net maybe we're having a different conversation right now.

    But in the 2nd of 2 games he one-man pressured the opponent into multiple turnovers which he did well to maintain possession on. However, at that point it's up to his teammates. He's out of position and they have s**t creativity. This is the rest of their front 4 - Busio, Dobbelaere, Jasson. That's as bad as you've ever seen from a USNT. That's who he was dependent upon for service. The cm battle was stalemate in that game, they weren't backing up Pepi's pressure nor winning up high to see him as an option nearby, and they were instructed not to send it long to their cf rather keep possession at all costs. So where are the chances?

    It's also worth noting that in the lone friendly in the lead-up, Pepi played well against the toughest possible opponent in Brasil who we always suck against, scoring a brilliant individual goal, and I don't think it's a coincidence we saw the best performance from him and the team when they collectively pressed. Then they scrapped it against worse competition for whatever reason. Actually they were causing Senegal fits at the start of that game, then it was pretty much never to be seen again.
     
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  6. zlebmada

    zlebmada Member

    United States
    Jan 16, 2018
    A lot of good insight in this thread, especially appreciate the long posts from @ussoccer97531 and @dlokteff.

    My take is that Kobe (at left back of course) and Reyna are still likely full national team players, Pepi has a good shot at it, and Bello, Gray, Carrera and Kayo have a chance if they grow a lot as players, especially when it comes to defensive awareness and responsibility. Development for those last four is really tough to predict, but they have the physical tools and solid enough technique to play for the national team someday, if they get serious about improving over the next three years.

    Wicky had a poor tournament, obviously, and since he's the only YNT coach right now and the hand-picked Berhalter/Stewart/Berhalter hire, this tournament is yet another thing that reflects poorly on the current regime at Soccer House. That's a big problem and I don't know how it's going to be solved outside of the Fed hitting the reset button on the entire men's program, which seems incredibly unlikely.

    But in terms of talent on this U17 side, it would surprise me if we don't get at least two players from it who become real contributors for the national team, and I would NOT be surprised if we get 4.
     
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  7. DHC1

    DHC1 Member+

    Jun 3, 2002
    NYC
    was Gregg involved in this hire? Why?
     
  8. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Reyna, Pepi, KHF, Bello, and Odunze/Las are all pretty good bets to be senior national teamers.

    Wild cards are Kayo, Leyva, Busio, Carrera, AOC, and Odunze/Las.

    It's going to be much more productive than our normal U-17 squad. They were further along in their professional careers to be able to come closer to telling who the cream of the crop is. And academies are much more advanced that they used to be. It was just a holesy unit w/ sub-par player selection (stagnant so "the group" would learn the system, especially a problem w/ such young kids) and tactics to make the group appear much worse than they were.
     
  9. zlebmada

    zlebmada Member

    United States
    Jan 16, 2018
    We don't get clear information on who exactly decides what at US Soccer but everything they say is that these decisions are collaborative and we know Wicky had conversations with Berhalter in the hiring process (which makes sense -- in the abstract you want the senior NT coach and the YNT coaches on the same page). So yeah I think it's very fair to say Gregg was involved in Wicky's hiring.
     
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  10. Runhard

    Runhard Member+

    Barcelona
    United States
    Jul 5, 2018
    I have to disagree on these players. This was the worst performance by a US U17 in the history of EVER. They were absolutely terrible against their peers from other countries. If any of these players is on the Senior team that is just the status quo of our program moving guys like this along. I didn't see a single player that showed any reason to make one thinl these are the types of players we need on the US senior team. Maybe if we want to continue to be a minnow on a world stage we can move them along, but not is we ever plan to compete for anything at a senior WC.

    We need to restructure how and where the US scouts for players. I could probably have picked a group of players simply out of NTX that would have had a better result in this tournament.
     
  11. glutton4Bolts

    glutton4Bolts Member+

    United States
    Mar 18, 2019
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    All three games were very hard to watch IMO.

    On the attacking side, Jasson ruined almost every chance to attack down the left side. He was absolutely atrocious. Pepe wasn't given a ton of support but I worry that his lack of elite pace will stunt his ability to play at the national level. Reyna also missed quite a few opportunities and I was expecting more pace as well... but he largely played out of position. Overall... I was quite consistently screaming at the TV when the squad almost invariably passed it backwards after taking the ball in midfield. It screams GB and it pisses me off. The coaches in this regime do realize that not everyone on the team needs to touch the ball on every possession... right?

    Defensively, we saw a lot of the same struggles we have seen from the USMNT... sloppy giveaways in the back 3rd gave countless chances to the opposition and the goal differential could have been even worse than the embarrassing mark it ended up being.

    In short, that was a total fail in my book. There wasn't even a bright spot that I can think of. Did any player stand out to you? I can't think of a single one.
     
  12. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This is an emotional response to the team performance without weighing in how weak links in the chain break the chain and a foolish tactic handed down from the top to keep possession at all costs prevents players from making winning plays in the moment. You have to look at individual players, individually, as well as outside national team play for an overall picture.

    As aforementioned, the team 4 years ago got one point, and it produced Pulisic and Adams thus far, while several players have a realistic chance of back dooring a senior national team future.
     
  13. gogorath

    gogorath Member+

    None
    United States
    May 12, 2019
    #1813 gogorath, Nov 4, 2019
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2019
    History tells us that's not true.

    Reyna is the only one that is over a 50/50 bet at this point, IMO. His talent level and potential are both high, and that's pretty rare on this team.

    Everyone else has larger question marks, IMO.

    Kobe is probably the closest to having both skill and potential, but I don't don't see him on the same level as Reyna.

    Levya. Will he develop into enough of an athlete?
    Busio. I like him better than most. But what's his position?
    Kayo. Got the athleticism, but lacks the skill.
    Las/Odunze. GK at this age are a crapshoot.

    and so on.

    No one is both an elite athlete and highly skilled. And I think even a player like Reyna carries some risk. The rest of these folks that don't hit both now, at 16/17, are just much lower than 50% to make an impact on the senior team, IMO.

    The 2017 team was more talented, and Sargent, Weah and, as a late addition, Dest. There's some other guys who might make it -- James Sands, Taylor Booth, Chris Gloster. But the rest of the roster is not currently on track to contribute at this level.

    Players like Pomykal, Ledezma, Richards, Llanez, Mendez, Araujo, Soto, and others all got added in the ensuing two years (Pomykal is a 1999 so he wasn't eligible for the U17 ... but everyone else I've named was).

    So much will change over the next two years.
     
  14. bpet15

    bpet15 Member+

    Oct 4, 2016
    Is this seriously what people saw? Because, overall we were out possessed when you combine all three games. I also think its pretty amusing about this playing out of the back crap we keep hearing about. If playing out of the back simply means the GK doesn't ever kick, then fine, we play out of the back. What I saw the vast majority of the time is our GK rolling the ball to one of our CB's who would then take a mighty whack at the ball.

    I don't see how anyone can look at these three matches and say there was a mandate to keep the ball at all costs. If there was, we failed even more miserably than people think.

    For me, I just think it was boring, slow football, similar to the pace our players play at the DA level, USL level and even MLS level. This was as unAmerican of a performance that I can remember. No heart, no leadership, no fight, no cohesion, combined with very little speed, creativity and bad decision making equals 1 point in the group. I will fully admit that each team we played was simply better than we were. What bothers me is that the gap seems to be entirely too big.
     
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  15. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    As I said, the history you're drawing from isn't overly applicable because the academies weren't nearly as far along at that point and we weren't seeing players breaking into 1st teams, playing w/ professional reserve sides, or as high up the ranks in big clubs.

    Look at the competition in the 2011 WC as a guide. Denmark produced 5 senior internationals. For Ecuador they yielded 6. So did Japan. So did Netherlands. It's irrelevant if you consider these sides to be better than the U.S. It's relative to their respective quality of their senior teams. And in the U.S.' case MLS/USL graded out well worldwide in terms of giving teens opportunities to gauge their ability.
     
  16. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah, they couldn't win the ball in cm to have good possession rates, and when they actually were on the ball they tried to fiddle, play back passes, including to the keeper, and it ultimately led to turnovers.

    This was widely noticed by us and some of the media who had inside info that they were trying to implement the fed's directive from top on down to the u-17's.

    Outside the official comp they played a different way in the first half of the Brasil match, collectively pressing, and they managed to achieve equal control of the game against a tough opponent.
     
  17. bpet15

    bpet15 Member+

    Oct 4, 2016
    Well then, they did a shit job of it. I thought it was an assumption, but if it was truly mandated, then the rot is running downhill.

    I guess just another example of trying to fit a round peg (players) into a square hole (GGG style). I've never understood that. At most, a couple of these players will play in the full team, why not use their strengths and try to win a tournament. Is it really that big of a deal if 16/17 year olds don't play a style that maybe will be required of them 5 years from now?
     
  18. thedukeofsoccer

    thedukeofsoccer Member+

    Jul 11, 2004
    Wussconsin
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    In Gregg's last season or two in Columbus you often couldn't tell they were trying to play possession. That's because they had little bite in cm to win the ball. So them and their opponent were taking turns. At least they usually had better finesse cm's than their comp, although nothing special. And their wingers like Pedro Santos and Meram were more creative relative to opponent to carve out some chances. The U.S. were employing Dobbelaere and Jasson. Didn't even play Reyna there, or bring Pynadath. So it was a bad combo of light on defense, mediocre on build-up, and virtual non-existent creation. Thus few fruits of a possession style, even if that was their intent. Tried to run thru a brick wall ultimately and kept falling down instead.

    If they played 2 in front w/ Pepi and AOC, Reyna underneath, moved KHF up like Austria does w/ Alaba, had Kayo in cm around Leyva for a combo of distribution and athleticism, Bello-Carrera-Gray-Anderson; pressed and told players to make the right initial reads, we would have saw a lot more functional team where all of a sudden it looks like there would be promising players this group would be producing. Could have brought Pynadath for wing creativity off the bench and Atencio + Tolkin for mf bite. These are things the fed don't seem to be valuing right now to our detriment. The lack of dynamic wing options are a mitigating factor, but they have to prioritize anyway to function in a possession style especially. No excuse for not finding destroyers as they could even convert an athletic cb w/ adequate ball skills, but they inexplicably want a ball circulator from that position.
     
  19. don Lamb

    don Lamb Member+

    mine
    United States
    Aug 31, 2017
    I do wonder how Bailey Sparks would have impacted this squad. How would this team do against the team we sent?

    ---------Sparks--------

    Dunbar----Fuentes----Pynadath

    --------Stroud------Rodriguez----

    Gomez---Ramsey----Tompkinson---Cuevas
     
  20. Excellency

    Excellency Member+

    LA Galaxy
    United States
    Nov 4, 2011
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    I noticed we gave up 8 goals with Gray on the pitch at cb and gave up 0 when he was on the bench, for one game, against Group winners Japan.

    Was Carreras much better than Gray? I don't know much about this pool.
     
  21. Runhard

    Runhard Member+

    Barcelona
    United States
    Jul 5, 2018
    Maybe we will know soon. Heard Sparks, Ramsey and Gomez have been called into the next 02 camp. As well as Dante Sealey and Seth Wilson. Time to re-rack this age group.
     
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  22. butters59

    butters59 Member+

    Feb 22, 2013
    Who is coaching?
     
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  23. matabala

    matabala Member+

    Sep 25, 2002
    ....

    A 16 year old soccer player doesn't need to be "showcased". He needs to play soccer.
    A 16 year old soccer player doesn't need "fans". He needs to play soccer.
    A 16 year old soccer player doesn't need an "agent". He needs to play soccer.

    What's clear from your post is you are very invested in a bunch of pimply kids who statistically will never be professional soccer players. Whatever floats your boat. Perhaps one of the reasons we are not developing competitive soccer athletes is precisely because folks like yourself insist on turning these 16 year old soccer players into commodities rather than let them be soccer players. Can you blame them when the headlights get too bright and the stage fright sets in? We have seen the enemy and it is US.
     
  24. Runhard

    Runhard Member+

    Barcelona
    United States
    Jul 5, 2018
    No idea. Just hearing names from some of the parents I know here locally. I have not seen anything announced. I think it will be an combo 02 and 03 camp and then the 03s play Nike Friendlies at the DA showcase in December but I could have that wrong.
     
  25. Runhard

    Runhard Member+

    Barcelona
    United States
    Jul 5, 2018
    I tend to think there is a lot of truth in what you are saying and have heard from a parent of one the kids mentioned here a lot that some of these kids read these forums, social media posts and they get very big heads. I also think its really early to act like these kids are anything but a guess on if they will be very good pros.

    It make for interesting forum fodder, but I think the pool of people interested in these kids is limited to US soccer scouts and coaches and some adults with two much time on their hands. Most of the adulst I know that are very well versed in soccer all things Europe and even a little MLS haven't heard of any of these kids.

    As an example I was walking by an LAG game a few years back in San Diego at the DA showcase with some FCD DA parents and players and Efrain and Uly were warming up to play. I said to a parent, " that is supposed to be the best 02 and 01 in the country right now" to which every parent around me, said, " I have never heard of them" and these were FCD DA parents with kids traveling all over and some going to National Team camps.
     

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