That group was excellent, and the USA would have had an unprecedentedly strong team in 2010 (their peak WC, agewise) if Holden, Jones, Onyewu and Davies had all been fully healthy. However, I think the current group looks significantly stronger than that one. None of the Donovan generation earned significant playing time at top teams or in top leagues prior to age 21. This time there's Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Dest, Sargent... and also numerous other players who could easily turn out to be Donovan/Dempsey level talents based on what they've done so far. Not all of those prospects will pan out, but there are enough of them to be reasonably confident that some will.
The lack of youth professional opportunities for the earlier group make for difficult superlative comparisons based on early pro careers. The earlier group did, however, have the historically most outstanding youth international achievements. 4th place in the '99 U17 WC. Best Player of the '99 WC. 4th place in the '00 Olympics. 5th place in the '03 U20 WC. Top scorer in the '03 U20 WC. This group also produced Best Young Player of the '02 World Cup.
The Mastroeni and Clark were classic destroyers. At club-level, Yueill plays mainly as an 8. 3G uses him as a regista.
Adams is so much more though. The one thing they had on him is their destroyer part. he just out thinks and out quicks and thus doesn't get into nearly as much card trouble while simultaneously surprising the other team when he intercepts and starts an instant counter.
Which means for this position, this version of the team is better than the 2002 version. I think this type comparison would lead to numbers that dont tell us much. It would probably be more fruitful to compare the whole midfield starters and bench to see how it fits together. Interestingly enough, Mastroemi was listed as a defender so comparisons are already getting more complicated. It is tough to compare the midfielde as they were constructed differently. The group I would have today has many physical players. I like how both groups fit together. What are your thoughts of.... Adam's, mckennie, pulisic vs Mastroemi, o'Brien, Reyna Morales, Holmes, Reyna vs Hejduk, Stewart, Lewis, Jones The current side has better defensive qualities and dynamic attacking. The 2002 has better skillful possession oriented players and wide midfielders.
The midfield I would like to see before making any decisions is a (healthy) Adams, (healthy) McKennie and (healthy) Pomykal. depending on whether that works as I think it would and the players can stay healthy for a while the rest of the team can fit around it. If not then perhaps Pulisic, Reyna, Ledezma or Lletget etc could be in the starting three.
There is also the interesting consideration that Europe used to be super super snobby about our players, who could barely get in there, and had to take what they could get. As a result, Keller is an elite keeper who ends up at Rayo Vallecano. That couldn't possibly be objective. But the arguable result is a player with modest control of his pro career, fighting Euro-snobbery in his career, might focus on the NT that gets to play the elite in spite of it all. With the US, if nothing else, Keller gets to show up Brazil. And those players might even make career concessions to promote the NT. I will come back to MLS. I will sign someplace I am sure will play me. OK, fast forward a couple decades, we are starting to be able to sign at elite destinations. McBride is being brought in, supposedly, in part, because of team spirit concerns. But is part of the passion issue that players can now sign "higher" and as a result you don't have to funnel most of your ambition into the NT because Europe is indifferent. I do think there are issues with the current gestalt on signing abroad, perhaps a little too much ambition, too many players signing over their head and sitting or on loan. But when you mentioned "professional opportunities," I wonder if some of the NT issue is that the NT is no longer the only route to recognition and elite status. My response, a discussion Arena started to broach after Klinsi's failures, but perhaps took in reverse-snob-problematic directions himself, is you have to parse out the players with talent and passion. That we may have to deal a little more than before with -- and perhaps try to weed out -- people who should make an impact but don't GAF. Yet another reason to put down club based analytics or resumes and watch how hard and effective they actually play for the NT and what their eye test is.
A game-specific question I would ask, along development lines, is would you bother with the veterans on this camp cupcake roster or would you play the kids? Camp cupcake is often mocked for performance. But to me it's a development showcase. It's an opportunity to get some minutes and show where you fit in. Those sorts of games may be ragged and not optimal for winning big. It's like a tryout scrimmage. If you focus on overall gel and results in a tryout game you're missing the point. You're looking for the standouts and/or for sets of players who show un-aided chemistry. I say this because in this particular year, when we are about to start LoN knockouts and quali, and with only one more international date after this, we have just one 90 minute game coming up. We lost the closed door scrimmage when Qatar got canceled. And even then it's, how do we spend that 90 minutes? I posted something before Xmas where with this roster he could use mostly regulars and make a starting lineup. Will the kids even play more than 10-30 minutes? Is he going to use camp cupcake to work on system and starters instead? This is part of where I say we're bedding in a veteran team, whether we like it or not, and the bubble players not already broken through are going to be treated as secondary for probably this whole calendar year. There will be various excuses, can't get players for camp cupcake, U23 quali, Olympics, lack of international dates, seriousness of LoN and world cup quali. But it's still a choice.
I would throw Vasilev into that group. He has gotten rave reviews from his coach and is expected to be in the team regularly. I think Pomykal is in the mix with all those guys, but far the penciled in starter many are making him out to be. Interestingly, with all the talent coming up, I can see a scenario where Mckennie loses the spot he has for the last year plus. I think many over rate Pomykal (which is the tendency with MLS players), but if I am wrong, he might be suited for that 8 role.
We are too predictable. One thing this team is missing is a more direct playmaking ability. What we do now is either counter down the lines or switch and switch and get the ball wide and cross it back in. What we need are some players who can be facing net 20-30 yards out right in the middle and dribble people and make an incisive pass. I thought McKennie had this from his slalom run of Portugal but haven't seen it since. Some of this may be a parched person in a desert wanting to drink any liquid he sees, but Pomykal in his 5' of Uruguay took on their defense on the dribble. I don't know if he's the best choice to do it, ultimately, but I want that ability. I have seen footage of Reyna in age group ball similar to that. That's one reason I am his fan. Just like we all got excited over Morales because he actually got stuck in as a 6. It represents something missing as much as it represents they are the ones to provide it.
I reiterate, as a defender, my concern is whether we're going to have enough/many defensive options in this boom. Richards, Dest, and then what? Tons of attacking talent. Brooks is back half of his 20s and iffy. Long is even older and some say iffy. So even the band aids aren't going to last much more than 2022. At least one thing worth considering is taking McKennie and Morales and some of the mids who don't fit GB's idea of a 6, and may have a position-fit issue, and try them as CBs. People need to realize that a big pile of mids is redundant and doesn't solve other than 3-5 problems. You still need forwards, backs, keepers. One thing I worry about with the snob focus on skill alone is someone has to do the dirty work. You can pronounce a tackling 6 anathema. You can select wingbacks to get forward. You can pick CBs who are slick. Someone has to stop the other team.
It is not a bias towards the league or a quota imo. But I do think 2019 was an attempt at a "moneyball" approach that necessitated the majority of rosters to include a majority of players from Camp Cupcake 2019. We don't know if that approach has been abandoned or not. We might not find out until June. March will give us some hints.
Most of the best players from the previous good USMNTs topped out professionally at mid-table Top 5 teams. Dempsey, Donovan, Howard, Jones, Beasley never made it much higher. Jones and Beasley were the only players with any significant Champions League playing time. I think Pulisic has already passed Jones for UCL caps. Pulisic, Dest and McKennie have UCL caps, and Adams, and maybe Reyna should get into UCL games next month. The top end of the talent is starting at a level that the previous top talents never got to. The only thing that can hold back this wave and make it underperform is MLS imo. The unwillingless to sell young starters under contract will stunt quite a few players and lower their ceiling. This problem will lessen over time as more and more kids bypass MLS or MLS changes their practices.
Yes! The MLS is a thug based league with poor officiating where very few players learn how to play at the top levels. I really think we need a real league with good refereeing and good coaching throughout. But that will not happen without major changes to the way the MLS is organized. We will never see the kind of things, like promotion/relegation, that drive the best leagues throughout the world. Once a team is out of the playoff race (playoffs are another thing that makes the MLS second or third rate) there is no incentive to play well. In fact there is some incentive to lose more matches to improve draft position. Bad officiating and bad coaching and many bad players allow thugs to dominate the MLS and therefore young players learn very bad habits that make them, over time, less and less attractive to the really good overseas leagues.
GB faced an unusual situation, failed older team on its way out, bunch of retirements, still has some players like Bradley who are too old left. Leaves a huge hole, how do you fill it. I think he picked the very best of the Sarachan trialists, and then was faced with the choice of how to further fill the team. You can try the mid-career guys or you can skip to the upcoming boom players who are not all ready and in a head of steam career progression. But may have much more upside. I think he would say that he had a bunch of holes to fill and people to look at and to keep it objective he went to the numbers. Analytics. If you players early in their career progression have age group stats you don't count, then they won't show up as desirable in analytics. Or at all. I think this is perceived as a MLS bias when it's a mid-career bias. It currently favors MLS in practice because even a mediocre MLS vet will have analyzable numbers where an age group player at an elite club won't. The foreign based still working through systems are effectively punished -- for the time being -- for their choice to take a longer-evolving path to a first team. Hence Dest and Pomykal are promoted before Richards and other better players. Hence Sargent is in under Sarachan, who was willing to anticipate based on scouting and reputation, but out then in again under GB under analytics as he waited for then crossed the full time first team threshold. GB was on the team 1994-2006 back starting before MLS and when we could barely get jobs abroad. Though he went abroad he often played in smaller leagues or second divisions. He might have a blind spot about the difficulties of trying to break in at top clubs and that a player so struggling (eg Weah) might still be better than a less ambitious starter elsewhere. That is not the career he lived. But I think the pool has changed where you no longer have to deal with just the Woods -- veterans who make a bad career decision that may impact their NT usefulness -- but whole piles of rookies coming in who have promise but won't show up in analytics. I will say that under normal circumstances you have a more successful NT and you have a reliable core of veterans to work around, and the integration of the kids can be slower and more specific to need. I think part of his difficulty is the sheer amount of holes and need speeds up that process and he's pushing back by favoring mid career players instead. to me he's missing that if that cohort was any good 2018 would have handled itself. they have brought in some new players like holmes from that group but he's relying on some key people who were part of a failed team which is unwise.
All that aside, I was more thinking about the individual club mindsets. It is still a league run by NFL owners that tries to stay apart from global soccer. When a youth like Adams gets to the point that the league is too easy, he was sold on by NYRB. But this is an anomaly. More common is the Pomykal situation, where the MLS team wants to "Win a Championship" by retaining all their young players. Whether they win it or not, whether Pomykal gets paid or not, he is not playing in the Bundesliga like Adams. And that is just the 2 of a dozen teams that even try to develop young players.
That is also a logical way to explain the situation. I would say my theory, which some in the media have eluded to, that they were using the extra time with MLS players in January to install a complicated system of play is more generous. It shows some forward thinking and brash experimentation. It, of course, was doomed because the players were not that good. Like I said, your theory might be true. But it shows GB and ES actually leveraging the worse generation of talent ever. That they were incredibly dumb and not particularly daring. Not saying you are wrong or I'm right or we are both crazy. Just that it would be sad if your theory was true and would not bode well for the future. The only argument against your idea is the guys in second divisions in Europe, some who played well under Sarachan, that had lots of data but were not used. Robinson, Green, Holmes, Miazga, Lichaj. Morales had lots of data but was ignored for 9 months. But we can discuss it in another thread.
I think the current young crop does look to have the most potential that we've seen for a long time if not ever. On the top end, Pulisic and Adams are making noise at a level no US players of the past have. Lower down the list, we have raw numbers of guys in good situations now like never before. However, I think they are still severely hamstrung by following the lost generation so they are all having to grow up really fast to replace the players who came before them. So, even when they are progressing really, really well, we are expecting so much from these guys and hoping they come around so fast to fill the gaps that progress with the full national team can look less inspiring than we may hope. This issue also points out that the ultimate success of this generation will also fall heavily on the generation behind to fill in the gaps. Most good teams have players from a variety of age groups. Very seldom does a team consist of players all from within a single generation. You want some experienced guys, mostly peak years guys and a few youngsters. The current young group will never have appropriate experienced guys as they are all either too old (veterans from the 2014 team) or never developed well enough to matter. The big hope is to have a similar generation following the current youth crop so you can put together a real competitive team between the two or maybe it means waiting even longer. The youngsters could become the best generation we've ever produced, but if they are surrounded by piss poor generations on either side, they may still struggle to get the results expected all by themselves.
I would say that they retained camp cupcake players at what even a "MLS can be as good as Europe" sort as me would see as foolish. To me so much institutional wisdom has been lost. A very easy lesson learned soon after starting January Camp was don't overrate the results and keep the ones who make an impression on a short leash. In short, remember the sort of player you could get released. Keep the good ones but watch how they handle March. Used to be plenty of guys who looked good in January then crap in March and disappeared. Personally I think if he did system that early it's stupid. As with my complaint that January campers would be unlikely to make Qatar in bulk and use anything gained from a camp there this year, unless you retain a bunch of January players teaching them system is kind of Quixotic. It's March when that makes sense, full access. However, if the idea is empire building then January it is. It's our team now and this is how it's done. If you want to be part of it, sit straight and fly right. Still absurd to act like they are going to be the tutors passing on the wisdom to the more prestige March guys, but I think at least some of this is them embarking upon a long term project and part of the question is where do you fit in it. I still think 2022 is expendable based on how we reacted to the first 2 LoN games. The irony to me is that a smart program serious about the future and on a long term project would consider skipping the mid-career mush to the bubble coming up behind them. If 2022 is expendable then why aren't we playing the 2026 players. And ironically that might also be your better chance of results is go with new faces, rookies, mid career guys like Holmes we haven't seen much/at all. You have the perfect excuse to then get whatever results happen. "We're building for down the road." Cause to me this is an odd blend of seeming 2026-horizon accountability mixed with veteran players that look like a cynical (but misguided) effort at 2022. "I think these older players give me my best chance to win now." The past year (or years) should put that in question. OK, if that's your game, you get Klinsi/Arena style accountability, no? You've had a year with your system and your peculiar choice of the veteran talent. It is what it is. What have you accomplished? OK, not enough, later. I mean when the Astros rebuilt they tore it down to the studs and then built around their first round picks. They could have signed 30 year old vets to plug holes but what's the point. Half of what I want to know is if I hand the reins to the future we think is improved, Sargent, Reyna, Richards, etc., will they perform to promise. If they don't, you move on to Soto, etc. You don't know if you're not trying. And I see Zardes, etc. as worse and still not trying. That's literally setting up a 2018 repeat where the team is no good but you perseverate like it's your best chance at success, which at some point should contradict so bad your head explodes.
It's true that there are more European pro opportunities available to young US players today, but I still think that the comparison favors the current crop pretty strongly over the U17 class of 1999 or so (who I'm not downplaying - that cohort was much better than any other, pre-Pulisic). Donovan was still playing in the Regionalliga at 18, for example. Dempsey was an instant success when he joined MLS at 21, but I don't think he would have been an instant Bundesliga standout a year younger (unlike Adams). And there are a bunch of players who are relative afterthoughts now who would have been considered among the best - if not the single best - US prospect during the years between Donovan and Pulisic's emergence. Think about how much of the USA's future would be seen as riding on the shoulders of the likes of Busio or Miljevic if they'd emerged ten years ago.
If it's a new decade it must be the latest installment of the "greatest ever Youth Generation". Some things never change including juvechelsea's verbal diarrhea...
does anyone actually read them at this point? At this point, I only skim his posts while scrolling as fast as I can. it’s crazy.