The USMNT 26-man roster for World Cup 2022 announced p80 #1991

Yeah, if we are down to our 5th FB then stuff went completely off the rails. I'd rather have Arriola play that position in an emergency since he also gives us offensive options the other 5th FB won't.

 

Good, but not good enough in their eyes.

If he was a guy who barely played but had a good highlight or two every few seasons he would be loved. The fantasy is always better than reality. The need to show how smart a person is by seeing that genius when no one in world soccer does also is appealing. There is almost no real proof to show they are wrong you see.

Since he is flawed there has to be a much better flawed, limited, young player out there who is better! it’s because the coach is dumb and the poster is clearly smart, so it’s easy to ridicule.

Being a hard worker, good teammate, OK producer, while doing it consistently is a terrible thing in a place like this.

 

Plus Arriola saved Berhalter's bacon in home v. Panama game, didn't he? I used to call him Wild Paul Arriola and it looks like some of that came back vs. ES with the red card. Otherwise he is a useful players when not used incorrectly. Tijuana tried him at midfield and it didn't work. Arena tried him there in Couva and it didn't work. Memo to Berhalter: don't try him in midfield. He's a winger end to end.

 

I can imagine a desperate WC injury situation where Arriola and Acosta are both playing emergency outside back. Actually with 26 this won't happen but with 23? How about the usual Olympics with I think 18? I guess the more players the more specialized the last few guys can be. How about a set piece free kick specialist and a set piece goal scorer?

 

He’s not elegant, but sets a high tempo, is incredibly disruptive and understands his role. Some of these games are going to be battles. He’s going to be useful in some situations.

 

I like watching Arriola when he's on a team with a lead and he goes hunting defensive players with the ball. If he's on the WC squad I sure hope we get a lead and get to set him on the other team for 20-30 minutes. Aaronson too. Teams will be mad at how much running those two do to make it hard for them to do things. Add in Ferreira or Pepi up top and that's a hard pressing bunch. Get a goal keep a lead and unleash the hounds.

 

I consider Arriola a Chihuahua. Aggressive, unrelenting, but ultimately not much bite. Sometimes you need a Chihuahua to close out a game.

 

We've a sizable group of talented strikers. But none has shown consistency in a Top-5 league. None showed consistency in WCQing. And none has shown anything in a major tournament.

 

Vazquez has surpassed Herc and Findley. He did so before August.

In terms of the attacking patterns the US generate, Vazquez is the best fit. He has more range than Pefok has. He is much better around the 6-yard box than Ferreira is. Obviously, Vazquez needs to keep it up. And we'll see whether Pepi shows signs of life.

 

This is the first year that Vasquez has been good in MLS. His 7 years prior were not good, and in 2 of those, he was with Atlanta United's USL team. I am hopeful that he gets a callup in the September camp, although it is unlikely he will go to Qatar. If he keeps his club performances high, he'll likely go somewhere in Europe.

 

One thing I am concerned about by bringing in players who haven't been called in before is this team still has very little chemistry among what most would consider the top 15 players. We're talking about Reyna starting and he's been out of action for 10 months or so and has 11 caps. It's already pretty chaotic. How much more chaos do we want to add by bringing in brand new guys?
We need this group to gel and get used to playing with each other if we want to have any success in Qatar.

 

Sure but we aren't talking about a ton of new guys, we're mostly talking about one (Vazquez).

 

A lot of big body strikers have sudden increases in their numbers at age 23 or so. Drogba and Lewandowski are the classic cases. Lukaku is an exception by breaking out at 19. Meanwhile Jordan Pefok was a little late at 24. Brandon is only 23 and seems right on track for his potential.

 

Well, when it comes to gelling, it seems to me Berhalter has seen that a scheme with these 4 attackers:

------------brenden/pulisic---ferreira----weah
---------------------pulisic/brenden

and these 2 dmids

---------------musah-----------------adams

and these 4 defenders:

--arob/scally--long/richards----zim--------dest

produces good play and I'd expect him to give them plenty time together in the first game of Sep window with the following to be fine tuned:

1) up top in lieu of Ferreira, a 9 like Vazquez or Pefok/Pepi (whichever does best in BL in August)
2) in the back more play for Richards so he can catch up to Long in the experience department.

If something isn't working, he'll try to adjust it with different scheme or different players in the 2nd game of window.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.......

 

Ferreira, Dike, Pefok, Sargent, Pepi, Wright and now Vasquez.

Worthy options but none of them scream "START ME AND I'LL SCORE A GOAL AT THE WORLD CUP"

 

None of them scream "START ME AND I'LL SCORE A GOAL ON THE ROAD IN PANAMA" either.

Honest opinion? Berhalter sees this. He thinks his goals are going to come from Pulisic, Weah, Aaronson, etc. So he's going to play the forward who combines well with those guys and puts THEM in positions to score. See his use of Jesus Ferreira, who's easily the best playmaker of the bunch. Pressing is all part of that................

And to be honest, Vasquez isn't coming out of nowhere. He played for the US on the U17, U19, and U20 levels. He was on our U17 World Cup in 2017.

He did have moments in Atlanta as a younger player that made us think there was some nice potential there. Tata seemed really reluctant to play a bunch of the young domestic guys on his squad (Carleton, Goslin, and host of homegrowns). He played Vasquez and Miles Robinson, though.

Opportunity has met development now in Cincinnati.

 

Probably not but that's why I'm interested in Vazquez. He's good at pressing, good at hold up play, and good in the air. All things that are incredibly useful from your forward if they aren't scoring.

 

Very true. One other thing is that all are young….very young. all bets are off because anything could happen.

 

You said it yourself. 828 minutes and 4 goals. You want to get a USMNT callup with 4 MLS goals? Now should he have been playing more? Sure. But that's a problem with his coach and club. It's not Berhalter's job to do predictive analysis with linear regression models.

 

Morris earned a penalty that no American striker would have got.

 

Does not compute, does not fit the narrative, sorry …

 

i hope no one shows him our penciled-in starters numbers the last couple of years...

 

Vasquez clearly deserves a September look.