Pre-match: International Friendly: USA vs Netherlands; March 26th 2020

there are fans of every sport who value entertainment at the cost of some degree of ("safe") competitiveness. there are certainly owners who value profit over wins (frequently manifesting as being more entertaining than competitive).

but there are zero actual fans who prioritize anything over wins with two exceptions. a perceived "integrity" (say a college basketball team who wont recruit one-and-done players), and out of severe frustration with ownership/management/etc (people here hoping we lose to get berhalter out the door).

and that second one is, again, an irrational "if we arent winning anyways..." mindset. its in (very questionable) service of winning.

i think youre conflating aesthetics with effort/heart/visable courage.

i think holmes and llanez are two perfect examples of this- does holmes even have an hour of combined minutes for us? but in those minutes he goes all out for every ball, he hustles and pushes and closes. he looks desperate for the ball. llanez gets the ball and attacks, he goes at his man, or two men, regardless, he freaking goes for it. i believe hes just as bummed as i am (as a fan) every time he has to turn and recycle a ball- which is obviously the right thing a majority of the time.

thats as close at it gets to "wanting to look pretty ("try s***") vs "winning" (picking your battles, so to speak).

again, both have mere minutes on their nt resume and yet the majority of us clamor for that.

speaking for myself i dont care about backheels or stepovers (admittedly hilarious mullet-hawks are definitely a plus but even in that case i still lean miazga). but i care very, very much about fight, and heart, and showing it only helps.

onyewu wasnt a visibly emotional player by any stretch, but towering over borghetti, taking absolutely none of his s*** made him at least 3% a better player in every american fans memory that saw that.

while most of bs clutch their pearls over mckennies "out of control/hotheaded" play at times i love every damn time he runs in and shoves players off his teammate on the ground while a bradley or a trapp walk away plotting their next sweet backpass.

i LOVE players who wont back down, and in fact go in hard when garbage concacaf opponents get all concacafy. from boca, to mckennie and miazga, hell, its the primary reason ive come around on morales a bit.

but im wandering off topic- maybe im misconstruing who youre talking about when you say "astetic"ly pleasing players bs posters want over, i guess youre saying "winners". i get the impression you mean a solid shift from a roldan over holmes getting more looks, ream over robinson, etc.

of the many problems "we" have here, i dont see wanting to play beautiful soccer at the expense of winning as one of them. i just think we value passion over business-like.

and i dont think you have to look any further than missing qualification with a veteran, experienced, old pro team with precious little heart or fight in them. you think ill never get over bradley jogging to the corner flag as the world cup drifted further and further away? youre damn right i wont.

eta: i was still typing as you last replied, so i guess im just talking to myself here.

 

I didn't mean to say passion and aesthetics are mutually exclusive. Sorry if that was implied by the beaches of brazil and normandy references. Klopp and Pep have their teams playing breathtaking soccer, but when they lose the ball they work their asses off to get it back. I think that is what you are saying as well, my example would be Pulisic losing a ball in a Chelsea game, and he won it back and scored. I absolutely want to see the US passion back in this team.

To bring it back to the upcoming friendly with the Netherlands. If Reyna or Pulisic or Weah are out wide in the offensive third with a man on them and the Dutch defense is well set up with no obvious play into the box, I'd like to see our guy not pass back and recycle, but take his player on, create a mismatch, open space in the box to a forward to run into and get the pass and score.

Because when its a rainy night in Honduras, 0-0 with 5 to go and their are 10 guys behind the ball, I want to know that our guys have the confidence from experience to beat their guy, and that the forwards and midfielders anticipate they will (again from experience in friendlies) and actually make the runs into space that open up. That we get the goal we need and 3 points on the road. And the likelihood that that actually happens when it counts goes way up when they've done it when it doesn't.

 

That's not what I'm interested in in comps of that sort. You equalize for athleticism because if you move greats from the seventies, into a match up with say, greats from 2019 or 2020, you also give them the same advantages. You're not going to all of a sudden given Lebron a crap diet and an addiction to booze, cigarettes and nights with slump busters. Instead the best way to evaluate it is to imagine the players from the past coming of age w/the advantages of nutrition, working out, and the science of their sport in general. Now what happens? Otherwise there is no point in ever making the comparisons. A Babe Ruth in 2020 isn't going to behave like a Babe Ruth of 1927.

 

How sad to imagine ...

 

How will the odds compare to these guys to accomplish that?
http://www.lfconline.co.uk/news/tmn...verpools_virgil_van_dijk_n_934415/index.shtml
7 Players Who Could Finally Complete a Dribble Past Liverpools Virgil van Dijk Next Season

 

Good thing he plays in the middle - why do you think I said out wide? VVD is having the greatest run of form I have every seen in a CB.

 

Imagine, in Italy they put de Vrij in their Serie A best team as one of the three defenders

Goalie: Wojciech Szczesny (Juventus)

Defenders: Stefan de Vrij (Inter), Francesco Acerbi (Lazio Roma), Theo Hernandez (AC Milan)

Midfielders: Papu Gomez (Atalanta), Miralem Pjanic (Juventus), Marcelo Brozovic (Inter), Radja Nainggolan (Cagliari), Luis Alberto (Lazio Roma)

Attackers: Romelu Lukaku (Inter), Ciro Immobile (Lazio Roma)

In the Orange team he's on the bench.

 

That isn’t how it works.

 

EVERY player in every soccer match has numerous opportunities to demonstrate their technical abilities (or lack thereof). Give me a roster of intelligent players who know when to demonstrate those skills and when a simple pass is the better play. And I'll take those guys every day over, for lack of better term, a Brazilian beach player. I had a young player on my premier team. Kid had as much footskill talent as anybody in the area. But that's all he would do. No matter how much training we gave him. His brain was wired such that the only thing recognized was to beat the next player in front of him. Then beat the next one in front of him. And so on and so on. But in the end most of the time he'd lose the ball. The kid has almost zero value in a game where results matter.

There is no question that you want players who are willing to go 1v1 against anybody. The best are those who know when and when not to try that.

 

well stated.

I think we on BS over-value technical skills and under-value athleticism and grit.

we fall in love with attractively skilled players with average if not low athleticism like Adu, Carleton, hyndman, parks, Lletget, zelalem.

Conversely, we give short shrift to truly elite athletes who aren’t perceived as truly technical: yedlin, chandler, Fabian. I think we vastly under-rate grit and drive as well: morales, Zardes, arriola.

interestingly, the club market actually values the latter highly and doesn’t value Americans who have the former but not the latter.

 

Really? Great, we can save a lot of time just having the team fly in the afternoon of the game and not worry about practice or experience playing with each other in real situations.

 

We need a good mix of both and the right ones in the right positions. Perfectly happy seeing Yedlin and Arriola bomb down the wings for crosses and working their asses off coming back to defend. Arriola btw, just needs to take a breath sometimes, I think he's better technically than he shows... if he had a transmission and brakes hooked up to that motor.

But can't we have both? One reason I want to play the kids is that many are more confident on the ball and also have the passion and athleticism.

 

I'm probably not expressing myself well here as you're not understanding my intent.

We have posters who want to play a style that is more attractive and possession oriented so that we can pass our way through opposing teams in a pretty manner. These posters don't like a defensive, hard-nosed, countering style as it isn't as entertaining as tiki-taka.

Given our player pool, I want hard-nose athletes at almost every position and use our elite speed and aerial abilities to pound teams both offensively and defensively as I think that is clearly the best use of our pool. I also highly value grit/drive/ambition - that combination is the special sauce that has traditionally made the usmnt better than the sum of its parts.

 

No, the whole thing about just trying to dribble at expense of the smart play won’t help anyone. Won’t help a night in Honduras. These guys gain their confidence beating a man in training and with their clubs along with the decision making that goes with it. Sure, Berhalter can emphasize it but doesn’t mean that you beat your head against a brick walk just for the heck of it. All that happens is turning the ball over and over again.

 

and all that happens if we don't is endless backpassing and switching the point of attack with no shots on goal and a defense content to shuffle a few steps right and left, until we put in a bad backpass and they pounce and score on a counter and we lose 1-0. I don't care if it's Berhalter or the players, but we are too easily beat by inferior teams because we don't take enough risks in games that don't count.

 

Good job scheduling this one, USSF.

I see this camp as an integrative exercise for European-based players and domestic players seeking a showcase for European clubs. I fully expect there to be a couple of U23 guys involved like Ledesma at Einhoven. Anyone playing in Holland trying to earn more minutes with their club team might get a burn against the Orange.

I could see McBride, Berhalter, and Stewart utilizing this opportunity to pull in Dest's teammate Kik Piere or maybe other dual nationals who have some interest. A simple camp invite to get them a closer look at USMNT life and opportunity could go a long way. Don't be surprised to see someone we didn't expect to join the program like Kik. It seems that the Yanks are building a bit of momentum and the youth movement is evident. Who wouldn't want to play for the US in a home world cup?

 

Just wanted to address this point because as we've seen our players play on bigger teams with bigger stakes, that may influence some of their decision-making. The complaint a lot of fans are making is we don't see the fearlessness we used to. Think of Donovan and Beasley in '02 taking on everyone with no fear - Dempsey nutmegging his guy to shoot and set up Donovan in 2010. I'm eager to see how Pulisic plays with the nats after 6 months with Chelsea and Frank benching him if he's too aggressive (allegedly). That works for Chelsea - he's part of a system they practice every day. But he has to be more risky with the nats - we need him to be more risky. I'm not saying he won't be - let's see.

So it's not enough to depend on how players are getting experience with their club teams - they may be getting conflicting coaching vs what is needed for the US Nats to succeed. These friendlies are important to establish how they should play as a US player in real games - and if we don't take more risks we will lose more than we win.

 

Nope. In the Dutch academies technical skills are considered essential and as result of less play in the streets a matter that is tackled in coaching and training as a key issue. However also athleticism and grit are essential. On top of that comes soccer intelligence to put it all to good use. Either are useless without the other in a competitive game of high standard. The only thing that seperates true stars from run of the mill players is that these latter ones lack the same level in either of the three categories mentioned.
So your stance is choosing for mediocracy and never leads to, apart from occasional catching a true top team off guard, making an impact in a long term competitiveness.

 

i did misconstrue, for the most part, what you said in the post i directly responded to, and dont think we are too far apart having seen your posts since.

i agree there are some fans who want more of the klinsmann/berhalter-esque (utterly unfit for our pool, also utterly ineffective) "attacking, attractive soccer" stuff and i agree fully that we would be (or would have been, i should say) better off "evolving" into a better version of ourselves than trying to change what we are, as a team.

its just every now and then people are throwing in references to brazillian beach soccer or whatever and i dont know where thats even coming from. whos calling for that, or even more baffling- who are people thinking we have in the pool ARE that?

what "sexy" players are people calling for over blue collar guys? reyna over arriola? i mean, do people not think it has something to do with the HUGE (potential) talent gulf?

thats a tricky example cause reyna- despite people going way overboard way too quick- isnt fully cooked yet, and arriola is criminally underappreciated- but my take is ill be freaking thrilled if reyna does push arriola down the depth chart.

who doesnt?

are you just saying its a matter of people wanting that now? id agree, bs loves nothing more than getting super ahead of themselves.

 

As you are so apt to point out, we are not the Dutch and we don't have complete players so we often have to make trade-offs.

 

Who doesn't want an elite technical player who also works his ass off and doesn't back down?

We don't have a full squad of that so we have to make trade-offs. We do have players who are near best in the world in certain athletic categories but we don't have any who are even close in the technical side: that's why I think that we should focus on our strengths and let our skill evolve over time (and it certainly is improving).

I think the Brazilian soccer mention was just a reference that some players and fans are so entranced by the aesthetics of skill and burning defenders that they de-value actually winning games.

It's not a sexy player over another one but rather a system that has Bradley/Trapp at the center of the field so we can maintain possession is how it displays itself for the usmnt.

 

It would be great if we Dutch had a selection of complete players, but alas that isnot the case. However to make it into the selection, or as a kid into our academies, one has to have in the personal toolbox the tools not top notch at least good levels so as not being a one trick pony.
One makes trade offs in the players tools levels themselves, not trade offs within the team with players lacking too much of the one or other.
So we have in the midfield de Roon, who's not technically on the same level as the rest (which is different from not technically at all!) but brings to the team a total skill set that's needed. After a not so good match of the whole Orange team (much to the delight of many posters in the Dutch forum who had a different view from mine on his contribution) the next match he was on the bench. That didnot work well at all. Our goalie got alot of shots at him and pressure was on uncomfortable levels. He was subbed in and after that not one shot was delivered anymore.
We can't have a clumsey player in the midfield, so a certain level of technical ability is a must, but what really matters is the combination of what a player has to offer and how that fits in the combi with the rest.

 

Exactly. It is the combination of players to get the best squad possible. Doesn’t necessarily mean the “best” players.

 

Since I referee a lot of club soccer, I am starting to see more clubs start to emphasize technical ability as opposed to just putting the best athletes on the field and telling them to outrun and "out-physical" the other team. These teams are starting to run individual skill sessions, play more futsal (which develops those "close to the ball" skills), and value players who have a high soccer IQ but may not be the biggest, fastest, or strongest player (but all of those are still helpful).

I'm not sure we'll ever see the US fully adopt a "total football" or a "jogo bonito" playing style. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think US Soccer can still develop a unique identity, but maybe it's more of a Liverpool style of play (manic pressing, fairly direct play, and high conditioning-mental toughness) as opposed to a Pep-style of play.

The one thing I think you can't do is do what Earnie and Gregg are doing and say, "damn the torpedoes, we are going to play this way no matter what". I think as clubs start to emphasize technical ability more and young players watch top-flight European players, you'll naturally see a US-style of play evolve.

Not saying my son will ever come anywhere close to reaching this kind of level, but I think it shows favorably for the future of US soccer when a pre-teen like him watches players like Kevin DeBruyne, Sergio Aguero, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner, etc. on Saturday and Sunday mornings and then works on what he sees in the basement or in the backyard.

 

That's the way things get moving...in the right direction.