Perhaps an unconventional choice, but hear me out. Left back has been historically our weakest position for decades. After being disfavored by Gregg for an extended period of time, Jedi not only came in and solidified the position, he provided a constant attacking threat while also generally being quite solid on defense. For an outside back, he was quite productive with goals, assists, and many other key buildups that resulted in goals. He also scored perhaps the most important goal of the entire campaign when he equalized against Honduras on the road at our most desperate point. No, he was not perfect, with the blown clearance against Jamaica the biggest mark against him, but arguably he was our most consistent player, never injured, and starting the most games of any field player (I think). He also has great celebrations. Funny to think Gregg was starting Lovetz ahead of him in the not so distant past.
I've thought about it because of his combo of solid play and the lack of alternatives at the position still. Even if he isn't, I'd give him the game ball for qualifying because he's killed himself for the team in these 3-man windows. So salute to him for that. You could make a similar, but maybe less compelling case for Adams, because his level hasn't been great, but he's usually a clear upgrade, & he's played a lot. There's a case for either individual in the top cb pairing. Zimmerman didn't come in until the 2nd window, but has been a consistent fixture since. As for Miles, he's been there from the beginning, has been vital at beating the 1st line of defense after Brooks went into the doghouse, & his only clear poor game was 3 months into his offseason in the toughest qualifier. In addition, Musah's been pivotal in ball progression and all-around play, since window 2, and he's played a lot from that point on. Then there's Wes, whose campaign got off to a rocky start, & was sidelined for the finish, but in-between he was arguably the team's best. Those are who I think are the serious candidates. There's not a clear choice between them.
For me: 1. Walker 2. Jedi 3. McKennie Antonee just physically dominates CONCACAF wide players, including Mexico. He’s not error free, but whenever he’s playing just average, no one in our region can check him. And he’s become a well above-average 1v1 defensive player. He just completely erased Tecatito last week.
Tough call. Wes has been the best when at his best, but his behavior and injury DQ him. Pulisic is a beast, but wasn’t productive for stretches. The defense has been stout. I’ll want to go look at some stats before making a decision.
you're actually touting the guy who got backdoored for a CR goal tonight and was gotten after by mexico and panama? i take this particular fixture tonight to be telling, just like it showed up brooks last cycle. you go to san jose or azteca and you figure out who can cope and who has issues that will show up later.
on numbers i would not be touting the US wingbacks because the GA ballooned back up. we ended up with our special way of soccer, most talent, 2nd in offense, 4th in defense. average it out to 3rd finish. 2 teams ahead of us allowed fewer goals. simple as that. you want to get a result in san jose show up with a backline with no cracks.
don't be silly adams miles & walker turner weah and reyna coming on strong late robinson was part of both central american away losses, the people touting him are the people selling we need to change soccer while we turn the best talent into the 3rd place table spot which sounds a tad inefficient a system
Can you try writing your posts in English in the first instance? Instead of a foreign language and then running them through Google Translate?
you don't understand i think there were probably most of an 11 who played better than your guy? you don't understand he was victimized in both the central american losses? that's not hard english? or is this a censorship game posing as soccer talk. make fun of me to silence a lousy lousy argument. dude was getting burned all window. dude got a reprieve for it because the results went ok the other 2 games and hid it.
plain english when we show up in qatar if he and dest are starting, and some of these new favorite mids are the bench, that is the weak links they will be after. to be fair, a rob may get us a goal back, but i consider that a wash. as a defender a wash, to me, is not helping. you want to win in san jose the keeper needs to be considering where the ball is going on his positioning, needs to catch it clean, and then antonee cannot go to sleep and get backdoored. the way you get to world cup success is pasturing the people who make the mistakes that cost you games. we continue to revert back to mistakes because we wish the paper ideas worked in practice.
i prefer substance. your dude kicked the dirt over us tonight and you have the cajones to act like he's team mvp. good luck with that one. oh, but the english.
i think wes was our best player, but ultimately missed what, 6 matches? two full windows. i think its personal preference between jedi and zim, neither of whom were "trusted" starters until the second window, which is wild. zim had the gc (until injury), but where would we be without jedi? my personal preference is antonee. and weah deserves some fake award for making our attack fully twice as dangerous as it was single-handedly.
You are on crack. He had nothing to do with the first goal and was less culpable on the second goal, where the ball was perfectly placed behind him after Steffen's punch was blown and Miles Robinson missed a header to clear the cross. There's not much a defender can do when a ball is placed behind him like that. Also last night's game was essentially a friendly that meant nothing to the qualification process. It doesn't undo AR's two goals and three assists in the games that mattered.
I don't know if he was the mvp but I haven't seen Musah mentioned. Was not a starter until qualifying and gave us a lot of great minutes at the 8. I can't recall a game in qualifying where I thought we weren't getting what we needed from him. Wes is probably the only other one tbh, but he also got suspended for two games we really needed him for. Thought Musah was the best player on the field by a pretty wide margin last night. He can truly be world class by 2026. Still can't believe we got him. He's a program changer. Love GGG or not (and I lean towards the later) keeping Dest and bringing in Musah his a hell of a legacy. Now lets do it in Qatar.
There is nothing funny about that roster selection snafu by Berhalter. We can love him for recruiting dual nats, etc but that was one a few bonehead comfy blanket calls.
Not sure I agree with this, this was like 3 years ago. Robinson was pretty horrific for the US his first tenish caps. He was probably the worst player on the field more often than not over that span. You can't just gift minutes to young players if they don't deserve it. Awesome how he turned it around and excited to have him in the 11 as we move to Qatar.
I think it's easy to pick Jedi over other players because 1) The nature of the position means you can get burned a lot for mistakes and he made few. Forwards and mids can screw up all the time but the consequences are far less than if a FB or CB make a mistake. 2) It's incredibly hard to find an international caliber LB. 3) He was incredibly durable. Not only did he not get injured throughout the campaign, but he was able to play all 270 minutes in the 3 game windows which was HUGE.
I like Jedi because he’s the best right now at a position where we have little depth. I expect he’s going to struggle a lot more against teams in the WC who will quickly pick up on his repetitive nature in trying to always run in a straight line down the wing and put in a cross rather than trying to cut inside or pass inside to a teammate. Not to say he does the same thing every single time, but it’s very predictable and probably what he’s more capable of given his weak technical ability.
the nature of the position does NOT mean you get burned a lot. you're confusing needing to track back -- which is the nature of the position -- with not tracking back and being burned -- which is the failure of the position. at some point be honest and say i am willing to accept a poor defender in exchange for limited offensive production. and we are reaching the point where assists and goals on eliminated teams are less useful and it's more problematic how he played against the sort of teams that did make it, eg, brazil, mexico, and probably costa rica. we aren't going to be playing the School for the Blind or Nicaragua in group rounds. this is one key concern i have with GB's tendency to go back to the well. far as i am concerned "proof of concept" on a system or selection choice is only truly made when we play mexico, CR, or this time canada. if your resume is based on highlights on some other, weaker team, that's not really proof of concept. show me who played well with mexico and CR and that's who to build around. y'all have it backwards.
people who argue LBs are few tend to be inherently biased against more stay at home type backs. they then make excuses for natural left footed attackers posing as backs. we then start racking up GA and are befuddled why. if a back's primary purpose is to defend then a RB can play LB.