Notably China built a new stadium for Costa Rica and spent about $100 million to do so. CONCACAF’s 2019 budget (the most recent year I could find data) showed a total revenue for the year of $123 million. It basically would cost you the annual budget of Congress to build a single stadium. And that would mean CONCACAF would spend nothing on anything else. And most of the federations in CONCACAF can’t survive without the solidarity payments they get from the federation and from FIFA. And while I’m sure there’s some corruption there, even if there were none they’d still be reliant on those payments to exist. CONCACAF just doesn’t have the capital to fund large scale infrastructure investments in their member nations. And that’s with the biannual Gold Cup cash grabs.
We won’t do it but I wouldn’t be against sending a U23 team to the Gold Cup this year as prep for the Olympics next year. We’re going to send a fairly young team as it is though.
This is a good idea, but even if the USSF tried to do so, the scheduling is really complicated. -The best players in that age group are w/ the senior team. (Musah, Reyna, Scally) -Lots of other guys that you'd guess would come from the u20s. There are already off playing a tournament right now. Do you really want them to take another month off from their teams? -Even for the 21yr olds who aren't on the A side national team, you are talking about taking them away from their MLS teams for an extended time.Or you might have players on European teams who need to give full attention to club situations. You'd likely have to pass on them, too. And once you restrict the player pool that much, you sort of defeat the benefit of getting the "olympic team" together if that team isn't really that close to the full side US Olympic team.
I think of Reyna, Scally, and Musah the first two are probably gettable for the Gold Cup though Musah needs the time off. Notably Balogun and Pepi are also both age eligible (though Balogun may or may not be able to play in the Olympics). Guys have played in both the U20 World Cup and Gold Cup before. It’s a question of whether they made deals with their club in order to secure releases. A first choice U23 team would actually be fairly competitive I think with the exception of center back. They won’t do it, but it’d interesting. Brazil sent a U23 team to the Gold Cup a few years back as Olympics prep. Either way I do think alot of young guys are going. But a team like this would be fairly interesting GK: Slonina, Brady, Pulskamp LB: Tolkin, Gomez (or Wiley) RB: Reynolds, Scally CB: Neal, Craig, Wynder, Campbell DM: Flach, Cardoso CM: Tessman, Musah, Buck, Gutierrez WF: Reyna, Booth, Paredes, Cowell FW: Pepi, Balogun If you added 3 overage players, particularly at center back you’d have a team that would be competitive. But it’s not going to happen.
The current US schedule has Nations League and the Gold Cup, but it also likely has a Germany and maybe an Argentina friendly lined up and Copa America 2024. What's the issue here? Isn't this the best of all possible worlds? (Especially since friendlies against top teams are overrated as hell. The most cited single match on here for like four years was that 1-1 tie against a completely disinterested French squad in prep for the World Cup. People held that up for years as to why Julian Green was awesome without realizing that France didn't care very much in that game until the very end.)
Yes. Once upon a time I cared way more about friendlies. Wins against Germany and Argentina back right after arena took over the first time felt important. ( but even those games weren’t true full squad a teams really) I think it’s a sign of our progress that our coaches and players now care about the results of friendlies as mush as other nations.
The UEFA U21 competition in which he played in is the UEFA qualifying tournament for the Olympics. Historically if you played in the qualifying event for another country you aren’t later able to play in the same event for the country you switched for. However Argentina seems to have found a way around this rule for the U20 World Cup so perhaps it’s been changed (though no one seems to be able to find the change itself). It’s also the case that except when they were hosts England doesn’t participate in soccer in the Olympics as they participate in the Olympics as Great Britton and the other host nations don’t want a unified team. So in theory it’s not a qualifying event for England.
Realistically he’s going to play in the Copa America and not the Olympics so it probably won’t matter. Striker is probably where they’ll need to take an overage player as after Pepi and Balogun there aren’t a lot of good U23 options at the 9.
no ur one of the complainers I’m talking about. Ur saying he eventually got to the right lineup. He was trying to build depth to do that ur going to try guys that don’t work it’s part of the deal. People need to relax everytine a fringe player struggles. They need to get a chance to play u can’t just run out the top 11 each time and then in the World Cup scream about no depth.
This (especially the bolded part). Part of the process of finding out who is good enough is looking at guys to turn out to be not good enough.
All that incredible Top Ten world talent we have. Crazy isn‘t it? Stupid coaches. Recent past and near future coach. They will all have to deal with those super intelligent US Nat fans. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I mean, Qatar did it, and the only difference here is that they are a petro-state and used slave labor. I mean, Gold Cup and Nations League media rights have to be close to what Qatar spent, right?
Qatar has a lot more money than CONCACAF though. I believe they spent over $200 billion to hold together the World Cup.
Watching Jesse kick Reyna out wide, sit Weah, and play Aaronson at CAM will be tough. I kind of like Hudson’s formations and tactics so far.
Who cares. And btw, I'm for taking a blended team, we are deep enough to blend Euro based players not good enough for the A side in Nations League, as well as the best young and veteran domestic based players. The '21 team that had more third to fifth stringers than 1st to 2nd won the bloody things two years ago and we have much better depth now than then. It should be fine. Whatever CBS or Fox or whomever may think, you cant give players a '22-'23 which basically was a nonstop season from August to freaking June with little winter break, and then demand said players come to camp after the first week of June and play through mid freaking July. It's insanity.
If Crocker and Marsch are a package deal did US Soccer go shopping in the discount bin for "the relegation package"? Leicester and Everton, do you think we're made of money??
Just to push back on this a bit, I’m still incredibly skeptical of this report from Alex Calabrese. There were two initial decision makers in the coaching search (Batson and Cone), and we’ve since added two more (Crocker and Batson). Up until the point a name is submitted to the board, it’s not going to spread much further than those four. Alex Calabrese has no obvious ties to any of the 4 and it’s just not feasible to me that somehow he’d have the story and no other reporter would be able to further confirm it. Whenever it goes to the board a much broader circle of people will get the name, but that’s only once the hire is imminent. Similarly while I’m sure Marsch is reaching out to the players my guess is that it’s more about him asking them to advocate for him to get the job and why he’d be good at it, versus the deal basically being done. They too will also get some advance notice, but once the hire is imminent. There’s also no reason that Batson or Cone would be particularly invested in Jesse Marsch or feel like they need to pick a sporting director who approves of that pick. Neither have any ties to him at all as far as I’m aware. As for Crocker the reason Southampton was interested in Marsch prior was because they had a Red Bull manager before and the team was built with that in mind. And the thinking was hiring someone with the same philosophy was the best way of keeping the team up. But the initial hiring of Hasenhuttl predated Crocker and there was reportedly alot of tension between the two. Crocker was also not the only decision maker and Southampton so it’s unclear as to precisely what his view on Marach even is. In terms of good candidates not being interested, I think we’re not getting any truly elite coaches (like a Pep or Klopp), and I don’t even think we’re poaching any sitting top 5 coaches (other than maybe Pelligrino Matarazzo), but there are definitely some good plausible candidates out there (Patrick Vieira for instance). Jesse Marsch is clearly a candidate, but I don’t think it’s the case there’s just no other good options available so he’s the pick by default. I also add everything we know about Jesse Marsch suggests there’s no way he’d skip the summer tournaments if the job is his. I also can’t imagine he’s telling Tyler Adams that he’s skipping the summer tournaments for financial reasons. US Soccer could also very easily make up the difference as well. I believe his annual salary was about 3 million at Leeds. We’re really talking about just two months of that, which is about 500,000. US Soccer could very easily just tack that on to his salary as a signing on bonus to make him financially whole. And the last part (which may be controversial to some on here), is that if the scenario laid out is true it would very much go against everything that’s been said publicly by Batson, Cone, and Crocker. It’s even been reported that the main reason they were saying Berhalter is still a candidate is because they didn’t want to tie the the incoming sporting directors hands in any way. Crocker himself laid out a whole interview process they are going undertake, I guess I’m not so cynical to think they are just outright lying about all of it in public. Of course different people have different views of USSF and probably don’t agree with me on this last point. Maybe I end up being wrong, but I feel like this hire is being treated as fait accompli, when nothing is close to being decided yet.
See, here's the beauty part of it: Each and every nation in Central America already have at least 1 stadium of at least 25K capacity, save for Belize. Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica all do. FFS, El Salvador have a venue of >50k capacity. IOW, if were being intellectually honest, CONCACAF doesn't "need to" build stadia, so much as upgrade extant infrastructure. Which, as you know, costs far less than building one. The other part is, who really gives a shyte about the minnows in CONCACAF? They don't matter competitively, and they're a massive part of the rampant corruption culture within FIFA. If they went under, maybe some rando fringe MLS type can't get joy against them in a friendly, but the confederation would be better as a result if they went under. And perhaps there'd be a few more Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, and Filipinos alive today. Well, if we're intellectually honest about it, yes they do. One of the Central American sides faisl3 to have a sufficiently large venue, but then they're ranked 176th or so, and don't really matter.. All of the somewhat competitive sides already have 1 or more sufficiently large venues that could possibly do with some refreshing, and not the canard of having to "build a new stadium." Which doesn't require biennial cash grabs, does it?