There wasn't any nepotism. Bob Bradley made objectively correct decisions based on the merits of players, and some players were simply too weak to accept them. The end. Call a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance!
I don't remember, but I doubt any gap in favor of Mastroeni, even if it existing at all, was meaningful enough to cry nepotism over simple, normal coach preference. Players think they are better than the guy who beat them out all the time, and they aren't always right. Nepotism is a pretty severe charge. More importantly, the context of 2007 is important. We were in the early stages of a cycle. Mastroeni played a decent amount in 2007. Not as much as Michael, though both played in the Gold Cup and neither went to Copa America at all -- I can't remember, was that a B team Copa? More importantly, WCQ for 2010 started with "easy" games in 2008 and then the final round in 2009. So is it relevant who was better in 2007? What was relevant was who was going to be better in 2008, and especially 2009 and 2010. Clearly the right call was Bradley. Pablo was going to be 33 when the final round of qualifying came through -- think back to 2019 -- should we have been playing the vets exclusively at the cost of the youngsters? Seems like most people argue the opposite. I don't blame the players for complaining -- Berhalter said his biggest lesson was learning how important it was to always prioritize winning in terms of team buy in and morale. But playing Bradley was CLEARLY the right move then. I don't get why some people always move to the most suspect motives when there's perfectly logical stuff there.
JJ early in his USMNT career when he did not fully understand the USMNT politics did make the mistake of answering a reporters question about trying different midfield combinations by saying that it should not always be Michael and someone else maybe we could also try he and Mo. JJ got the ire and hate from the MB90 fan club for the rest of his career.
Also funny to hear Pearce speculate on why he wasn't consistently picked for the national team; he puts it down to not always feeling comfortable in training, but fails to mention his mouth as a very likely culprit.
Yeah, Heath wasn't that good. If you're going to say things that piss off the coach, you'd better be a damn good player. He wasn't. And to not take any ownership for your exclusions is childish. If he has childish attitudes now, what was he like 15 years ago?
This also follows the typical pattern of people who look for conspiracies where there aren't any, and it's how you end up with a population that believes in things like pizzagate or Qanon. Is it possible that Bob gave Michael a slightly bigger leash due to nepotism? Maybe, but is it also possible that players who weren't getting as much playing time just had some sour grapes? But see we're not gonna think about that second part, you've found that nugget of information that supports your conclusion and you're jumping full on in to it, and now you're gonna find a way to connect it to other things, like Steffen being the starter which you also seem to have a problem with
If anything, when your dad's the coach you have a lot to prove because everyone is going to assume nepotism right off. Bradley was successful and praised by several coaches for both the NT and club; more so than either of these guys.
At the time, I remember thinking a lot of Michael Bradley's playing time in 2007 felt premature. Back then, Pablo Mastroeni was 31 and likely still a better central midfielder. But national team squad selection is not the same as all-star games. As @gogorath keenly said, 2007 was the first year of a new cycle. Part of a coach's job is to help build the player pool to set the team up for success at the next World Cup. Michael Bradley was good enough that summer to help the USMT win the Gold Cup in 2007. I liked Pablo, but he was going to be 34 at the 2010 World Cup, and despite that, Bob still picked him fairly often in 2007-2008 + early 2009. It's also important to remember that the US central midfield pool in 2007 was exceptionally bare. We struggled to fill that part of the squad for the 2006 World Cup, taking a clearly injured John O'Brien, and guys like Kerry Zavagnin and a 33 year old Chris Armas were earning caps as recently as 2005. By 2007, Claudio Reyna and Chris Armas had aged out, John O'Brien was done, and our pool basically consisted of some young, talented but unproven pros (Bradley, Benny Feilhaber, Sacha Kljestan), a holdover fringe veteran from the 2006 cycle (Ben Olsen), and some previously unblooded MLSers (Ricardo Clark, Kyle Beckerman). Maurice Edu and Jose Torres (the latter of whom was never particularly good for the US) came into the pool in 2008, and our CM pool for that cycle consisted of Bradley, Clark, Feilhaber, Mastroeni, Edu, Torres, and Kljestan. Not sure any of those guys were a cut above Bradley at the time.
It's pretty obvious that by the time Bradley's Crazy Uncle Jurgen was around to kibitz with The Kid, The Kid had already taken full advantage of the preferential treatment Dad gave him, Now if only he had taken full advantage of the preferential treatment Grumpy Old Bruce dished his way. Who knows, we might even not have been Couva'd......
One could construe it as sour grapes, but the actual argument they relayed was that Mastro was black balled because he had an issue with an autospot being gifted to a player, could it be sour breaks? Maybe, but, we should be arguing the issue he brought up, rather than Mastro vs Bradley, especially considering that generally they shouldn't have and usually weren't (during their careers) playing identical positions in the first place. I went from an anti-nepotism poster, to a Bradley supporter, to an anti-gifted spots guy over the years, despite having been really hugely impressed by bradley at the U20 World Cup in '07 and WC '10. I think you can view the constant capping of Bradley as odd nepotism, and him as having earned said nepotism eventually, but I think there's plenty of room to take issue with the inflexibility with regards to Bradley's role in the 11 throughout his term with the team. The total lack of flexibility there is odd. Pearce also mentioned in a separate or maybe similar podcast, not sure which, that Bradley actually had an issue with him hanging out with tons of different players and position groups in his time, and actually brought it up in front of the team, I think, trying to remember. The one thing that's most relevant for me w/the podcast is the wealth of interesting and often funny behind the scenes material (especially shirt switches, Riquelme being annoyed at Conrad at the Copa '07 for mentioning his shoe laces, Conrad making a hash of exchanges, Davies making a bee line for the biggest players, while Conrad like to get the opponents he marked, and EPB as a guest mentioning he just likes to get his teammates from the US whenever possible, and the hosts chided him for not getting jersey's from the worlds most famous guys as heirlooms for his kids some day etc). There's been a lot of amusing stuff brought up over the years in the player podcasts, probably the most interesting for me anyway, was what happened when Nowak seized Dempsey's cell phone at olympic training for '08, and Dempsey threatening to beat the ---- out of him in front of his teammates on the bus unless it was given back promptly (it was superficially about his wife being pregnant, but honestly, I don't think Dempsey even needed that as an excuse based on prior depictions of his readiness to scrap).
I don't know, unless Bob actually comes out and says something, whether we'll know if there is a "blackball" and why it would happen. But I will say is that everyone has a tendency to put outward blame on their own failures. It's a pretty common and accepted pyschological phenomenom -- my successes are because of me; my failure is because someone else was unfair to me. Was Mastroeni blackballed because he questioned Michael's apparent lock spot? I mean, I don't even know when he was blackballed because he played a decent amount in 2007. But I don't really know. What I do know is that number of people blackballed for non-playing reasons is FAR lower than the players or fans think. But otherwise, how are you going to prove it? There were playing reasons to play Michael that much. Bradley was always a better player than a lot of fans wanted to admit. We were coming off a really disappointing World Cup. Mastroeni was old. So in short, there's a lot of really logical reasons to phase Mastroeni out. If anything, Conrad and Pearce really just tell us of the risks of not managing this well, of not giving the veterans time to age out, or rushing the youth in. Regardless of the situation, the locker room is very invested in their compatriots -- not the new kids; very worried about losing their own spot; and very, very interested in the exact realities of today as they see it. None of those guys were thinking 2010. As for Bradley ... he was a coach's dream for most of his career. Skilled, hard working, tactical astute, willing to take an on field leadership role. Yes, that style definitely rubbed some the wrong way, but it's not a shock coaches wanted to play him. Even now, when he's a shadow of his former self, I saw him dropping dimes with Toronto. Like, he's still probably our best midfield passer even today. Whether all that was right is something for debate, I guess. But the guy is an all time US great, and the general fan view of him kind of weirds me out in relation to the general crowning of youth these days. There's definitely something about Bradley that rubs people the wrong way. I like Conrad and Pearce podcasting. They are great. The stories are great, and the perspective is great.
I have defended Mike Bradley for years. I think people were angry because he was never seen as a particularly good player relative to the fan bases expectations. .He would not even at his peak be comparable to the MMA midfield for example. He's also been kind of a jerk sometimes. But the fact of the matter is he was our best. Midfielder for several years.Which is too bad.
Bradley had notorious temper tantrums w/the press and was in general, prickly like his dad, which struck me as absurd considering the charming soft press we have. Those factors combined w/a sense of an unearned starting spot built a steep hill for him to climb that only got steeper after the disastrous flub in the final seconds against Portugal in '14. Like Altidore, he's a guy whose rep is hurt by having the misfortune of the '90-'95 developmental disaster following them. What would the reputations of '98's like McBride have been w/o guys like Donovan, Beasley, Mathis, Dempsey and a few others coming behind them? The disaster that was '98 was flushed out the system with the glory that was '02. For Bradley and Altidore, they saw the best and brightest of the previous generation retire out and little come behind them to support them as they wrapped up their primes. While they were at the wheel for the '17 debacle, it's not their fault that we gave them next to zero support from the youngsters that normally plugged depth and the occasional starting issue in the line up and 23. I imagine if Bradley and Altidore were born five years earlier, or so, they would carry a great deal more esteem. Its not fair but it is what it is. For Bradley alone, he's always going to have to carry the good with the bad, and the good was definitely far larger in quantity, but the bad was definitely there, whether it was the error that stands out horribly and unfairly to some degree in '14, the tantrums, and outsized personality that silenced everyone in the room, but anyone focusing on that, should also remember the glorious goals against Slovenia in '10, Mexico in '17, against Uruguay at the U20's (Suarez and Cavani's Uruguay) etc. There is a ton of glorious moments to enjoy, passes, goals, tons of it. But the other edge is there too, a complicated legacy that should, but isn't always remembered as much for the good as bad.
Marsch admitted that him and Bob tried for years to find a partner for MB in central midfield but were never successful. Jermaine was right. MB was wild at first and pass safe later. He wasn’t a leader on the field. He was good. But, players like Benny and others brought other qualities that could have been useful to the team structure. But, yes, this is old news.
Bradley was a mediocre technical player who worked hard and had a good engine. He scored some important goals. He was picked because he was the best available option. The end.
Michael Bradley pre-2016 is exactly why he was one of my favorite US players of the early 2010s, to the point where I got his Waldo shirt still hanging in my closet (don't wear it as much nowadays due to name/number peeling). However, post-2016 Bradley stopped giving a s***. The "casually jogging to the corner flag when we need a goal" in the dying minutes of that dreadful night in Couva would be unacceptable by anyone, let alone our captain. That being said, when people still slagged him off in the years where he would still get a US call-up, they'll act as if he never did anything for the US. My answer was always, "I don't, and won't, miss this current Michael Bradley. Know who I do miss? The Michael Bradley who played like he gave a s***"
Bradley got a red vs Canada in the SFs. He was not available. Your post is total BS. Or the part about the Final at least.
It's not possible to argue that 2008-12 Bradley didn't merit substantial PT. The 09/10 Bradley was among our best players, if not our best one. The goals the dude scored were legend: brace for the 09 2-0 v Mex in WCQ; v Slovenia in WC 10 to even the score at 2 apiece; one of the three v Egypt in CC 10 to beat them 3-0 and advance to the finals. Plus a host of other great goals in both meaningful games and friendlies. Could it be possible though that he got a marginal leg up v Mastro during 07 or so in order to accelerate his development? Possible. Is it possible this was due to nepotism? Yes. Is it also possible that it was due to the desire to bring along a promising youngster as soon as possible, esp since Mastro was going to be out of the scene by WC 10? Also extremely likely. So you have a very legit motivation to give him PT at Mastro's expense in 2007, plus a not legit one, and no way to prove which predominated. There is this though: MB ended up playing at a very high level for club and country soon after 2007, so regardless of the motivation, the choice to favor him worked out not only for him but also for the MNT.