I'm so embarrassed about the "snawball", I'm almost crying. Such a powerful argument of yours. No, he will not be as good. I like Mixx, bit he doesn't have either skills or speed of JOB. Try harder to make a point.We have a huge gap of top players in the most productive ages. Basically nobody except for Bradley between Dempsey and Jozy.
The problem with the "patience", as some preach here, is that there's no qualitative upward slope. The U-20's suck. The U-17's suck. The U-23's suck. And, had it not been for the Germamericans, the situation with the senior squad would be dire as well. But it does beg a question - the children of the US servicemen born, raised and trained in Germany represent a miniscule portion of the total US soccer playing male population, yet they account for 40% of the starting USMNT lineup. People talk about the over-representation of the Samoans in the NFL - 40-50 times more likely to play in the NFL than an average male - but what makes these German Americans so superior to the average US born and raised American? Well, if you said, "the German coaches", you would have hit the nail on the head.
I agree with that. But would you agree we need patience to see how this next generation in Euro academies as teens pans out? What I'm far more worried about is stateside development. The more of our youth NT players get into foreign academies the better imo, until MLS fixes both the gap for 18-22 yr olds and fixes the coaching issue, but that will take years. But as far as out top youth NT prospects going to foreign academies I do think we have to be patient with that, and I'm glad they'll get better coaching over there. When I watch our youth teams the technical ability isn't the issue, it's the coaching. It's the tactics. If it's that poor at the youth NT level and IMG then I'd assume it's worse in MLS academies. A question for you SFS. If you had a son who was 16 yrs old, what route would you want him to take?
It's not just the German coaches. So if you just brought those coaches over here we would be as good as Germany? Its the culture. They grow up living and breathing soccer over there. They are in a very professional environment from a very young age and their families support and understand what it takes to be a professional.
It's weird, though. Our U23 qualifying team didn't get the job done. We were analyzing this same group of U23s the other day on the youth boards. Look at our U23 pool for that Olympic qualifying tournament..................a lot of them are coming on strong. All of these players are getting significant playing time now at an MLS level or above. We don't need all of these players to "hit," just a handful of them. Jozy Altidore Brek Shea Joseph Gyau Josh Gatt Joe Benny Corona Sheanon Williams Mix Diskerud Kofi Sarkodie Bill Hamid Sean Johnson Zach MacMath Jack McInerney Juan Agudelo Terrence Boyd Amobi Okugo Perry Kitchen Zarek Valentin Timothy Chandler John Anthony Brooks Will Bruin Matt Hedges Tommy Meyer Nick DeLeon Dilly Duka Luis Gil Andrew Jean-Baptiste oh...............and Freddy Adu We could go on and on...................... Some in this age group are disappointing us. Ike Opara is a source of constant frustration. A guy who seemingly has skill, but just isn't developing. Teal Bunbury has kind of stalled. Jared Jeffrey hasn't advanced. Michael Stephens seems like an odd man out in Los Angeles. Tony Taylor is a mystery. Stefan Jerome has fallen off the face of the planet. [Let's not forget a whole bunch of kids still in the NCAAs at this age level. I just named the kids that are already pros. Just to name a couple: London Woodberry and Sebastian Ibeagha will be signed as homegrown centerbacks by FCD and Hou this offseason. Dillon Powers, who was the captain of this age group with the U20s will be drafted into MLS as a two-way midfielder. Perhaps top 5] Yes, we have some German-Americans thrown into this group.................but the USMNT has always and will always have a group of foreign-born players in their pool. It's just that this Klinsmann on board, the German-Americans are the group du jour. There is A LOT of intruiging talent out there for the USMNT staff to consider. If we ask "where's the next generation?" than I'd counter that it's right there in the list above. We do have a wave of talent coming.................and I do believe it's better than the last. I'd argue that its certainly deeper than the last. The next wave, guys in the U20 pool, are primarily guys who've been brought thru the development academy. [Guys like Wil Trapp of Columbus/Akron, Collin Martin of DCU/Wake Forest, Danny Garcia of FCD/North Carolina, and on and on]. And we need that wave to be superior to this one. Patience perhaps isn't the right word. We need to keep building and building and building at an pace that makes sense for the level of investment we have. We calculated the other day that Bayern Munich alone spends more on youth development per year than all of MLS combined. So it should be no surprise that some superior talent comes out of Germany. We can't expect to develop talent at the level of Argentina, Holland, or Spain at the moment. We just need to keep workin..........................
Against Russia we played with a young team and we did pretty good. While there is ebb and flow, I think that mostly you are thinking of this being the last WC of Dempsey and Donovan. Sure, those two are great but I think that we have enough young players to think that at least a few will reach that level. Bradley certainly seems ready to do that.
We need to pump a lot more money into coaching, and the money is there, it's just going elsewhere. Por would have been better suited spending half the 1.2M they pay Boyd on foreign coaches. Tor would have been better suited spending the 4M or whatever it is on Frings on foreign coaches. NY would have been better suited spending the 6M+ on Cahill/Rafa on quality coaching. Chivas would have been better suited spending Joseph's DP salary (500K?) on foreign coaching. Etc... And I mean quality coaches who can develop. Japan did it and it's paying huge dividends. I'm not saying any foreign coach is better than any American coach. But there's foreign coaches out there who'd work for a fraction of what we're paying DP's who aren't doing anything.
I think this is just exacerbated by MB's generation which is pretty barren. a lot of these guys flopped, relatively, that was our valley.n With the current u23 crop I think we will see a relative peak. In MLS's latest draft a good amount of players have walked right into starting roles with their teams.
Well, Portland was coached by a Scotsman, Toronto by a Dutch international from the Ajax school, and I don't disagree on NY. It's not as simple as simply needing foreign coaches, which have long been a fixture of the league. What it needs are better coaches, some of which will be enticed by growing international prominence and financial incentive as MLS continues on, and others will come out of the players' ranks, as more and more U.S. players who have spent an entire career in a decent professional environment transition into coaching. Olsen and Kreis represent the vanguard of what I'm sure will be a quickly growing phenomenon.
If you discount the socioeconomic factors - Brazil is great for soccer but the murder rate is even greater - I would try fitting the talent with the style that fits his abilities best. If you have a 5'6" kid with a decent touch, he may want to find someone in Spain or Argentina for technical and tactical lessons. If the kid is 5'11" and runs 4.4 40, then the Netherlands, Denmark or Brazil may fit the bill. If he is 6'4" and will run over his grandmother for the second helping, then I'd give David Moyes a call. Just because some English soccer can look ugly doesn't mean it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. As I have said in the past, Everton's high paced game is probably the most suitable to the generic "running beast" US talent anyway. IMO, it was a combination of very poor tactical coaching, deficient in many areas players and a freaking bounce from hell. Look at Spain at the Olympics - they hit the post four times vs. Honduras and were bounced out. A stroke of bad luck, you say? Absolutely... but also, a small, even if technically magnificent, team will have trouble against a bunkering and athletically superior foe. But it's not like we have to replay the Confederations Cup semis again. This is where MLS screws their cadres up. Sure, some kids will improve more than others but Juan Agudelo is playing worse now than he was two years ago. Now, I look at someone like Jonjo Shelvey and think that, two years ago, he seemed as an average prospect ... who now has been called up by England and deservedly so. Can we ship all of them to Alkmaar?
So did Eddie Gaven at 17. Fat lot of good it did him, or Freddy or Justin Mapp. At some point we have to consider that it might at least partially be the sculptor instead of the clay.
As much as I rip on Freddy, at least, he had ambitions. Eddie and Justin were just happy to be MLS lifers. In a high-middle-low-lower tiers of most international football structures, a player almost has no choice. If he is good, someone higher on the food chain will want to buy him. There's no one higher on the food chain in the US. And the food chain itself is happy being "affordable" rather than wanting to become "elite".
Sure, absolutely. But for that we will all need a ton more patience. MLS is now just barely starting to professionalize the development/training of 15-18 year olds with their youth academies. That's just a few years old now and still far from top notch. Pushing the professionalization down into the vast numbers of 9-14 year old youth spread around this massive country will take a ton of pro soccer resources that simply do not exist at this time. Nearly all the current youth structures today vary between well-meaning mom-and-pop recreational amateurs at the low end to pseudo-pro-pay-to-play clubs at the "high" end. Even the very top pay-to-play youth clubs today lack the real professional resources to run the kind of development/training done at European or South American pro soccer academies. Yes, our 9-14 year olds need hundreds of top-quality professional coaches organized in a professional development structure all managed by real professional clubs. None of that exists today, and it took decades just to get the MLS's academies for older teens off the ground. This is still going to take a long time.
We simply need to keep growing and maturing everywhere. It's not one thing. But if there was an area where we could use so much more it's coaching of course. The youngsters. We just need so, so, so much more. No easy solution if u look at the problem on a nation wide level. As for the Olympic team? Porter was naive in so many areas it wasn't even funny. Ley's hope that finally puts a nail in the coffin of amateur types coaching a team like that. Hope it's the end of college coach consideration.
Agreed. Thankfully with many more retiring US players in the fold we will see these things grow I would hope. More coaching opportunities from vets who have left the game. It will take time but thankfully the massive investment US Soccer is putting into place over these next 3-5 years will help. (a ton of money)
The US has made the knock rounds of 2 out of the last 3 World Cups including a quarterfinals appearance and made the finals of a Confederations Cup. The success in tourneys has been reasonably steady.
The last two friendlies were against Mexico and Russia. Great to see MLS products Agudelo and Shea, Bradley, and Edu be key components of the goal scoring attacking movements. The lack of in country youth professional dev is an obvious long standing issue. Think the main knock on effect at the Senior level is players at signficantly later and having significantly less time at their respective peaks. A player like Cameron for example really should been available last cycle as well.
One name I forget in my U23 list above was Greg Garza. Scored the game-winning goal for the Xolos in the playoffs this past week. When one asks where the "next generation" is........................part of the answer might be in Mexico. Alejandro Guido, Stevie Rodriguez, Benji Joya, Juan Pablo Ocegueda, Daniel Cuevas, Jesus Guzman, Daniel Medina, Gector Delgado. Uvaldo Luna, and others have all been been called up by the U20s in the past year.
I was very high on the last U23 USA side, I think it was one of the strongest class the USA ever had. it was unfortunate the kids that were suppose to "hold the fort" during qualifiers didn't get it done. I can only dream what if, in London with core group of... Agudelo, Corona, Shea, Jozy, Gyau, Adu, Mix, Morales, Chandler, Boyd, Wooten etc. My gut feeling is that at least 5 of these kids will be in our 2014 WC team.
You can also mention Cobi Span and Billy Schuler ... but, really, who the heck knows ... someone goes to Europe and lays low for a couple of seasons, then explodes onto the scene; others come in with the bang and go out with Valerenga.
Really? I believe 1985/86 was more of a valley. 1987 is were it starts to get better. What I can agree on is that the Adu/Altidore generation is HUGE. A pity that it was the one that missed the Olympics!