I like this analogy. I don't believe the USMNT has the same talent level as GS did at the time, but there is always potential for improvement on what Berhalter has built. Again - I am not a fan of multiple cycle coaches anyway. Ideally, I would prefer an interim coach when Berhalter's contract ends, rather than any type of extension - short term or long - while a coaching search commences.
I just want to know what Euro players were left out of the World Cup roster who should have been there. Anyone other than Pepi?
I'd have preferred Pefok or Dike to Pepi, but Wright and Ferreira as the two backups to Sargent was a bad strategy badly executed. Besides that it's just shuffling deck chairs on the fringes of the roster, who cares if Busio is better than Roldan, neither of them were going to play.
Now I want to know if you hate watch MLS. Personally I only care about two sports (college football and soccer). I don’t watch any NFL for instance, but I also have no animus for it either. I just don’t care. If you want the USMNT to be successful, the number one that can help that along is for MLS to be successful and to continue to grow and to become the sort of place which can incubate world class talent. There’s no path to the USMNT having the sort of talent to win the World Cup without the quality of MLS continuing to improve. Or you can keep hating the league for irrational reasons. It’s entirely up to you.
us u23s are ELITE in the world very very few team are doing what the USMNT just did with players that young a lot of people are overlooking how young the US was in Qatar when they assess the talent or lack thereof on the team and in the pool
While USA and Costa Rica are tied on points, the USA went into the last game against Costa Rica virtually guaranteed a spot. Obviously, we all know Costa Rica won that game 2-0 to pull even on points with the US but it would have taken 7 more goals (9-0) for USA to be bumped down to 4th. (pretty sure goals scored was 2nd tiebreaker?) The reality is that USA took care of business and qualified in the previous game vs Mexico. USA had a huge cushion going into the game vs Costa Rica. Did they play poorly in that last game? yes. Did they barely scrape by? I guess it depends upon how you look at it. I know I can think of many scenarios that would give the same number of points that I would consider to be scraping by. It also is interesting to note that while we finished in 3rd, we were only 3 points from 1st, so if we are counting "almost" (almost didn't qualify), we can also count "almost won our group". Don't worry, it doesn't make me feel any better either.
I would have brought Pepi instead of Ferreira and I would have taken a look at Vazquez and then made a call between him and Pefok for Wright’s spot. Dike of course was coming off an injury or not an option. But I think the broader point is there isn’t this huge mass of European guys we were ignoring. I suppose you could have taken Cannon instead of Moore or Yedlin or EPB or McKenzie instead of Long (who didn’t even play), but I don’t think either of those decisions make a difference. But otherwise I’m not quite sure what European guy we should have taken that we didn’t. Indeed there are probably more MLS guys I wished we had looked at.
I mean at the time the roster was selected Brooks had played a total of 2 total minutes this season. I’m pretty sure if you had thrown him on against Wales who would have looked rusty and out of form and probably have played much worse.
John Brooks in his first Benfica start today 🔥 https://t.co/jdi6hzX0WV— USMNT Only (@usmntonly) October 15, 2022 holler at me when zimmerman can pull something like this off (from 3 weeks before the USMNT WC roster dropped fwiw)
I feel like we need to memorialize the reality of the qualifying campaign. Window 1 - September 2021 El Salvador 0-0 USA USA 1-1 Canada Honduras 1-4 USA Zero first half goals combined, trailed 1-0 in Honduras at half. Window 2 - October 2021 USA 2-0 Jamaica Panama 1-0 USA USA 2-1 Costa Rica Dest scores our first opening half goal in game 6. Real qualification jeopardy in play Window 3 - November 2021 USA 2-0 Mexico Jamaica 1-1 USA Dos a Cero was huge, then undermined by a stinkbomb leaving us with five points from our four away games against the teams that would ultimately fail to qualify. Still in extremely shaky shape to qualify, particularly avoiding the playoff. Window 4 - January 2022 USA 1-0 El Salvador Canada 2-0 USA USA 3-0 Honduras The first two were absolutely wretched performances that put us back in 2018land. Window 5 - March 2022 Mexico 0-0 USA USA 5-1 Panama Costa Rica 2-0 USA Honduras holding Panama to a home draw in the first matchday was a massive result for us, combined with the solid, mature, unambitious, unspectacular performance in Azteca that presaged our World Cup. We still absolutely had to have all three points against Panama and got them. And then were not one whisker better than we absolutely needed to be in San Jose. Six points from seven away matches, and three really shabby home performances against Canada, El Salvador and Costa Rica that we were very lucky to collect seven points from. None of the windows were a consistently good set of performances. It was bad. We were poor. Costa Rica could have and probably should have beaten us to that automatic qualifying spot.
My comments were disingenuous HOW? Do you even know what the word means? Christian Roldan had no business being there. Aaron Long, who is in terrible form, had no business being there. Shaquelle Moore had no business being there. Jordan Morris had no business being there. Kellyn Acosta probably didn't need to be here. Jesus Ferreira proved why he had absolutely no business being there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That being said, from MLS, Walker Zimmermann was an okay pick. Sean Johnson was an okay pick. DeAndre Yedlin was an okay pick. He probably shouldn't have seen any minutes though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Djordie Mihailovich should have had a look ages ago. John Brooks should have been there. James Sands should have been there. Malik Tillman should have been there. Jordan Pefok should have been there. Eric Palmer-Brown should have been there. Ricardo Pepi should have been brought back in.
It’s true I forgot about the game he played against a 4th division team. The only game he played substantial minutes. There’s not a coach on the planet who would have called John Brooks to the World Cup.
1 - klinsmann called an amateur college player to the usmnt 2 - idgaf brooks > zimmerman now and forever
I am beginning to hope that Berhalter is extended for all 4 years simply because it will grind down the anti-Berhalter people into mumbling ne’erdowells until they just give up participating and return to obscure subculture obsessions.
Was he? I don't remember reading that he caused his team to lose or tie. Unlike, Zimmerman on the first game.
Klinsmann never called an amateur college player to the World Cup so that’s not the same thing. John Brooks is not Virgil van Dijk. He’s was a decent Bundesliga player who has made a serious of very poor career decisions which have caused him to essentially fall off the map. When we last saw him in qualifying he was playing poorly. Zimmerman on the other hand played very well in qualifying. He did have a bad play against Wales, but he wasn’t the reason we went out against the Netherlands. Where we went wrong in the World Cup was being bad on set pieces, failure to be clinical in transition, and exhaustion from a lack of depth to give rest to our starters. The position where Berhalter could have made better choices was not center back but at striker where neither Wright or Ferreira played great. Now maybe Pepi, Vazquez, or Pefok would have done just as bad. But we do know that two of our strikers we did bring didn’t do great. A bigger picture criticism would be not trying more guys at the 8 to see if they could provide adequate depth, especially since LDLT doesn’t seem like he was good to go.
Brooks could have been invited to the final 2 camps or last camp to determine if he lost his game. But, we didn't because GB already had his mine set. Same with Pefok. He almost pulled the trigger for Pepi over Wright. Something happened on that final decision.
How many other coaches do you think would have invited Brooks to that last camp when he wasn’t playing at all with his club? I think Berhalter meant what he said that he would have called Pefok instead of Wright if the World Cup had happened a bit earlier when he was on a hot streak. No one talks about this in their post mortem calls for Pefok but he hasn’t been scoring and seems to have maybe lost his starting spot.
Pretty sure you said they should have mutinied after the first game. Would have been really hard for them to do what they did if they followed your advice. You just admitted very few teams could have done what the US just did. But I'm sure you'll also say it was all done in spite of the coach.
I wasn't advocating to start but to give him a look. Specially, after Miles went down. After all, Pepi played qualifier games when he didn't score in Germany.