Our 2 biggest concerns are depth at forward and another defensive midfielder. Imagine if Clint Mathis had dedicated himself to be a soccer player and not some idiot who decided to drink and eat himself into irrelevance. We desperately need a striker who can score around the box. To have Clint in his prime would have solved are most pressing issue. I will probably get flamed here but if Richard Mulrooney had not been injured he would be an ideal candidate for a midfield position. Dont get me wrong, I dont have a problem with Ben Olsen making the 8th MF slot but he has always been more of a winger. Mulrroney is a classic holding MF and considering our lack of depth at this position, he would have been a nice fit.
Bruce and Clints' styles don't mesh, and Arenaball is the only game in town. Seems to me this has been awful for Clint's career and psychology, but what are ya gonna do? Disparage his character? I'm not. We might not have qualified for 2002 w/out Clint, and we definitely wouldn't have made it out of the first round. He's given us a handful of our all-time US highlights, and overall he's more than rewarded us for the amount of playing time he's been granted. Other guys can play like crap three games out of five for the US and still be a starting center back, striker, or captain for life. Is Eddie Johnson, Josh Wolff or Taylor Twellman really going to do more for us this summer than Clint would have? I'm not so sure. But they're probably gonna pressure the ball more than Clint. That's what I guess Bruce is thinking as the bottom line.
There's been lots of talk about Clint's consumption of beer and food, but I've never seen any real evidence that it's a problem. To me, Mathis has never been the same player since his knee injury in July of 2002. Some players seem to never recover psychologically from a major injury and I'd have to put Clint in that category.
Mathis' knee injury, Wolff's knee injuries. These two were supposed to lead us to glory this cup but because of our constant bad luck with injuries, Mathis is no longer on the squad and Wolff is just a shadow of his former self.