I think the idea is to kill the game off for the other guys, not for us. (Only halfway making the obligatory Arriola joke)
Lennard Maloney made his Dortmund debut today (22yo 🇺🇸 CB). He's a regular with their reserves. We'll have to see if he gets more run with them.Did he magically become a much better player today? No, he already was. It's important to track players w/reserve sides.— Justin Moran (@kickswish) October 24, 2021 23rd american to make an appearance in the top 5 european leagues, 26th eligible american to make an appearance for a club from the top 5 european leagues (the 3 dual nats are balogun & the tillman brothers)— US Soccer's Bot (@USSoccersBot) October 24, 2021
No bias here. I just expect that Maloney--having not been even a known name to most people until yesterday--will get a lot of push because "Dortmund". Zimmerman has been (surprisingly, to me, really) quite solid and consistent this year for the Nats and has looked so far to be the best CB pairing along with Miles Robinson (though I think Richards will probably become the better partner for Robinson by the end of qualifying). Do you think that Maloney is a better CB than Zimmerman?
Looking good! Glad he got some minutes. I hadn't realized that he wears the number 8. Might not mean much, but given that he hasn't played very much I would have thought he wouldn't be offered a single-digit number.
Again, repeating a lie over and over does not make it true. At this point you are just hoping that other people who read these forums pay no attention to the fact that I've countered your ridiculous assertions about this more than once. At this point you're just being intentionally misleading, because I have more than once given you my assessments of European-based players (and also MLS players). But I guess saying things like "I like Scally--he's the type of defender I prefer", "Weah will be a top contributor at WC2022", "Dest was really good in the last window", or "Aaronson is my soccer boyfriend" is really just bashing non-MLS guys. SMFH. EDIT: Also, how did I bash Maloney? And, further, why don't you answer the question I asked you: Is Maloney a better CB than Zimmerman?
Who has even mentioned Zimmerman in relation to Maloney, besides YOU when you created some "Maloney vs Zimmerman" false dichotomy to get mad about?
Maloney isn't coming out of nowhere. Youth watchers have known about him for years. He appeared multiple times for the US U20s. Here's an article from 2018. Typical story. His father was in the air force. Met his mother and stayed. As far as the national team goes, we don't have to worry about that quite yet. Let's see more. Could Lennard Maloney become the next USMNT Germerican? - Stars and Stripes FC
On the flipside, it's quite possible that Maloney has been better than Zimmerman for some time, but MLS would flip if we were calling Euro reserve players into camp over MLS stars.
It's pretty easy to see that Egg's MLS bias is identified by everyone on here, even the Brigade, as we're already seeing the preemptive "Wahhhh, everyone demanding a Dortmund reserve player over MLS STARS" crybabies appear, a complaint and argument created out of thin air. If Egg was simply calling the best players, and putting them in positions to succeed, we would not be hearing this, but these loonies need to create something to explain away 2k minutes on Lletget and 3 straight starts for Arriola. The entertainment never ends. Literally nobody is, or will be, calling for Maloney into the NT. If we gets a run of games, and performs well, and establishes himself as a first team Dortmund player? Then we can reassess. Nobody here is upset with Turner starting, or Zimmerman/Robinson being rotational starters. But certainly nice to see him progressing with the first team. Hope he keeps improving. More guys playing in top Euro leagues will do nothing but help the NT.
The MLS vs Europe thing is honestly the most tired, played out gripe. You could take these posts and swap out names from 10 years ago and we’d just be reading outrage about why Conor Casey was called up instead of like Gabe Ferrari or some crap.
Eventually they will say he has good feet. That's a good start. I like that he has aggressive vision as well. Hard to say where he ends up.
Sergio Dest starts the Clasico. Which is not what it once was. But still. Will never take it for granted that an American International is starting a Clasico https://t.co/SkBXxlxOX3— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) October 24, 2021
The argument has always been that there is a soccer meritocracy. Then when I ask why Antonee would be ahead of Scally at lb it's like crickets.
I mean, in that specific example it’s perfectly reasonable for a NT manager to value Robinson’s traits in his role over Scally’s club affiliation? I don’t get the point here.
You're right, no one but me has mentioned this (YET!), which is exactly why I wrote it--in before the inevitable happens. I'm not sure what about "I can't wait to see the posts..." indicates that I'm mad. I'm just getting ahead of the arguments I see coming, which is entirely based on an extensive history of the same stuff happening over and over and over again. As soon as certain people become aware of a "new" Euro player they'll scream for their inclusion and shit on whichever MLS player they think stands in the way, with no analysis whatsoever. You'll ignore it I'm sure, but @VictoryWePredict4Thee asked why I'm so biased in favor of MLS players--when all I said was "I can't wait to see the posts when Zimmerman gets called and Maloney doesn't". Which, of course (to any not completely unreasonable poster) doesn't indicate any bias at all.
I think you’d need to ELI5 how calling up Antonee Robinson as opposed to Joe Scally is evidence of some lack of meritocracy. NT managers don’t (and shouldn’t) just run down a list of club affiliations to fill out a roster. They’re looking for specific traits in a given role. There’s also the fact that Robinson has essentially been playing as a regular for a couple years now; Scally has not. Personally, I’d rate Robinson for his speed alone as that works well to compliment the strength of our attack. Here’s how I look at it these days: generally, as long as Gregg is calling up the right mix of guys for the roles, I’m not gonna get bent out of shape because our LB plays for Fulham and he didn’t call some BL player that is probably qualitatively equal but less experienced and with different strengths in his place. I couldn’t give a crap about where a contributor plays. Where I do get annoyed is when we don’t call sufficient depth for the roles we have, or when we’re calling in objectively inferior options (Gyasi over any other striker). Calling in Arriola because Gregg values his work rate can work fine if it’s just Arriola playing with the first team, because he’s calling in for a specific role. When that doesn’t work is when you start all your role-player call ups at once. Basically, I’m not generally gonna get pissed unless we’re calling up inferior players over clearly better ones and/or starting all the role players in meaningful games.
Look, any guy who gets called up to the big leagues is going to get a serious look over guys still playing AAA ball. I am going to say that the guys who get paid a lot of money to evaluate talent at the top level are better at discerning talent than people on the internet (or Gregg Berhalter, for that matter)