If we had to go with a 3rd choice DM I'm riding with Musah who has shown well there before, albeit in a smaller sample size. His ball composure would be a positive under pressure assuming a high quality Copa opponent who presses higher up.
first off, i strongly disagree that luca and maloney didnt have good seasons. and while he obviously didnt get many chances (nor did he do enough to demand them) in the first half of the season he did play well in the second- and im not sure why aaronson doesnt qualify as "exceptional"; his level with the nats never really dropped off. as for tillman, im not sure "mls best xi type" is the best argument. before that he was an underwhelming player on underwhelming teams- below the level maloney just heavily contributed to while finishing 8th. look, players grow and improve. hes produced what he did all of last season in roughly half the matches played to this point; i absolutely wouldnt say he isnt deserving, but i dont see the argument hes more deserving then anyone "ahead" of him. im not trying to make this a tillman vs maloney thing, nor mls vs the clearly higher levels our other cms are at. but if youre going to hold up his status/success in mls as the reason for his inclusion then you have to evaluate/compare him to other players at the level they are. i think the problem people have is that maloney fills a (potential, pending adams' fitness) need in terms of depth while tillman doesnt. again- i have no problem whatsoever with his being in camp. hes one of the very few "sr" players (i mean, hes 25, im just saying not-olympic eligible) who has shown enough to be beyond "ah well, wait til jan camp". but with mckennie, musah, luca, reyna and malik (set apart from the more "defensive" guys in adams and cardoso) im not sure where he fits minus an injury/unexpected loss of one of those guys. the one thing that would make more sense is if wes and/or musah were being strongly considered as a contender to primarily play rb. thats the big piece of the puzzle we are missing, further compounded by berhalters history of overloading depth in some areas while going very thin/questionable in others. but if greggs preference were wes/musah rather than weah that would put timothy one spot away from the presumed roster. back to maloney- if it werent for adams' fitness i wouldnt see a place for him either (despite having a more compelling case than tt in general, as i noted). it also raises my curiosity that another winger isnt in this camp, where, we could bring in 30 if we wanted to. cause if weah were "likely" to be used as a rb then why wouldnt we bring in zendejas, who is probably the next guy as wing depth without disrupting the olympic roster? because if someone moves to rb, then someone else has to move in behind them (or behind who steps into that opening). and it is interesting that its tt in camp but not maloney or zendejas. if we are playing encyclopedia brown here and trying to figure out what every decision might mean that points to wes/possibly musah being who we are "replacing", or covering for. or again, maybe berhalters unbalanced rosters are just unavoidable for whatever reasons.
I don't know how reliable the sources are, but there appears to be some smoke on Twitter around BJ Callaghan taking The Nashville SC Job. Wouldn't be the end of the world, but losing your lead assistant before a tournament isn't great, unless he plans to take over afterwards. I wouldn't fault him for it, just unfortunate timing
Musah has generally not shown well the times he has had to play dmid. Maloney plays the position every week in a better league.
Yes, medical data. His club and the USMNT have it and we don't. We have no idea why he didn't play this past weekend. It could have been a new injury, a re-aggravation of another one, or just simply that Bournemouth--wisely--said "We don't need you today. Our season won't change based on this result. Be ready for the Copa this summer and come back healthy next season." I provided plenty of nuance in my post about my concern, which is clearly shared by many others.
What we know is that he has played very little in the past 12-plus months. We also know he has been cleared to play, yet re-injured, 3 times. Tyler Adams is an injury prone player. Therefore, the reasonable thing to do would be to carry extra depth in the position. Hopefully, that's enough 'nuance' for you. Geeez. Why do people get touchy over nothing?
But does he play the position the way we need him to play the position? I don't watch the Bundesliga but Maloney looks like a CB playing DM to me in the (granted) few times I've seen him and I've read his team uses him as a VERY defensive, defensive mid. If we've learned anything from low level Big 5 players like Tillman, Green, ect it's that they're not always better than good MLS players and Maloney didn't look to me to be anything special at DM. Love to see him move back though and see what he can do there.
Indeed. Musah would be a stop-gap measure against good teams. If Adams has to pull out due to injury, Maloney would be an excellent choice to replace him on the roster. He'd be a nice option to bring off the bench when we need to shut things down. Adams always seems to be a huge question mark, and then really shows up when it matters the most. So who knows? Berhalter did name Aidan Morris specifically as one who might have been at this pre-Copa camp if not for the Olympics. At some point after this summer we probably want to test McGlynn, Morris, and those guys against better competition. I personally think at least one of them moves to Europe shortly. Plus somebody like Tessmann, who is more of an 8/6. One actually wonder whether Tessmann and Busio will have to pull out of the pre-Olympics camp. Cuz they're still going in the Serie B playoffs. If they get past Palermo, which you'd now favor them to do..........then they have a home & away for the final. That doesn't end until June 2nd. Will those guys need a rest? Maybe.
The Haji Wright as winger mention is interesting to me because Pulisic has been playing so much as RW. I have to assume that there is a plan to see at least a bit of Wright-Balogun/Sargent-Pulisic in the front.
I would take Musah at DM for the USMNT any day of the week over Maloney. I think he has played the single 6 remarkably well for the NT and his best minutes for Milan were at the double pivot. My USMNT DM depth chart: Adams (when fully fit), Johnny (stock rising), Musah (needs more reps at the position at the club level), Morris, Tessmann, Maloney.
Some data on who has been our 6 when Adams has been out: 3/24/2023 LDLT in 7-1 win over Grenada 3/27/2023 Musah in 1-0 win over El Salvador 7/15/2023 Musah in 3-0 win over Mexico 7/18/2023 Musah in 2-0 win over Canada 9/9/2023 LDLT in 3-0 win over Uzbekistan. Replaced by Tessmann after injury. 9/12/2023 Musah in 4-0 win over Oman 10/14/2023 Musah in 3-1 loss to Germany 10/17/2023 Cardoso in 4-0 win over Ghana 11/16/2023 Musah in 3-0 win over T&T 11/20/2023 LDLT in 2-1 loss to T&T 3/21/2024 Musah in 3-1 win over Jamaica
Moore was a late game defensive sub that didn’t give up a goal. The legend of his bad performance is mostly made up. He conceded a corner that he didn’t have to but other than that it’s mostly just people’s nerves at the time and general groupthink.
All fair points - I just reject the "obvious snub" camp's opinion wrt Maloney. As to whether or not LDLT, Aaronson, or Maloney had good seasons, none of them had good counting, advanced, or rating-based stats. Tot he eye test, Maloney is a pure detroyer, LDLT is a wing/CM tweener, and Aaronson is a defensive attacker. Each can work in certain systems, but I'd say that each had an OK season, and none have the talent nor skill-set to be written-in-pen inclusions or snubs. In general, I'd just like to see a bit more fluidity on the fringes of the roster. We know what LDLT is, and it's fine, but he doesn't raise our ceiling. It's nice to have him as the positional floor (higher than ever before in our pool), but I really don't think he's earned the right to be an auto call-up to every camp. For the record, my preferred set of six mids would be: McKennie, Adams, Johnny, Musah, Reyna, Malik For this camp, given Adams' health and the 26 man roster, I probably would've added Maloney, too, given that Aaronson, Pulisic, etc. can cover the 10/8 spot if needed. But yeah, I'm happy to see a guy like Tim Tillman get a chance while playing out of his mind. I'd have him over LDLT, and don't really see him competing directly with Maloney, but... I'm not GGG Appreciate the detailed reply!
Shaq Moore has started 12 games for the USMNT. We've lost 3 of those. One was a friendly against Italy. That's one of the crazier lineups against a world power we've ever fielded. A 3-5-2 with Cannon and Moore as the wingbacks. Moore as a left wingback if I remember right. Egads!!! The next loss was the ill-fated WCQer against Panama in 2021. He hasn't started a game that mattered with the "A" team since that match. So..................... As we know, the Moore criticism is just Berhalter criticism in disguise. Like.........................why did Berhalter bring on a defensive right back for Dest against England at the World Cup? OK. Against Iran we were protecting a lead. Moore was fine. But against England it seemed like a capitulation. Why not be a little braver? Even if it was Yedlin to be a little more offensive and go for a win. Moore has a certain skill-set and it wasn't what people wanted at that time. That's not on Moore; that's on Berhalter.
thats the rub, isnt it? the context is always changing. for this roster/period of time we have two big variables in adams' fitness and whos going to be used/how much to account for dests absence. that "preferred six" that we all have (like a theoretical best 11) is just a thing we do as fans to make ourselves crazy. theres almost never a time thats possible in reality. and even when it is our best 11 vs el salvador isnt the same as our best 11 vs france. id probably agree with your 6 assuming fitness, availability, balance, etc. but there are still questions. i dont think cardoso, or malik in particular, have fully adjusted, translated, however your want to put it to international play. and thats especially weird for us, as we primarily play pretty low level teams and even the concacaf sides with talent play pretty garbage soccer. ive said it elsewhere, but i think its very likely they may do quite a bit better against the much tougher competition we are looking at over the next couple of months. it doesnt make a ton of sense, but thats just how it is sometimes. i think thats why (in this particular conversation) i "rate" brendan and luca higher than you, theyve had more time with the team, at the intl level, and have shown their value. i dont know that i would rate them higher or lower in a very general "how good of a player they are" sense cause my interest is the national team. thats why i would probably take luca over either cardoso or tillman, while fully understanding thats some degree of nuts considering the seasons they just had. i guess all i can say is betis isnt playing in the copa, so im gonna need a little more than what johnny did there. and the only way past those concerns, adapting to intl play, is time. and it gets like ten times tougher when you add in guys beyond that theoretical best 6. how does maloney find a way into the team with a fully fit adams? how do timothy tillman, or aiden morris find a way in? your club play gets you a chance, and then (to a degree) you throw that out the window cause this isnt club ball anymore. not better, or worse, just different. and we barely have enough time to spend on building a cohesive team in a vacuum. we just dont have the matches/minutes, so theres so much speculation and we all value different things differently. im just a strong lean towards what guys have shown with the nats. thats inherently unfair to guys who havent been able to yet, for any number of reasons. if you/anyone see club play as more a more important indicator thats absolutely as valid- and if anything only makes it seem like we disagree more than we actually do. and thats not even getting into club "form"...
and this is a steaming pile of propping up/defending berhalter. scally has started two meaningful matches for the us, both nl finals, both nl wins. wheres that loving devotion to him?
I assume that if Adams is out, then Gregg might add Maloney to the Copa roster. Is this a ridiculous thought?
[ Has anyone decried Joe’s selection to the camp roster? You don’t have to defend him from attacks that aren’t happening.
if his premise is that disagreeing with moores inclusion is anti-berhalter how else do you respond? if you (meaning anyone) want to make a case for moore have at it. but his tying that to gregg is the steaming pile i was referring to. scally has done well (and the team has done well)- better in comparison to moore- but we are retooling the entire team to avoid him actually playing...but moore is just fine. and its somehow about gregg? make that make sense.
I think right now the fringes are going to get more minutes at the Olympics and then there will be a Battle Royale for spots 20-30. There will be constant additional adds / tryouts since the talent wave isn't relenting. There will be times when the music stops and if you don't have a chair you will have to wait until the next big tournament because the players need some semblance of time together. Berhalter even named three players that he said might be at Copa but he was sending them to the Olympics. I agree with that thing because I'd like to see say Paredes step up and be a leader and play a lot of minutes instead of sitting on the bench and maybe getting 10-15 minutes the entire tournament.
maloney is a really strong guy. I saw the Union / Heidenheim game and at one stage maloney hits Aaronson along the touch line and you could see Aaronson wincing (Brenden has actually been working successfully on creating a stronger base to absorb contact in BL). maloney is also a bad passer. the guy to compare him with is CCV, imo. Maloney has good teammates and coaching at Heidenheim. I don't blame Berhalter for passing on Maloney this time around, especially with his shoulder injury fresh in our minds but I could see Maloney in a future camp to see if a role could be carved out for him like CCV's when the latter is not in camp. when it comes to some of the fringe guys, the real test is how they do against higher competition. Aidan Morris or McGlynn could replace Malik and/or McKennie by 2026. It's great that Berhalter and McK have a compliant Mexico figured out. We won't play Mexico in quarters of Copa or the ko games in 2026.