Boca level is pretty good in my book. He was an MLS defender of the year and played in England, Scotland, France and Spain. Sure I hope we have even better defenders some day but two at that level would pretty sweet right now.
If our worst CB was at that level, that would be quite good but hopefully we have at least one above that level.
Well, I can't recall there ever being much of a controversy about Morrow and the national team at any point, so I'll stand by my original post that it is not an obvious controversy or grounds for questioning in an interview with Morrow.
Not BSI, but an espn article on the Wynalda and Donovan "rivalry," which has always been a one-sided Wynalda gripe-fest, in my opinion. Wynalda still seems to be upset that a teenage Donovan did not eagerly kiss the Wynalda ring when offered. https://www.espn.com/soccer/major-l...-the-pastare-now-managerial-rivals-in-the-usl
Will Ferrell on this week (wtf)? Seems random but he's heavily involved with LAFC so I guess it makes sense. Overall it was pretty much a puff piece. The guys sounded starstruck (especially Ike). Not much real news or gossip from this one, although some random entertaining moments. I'd suggest listening merely because you have nothing better to do.
The Charlie Davies one had some good nuggets. One that stood out to me is that Zizzo had a really bad knee injury in Germany. He was such a standout at the 2006 U20 that I always wondered what went wrong. He said he never got his speed back and was proud to be able to hang around for as long as he did.
From the Nagbe episode, Ike is definitely bitter about his one cap. Glad to know that he feels the same way that I do.
I think the kneecap and groin issues also affected K Acosta's speed. When he was last here in Dallas he was getting roasted by players that never troubled him before. I don't watch the Rapids enough to know if he's recovered but I'm guessing no since he never gets called up and Roldan does who he always beat out until the injuries.
New episode with some current USL player I've never heard of, Austin De Luz. Not the most interesting podcast. The best bit was the story about Rafa Marquez trying to break his foot.
TODAY'S THE DAY: Ep1 of my new podcast has my interview with USMNT's Tyler Adams on everything surrounding the German Bundesliga's return @tyler_adams14 SUBSCRIBE, RATE, REVIEWApple: https://t.co/A1kX0uYUEgSpotify: https://t.co/VCDYuGPWy7Stitcher: https://t.co/IEr2vqpACh pic.twitter.com/9xJKLRL7ly— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) May 18, 2020 Wahl has a new interview with Tyler Adams. He says he is feeling really fit and used the layoff as a pre-season. Confirms that Long, Weston and CP are all funny in the USMNT group chat.
Adams was just on BSI. He said his best position is the 6 and he prefers not playing wingback. Suck it Berhalter!
Landon is sorta like the Mia Hamm of the MNT. No one ever talks about the assists. Mia has more assists than any other WNT player by farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And, Landon has even a bigger edge. LD has 58 assists. Next highest is Bradley with 23. That is crazy. I like Dempsey better. But, Landon is the GOAT.
Listened to the Bruce Arena interview today. Nothing really new here if you've paid much attention to him over the years, and obviously he's a bit of a blowhard at times and makes a lot of self serving statements, so you have to take all of this with a grain of salt. I"m only going to summarize the USMNT-related stuff. He's a manager that really seems to value having the right mix of personalities over tactics or modern sports science, both of which he explicitly downplays or minimizes. By that measure, he obviously has high regard for the 2002 side -- especially the leadership from guys like Earnie Stewart and Brian McBride -- less regard for the 2006 side, and MUCH less regard for the 2017 team he coached, which he thinks had a lot of players that weren't really committed to the team. He says that he knew that if he made it through qualifying, there would have to be about a dozen changes to the roster before the 2018 World Cup, though he doesn't mention who that would be. He seems to have some bit of disdain for one unnamed player with experience at right back who did not want to play in that position in a key qualifier even when the team had a desperate need for a RB, and another player that begged out of a qualifier in the middle of a camp because his club told him to return, afterward citing an injury as an excuse. He also acknowledges that he had an extreme personality clash with Geoff Cameron during his time managing the side. (It seems to be pretty well understood within the group that this was by far the biggest personality clash at the time). As he's stated before, his biggest regret in 2017 is not Couva, but the Costa Rica match. He regrets playing so many European players in that game, who in retrospect he believes did not have enough match fitness that early in the season. He did however consider benching Howard, Altidore, and Pulisic it seems against T&T due to fitness or injury concerns they were tracking, but all of them were cleared as fit enough to play prior to the game. One thing I didn't know before the podcast is that Claudio Reyna apparently partied pretty hard in college, and even though Arena obviously recognized that he was the most talented player he'd coached at that point, he had serious doubts about whether Reyna would acquire the professionalism needed to carve out a career in Europe. Obviously, Reyna seems to have matured a lot since then. Re: that 2002 WC side, he thinks Tony Sanneh (along with maybe Brad Friedel) had the best tournament. He also thinks that John O'Brien is severely underrated, and is one of the top 5 American players ever. One other interesting tidbit that was kind of surprising to me: although Arena was a little cautious in providing explicit confirmation, it seems that the US wanted to call Ike Opara up to the 2017 Gold Cup roster and Kansas City denied the request. I mostly found that interesting because I didn't even know MLS clubs ever did that for competitive matches.
I'd never heard of clubs having the ability to deny callups to senior international matches during the international window. Would rank the home loss to CR second only to the loss at Couva. Fab? Cameron?
He indicates it was at some point during his first WCQ camp in charge, so more likely Cameron, since Fabian wasn't there. But I do remember that there was some noise back in 2017 about Fabian not wanting to play fullback with the national team any longer, and I'm sure it's easy to mix up the dates on something like that 3 years later.
One of the more amusing but telling anecdotes in that podcast is that when Poland lost their first two matches in the 2002 World Cup, their manager scrapped their entire starting lineup and started a largely new side, which caught Bruce Arena's coaching staff entirely off guard because they had only scouted Poland's normal starters and had no idea who most of the backup players were. An hour before the match, Arena and his staff were panicking, and he even phoned (Polish-born former USMNT international) Janusz Michallik in a desperate last minute attempt to learn anything useful about the players they were introducing into the lineup, since he had helped scout the team for them, and Janusz had no idea who they were either. Also, I forgot to mention, but it may be relevant: Arena thinks that it helped in 2002 having a number of players who remembered and carried with them the feeling of humiliation and anger from the 1998 debacle, as that fueled a lot of players to perform at a high level in the 2002 cycle and cup.
That got me curious to see what that Poland lineup actually looked like that day. GK: Majdan - Göztepe İzmir (Turkey) RB: Klos - Kaiserslautern Bench (Bundesliga) CB: Głowacki - Polish League CB: Zieliński - Polish League LB: Koźmiński - Ancona (Serie B) RM: Żurawski - Polish League CM: Kucharski - Polish League CM: Murawski - Polish League LM: Krzynówek - Nurnberg (Bundesliga) FW: Olisadebe - Panathinaikos (Greece) FW: Kryszałowicz - Eintracht Frankfurt (Bundesliga 2) None of those players except for Krzynówek rose to a much higher level later in their careers. I can understand not knowing who most of those players are if you neglected to do your homework. But also, boy that was a much more beatable side than I realized at the time.
Another Bruce masterpiece. GK: Adrian Foncette - Police(Trinidad) RB: Tristan Hodge - W Connection(Trinidad) CB: Daneil Cyrus - Juticalpa(Honduras) CB: Curtis Gonzales - Defense Force(Trinidad) LB: Alvin Jones - W Connection(Trinidad) RM: Nathan Lewis - Central(Trinidad) CM: Leston Paul - Pasaquina(El Salvador) CM: Kevan George - Jacksonville Armada(NPSL-USA) CM: Khaleem Hyland - A-Faisaly(Saudi Arabia) LM: Levi Garcia - Jong AZ(Dutch 2nd Div) FW: Shahdon Winchester - Murcielagos(Mexican 3rd div) Shahdon Winchester, RIP. T&T should make a movie about this team.
Yeah, it was an experienced team. Current ages. Foncette(31), Hodge(25), Cyrus(29), Gonzales(31), Jones(25), Lewis(29), Paul(30), George(30), Hyland(31), Garcia(22), Winchester(28)* age if he were still alive.