I think that's a fair critique. On the other hand, Bedoya started in the loss to Guatemala. Almost everyone covered themselves in shame at one point during that cycle. But I think people are looking at how Jurgen used Morris or Green, but those guys are attacking players. It's easier to bring a young striker or winger into a game where they can have an impact (and we saw Jurgen had a knack for this) than a young CM, where a mistake is much more costly.
Bedoya played left midfield in the 2-0 loss at Guatemala in 2016. Bradley and Diskerud played in central midfield.
I think Mexico was just better than us at that point (2019 GC final), better than us by a margin big enough that they could beat us with a B team, as was confirmed in the September friendly (3-0 and with most of their A team). They have a world class coach, we got Egg. And at that point their players were clearly superior. They still are, but I can see a future where they are not, not so much because we've improved but because they're sinking.
Funny how these tangents develop. I didn't suggest Bruce start McKennie at T&T, or against CR or Panama as things played out. I suggested Bruce call him to the GC, INTEGRATE HIM, give him 3-5 caps, then start him if needed in the Fall. McKennie was hurt in October. Arena, iirc, said he was going to call him in. Arena was going to take him to the world cup, according to Bruce (who says a lot of stuff like this now). If all the above is true then he should have been at the Gold Cup. This world where you see a kid get 8 minutes and think that is the end does not exist. Or at least, it only exists on TV for you. The coaches at Schalke were not thinking of McKennie that way. They were moving him to the first team for major minutes in 2017/18. What you saw as, "8 minutes", were just the first 8 minutes of a career of 20,000 minutes. Adams likewise would have been an option at RB over Zusi. There is no moment where you can point to Zusi getting beat for a goal. But against CR and especially Honduras, he was a weak point that everyone had to compensate for. For all the talk of T&T, we were very lucky to get a point at Honduras the way Ellis was exploiting Zusi. It was only after Zusi got pulled that we played well. "But Adams was young and never capped!". WHICH IS WHY YOU BRING HIM TO THE GOLD CUP AND CAP HIM. Nobody is saying you don't integrate players. I'm literally saying he could have integrated them and didn't. To excuse him later as not being able to play them because he didn't integrate them is backwards.
It's not "funny how these tangents develop". It's people that were wrong at the time, who are still wrong, and who can only be right by fabricating arguments that never existed. It's many of the same people who, now that Reyna is getting minutes, are saying "he's not a lock starter, but he should be called in and allowed to compete". Fine. That's basically the same point that was being made in 2017. So these people are arguing against themselves, somehow. These excuses need to be made, and the arguments need to be created out of thin air, to avoid saying "yeah, we were wrong demand EXPERIENCE and zero competition in 2017". Nobody has anything to say about Miazga playing only 45 minutes total in 6 Gold Cup matches. Nobody has anything to say the fact that Jon Gonzalez should have been called in. It's not about "I DEMAND THIS PLAYER START". It's about demanding competition to keep every single player at their peak. I don't even know how people can argue against this fact. The single biggest reason for failed qualification was that most players were guaranteed their starting roles, and get complacent and lazy, despite already being old and not very good. The fact only a couple people on a BS message board identified it at that time doesn't make it wrong.
So did MB90. MB90 and LD also started in the US' first group stage loss in Gold Cup History (to Panama) in 2011. I guess we should never play them again.
Your obsession with certain players and coaches prevents you from making rational arguments. Who are these posters that you think started watching the game between 2011 and 2016. It is kind of amusing coming from an MLS fan who thinks the game in this country was started sometime between 1996 and 2002. This last paragraph is quite impressive. An unnecessary swipe at a player and misrepresenting others arguments completely. I dont think anyone suggested "relying" on this player in an important games. I also dont see anyone claiming what they actually said was Arena's biggest mistakes. I think the gist of th othe arguments has been ignoring the opportunity to give chances to young players was one of Arenas many mistakes in 2017. Not sure the order, but I would also include attempting to eliminate one side of a supposed fractured locker room, over valuing "experienced" MLS players who were never international quality (attempting prove he could qualify with mostly MLS players), eliminating competition for positions to create complacency. All of this led to an unmotivated collection of less than optimal player selection.
Not really relevant to the point at all since Bradley started the match in question and Donovan was retired. Are you just saying stuff?
If you want prove me wrong, focus on making good arguments. What about being 2 games down with a -5 GD seems like a great time to bring in new, inexperienced players? Especially a center midfielder, whose success is going to depend on building chemistry with his teammates over several games. I'm not saying you're wrong to critique Arena. I'm saying these critiques are dumb.
Good arguments have been made. You have just ignored them or twisted them into something different. The specific argument that was made is that Arena should have looked at Mckennie and other young prospects in the GC. Not sure why you are still talking about the first two games at that point other than your ridiculous fixation on Klinsmann. At the time of the GC, the USMNT was in thir place with 8 points. Btw, the chemistry of the central midfield looked awful in the last 4 matches and Mckennie is flexible to play many positions.
So, the roster should have frozen after November 2016? The fact you have a year, two dozen games, and entire another tournament, multiple friendlies, doesn't matter? Because you are in a hole you can't change anything?!? They changed the coach. Is being down 2 games and -5GD a good time for that? If you can change the coach, why can't you change anything else? Does the new coach not get to change anything? Arena did change CMs and brought in one that had no experience who scored the first goal in the first WCQ'er he was apart of. He started another CM that had not been involved at all and had only a few minutes in a handful of caps outside January. He started a player on the backline that had only been capped for the first time in the previous game. So, down 2 games and -5GD, in last place, Arena started 3 players that had never started a WCQ'er before, and never really featured outside January camp as starters. Nagbe probably had 120 minutes, total, over two years of playing next to Bradley. Lletget had 45' total, in a January game, playing with those two. Where is the long term chemistry? How were they possibly successful that night with such recklessness in squad selection?!? Pretty bold. But after 9 months, 12 games, anything like that is insane? When you are in position to qualify?
Arena specifically said for that GC that he was using it to scout players that'd be ready to help now in WCQ. A prospect, by definition, isn't that, is it?
I noted the Gold Cup exclusion in another post. He still got his first 13 minutes (not 8, my bad) in the last game of the season, less than 2 weeks before the Gold Cup provisional roster was due. He wasn't officially on the first team at that point either (officially it was 6 weeks later). How much scouting can one do of Schalke's U-19? I'd guess very little, as even everyone's favorite website, transfermarkt, hasn't assigned a valuation to a single player on the current U-19 squad.
I don't understand your point of comparison. I'm speaking to general experience as a pro -- Nagbe and Lletget are not young, inexperienced players, they had about 200 starts at CM between them for achieving MLS clubs. I get some of you don't value MLS experience very much, which is fine -- but the burden's still on you to prove that McKennie was a seasoned enough pro to be ready to contribute to qualifying, which is what Arena was using the GC for. Not to bring in guys to "learn on the job" or "push other guys", but to be ready to make a difference in the next rounds of WCQ: Keep in mind, as opposed to a young winger or striker who can be integrated earlier and have an impact as a sub, a CM needs significant minutes to be effective and integrate into the squad. Weston didn't have enough pro matches to even have a scouting profile yet, which would make it challenging for any coach to integrate him successfully.
Arena named McNamara, Roldan, Pontius, and Rowe to the GC2017 40 roster ahead of a talented CM who had dominated the Schalke youth squad, made his BuLi debut, and had been promoted to the Schalke's first team for the upcoming season. Anyone reading that list of names selected ahead of Weston is ROFLOL yet you continue to try to defend such an incompetent, idiotic decision!
Eh, there is always the question of how a GC call up will affect a situation where a young player is promoted to first team in Europe with a top flight league. You really don't want to interfere in a situation like that unless there is reason to believe it could help the player.
I thought that Cannon had trouble playing the hybrid rb-cm that Berhalter was going to use for Adams. Made sense for a very short period until he moved to CM for RBL. Oddly they used him similarly for a bit after he returned from injury. Lima was the next in line after Adams was hurt. GB must not have liked him too much in that role as he went with a more classic right back after that and then Cannon and to a lesser extent Yedlin were back in the picture. If we had another CM as good as McKennie and Adams I could see him thinking about trying Adams there again at times.
According to this quote "It was a chance to see who might help during four critical World Cup qualifiers later this year", Arena thought that McNamara, Roldan, Pontius, and Rowe had more potential to help than Weston. If you're digging that far into the pool, yeah, it makes sense to look at rising youth players - it's not that hard to figure out who should be on the radar. For example, Uly Llanez showed that he was at least as good (and probably much better) than everyone else who was called into the most recent Camp Cupcake. Likewise, Reyna is clearly a core player already and would be an asset to mix/match with irrespective of if he hadn't played for the first team. Other prospects at clubs that are better than MLS level that the team should absolutely be tracking: Richards, Ledesma, Otasowie. This doesn't mean that they are proven but if we're taking average MLS players, we should also look at this high (in the hopefully near future) ceiling players. We should be ready to integrate them quickly if they take the next step of their career.
I mean FFS, we use the Ralston line as a threshold here and he made MLS Best XI three times and was a seven times All-Star. But now, we're calling 2019 Bradley, Trapp, roldan, Lovitz, Baird, etc. to multiple camps and giving the lion's share of the minutes to these plebeian players. C'mon.
You are just trusting yourself up with these dumb arguments. A coach has many responsibilities that need to be balanced over time. One of them which is very important for a team with a shallow pool and comtiniually improving developing young players is to scout and integrate youth players. Arena ignored that responsibility for the trade off of results in the GC (doesnt matter) and WCQ but failed. Perhaps if he had qualified, people wouldn't be upset about not integrating the younger players. An argument that starts with "Arena specifically said..." isnt that compelling. Even if you believe him, who did he find? Nobody! He arbitrarily shrunk the pool (again) and found no players that would go on to help in the next four games. So he didnt integrate young players, didnt find new players that could help, botched the player selection with his limited pool, didnt get the team dynamics right, and had poor tactics. We dont know that Mckennie or Gonzalez or Adams could have helped in Sept or October of 2017, but the fact they started in November gives us an idea. I think it is safe to say if they would have been included in the GC, there is a good chance they would have been a bit further along in their development. Your argument that a midfielder needs a bunch of games to be integrated is either not true or means that Arena was full of $hit that he was going to integrate these players for the WC if he hadn't completely screwed up.
Taking one of the best young DM prospect on the planet that most scouts liken to Kante and trying to play him in a gimmick role is dumb, dumb, especially when you have a RB prospect like Cannon that top 4 leagues team are interested in as a RB. Playing Adams in a gimmick role, not playing Cannon so you can get Trapp or Bradley on the field is beyond dumb, dumb.
I can't think of any example where a promoted youth player (baring injury) suffered because they were called to a competitive international tournament. I would say the reverse is true, it adds prestige and thus transfer value to the youth player. Which examples do you have in mind?
He probably has zero or one. This is the same excuse we've heard time after time. It's been claimed so many times people think it's common knowledge and fact. Must let him SETTLE IN. Where does this come from? It comes from people wanting to defend brucie or any other horrendous coach. Just wait til WC qualifiers arrive. Risky to call in Reyna, he's trying to SETTLE IN and establish himself! At least Egg has recently shown some decent growth with selection by most accounts, with Reyna and richards and llanez.