A lot are mentioning that the team dropped off in the second half when subs were made, and I agree. We were a lot worse, and it's clear that there's a depth problem with this team. I think if you are going to acknowledge that, you have to lay some blame for that at the door of the coach. It might not be the best age group, but Wicky said from the beginning that he wasn't going to make any major changes to the team after qualifying. He tinkered with the roster at the margins, a lot (Jasson, Anderson, Dietz, Dobbelaere in, De Vries, Cuevas, Fuentes and Freeman out), but the only two players he brought in who will play major roles on the team were adding the previously injured Bello and adding Carrera after he acquired citizenship. It seems to me like he went with a more versatile, older and more athletic last few spots on his roster. He didn't try to infuse the team with more high upside talent by adding some of the better 03's, he didn't bring in some of the more highly touted 02's who didn't receive call ups under Wicky (Atencio, Dunbar, Arce, Pynadath, Penagos, etc), and he didn't structure the team much differently from qualifying. The only changes to the lineup seem to be that Bello comes in at LB for Armour and maybe AOC plays on the wing (instead of the CF platoon) because there isn't a good option on the roster for the wing spot opposite Reyna. I think a lot of people like that Wicky is the first youth coach we've had with a big resume. I'm not sure a lot of people actually like the coaching he's done with this team. You can have an impressive resume, and not coach well. I think it's important to separate the resume from the quality of coaching. Jurgen Klinsmann is a great example of this. Biggest coaching hire we've had. Probably also the worst coach of football the NT has had in the last 20-25 years.
Wicky has this team playing exactly how we have always wanted, right? They are proactive defensively and press relatively high up the field. They play an obvious possession style. Just about every projected starter can pass and dribble with high proficiency. While other coaches struggled mightily with this squad, Wicky has achieved a fairly fluid and effective form in less than 10 games. This first half against Brazil and that first half of Mexico are surely two of the best halves of this cycle. I can understand not being completely bought in on Wicky since it's a small sample size whatever, but I don't see how you can be calling him a poor coach at this point. Besides a couple of disappointing roster decisions, any criticism seems harsh.
The other thing to add is that roster decisions are always going to be rough at the youth level. Players are changing so much that hindsight will sort of always be 20/20. Even the most talented coaches are going to miss. But yes, they press high, play possession based football, and generally seem up to the task. I think it's a good thing they play Senegal first though.
Caught up on the U17s' 4-1 loss to Brazil in a World Cup tune-up over the weekend (the U.S. opens group play on Sunday v Senegal). Adding Gio Reyna (who is joining the squad from Germany this week) will help, but there were still several warning signs.— scuffed (@scuffedpod) October 21, 2019
We will see the real team against Senegal. I can't take a pre-tournament friendly at all seriously. If I was a coach, going into a tournament, I'd use the last game to try out some players in positions I don't want them in, but might have to use them in. I wouldn't want to show anything tactical that would help group stage opponents. I wouldn't want to show anything but vanilla on set pieces. The USWNT couldn't score against Mexico for most of its pre-WC friendly. They then dropped 13 on Thailand and ran the table.
Overreacting to friendlies and small sample sizes is the American way, and I won't have you say anything against it!
Hopefully we can score because our back line is going to give up goals. When the centerbacks that look to get WC playing time are regularly out of position and too slow to cover runs vs your garden variety DA opponent, ..."Houston we have a problem". Our offense will have to get going to compensate.
That is the case for U17 teams in general. By my (very rapid) calculations the 2017 U20 World Cup had a total of 125 goals in the group stage while the U20s had 89. 3.5 goals per game vs. 2.5 goals per game. The 2018 World Cup was about 2.5 goals per game too. We'll definitely see some goals on both ends.
I think it’s the opposite. Hope the defense can be solid enough because there is little offense. In that tweet thread that @Peretz48 posted was the good point that the Pepi goal was the only attacking chance we had the whole game. This is a theme with this team. They carry around passengers nearly every game having players like Yow, Jasson and their ilk on the field, Busio has a long history of disappearing from games at this level and the holding mids usually do a bad job of winning and maintaining the possession battle against their counterparts. Has this team even hit three goals against a good side all cycle? They are a very low scoring team. The prior two cycles could score five easily in any game against any team. This team does not have that capability. Different style of team. We are going to need to be good defensively and hit on the counter with Reyna, AOC, Pepi and Busio. I tend to think that we can limit goals because Las is very good, Scally is back in form and very good, Kobe is very good if he doesn’t need to win headers against taller players, and there should be some combination of Bello, Gray and Carrera that can do an adequate job for the other spots. The back line and keeper is better this cycle than the previous two.
Citation needed. The 2015 team scored 3 goals in their entire tournament. The WC teams that the USA has scored 2 or more goals against since 2015: Croatia (2, still didn't win) India (3) Paraguay (5) The sky is not falling. Brazil is a tougher opponent than 2017 Colombia and they took us behind the woodshed.
They just scored 3 against the Netherlands in September. Probably the last time they played a full strength lineup...or at least Reyna played.
I'm talking about the 2015 cycle, not the 2015 U-17 WC. Teams can always perform better or worse in a short tournament. The 2015 U-17 cycle was very high scoring group, and they started struggling towards the end of the cycle. The coach was the main issue on many fronts with that team towards the end of the cycle.
Thats a good point. It bodes well that they were able to score three against a team they'll play in the tournament. At the same time, it's still a very low scoring team. They don't have the offensive firepower that previous cycles had. I don't have the time to go through all the results, especially since the US Soccer website has become a complete calamity in recent months, but this team simply does not score goals with ease like the past two U-17 groups did. I'm sure the results would prove this out, if someone wanted to look at all the data.
They lost to Brazil? Yeah, this team won’t go far, they lost, embarrassingly, to a minnow for god-sakes! Fire Wacky! Btw, will this be broadcasted on any networks?
They got outshot, out chanced, out everything'd in that game. It wasn't Spain vs USA in the '09 confederations cup outlier style, but it was in that universe. 15-7 in shots, 7-3 in SOG, 8-3 in corners, and 4-2 in offsides calls. I didn't see the game, but typically, when you've got some counting stats that look like that, it's either a situation w/a team sitting on a lead, and praying, or a team getting incredibly lucky in winning a game where they were dramatically outplayed. I tend to think it was more the latter than anything. Hopefully we get lucky like that again, or even don't need such luck and just win it outright, but that game on it's own, is very suspicious in the details, and if we're going to delight in that result, we probably should give equal weight to getting thrashed by Denmark shortly thereafter.
ok I watched the game. The first twenty minutes were relatively even, if not we looked better. Our goal was well earned. Their first goal was due to a risky back pass from Las, with an awful touch by the defender. So yeah, it was a youth game. At half we made some changes, including at keeper and yeah a good potion of Brazil's chances the first 20 minutes (which included some goals) were really on the backup goalkeeper. Viewing the result as being anything other than a tuneup friendly is misplaced. Also their teenagers for chrissakes. All youth competitions should be judged holistically.
The 2015 side barely scraped by into the World Cup on penalties after going 0-0 against Jamaica in regulation. They scored 9 goals against Cuba and Guatemala and 4 against everybody else in the CONCACAF Championships.
I'm aware. They won the Nike Friendlies in late 2013 with a 5-1 win over England and 4-1 over Brazil. They put up some very similar results in 2014, but I can't find them because the US Soccer website got rid of the results in recent months from the website. It was hard to even find the Nike Friendly results because you can't find any info from the US Soccer website anymore. The team started struggling in 2015. The results got a lot worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_U-17_World_Cup#Group_D Wiki gives the Orange squad zero chance of anything: