Seriously, this is just as silly a retort as any of the over-the-top criticism in this and other threads. You don't have to have been President of the US to think the guy in charge is doing it wrong. Why is it any different with coaching? I really hate this argument because it is a simple appeal to authority fallacy.
Quick question, and I am almost positive I know the answer. The people in this thread refusing to criticize Porter at all for this monumental failure are all Akron fans correct?
I'm not refusing to criticize him. He's the head coach. He obviously deserves blame. What he doesn't deserve is the insinuation that he knows as much as your everyday U13 Select coach. As far as being an Akron fan is concerned, you got me. But we'd hate to have the input from people who've seen him coach more than four games right?
Why are you folks criticising Caleb. Caleb was supposed to be the U20 coach but this was nixed at the very last minute for fair of true Akronism recruiting etc. etc. You need to crticise the folks who set him up to fail. Caleb can be crtiticed for being an ego maniac in thinking he could of gotten the job done.
I made the comment because it is all to simple to say "I would have done so and so...." and unless you have actually coached I don't think you can truly know what you might have done. Arm chair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen. I am not defending Porter nor placing an inordinate amount of blame on his shoulders for what happened. There has been a common theme through all these threads and that is alluding to our superior talent. I have,in several posts,pointed out that perhaps this was not the case. Nobody has yet to step up and explain to me why they think this is so. I only watched the El Salvador game and thought that in fact THEY had the superior talent. I thought they were more technically skilled and played much more quickly then we did. I am not convinced that our problem was that we had players who were totally gassed. I think the more talented team won.
Fair enough, I honestly think it will help Porter as it might knock him down a peg or two in his own mind. I have seen Akron play plenty of times so you won't hear me call him a U13 coach. I appreciate that he plays a possession oriented game in the face of all of the crap you see in the college game. I also feel that he might have been getting a little too big for his britches and believing a little too much of his own hype. But that's just me.
Because if the subs were earlier they would have been more effective, and had a little time to gell. Remember Stephens and Mix ran into each other on the last play. And because, IMO, Shea and Mix were more gassed than Corona and Adu.
It would be nice to see a post from you that actually educate or share ideas with posters re: tactics, technique and overall football acumen. Instead, you speculate about who is connected to whom. Who are you connected to? We all witnessed that player(s) you support did really well and players you disapprove of, didn't. In the end, our team lost, but your player (s) won. So you gloat! You blame Porter for his selections, when in fact, JK and Reyna hand-picked the "star players." Let's not forget that Reyna along with Ramos ran the 1st camp in Germany. The area that Porter deserves blame is in tactics not selection. The U-23 would have dominated Canada and ES if we played a 4-4-2. In his 4-3-3 system, he has too many finesse players-and oh yes, that includes Bunbury. We all know that Barca has 3 finesse mids on the attack, but they are tenacious defenders as well. None of our "creative" mids were ball winners and that's when the game and the qualifying tourney was lost. So, if you decide to respond to this post, let's discuss our ideas about tactical as well as technical approaches to the game. Maybe we can learn more about the beautiful game as we exchange our thoughts.
I see it now, it was a conspiracy and Porter was set up to fail by Gulati, Klinsmann and Reyna. Ramos as well! Anyways, I hope Porter has greater ambitions than his fiefdom at Akron.
Why did they need to be more effective? We were winning until the very last kick of the game. If you take out out Mix or Corona in the 65th for Stephens and we get scored on, we're screwed. We don't have the necessary pieces in midfield. That leaves Shea and Adu. Anyone saying Adu should have been taken out before he was is insane, so that leaves Shea. He's widely considered the most talented player on the team, even if he's tired. Are you really going to take him out? Regardless, however the subs played from minute 87 to 94 was just fine. We lost because two unthinkable things happened at the final whistle. Remember that Sean Johnson WASN'T the starter. Porter specifically chose NOT him. If Hamid doesn't get hurt, he doesnt give up the two goals (which everyone seems to blame on Porter), its a completely different game and Johnson never even sees the field. How we can sit here and blame the coach for that chain of events is beyond me.
I'd like to see heat maps for players and an average position chart, but my impression is that Corona played high to stay connected with Boyd and that hurt our buildup. We played a 4-2-1-2-1 instead of a 4-1-2-2-1, that's fine but whoever the 10 was needed to show for the CM a lot more than how our system worked out. Watching live I would have subbed Gyau for Shea in the 85th minute and then Jeffrey for Okugo shortly after that. Both looked like they were spent. Coincidentally they combined to allow the chance that led to our ultimate defeat.
We were winning for 60 minutes. (1-35, 68-94) If you take Corona out at 65 we won't score and the 90th minute crap never matters.
After this post-game comment: If Porter ever coaches another US team I will hurt someone... Why are more people not enraged after reading his comments?
More?? How many U-23 camps and friendlies did Canada and El Salvador have over the last six months? Ours was the well prepared team, they had five camps together over 4-5 months. Canada's team was hastily thrown together a few weeks ago. And if you look at their other results, 0-0 tie with El Salvador, 1-1 tie with Cuba, it shows. It's only against the US that they were able to do anything, and once again that's because Porter despite having a far superior roster and far more preparation time was thoroughly outcoached (7 new starters to 2, same midfielders and wingers for a second game in three days, 3 tired midfielders overrun by 5).
Maybe because if not for a horrendous GK error we are still playing. We came back from the dead and were 1 min away from advancement. It wasn't poor philosophy, tactics or substitutions. It was a GK injury that forced us to waste a sub and bring in the back-up GK and then his inability to block a 35yd shot that prevented us from advancing.
Yeah but one could argue because of our result against Canada, we put ourselves in a position to be eliminated.
THIS....is exactly how I see it. Player pool was adequate, plenty of preparation time, we were at home....bottom line, when things got tough, our opponents were more resourceful both from a coaching and individual player standpoint. I'm missing the bright spots here...I didn't see anything particularly attractive about the soccer being played by this team. In fact, I thought both Canada and El Salvador outplayed and out-thought us. As for the goalkeeping, unfortunately Reyna, Klinnsman, Porter picked these two guys and prepared them and they didn't get the job done. At the end of the day, defensive free kicks really did us in...two goals given up against Canada and one killer given up against El Salvador where a player beat us to the near stick on a corner kick. How does that happen to a team that's well prepared and well coached? Porter even said prior to the El Salvador match that free kicks wouldn't be as big a concern against El Salvador, that they do some "short stuff" that needs to be watched. Unfortunately you can't get away from the fact that this coaching staff and player pool failed miserably in ideal circumstances. I see zero positives. Hit the reboot button.
You were not responding to me, but I just wanted it clear that while I wanted the subs sooner, I meant after we lead, with about 15 to 10 minutes left, for fresh legs.
I'm not trying to say we suffered in relative terms. I'm saying it's foolish to expect a good head coach with the parameters we put on the hire, and if you want to emphasize the program by putting more into hiring a head coach, it only seems to follow that we would back it up by also having more prep time, because it's something you can (to an extent) control and why would you leave anything to chance?
Now that we are out of the tournament we have time to determine where the train got derailed. To come up with a good hypothesis we need to take a moment to study the man at the helm and try to decipher his thinking and preference. Before I start, let me emphasize that I have no inside knowledge, all information that I used can be found in the net all I have done is connected the dots and come up with my conclusions. Porter the new way of soccer in the USA First a little background of the man, Porter is 36 years old and after a short career as a MLS player began coaching first at Indiana and now at Akron. He has been involved with the U-18 squad as an assistant for 2 years so he is familiar with USSF. Porter’s game philosophy is known to be an aggressive attacking style in a 4-3-3 formation, it has been said that he won’t deviate from this no matter the circumstance; this was confirmed during the qualifiers. His defense throughout his tenure has been excellent which may be one reason why we had Akron players in our U23 backline. He chooses to have a short game rotation of players at Akron which was also evident with the U23. During the 4 months of training with the U23 Porter developed a pattern of player selection for his scrimmages and friendlies, most notably were Okugo, he played in every game mostly as a “6”, Adu played mostly as the “10”, except for the Mexico game. Bunbury has played as the CF in every game that he was available for the U23. The arrival of Morales With 2 days before the Mexico game, Alfredo Morales came in to camp for the first time, after such a short training no one expected for Morales to play, even less start next to Mix, this was a surprise to me and others, some dismissed it as Porter just taking a look at the new kid, I thought Porter saw something which we later learned; Morales was the perfect complement to Mix, he is tough as nails, his game has bite to it and he can pass as well as Mix. This revelation kept Mix from tiring and also helped him hide the soft label that he started to get in previous friendlies. Morales was the perfect tandem in the midfield. When Porter learned that Morales wasn’t available you could see in his interviews that he was upset about it. At the time we thought no problem, Okugo should cover since he has been playing the “6” from day one. In our first game vs Cuba we learned how bad Porter wanted and missed Morales…he started Jeffrey, he was the closes we had to what Morales offered. This worked fine against a weak Cuban side but later we learned that he didn’t have enough of a “6” in him to help out against stronger foes. Porter downfall in this area was the continued use of Mix even in the Cuba game which was decided by halftime. Porter made another mistake by selecting Taylor as his last pick, he should have selected Gil instead, some may say he is too young, but Gil is starting and has the experience in important games with a very good SL Real team, which is more than one could say about the other players Porter selected. Taylor was a wasted pick since he never played. The second center forward? Prior to the Mexico game Klinsmann called Porter because of a last minute injury to Chandler. I would guess the conversation went something like this… JK: Hi Caleb, I have a problem and need your help, I won’t have Chandler and I need you to send me Shea so I can move Johnson to LB, can you manage without him? Porter: I guess we can, we’ll just move Gyau over to the left side, since he was going to be my sub behind Adu. JK: Good, good, sounds like you have a plan. Who are you going to start at CF? Porter: I’m going with Agudelo and my backup will be Bunbury. JK: You know, this kid Boyd will be there with Morales? Porter: I know, but I really haven’t seen enough of him plus he is coming in late. JK: I think he can help you…(a few seconds of silence) if you are not planning on using him, I would like to take him with me to Italy and get a better look since he still in Europe. Do you mind? Porter: No problem, good luck and talk to you soon. I may be reaching here but his actions in the first 2 games showed that I may not have been too far off from the truth. I wasn’t surprise when Boyd didn’t play in the Cuba game, but I connected the dots in the Canada game. Porter was going with Bunbury come hell or high water, even when Bunbury’s lack of form was evident, even when he planned to attack Canada with his wings crossing in to the box, he had to have known full well that Bunbury hasn’t been successful at scoring and even less with headers, in fact, his only professional career header was when a loose ball bounced toward him 15 yard from goal and his forward momentum headed the ball up and over the keeper in to the net, an ugly goal to say the least. A week or so after the Italy game, Boyd was quoted about his probable selection for the upcoming U23 qualifiers, he made the comment that we had a good chance to qualify and that he was probably the number 2 striker in the team. Was he told by JK? Because I’m pretty certain he didn’t get any vote of confidence from Porter. Perhaps it was Reyna, he saw him play in Germany and raved about his work rate and accuracy; interesting that Reyna sat next to Porter during the qualifiers, did he have influence in getting Boyd to start in the ES game? In conclusion… Porter is faithful to the players that help him succeed at the college level, he believed in them and perhaps that clouded his judgment. Something about his college team struck me, he had an excellent defense with Akron yet, the same players were subpar in the qualifiers, what changed? Maybe it was the opposition, which doesn’t speak well for the college level of play. His lack of player rotation in such a short time tournament was another factor to his failure; he lacked experience in such tournaments. I wished Porter would have tried Gyau and Shea at the wings but his judgment failed him because of how well Adu did at the Mexico game. Although Adu’s best game was against ES his lack of defense and speed was evident, how I wished he played the “10” position more but I guess that would mean he would have to be part of a rotation which Porter did not wanted to do. Sometimes I wished we didn’t win the Mexico game, that influence Porter’s player positions with 10 days before the qualifiers. My biggest disappointment is we will never know how good this team would have been if we had all of our top U23 players playing against other countries best U23.
I'm out of rep for you, but I liked that post. Two key player absences at the last minute really hurt. Morales as you correctly noted and I think Gatt. I know Gatt was listed as a defender and who knows how Porter would have used him, but since Sheanon Williams never saw the field it might not have mattered. Gatt would have offered more attacking from the right back slot (we got nothing from either fullback). Or in retrospect what I would have liked to see is Corona and Adu swapping the #10 role in rotation and Gatt, Gyau and Shea rotating the wing spots. However you correctly observed that Porter seems to have not liked rotation and frankly I think that failed him. I also think Jeffrey over Okugo was a bad decision and that Okugo starting more than just the last game would have freed up Diskerud much more in the way you note. Okugo would have been a much better substitute for Morales than Jeffrey. In retrospect of course. The Boyd vs Bunbury topic seems straight on too. Did he not get enough of a chance to see Boyd? If so that might be a major failure. Or did he really just think Bunbury was a better option than Boyd? Either way, it was a failure in the short sample size. One would have to have expected that and since 99% of bigsoccer posters saw that Boyd was better than Bunbury long before even seeing them play, it goes down as a major failure. I omitted most of your post obviously but the last line I kept seemed to strike me. I personally never get excited about friendly wins. Friendlies are glorified scrimmages. Yeah it's nice to beat Italy or Mexico and you always want to play well, but they don't matter. A lot of posters seemed to believe the hype after the win and frankly that doesn't really matter. But I just wonder if the players and coaches didn't start to believe it themselves and start to overestimate themselves vs the competition. I'll never know the answer to that but it's a thought.
I don't think you can blame this on the player pool. The problem was roster selection, tactics and in-game player management ... straight up. Roster Selection Granted, there are weaknesses in the player pool at central defender. The injury to Gale Agbossamounde shortened depth at CD, but meanwhile other players such as Ethan White and Andrew Jean-Baptiste weren't called in. Instead Perry Kitchen was converted back to central defense even though almost all of his MLS experience is at DM. And what if Okugo or Opara had been injured - was there even another CD on the roster? And with a small CD we were small and vulnerable on set pieces - and we gave up three goals on corners. Another larger CD would have been very useful in this tournament, and the ability to move Kitchen to his natural position in the three-main midfield in place of Carona would have mitigated most of the tactical issues (discussed below) Tactics If you are going to play a 4-3-3 the three midfielders all have to be strong defenders and preferably at least one is a strong 2-way player. Mix is a pretty good 2-way player and Jeffries/Okugo are pretty good anchor men or defensive midfielder types. But the third CM, Carona didn't offer very much defensively and also tended to get out of position offensively. This enabled the opposition to repeatedly counter-attack against the US backline protected by only a single midfielder. This happened all game long against both Canada and El Salvador. The 4-3-3 may have worked even with Kitchen as a converted defender if you had fielded both Jeffries and Okugo along with Mix as the three midfielders. The substitution patterns were strange and ineffective as well. Against Canada, Gyau for Carona at halftime is a bit strange - I guess the idea was to add an additional offensive player since US was behind, but again the problem was being overrun in the midfield so taking out one of the three midfielder and putting in another winger is unusual. Adu seemed to move more centrally while Shea and Gyau manned the wings, but the problem wasn't creativity or offensive skill players in the first place - it was inadequate defensive support in the midfield. Every single turnover of possession ended up in a frantic retreat to thwart off the counter. The US never addressed this problem, even into injury time against El Salvador. In the El Salvador game, more strange tactics and substitutions. First was the Hamid substituion. Porter should never have allowed the game to restart with Hamid still visibly limping, and if it did restart SJ should have been at the center line 2 seconds after the shaky kick up the middle on the ground after the back pass from Opara. Then the US takes the lead in 67' minute, still playing a 3-man midfield with Okugo, Mix, and Carona and Porter elects to wait until the 87' minute to make the obvious move and sub Carona for another defensive minded player to help hold the lead. Then the final sub is made in injury time and it is a head scratcher for a team attempting to protect an all-important one-goal lead - Gyau for Adu. A winger for a winger ... really? With Jeffries on the bench and both Okugo and Mix flagging after busting it box-to-box for 90+ minutes? And Adu off instead of Shea even though Adu had been gamefully tracking back and Shea had not and was obviously gassed. Adu had proven he was the guy to show the heart and make the commitment to killing of the game by playing both ways, holding the ball up smartly and taking fouls where possible ... but we took him off. After the game Klinsmann says he liked the style even though the result was there. I almost vomited in my mouth. I assume by "style" he means committing recklessly to offensive play and possession even if it means an unbalanced and tactically flawed approach to the game. As far as I know, the coach is responsible for roster selections, tactics, and substitutions so I'd need a pretty good explanation to anyone who doesn't place the blame for this on Porter (and perhaps by extension the mandate from Klinsmann to play a particular formation or style). Porter has strengths - motivation, player evaluation,player development but did not rise to this challenge.
For the record, In the past Klinsmann frequently said that he was going to have a say as to which players would be on the US U23 roster. So it would likely follow that if you are going to blame CP about the selection of the roster, JK also played a part as well.
Porter did get a chance to see Boyd at one of the camps, not sure if Bunbury was present. Also, I'm not sure if they had a friendly against someone or just scrimmage among themselves. All I remember is Boyd fouling for his second yellow, Porter talking to him and a few minutes later Boyd re-entering the game to score the winning goal.