He’s definitely better I think then their current options at right back. He’s definitely deserving of some run with them.
A look at one part of the dual national pipeline for the future: #International #Immigration as a proportion of population growth in US - depicting trend change since 2016 pic.twitter.com/RogK8y2TQo— Danstan Bagenda (@xolaniboy) November 13, 2021
Watching Musah last night, I can't believe he doesn't get more minutes at club level. He's so strong, quick, good balance, good dribbler, good eye for a pass, good technique, good defense. What more does he need?
My theory is this will take years or even decades to take effect and by then we'll have really solidified MLS as a quality league and export more guys from MLS and USL and we'll have more talent than we know what to do with.
One area I think it will have a more near-term impact is on coaches. We have a shortage of quality coaches (partly because they support both the men's & women's game) and even just the youth coach "dads & moms" who played the game at a high level growing up. Getting more (and better) coaches who see the US as an opportunity, even if for a few years, the better it is for us.
It is funny. These dual nats switch sides, and to this point, I think it's reasonable to argue that Gonzalez (whose since faded) would've gotten more run for us in '18-'19, and that Araujo definitely would have already made a 23, maybe Ochoa (but probably not?). They've definitely been predatory capped by a coach that clearly leans to heavily to veteraness against his own interests as compared to Berhalter.
His club plays a 4-4-2. I don’t think the style he plays with the US translates well to a two man midfield. That’s my theory. Musah is the best thing GB has done. He successfully recruited a player with the barest of US connections, and also identified the perfect role for him. That’s a hell of a two fer.
I really would like to know what Araujo thought of the game last night. Yedlin played well, but GB was clearly willing to give Araujo a chance to leapfrog him had he played well in the gold cup. Then, for Mexico, you had Chaka Rodriguez, who the Mexican fans hate, not just play poorly, but also make an ass of himself.
(* note I am not a lawyer but I did take a few immigration law classes in law school) We will feel the significant impact of the 2017-2020 halving of immigration many years down the line, just like we'll feel a small impact from the reduced troop presence in Germany, and a substantial impact from so much of international movement grinding to a halt as a result of the current global pandemic... We also have citizenship changes post 9/11 that have increased how long those with green cards have to wait for US citizenship to 5 years (4 years if they marry an American), which has had an effect on the national team careers of guys like Darlington Nagbe and Julian Gressel. There's also the fact that immigration has been turned into a hot button issue. Andy Najar chose Honduras because he didn't want to wait for years and years for US citizenship especially as he was planning to move to Europe and that would mess up the residing in the US requirements (see Kekutah Manneh living in that weird little US enclave while playing for the Vancouver Whitecaps and pursuing his citizenship). DC United people actually went around to Senators asking them if they would sponsor legislation to give Najar citizenship early, and there was zero political will... no one wanted to stick their neck out for some dirty immigrant kid who crossed the border illegally... irrelevant that he worked hard to turn himself into a big asset to the United States. Without 9/11 and the changes to immigration (including replacing the INS with the newly created Department of Homeland Security), and the massive 2017-2020 drop in refugees being accepted by the US (still nowhere close to previous levels), how many kids will end up playing for other national teams, for example one of our rapidly improving rivals Canada where Alphonso Davies' family settled as refugees due to the Liberian civil war... crazy to think about but without 9/11 is Alphonso Davies playing for the USMNT?
He’s not going to change his mind but technically Araujo can change his mind until he plays a game for Mexico. I think with alot of these guys it’s come off as predatory, but in my mind Araujo is by far the one whose good enough to play for Mexico given their current situation at right back. So if he doesn’t get a legit opportunity that would be surprising.
I'm pretty sure there weren't any changes to the citizenship laws after Sept. 11th. The 5 years after Green Card has been in place for a long time & the time to be eligible after marrying a US citizen is still 3 years. What has changed are the processes both to get a Green Card & to get to the final stage of getting citizenship. There are more security checks and administrative hurdles (including higher costs) both to get the GC issued and to get to the final step of taking the oath of citizenship. It could take a year after applying to get to the final naturalization step. What the last administration did was to strangle the legal immigration pipeline by adding more hurdles to the process. The immigration lawyers we worked with saw RFEs (request for additional evidence) on the most common visas jump from maybe 10% to over 50% of all cases. The bureaucrats would ask for documents again and again, even if you already had submitted them. Denials of visas went up substantially as well. They made the process so time-consuming and expensive that my big software company was really hesitant about even considering visa candidates in most categories. Candidates would also be hesitant about bothering to join the queue for the US (the time for an Indian to wait for an available GC was decades at one point) that they would consider other countries as a better place to go. Canada really took advantage of the bottleneck to draw highly educated people by guaranteeing them Permanent Residency before they arrived and only 3 years to citizenship. Lots of other programs were either dismantled or throttled by the administration. It's not that hard to make immigration to the US unattractive if you know what you are doing.
The previous administration definitely did quite a bit to restrict the flow of legal immigration and make it much more difficult for people to go through the process. And they did this basically across the board. And just the fact that this happened itself served as a deterrent to people applying. And on top of that the pandemic definitely also had an impact on the shortfall. A country like Canada on the other hand as you noted makes its very easy for high skilled immigrants to come and obtain permanent status. Now on the flip side it’ll take time, but alot of those policies will be reversed in time. And more generally if we ever wanted to as a country we could massively increase legal immigration at any time. How that impacts the overall dual national pipeline I have no idea. But the fight over Mexican American dual nationals is definitely not going away anytime soon. As someone said recently, the Mexican American population in the United States is equivalent to the population of Canada,
I was wondering last night of how a team entirely of Mexican-Americans would fare in qualifying. Like, would they make 3rd or 4th and qualify? It's probably a somewhat underserved population in terms of scouting and playing and coaching and opportunities in the game, but I'd have to imagine a country of 30 million (or whatever the number is) Mexican-Americans would do really well.
Bad news: Bryan Okoh suffered a cruciate ligament rupture in his right knee while training for the Swiss national team and is returning to Salzburg for further examinations. Get well soon Bryan! Hiobsbotschaft: Bryan #Okoh hat beim Training in der Schweizer Nationalmannschaft einen Kreuzbandriss im rechten Knie erlitten und kehrt für weitere Untersuchungen nach Salzburg zurück. Gute Besserung, Bryan! pic.twitter.com/qVjE8RHug4— FC Red Bull Salzburg (@RedBullSalzburg) November 14, 2021
Is that… is that a bald eagle? 🦅 pic.twitter.com/BkUKIxT1se— Balogun (@balogun) November 14, 2021 US flag emojis, assemble Let's go join up with your boys Mighten and Musah! 🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸— First Touch (@FirstTouchSpace) November 14, 2021
< Mexico taking notes > They debuted him because Canada contacted him Shady and no one there to guide a kid who just won’t refuse a senior call up— Edgar Moreno 🇺🇸🇲🇽 (@ConcacafEdgar) November 15, 2021
101 call ups in 12 months… still our pursuit of dual nationals isn’t predatory, that would be L Tri 1457728891481624583 is not a valid tweet id
Will Mexico ever again play a goalkeeper named Ochoa? Interesting list of future el tri goalkeepers. https://t.co/jDo8tB2hXZ— Daniel (@DanielSmith1022) November 18, 2021
I bet we'd be shocked about how low the average or median age of those 101 players is. I don't think we've capped any player in a "predatory" fashion under Berhalter. In fact, he seems to be the exact opposite. It sounds like he encourages players to check out both options and choose. We heard that with Alvarez. We are calling up young dual-nationals to cap-tying games, but we're legitimately using them. Musah, Pepi, etc. They're legitimately part of the program. Guys we had switch were legitimately considered options a the time. Tyler Boyd is one I think of in this regard. He'd be a regular for New Zealand. We convinced him to switch allegiances, and now he can't get a look. But he does have 10 caps, including those at the 2019 Gold Cup.
To be fair, Boyd seemed to not be interested in playing for NZ. He grabbed the chance to play for the USMNT when he had a hot streak.
David Ochoa has to feel like such a tool. I mean, if you feel more Mexican than American, I get it. But the whole, how dare you put in another goalkeeper before me so I’m going to switch nationalities is what makes this comical. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if David Ochoa never surpasses Bill Hamid level. He’s a very error prone goalkeeper. And seems to lack the professionalism to resolve that. That said, I confess to being pretty dumb too when I was his age.