#USMNT has 8 wins/draws in 13 European road games in 4 years under Klinsmann. U.S. had 7 wins/draws in 26 Euro road games from 1992-2010.— Paul Carr (@PaulCarr) June 5, 2015
Wood is the proven one who was our top goalscorer last season, which seems long forgotten. Sargent was 2nd place. Soto may prove better than he is based on how U20 went. GB mouthed words like Sargent is the absolute future, which some say. He then noted how Soto did without apparent irony. I am not sure that turns out how some expect. I am not sure Sargent has a clear path anywhere. We instead seem hell bent on making this a battle between the 2 most frustrating strikers of the bunch, Zardes and Jozy. Jozy being slightly less frustrating but older and of the same sloppy mold. Jozy who would be like about 32 by Qatar. And gets hurt all the time. In terms of my comment on "windows," one can see a scenario where we invest in a would be 32 year old Jozy, and a would be 30 year old Zardes, and then next cycle pivot back to a now 29 year old Wood, or the kids who get left out of the process this time and are now 21 and 22 instead of 18 and 19. Hell bent on squeezing out the future in favor of the past.
If he was Murican and had an MLS resume, they'd have built a statue for him and forgiven the rightful diss of primadonovan. But he's german and he's not allowed to do that to a Murican legend. Most of the hatred for him is based on the Donovan deal.
mildly amusing if one forgets his complete failure to even qualify for the subsequent European world cup. or going out in the semis at home.
The problem was re-upping him. He'd become stale and it's always risky for a national team to keep their head man after a full cycle.
dave understood selection but not tactics at all. dave's team was a mixed bag. all due respect to your take but he had the Mexico win, several Bosnia/Portugal/France ties, and yes, some dogs. but his dogs were uniformly high level teams and not venezuela and jamaica. so far dave's results are better than GB's. GB lost to Venezuela who took second in a CA group. GB lost to Jamaica who won their GC group (and we play next). he tied Chile who took second in a CA group. he barely beat Ecuador 1-0 who managed one CA group round point and exited. he beat Costa Rica C who lost in the quarters. beat up on Guyana and TnT who went home. squeaked by Panama and Curacao who exited in the quarters. Dave can at least blame the scheduler for how his year went. i have made distinctions amongst those who have already been tried out. i am not the one saying morales. i think i have at most grudgingly said give him a game. he is not one of the ones i lament being left out. i can list people who got run out the last two years not to bother with. most of the ones i lament being left out are fairly obvious and not the ones who sucked eg green gall holmes lletget sargent weah wood. they all have some degree of bona fides already. i do not get that being "complainer." i do not get that being "pie in the sky." these are people with NT goals or who looked good. most NTs are not deliberately like 50% off of what should be their roster. are not that confused what the team looks like. i have named a few others i would like to see get initial caps and acknowledged that some succeed and some don't. i think there are a couple dozen more people we could look at, dual nationals, U20s, etc. we are fielding mhailovic, trapp, roldan, and several others wasting space. we can afford the experiments. it's weird to be in a rebuilding stage where people are afraid of looking at new things.
I feel the same way, but about tactical choices. People are very interested in trying out a bunch of new players -- and not necessarily the same ones -- but they show absolutely no patience in trying to play a different way. There's an inherent tension there -- you can't ever build tactical cohesion if you are constantly changing guys. But at the same time, you have to try out guys. I like what Berhalter is doing, but Nations League HAS to evaluate players at positions that aren't cutting it. It's impossible to fairly evaluate other players with wholesale changes, and I think you need to get guys multiple opportunities to get in the flow, so I don't think massive experimentation is smart -- mostly because it's not fair to anyone when everyone is new. But players who clearly are young, talented, developing and are already in consideration need to get a shot. And we need to find a LB. We need to play around with central midfield. People weirdly criticize after every game as if we can change the roster right now. But once we can, we need targeted experimentation. That said, the furor over even the slightest bit of tactical experimentation is insane.
i don't mind tactical tinkering but the 4141 shows no signs of working and plays the 2 locks on the team out of position. i think the tactics need to match the pool and am not sold that if i had these people i would run out his choices and basically play for get the ball wide and go for crossing goals. among other things, where is the target striker for that. where is the precision brad davis to hit the crosses. i feel like curacao went like it did because we're pretending the mids are suited for what is being asked. we have endless forward talent, if no world class stars. we have a functional backline so far this tournament. but the mids struggle to win balls and possess. we are blowing the cycle. wasted a year on an interim whose selections and tactics seem basically forgotten. like it literally doesn't matter how you played last year, if you scored, we started over in january. hence how weah and sargent and others get treated. and then if you were going to experiment, the wiser choice is the long-camp GC as opposed to quick turnaround LoN. the excuse on leaving some off GC is fitness or club form. well GC I can run them for a month and get them sharp. LoN you have people in camp a week and play 2 games for an international date. then you have to pick fit people. there is no time for running people into shape. there is no time to gel a team. GC you might have them a month and you can squad rotate on purpose. if we'd picked the right people the rotation games would instead be a second window at some new players. to me this whole tournament should have been risk taking, then come back LoN and start bedding in the cohesive team. i think everything we do is distorted by a horizon no longer than tomorrow. after missing a world cup the horizon should be success in qualifying and the world cup. 3 years. anyone you might play now who can't help the 3 year horizon is a waste of time and symbolizes our confused goals. i get in general we try to win every game. but sometimes that is subordinate to the bigger picture goals. right now i can't tell if the bigger goal is win Gold Cup or re-qualify. if you asked me, based on the choices we are making, despite missing last time, the end all be all is not re-qualification. i root for us to win every game but based on what i saw the other night, we are not mexico's class. anything can happen but if we thwarted big picture re-qualification to try and win gold cup, and that doesn't even happen......i mean this feels like 2015 again. how important it seemed to win gold cup. or the regional playoff. or copa america. none of which went all that well. and then we were not ready to qualify. we were built around 3 old farts mids. we had holes in the back. we were a mess. never got fixed. TnT could exploit it. voila.
Lol. We’ve had more than enough games to evaluate the system: the main problem is that there isn’t a single player who is playing close to their personal ceiling over 10 games. A good system would have multiple players hitting their stride 10 games into the system, particularly since many of them have now gone through at least two camps. You are welcome to disagree but I’d like to understand who’s playing near their potential?
to me i feel like people confuse playing an experiment and giving up. i expect the 11 we field to try and win the game no matter who we stick out there. but if you play omar the sole goal is win a soccer game. you play someone else and you can learn about the roster and whether to make changes. or whether someone needs to go back in the pool to take swimming lessons. and in the process someone wins or loses, and hopefully we win, but until qualifying, i am not heartbroken if sometimes it's not us, if we are trying things that make us a better team. based on what i have seen in the last 2 games plus the last 3 friendlies, we need new players and more swimming lessons, both. you can ignore that and focus solely on winning that day's contest, and pretend that will just keep going automatically, or you can spend at least some of each roster on trying to identify some more players that close the gap where actually winning the tougher contests is more likely. i think at least some of the change needs to be personnel change and you can't change rosters without changing people on them.
A 26-yr old entire-career-in-MLS player or a rapidly declining 31-year old, neither of whom is close to being a candidate for Best XI or a deserved all-star in MLS? Absolutely. Neither of those guys would get a sniff of playing time for a mid-table B1 team. Replace MLS with B2 and the answer is the same.
If someone is starting and getting minutes in a better league, is that player better than someone starting and getting minutes in a worse league? For many here, the answer is an easy "yes". For you, Egg, and the USSF (and a few others), the answer is "no, our talent evaluation is more important, and generally better than the people selecting the better talent in the Bundesliga. Trapp and MB are better than Morales, despite higher paid, more talented executives, wielding more funds, valuing Morales (and playing/paying him) instead of MB/Trapp". Is a AAA baseball player better than a MLB baseball player? Maybe in a couple instances, sure, but 99.9% of the time, the MLB player is better, which is why he is in a better league, getting paid more, and has been selected by the best talent evaluators.
People here are seriously underestimating Curaçao. You should have a look at their results in the last three years.
If the better team in the better league, with the better talent indentifiers, with the most money, thought that Trapp or Bradley were better than Morales, they would switch the two. Much like if Google or Microsoft see a talented engineer at a small firm, they will offer them more money to do more impactful work. At least with MB, while he'd have zero chance at playing anywhere close to the Bundesliga, you have the argument that he's making WAYYYY too much to consider a move over there...
they did that before we even played in Brazil, fwiw. he pulled a gambit and threatened us with the spurs job. we bit.
There are MLS player who could translate to a higher level - they’re usually younger and highly athletic who are highly lauded (Adams, Davies) or if older, they are Best XI candidates (maybe Long, although his play seems to have slipped this year).
It's such a waste of time to keep arguing this, as it's gotta be obvious to 99% of posters here... There are AAA players better than MLB players - they're usually younger and highly athletic, who are nearly ready to be in the "Major Leagues". Can lightning strike? Does random stuff happen sometimes? Sure, Leicester won the EPL. But teams with more money, more talent, and better resources will GENERALLY find the best players. Those best players are GENERALLY in Germany, not MLS. The only argument is "Egg and the USSF know talent evaluation better than German clubs", to which I would not agree.
They were #168 three years ago. Small teams that only play about four games per year take a long time to climb the ranking, and even so going up 55 places in 3 years is remarkable. At this rate in 3 more years they'll be in the 60-70 range, that is on par with the likes of Honduras and Canada.
i expected us to have to work for it and our game to be 1-0 or something like that based on their recent history. but last GC (2017) they shipped 2 goals each to Mexico, ES, and Jamaica. what i was looking for was some higher gears to kick in and it goes to 2 or 3-0. i expected to see either a stalemate where they had no real chances, a safe game for us won on a couple finishes, or us dominating and getting more chances and only a couple go in. this was a little too workmanlike. yeah, on one level, get the result, go to the next round. but that's all we had for curacao? that feels like we have slipped. also bears noting this is at home... i do think they will be interesting to watch this cycle. a team that is in every game like this will be tough in quali. every game save india all summer is like 1-1 or 1-0.
Those are total false equivalents. MLB and AAA are affiliated leagues. MLS and Bundesliga are not. They are competing. That means it's going to need to be made worth their while financially for MLS to transfer someone. And of course with the non homegrowns they've deterred that w/ the single entity system. Plus how many lower league teams are offering more for players w/in that same system? MLS splashes the cash here and there to draw in some talent who could be playing in the best leagues. League, especially if we're talking U.S. system vs. Europe, is just a general gauge. 99.9% is enormously hyperbolic when it comes to affiliated leagues let alone unaffiliated ones. Morales came up in the German system and has yo-yo'ed back and forth between 2nd and 1st division on the basis of who got promoted/demoted. After Ream got a move to England from being a national teamer first, he did the same but kinda sucks. He's worse than a lot of MLS defenders he has or could share a field with. Are you telling me Cameron and Holden were worse than Morales before they made the move overseas upon which they were immediately better? Besler was worse because he didn't take the Swansea offer? I wish USS were talent evaluating. That would be a far superior strategy to what they're employing or what you're suggesting. They have multiple conflicts of interests that have been well-documented now, and you acknowledged then, so selections are far from maximizing the pool's talent. But you're suggesting prejudice, like Klinsmann employed. That was also a proven failure. Two wrongs don't make a right. What's a proven success is what first tenure Arena or Bradley employed for the most part. Which was a meritocracy for the most part, not based on circumstance, but qualifying for trials w/ the national team from being a (semi)-regular in one of the best leagues, or excelling in a respectable one, domestic or abroad. Both results in some error. None of this is an exact science. Our players aren't filling the lineups of Bayern and Madrid like the Germans. But at the end you'll reap the rewards of a coalesced, strong squad. However, for the last decade it's been decimated by actors who've not made winning the top priority. So we're in a deep hole as a result. And we need someone who'll dig us out, which takes some time, instead of doubling down or overreacting back in the other direction and burying us deeper.
Duke, There is a well established global soccer meritocracy and, as imperfect as it may be, water usually finds its level. As I said, there are minor league players who are better than some major leaguers but they fall within the aforementioned buckets of rising athletic youth and Best XI candidates. Do you believe that Trapp and/or Bradley are heading to be midtable big 4 players getting 50% of available minutes as they’re both available on a free and both either have a passport or qualify? C’mon.