I've watched a lot of Owen Wolff's minutes in recent months. He probably should not be playing as much as he does. However, I do like what I see. He's clearly not a winger. They are using him out of position to get him on the field. He shows some really nice passing ability, and he's also very good with pressing and defensive work. He's either an 8 or 10. Probably more of an 8, but best suited for that double 8 type of role. He makes good decisions. Not too dangerous 1v1, although he puts in good crosses and sees some avenues to create attacking chances that a player without good vision wouldn't see.
SKC, despite low spending, has been a quality team for like a decade under Vermes. They lost two DPs to injury. It is Vermes' fault they got old, no doubt, but I'm not really sure why half a year of being bad is suddenly "so long" when they were 3rd in the Western Conference and 4th in the Supporter's Shield last year. SKC recruited Busio and a couple of others, but I think their vanguard status was more a lack of effort by others than a super strong commitment. Vermes has always been reluctant to play youth, but I'm not sure that's a requirement of SKC ownership. What USMNT fans wants is probably not relevant to Peter Vermes' employment. That said, Kayden Pierre and Cam Duke have been getting good minutes this year with the injuries. They also start two other homegrowns in Felipe Hernandez and Hungarian Daniel Salloi. They aren't young anymore, but between Hernandez, Salloi, Busio ... if Pierre (19) and/or Duke (21) work out, that's actually not a bad haul for a five year period from SKC's point of view. Salloi didn't spend a lot of time at SKC's academy, but he's also an MVP contender. I'm not sure many academies have gotten a good MLS defensive mid, an MVP contender, and a CM sold for $10M out of their academies yet. It's not Dallas, but it isn't chopped liver.
He's done nothing. No major mistakes as he had nothing to do. Plus horrible, not bad, horrible footwork.
I think the pitch being terrible contributed to that. The bobble was so inconsistent. You could never be sure it wouldn't go right past your foot. He's clearly not a natural with his feet, so you see he needs to take extra touches and look down at the ball. Makes it more difficult for someone like that on a bad pitch. I think he's getting better though. Some of those passes he would play to the holding midfielder centrally under a little pressure he wouldn't have tried a year ago. He even played a few nice diagonals to the fullbacks at times.
Let's me clarify myself. I don't mean that he doesn't have a great potential, he was reading game well,moved well, and has prototype keeper's body. But he had literally nothing to do, he was irrelevant on both goals (as any other keeper would), there was one half decent long distance shot, one lucky save with his body, what else. He can kick the ball when he's given plenty of time, but field or not, he was turning every single back pass in the major adventure, unlike some other keepers who were solid despite being chased non stop by Clark and Aaronson.
Yes and the US dominated every single game besides Canada. Did you watch the games or just look at the stats? There were a number of mistakes he made that should have been routine saves. Better opposition would have shown a different stat line by capitalizing on those mistakes.
Hard to respond to that without specifics. I think all of these kids are prone to the occasional error. It’s possible he made an error that a better team would capitalize on, but I think when you look at the big picture that 6 games without a big error, even if the competition was part of why there might’ve not been an opportunity for that, says something. Some of these other keepers were creating routine errors because they are U-20 keepers and U-20 keepers make errors. That we’re nitpicking if he did or didn’t and still can’t come to a definitive determination that he made errors probably tells us that he was pretty good, all things considered.
Fair point. I felt like most of the errors he made were definitely errors for someone at a U20 level rather than a typical goalkeeper whose older. Time consuming to find examples. There’s many instances where we excuse a young player’s performance because they’re young which in some cases is fair, but in other cases it’s just an excuse. There were several in the gameday threads that felt like Brady was behind where they thought his performance was in previous games. I don’t think I’ll change your opinion though, let’s agree to disagree. If Brady gets playing time in MLS or the U20 WC we’ll get another chance to see where he’s at. It was only a few games.
Chelsea go cold on £10m Slonina transfer as Real Madrid target move ✍️ @NizaarKinsellahttps://t.co/f863LNRwZz— Standard Sport (@standardsport) July 6, 2022
Incredibly proud to make my MLS debut! What a night! https://t.co/iZU4ps6m3j— Brandan Craig (@BrandanCraig1) July 9, 2022
Two assists for Bender. 🙌@CharlotteFC's first ever signing Sergio Ruiz scores his first @MLS goal! ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/6atIWibr8t— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 10, 2022 Andre Shinyashiki with the lovely cutback and goal to cap off Charlotte's 4-1 win over Nashville💥(via @MLS)pic.twitter.com/eZV5bzLi6d— B/R Football (@brfootball) July 10, 2022
Not worthy of their own thread in the YNT forum 16 Timbers saw the field today and Williamson was the only American.Not a single player in the 18 spent a minute in the Timbers academy, which recently turned ten years old.I’d recommend that any Timbers academy player that wants to play pro soccer leave while they still can. https://t.co/t8lhwW3wmI— Matt Hartman (@MattSHartman) July 10, 2022
I actually think their academy has been getting better and we'll see this issue get better in a few years, but the point as it applies to the first team now is correct.
Indeed. In every league in Europe there are clubs that make youth/player development a principal part of their business plan, and others that don't. Nashville is showing that you CAN acquire some domestic talent to make yourself competitive. I've been impressed with what Nashville has done in terms of American talent without an academy pipeline. Cuz it ain't easy to acquire domestic talent without paying out the nose. So at some point, Portland is just Portland. They can find domestic talent, and choose not to.
Caden Clark 🇺🇸 is set to leave NY soon. He is currently under contract with Leipzig, now where in Europe he going is unclear. He has clubs from Bundesliga, Eredivisie and Belgium interested on a loan. Salzburg is a possible destination as well, as a loan.— Tactical Manager (@ManagerTactical) July 11, 2022 There is also an EPL club interested on a full transfer, but then would send him out on a loan.— Tactical Manager (@ManagerTactical) July 11, 2022
The EPL thing seems like the situation but way worse, since the national team is the only pathway to work permit.
It's happening! Gaga to Chelsea for $10 million with a loan back to the Fire, length not reported. Chelsea have reached a verbal agreement with Chicago Fire for the transfer of 18-year-old American goalkeeper Gabriel Slonina for $10M, reports @FabrizioRomano pic.twitter.com/872VHdH9jK— B/R Football (@brfootball) July 11, 2022
Im fine with this, he will get loaned out after Chicago too, but hopefully he will get to play. I do hate the weird photoshop of him and Boehly shaking hands.
Someone mentioned this in the Union thread, but Aaronson and Sullivan added a lot to their sub appearances. You can see they are on form. Not too many minutes, but Luna and Toure both had good late cameos. Luna had a few more positive plays, while Toure contributed to a tying goal for Colorado. Wiley looked very lost defensively for Atlanta. He played a part on one goal against with slow processing of some quick ball movement and then was completely at fault on another with a missed clearance with his weak foot that cannot be happening at this high of a level. His second half was better, but he didn’t have much defending to do in the second half. The defensive errors and processing of the game are an issue, if he wants to keep getting MLS minutes. I would prefer he’s in USL because that’s more of his current level. He can defend 1v1 and going forward he’s slightly above average with what he brings, but the MLS game moves way too fast for him defensively right now. Campbell looked a little inconsistent. I find him generally a little error prone and he needs to shore up his passing accuracy, but otherwise he’s doing well enough. It’s a tough team to play in for a young defender. They aren’t that good. The same also applies for Wiley. The struggles of the team don’t help them. Wolff looked pretty good playing centrally. He was subbed off at halftime with a minor injury, but he won the ball back well numerous times and then also had some very nice passes. It was a good shift. You’d have no clue he’s 17 the whole season. I hope he starts playing more centrally as that’s his natural position. He probably fits this double 8 role best as he’s between an 8 and 10, but between the two I think he’s more of an 8. He could likely play either though.
It seems to me that we're producing perhaps a higher floor of player now with our new U20s, which generally means more depth. A general rule would be that the more good players you produce, the more great players you produce. It seemed like we got lucky with the 98-02s where we produced a statistically abnormal number of very good players (Christian, Weston, Reyna, Dest, etc) when we only were producing so many good players. With the 03s and below, we seem to churning out a new high level MLS guy every week or so, and yet not so many top, top level players. Is this something that people would agree with? I'm wondering, as well, how our production in both categories, and the ratio between, compares to other countries.