Their keeper is fine, but they've given up the most goals in the Bundesliga. They've also scored the second least.
What did you think of Reyna watching him play in the youth ranks? On the positive side, I thought he was a very technical player, aggressive as hell, super confident, a chucker w/not a lot of vision and nothing remotely like where people are putting him now (playmaking/scoring #10) reminding me of how different the game looks as a 10, 12, 15 year old, compared to as a 25-30 year old, when you go from vision which almost seems literally deficient and requiring glasses or something, to seeing the whole field (I don't think that's only my experience playing, I tended to see the next pass, or couple of passing options as a teen and pre-teen, and as an adult I could see most and often nearly all of the field, it was like going from not having sight or compromised sight, to having the bet sight imaginable (considering that I played from age 4 to age 19 or 20 (and that last year was indoor), and then didn't play again for the most part until I was 32, maybe other people don't share that experience of not playing at all for more than a decade). When I looked at his game, i thought he was a really gifted attacking player with really limited vision who'd have to play forward, or failing that, develop a more complete game to be a winger. I definitely saw him as a scorer, but beyond that and his obvious technical skill as a player, and confidence, I was a bit worried. There was an obvious tool kit in place, but he needed to grow a great deal more in terms of combination play with teammates, vision, etc to ever be considered something more than just a pure goal scorer. He went to Dortmund in what, mid summer of '19 after U17 WC qualifiers where the kids were excellent and should've beaten eventual U17 WC Finalist Mexico in the Final (that also happened in '17 w/the U17's). Then a couple of months later (and w/a terrible team performance for the U17's at the WC that some of the youth board posters really saw coming and said so (definitely not me, I was shocked at how bad the team was compared to the spring) sandwiched in there) we saw him make his debut with Dortmund that fall/winter and he was a 1000% different player. He's a real difficult prospect to evaluate because I think it's obvious that 1 of 2 things (or maybe both of them) happened with him: #1 He may have been playing with such drastically inferior talent around him (which is definitely true in retrospect) that he simply felt he had to do everything, every game, and it produced bad habits and the liklihood for a bad evaluation. Maybe the reason he's not sending through balls to teammates, and working better give and go's/combinations etc is because he knows his teammates just can't hack it at this level, and he's going to have go hero ball every time if anything positive is gonna happen. #2: Dortmund knew exactly what he needed to work on to improve , and knew how to accentuate his particular strengths, and did a brilliant job (along with him for himself) of helping to motivate him to become the truly great player he could be. I don't know what the answer was/is, but #1 this definitely happens with guys (Sargent goes from a goal machine, to basically a neutered mouse after going to Bremen in the attack, Hoppe goes from a mundane, size/speed/technical option w/o much in the production sheet, to a natural hat trick scorer in like his second or third career start, Haji Wright goes from a guy who was actually drawing more raves than Pulisic in 2014, to a guy that had dropped 1000% off the map entirely by the end of the '19-'20 season, to the top goal scorer in Denmark a few months later) and #2 Gio's a bad example for trashing or teasing people like me that monitor the kids on the youth message boards. #1: It's hard to nail evals with kids that are 15-16-17 #2: Gio w/Dortmund looks literally nothing remotely like how he did for NYFC, or the U17's. Like Nothing. As mentioned earlier, it could be he felt he needed to play hero ball, could be he was just young, but honestly, I've never seen something happen w/a player off the top of my head like I saw with Gio between the early summer of 2019 and late fall of 2019. I've never seen that with anyone. He went from a kid that could score a lot of goals, was super confident and couldn't do much else, to a complete player in like 4 months. I don't think I was ever someone who trashed him, unless mistaken, I think I always viewed him as either the best, or the #2 prospect amongst the '02's and '03's, but just a guy who had part of the tool kit 1000% in place, and another whole side of the tool kit/brief case whatever completely empty, and then he managed to literally fill it w/every tool imaginable in like 3 months with Dortmund. Like literally everything. Defending, playmaking, combining, seeing the field in terms of vision, making the runs, making himself available for the ball, while also making the right decision w/the ball over and over and over again. It was insane. I also think coming into Dortmund at the same time as the best U23 Forward on Earth probably helped, but there are plenty of guys that didn't improve dramatically, or in some cases even tailed off a bit (Sancho) w/Haaland's arrival to make a Haaland argument nonsense, especially when you consider that Reyna, in clips with the youth team of Dortmund, looked a completely different player by late August/September of 2019 before Haaland arrived in the first place. I was basically losing my mind w/what I was seeing w/Reyna with the Dortmund youth squad by like Thanksgivingish of '19. Who knows. I'm just ecstatic, because I had no idea Reyna had this much in him, I thought if he stayed healthy and worked hard, he'd be a player in the 23 and in consideration for the XI by '22 or '23, but I never saw him having a ceiling as a $100,000,000 transfer caliber talent and he clearly does and more. I think he's one of kind. But yes, he's also a great reminder that evaluating, and especially making hard and fast and firm decisions on youth prospects, especially when they're 15-16 years old is a suckers bet, and you're bound and determined to miss over and over and over again over time. And none of this really even takes into account, mental makeup, what's between the ears, personality/temperament etc which can have far more of an impact than one might think.
You are spot-on on #1. Reyna has tendencies to do too much when playing for our NT. I think is because he doesn't know his teammates and how the international game is played. As to doing too much because others aren't at his level...That trait was also noticed with Pulisic and McKennie. Fortunately, this new group of young players is much better than previous groups and our key players should be able to play to their club's playing standards.
I guess you and I saw a very different player at NYCFC. There was plenty of tournaments where MLS sides have matched up and played academies from top Euro and S American sides. Reyna always looked like a top talent in those competitions. He always showed understanding of tight spaces and often took balls into spaces others avoided to create dangerous chances and goals. He continues that to this day, and that is what makes him a special talent. Tactical awareness is always going to improve in youth players in the late teen years and is nothing out of the ordinary.
as far as the U17 Nats, they completely changed their style of play before the World Cup and many of the players were unable to adapt.
The development that happens between 15 and 17 is monumental. From 17 on though, you should see a good idea of what that player is from a physical (ST and CB can be exceptions) and technical perspective. Tactical nous might come much later. I would only look at three traits at around 16, maybe 15: FIRST TOUCH: the building block to everything technical PHYSICAL PEAK POTENTIAL: what kind of frame does the kid have? How tall and muscular are his parents? MENTALITY: is he a hard worker? Does he play confidently and aggressively? Does he love the game?
Wenger had stated the ability a kid to read the game was what he first looked for. Other managers may, of course, stress other aspects.
I'm assuming this U-23 most expensive XI based on transfermarkt value would also be the full USMNT most expensive XI aside from: GK: Steffen CB: Brooks in one of the two spots LW: maybe Morris or Weah? The USA 🇺🇸 Most Expensive XI, U23:GK: Marcinowski €1MLB: Robinson €5MCB: McKenzie €4MCB: Richards €4MRB: Dest €25MLW: Konrad €2.5MCM: McKennie €25MCM: Adams €16MAM: Reyna €30MRW: Pulisic €60MST: Sargent €9MTotal Value: €181,300,000Per @Transfermarkt. pic.twitter.com/0I4SwGr9Ag— Football Wonderkids (@fbwonderkids) January 14, 2021
Transfermarkt has Weah at like ~$9M and he's not even 21 yet. They should have put him in under Konrad. Musah's $11M if he commits. Here's the transfermarkt Best XI tool set for Most Valuable XI: https://www.transfermarkt.us/spiele...tersklasse=u23&kontinent_id=0&yt0=Generate+XI $213M. They put Aaronson in the middle, slide Adams to RB and Dest to LB to pump the numbers. But if you force Adams to the middle, exclude Musah and a bunch of other practicalities ... it's still better than what's posted there. No age restriction is $225M.
U23 $213M / MNT $225M = 94.7% There can NOT be any other top 50 ranked national team with that small of a difference between their most expensive U-23 and MNT lineups... I wonder when was the last time that was EVER the case?
I saw the interview w Wenger where he broke down phases of development: A-Technical years 5-12 B-Physical years 12-16 C-Tactical years 18-20 D Mental-from 20 years Thing is, we have first team national players, including Gio, who aren't even through this cycle. Not even the finished article.
let’s just take my oldest son for example. He didn’t hit puberty till his senior year. Before that he was a boy playing against men since he was 13 or 14. When you are playing with boy muscles against players with men’s muscles, your game is very limited. His tactical understanding was always adjusted to play a game from an athletically inferior standpoint. Once puberty hit and that disparity evened out, he had to learn all the new possibilities that had now opened up to him. This also had a huge effect on his tactical understanding. So I would hesitate on judging players tactical understanding too early.
Also, physicality is a complex measurement. There’s endurance, strength, speed, recovery, coordination, flexibility, agility, stability, etc. And these don’t all peak at the same time.
that seems to be the last transfer fee for everyone except reyna, sargent and possibly marcinkowski. for example you aint getting mckennie for $25 mil. im just curious why they arent either all last fee paid or estimation of current value.
Here is my best 11: Dest, Reynolds Cannon, Sally, Araujo, Olosunde Moore, Duncan, Lima, Yedlin Lichai Hints: You need to be good right back to fit in. LOL.
Don't forget to check out uncles on mom's side. A keeper teammate of my son was average size in early HS (maybe 5-7) and his twin brother was probably 6 foot. His mom kept saying their doctor predicted he would be the taller twin eventually and her brothers were 6-2 to 6-4. Well when I saw the kid at age 20 a few years later he was 6-4. He'd grown that in a couple of years at the tail end of HS early college.
All you have to do is watch any game from U12 to U15 to see how wildly different physical traits are at that age. My 12-year old son, and a lot of his teammates, are proof of just how different physical development is on the timeline. It seems like every U13 team they play has kids who are a head taller, 30 pounds heavier, and look like they drove the team bus to the game. My son's reasonably strong in his legs, but you just look at the development and you know he's not going to have much of a chance yet from a physicality standpoint. He's a smart player and has some good technical skill, but he just can't match up with these kids who are closer to my size than his (he can outrun a lot of them, though - that helps!). His coach just keeps stressing to him that his maturity will eventually catch up to his ability to see and read the game. I'm hoping that maturity comes soon. I would agree that vision, smarts, and technical ability need to be emphasized first at the younger age groups. Yes, eventually you will need the physical tools and athleticism to succeed at the elite levels in the case of someone like Gio Reyna. But given the choice between a physically-developed 13 or 14 year old with limited technical skills and soccer IQ and a less-developed kid this age with the "soccer tools", I would imagine that most professional/academy scouts would prefer the second kid. If the kid doesn't have the technical skill, athletic ability and size won't matter much. If the variable is physical development, I'm sure more scouts would roll the dice on that. EDIT - to the point of @Pegasus , I'm hoping that uncles on Dad's side also have some sort of say in this as well. My wife's an only child. My two brothers are both 6-feet tall, and one of them grew almost four inches while in college. I'm 5-9. I'm REALLY hoping that taller gene somehow snuck into the gene pool.
As a once club youth coach, I know what you mean. I had a 5'10 175 chiseled body CB for my U15 team. At every tournament, I was questioned about his age. And to top it off the kid was handsome, the story was he was already dating grown young women. After his soccer days were over he joined the USMC. He entered special forces duties and was killed while doing wheelies in his Ninja bike on the freeway! He always used to stop by my house to check up on his old coach.
That's sad. Those bikes were killing more Marines than the war a few years back and caused the USMC to require training.