well, your glib response neglects that i have 6 other players who can play offense and thus the implied “extreme” approach can be offensive and effective without much back involvement. you kept it short but apparently haven’t watched a minute of italy’s refutation of your nonsense. it’s called specialization. i do my job. pass it to chiesa who does his. the idea pulisic and reyna need a bunch of dest and robinson help is overrated. i’d prefer they be liberated to do their thing. and if they ever actually need help the the backs can overlap and robinson can hit a cross 2 yards too far from his target. or maybe dest can do something which is actually improvising and inverting. not traditional wing play. what you miss is the actual opposite is not a 433 where the backs stay home but i am aggressive. it’s like a 541 bunker or something where everyone is back. it is possible for the whole team to defend but for me to be aggressive in the attack just committing fewer bodies. you suggest england does the opposite which is belied by their absence of GA. you also neglect that throwing backs forward in a 343 or 433 might be near its own extreme. all i am advocating is balance. it’s political trash to suggest a slightly throttled down version of what we do is somehow extremist. extremist would be parking the bus. all i am saying is leave 4 guys back and do what italy does. you watch italy cruise through teams that beat us and it seems to be working fine. and as i pointed out and you fiinessed the two teams cruising through everyone are the low GA serious defenses. the less balanced spain/ croatia/ etc. teams that play for 5-3 are the ones getting sent home each round. this suggests your notions of what is ideal are out of whack and being punished by the real defenses. far as i cam concerned we are imitating a spanish model that was outmoded after 2010.
We disagree on often Bsky but I appreciate your support on this point. Zardes has always and will always be a donkey!!
since you’re pretending i am being extremist, there is a history here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup 2 GA the whole tournament, one in the mcbride head gash game and one in the final. and they did not park the bus, but they did play a 442 with twin 6s. balance the numbers forward vs back, CYA on defense, aggressive on offense but more in directness as opposed to needless bodies forward. trust your specialist attackers. you pretend to promote offense but then don’t trust our very talented attackers to do their job without taking silly supplemental wingback risks for little tangible reward.
Which roster is better 2019 GC vs 2021 GC? 2019 GC P. Arriola G. Zardes T. Boyd J. Altidore C. Pulisic W. McKennie M. Bradley W. Zimmerman A. Long N. Lima D. Lovitz T. Ream O. Gonzalez W. Trapp S. Johnson J. Morris R. Cannon C. Roldan J. Lewis M. Miazga D. Mihailovic T. Miller
Sounds like, per Goff, Green wanted to be there but Greuther Fürth wanted him for the full preseason and Berhalter decided to bank some goodwill with the club even though he thought Green would have contributed at the Gold Cup and has a real chance of being a contributor during WCQs: [Green] is in little danger of losing his starting job, but because enormous challenges lie ahead this season, club officials wanted him in training camp right away. Although he could have demanded Green’s release, Berhalter will allow him to remain in Germany. In doing so, Berhalter’s stated thinking goes, Green will be well positioned, from a performance standpoint, for a possible call-up to the qualifiers. It could also build goodwill for Berhalter with Greuther Fürth when future scheduling conflicts arise. “It was a give and take,” Berhalter said. “It was a juggling act, and it wasn’t easy, because we still want to put a team on the field that’s going to compete to win the Gold Cup.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/07/01/usmnt-gold-cup-roster/
Thanks for finding all that. I find the idea that Furth will be happy to let Green go during qualifying fanciful. If green is playing well enough for Furth to get called in for th Nats, they will complain no matter what “goodwill” Gregg thinks he has built.
Wow, four posts in a row in response and attacking language, mockery and/or (especially) obfuscation ("to render unclear, obscure or unintelligible") in every one of them. Look, I don't think the Gold Cup needs to be played as often as it is. It's hardly an opinion worthy of: A terrible idea that nobody of any sentience would actually endorse." Most club and even some national team managers will agree that players are asked to play in too many games. That's not an uninformed opinion. That the leadership of CONCACAF doesn't agree is a truism. It's like saying "The schedule is good the way it is because ... that's what the schedule is." Personally I'm not too inclined to feel very positive about much of anything coming from CONCACAF policy-wise, given its track record (and they are not alone in this re world football).
CA has had about 5 July tournaments since 1990 so some of that discussion is mythmaking. to the extent it has settled towards June, we are usually fighting with copa in odd years and not with euros in even ones. but it makes no sense in drawing attention to our region to have it same time as copa to serve europe. it would communicate inferiority in conceding to the european schedule and then inferiority in that we would be second fiddle among the overlapped events. i am not interested in being the Kid Brother so euro leagues can have our players for preseason, which is not even what the rules say. the rules say we could put it in january like ACON might and their job is show up. we put it i their offseason. they can kiss our tookus. also i assume one reason this is done how it is, is to get about half a MLS season done before we demand their players and venues, since we always host. if it was shared around then some of the other countries might want it earlier. MX starts back up in July. but if MX barely hosts anything then so what. if we host then our league and venue schedules drive. if europe hosts the gold cup we can then care when their schedule is. i realize europe is growing in importance to us. but MLS is probably the leading league in contributing overall players from all teams. i’m also amused there is never any reciprocal concession expcected, which is basically capitulation. we can’t get U23 players, can barely get anyone for january camps in the german break, and basically get release per the rule book. you then want a list of concessions to europe. it’s like trickle down economics. if trickle down was working richards would be a dominant fixture. irony is the players breaking in right now are playing in austria for a friendly ownership and coach to american needs.
I suspect Berhalter isn’t too worried whether GF will be happy with Green leaving for qualifying. They can’t stop that. But there might be other circumstances where the goodwill would help. And there’s probably some utility for Green to making GF less unhappy about WCQ even if they’re still unhappy. Mostly what I took from it is that Berhalter thinks Green is not just good enough for the Gold Cup squad but somebody who would have improved it. So Green’s exclusion doesn’t seem to be because Berhalter doesn’t rate him.
He has come on a bit too late. Hopefully he keeps his foot on the gas. If he does, he will get a crack after the gold cup.
Clubs can let players play "slightly injured" and then sit them for good right before the international break. Anyone checks the guy, he's indeed recovering.
I'm sorry. You came in here with a cliched hot take that flies in the face of very fact and public statement made by CONCACAF. It's tiring reading these takes from people who obviously didn't educate themselves prior to giving their half-baked opinion.
Maybe read why it's played every four years or was expanded to 16 teams first? Nah, just take a blow torch to something that you seem to know nothing about. And why? Because you just don't want it every two years. Brilliant.
I think while GB sees Gold Cup as important, his primary focus is on getting qualified and a squad to Qatar that is in good club form and not burned out. Watching the Euro’s, you can see some heavy legged teams. Sure, great to have lots of time with players but downsides as well. Doesn’t just apply to Green.
Gregg should have found time for green. He had numerous camps and friendlies in Europe. He's had enough time. Now, green is effectively not an option for qualifying, as he's probably not bringing in a player he has hardly seen for the most important games. If green is in form, I hope he calls him in, and that I'm wrong. It's good to hear that it's at least on his mind. But it doesn't make a great deal of sense to have Acosta/lletget/yeuill in every single camp, starting multiple games when not even in season, missing months of the MLS season, but not being able to find a few minutes for green to ensure he's an option, if needed, at some point during qualifying.
Green was in camp. Gregg obviously has some idea what Green brings to the table. If he's an every week starter in the Bundesliga and shows well on what will most certainly be a bad team Green will absolutely be on the qualifying roster and an option to start especially in a congested fixture schedule. It sucks that we don't get to see him in the Gold Cup but at the end of the day, I'm far more concerned about the World Cup.
It still boggles my mind that our plan is to roll into qualifying with a starting eleven that has rarely, if ever, played together. I hope we have enough talent to dig ourselves out of the hole we will likely dig for ourselves in September and October
If I had to bet my rent money this would be MY Xi Dike Busio Arriola Williamson Sands Roldan Acosta Zimmerman Robinson Cannon Turner
I get that, and hope you're right. The point is getting him zero minutes with the rest of the team is ludicrous, when Lletget (likely a similar player, filling a similar role w the US) has managed to play every single game since the end of covid.
True for most of CONCACAF, though. We've actually played a lot more games and looked at a lot more players, than most of the rest of the region. [Look at what we've been doing when compared to Jamaica, for instance. They haven't played a game that's mattered since the fall of 2019. ] Looking at a lot of players is really important. With the three qualifiers in each window, depth will be more important than ever. Our lineup for our first WCQer will look a lot like the Nations League final roster.
We've played a crap ton of games with our second stringers. Berhalter should have a better handle on his scrubs than any coach on the planet. The first string? Well, that's another story. A lot of this is due to Covid and other teams have the same issues to deal with this time around. But, it doesn't change the fact that our first team has barely played together. We've played plenty of games, sure. But, very few of them have been played with anything resembling the team we would hope to field for a any big games where we want our top side. Basically, a couple Nations League games and that's it.
Most of our best players got experience together in the spring, and with nations league, but having an inexperienced roster is pretty much inevitable when your senior team is basically a U 23 squad. they’ve performed very well against CONCACAF competition despite their inexperience, so there’s not really a reason to be concerned about qualifying.