Pre-match: 2024 Friendlies v Panama {Oct 12th} & Mexico {Oct 15th} (Poch's 1st Window)

Frustrating isn't it?

 

Freese is notably 5th on this list (Burki is 4th) and Schulte is 7th.

 

Only a couple of those injuries are long-term problems.
[Not to mention Reyna, who isn't in that squad above.]

Its just going to be like this from now on.
For every England friendly, it seems half of their "A" group pulls out with minor injuries or requesting rest. Its the same types of clubs in Europe making the decisions to pull out our guys.

Kobie Mainoo, Morgan Gibbs-White, Harry McGuire, and Ezri Konsa just pulled out of the England squad. That's not even a friendly, but a game that matters. They're without a whole bunch of other players due to injury too.

For some reason USMNT fans think we're more hard-hit with injuries than other teams. We're not. Its just part of the deal. Gotta keep building depth and depth and depth.

 

So we have real injuries and they are faking liars?

 

.................having 4 or 5 guys out with long term injuries, and another group pulling out with minor injuries, isn't some sort of unusual thing. Its not lying. I suspect that if this was the World Cup...................Tim Weah, Johnny, de la Torre, etc. would be available for selection. Just as an example. That's what I mean. No reason to push some minor things for a friendly window. Carter-Vickers has a minor toe injury. He's been playing with it for a while apparently, and they're resting him. Caleb Wiley is reportedly in training after missing some time with knee tendonitis. He'd be ready to go if the game really mattered. They're resting him thru this international window. We can go on.

Its just the way this goes. For a friendly, we just say "next man up" and go with the guys in the group. A guy pulling out opens an opportunity for somebody else to make an impression.

Do folks remember how many guys France had missing from WC22? They had the depth to keep the machine rolling. That's what we need to work on. Depth and depth and depth. Injuries are inevitable.

 

The knocks just keep on coming. I'll need to re-re-revise on the insistence of the soccer gods. To me it seems at this stage that Panama is an opportunity for the relatively "new" players to show they can score goals without worrying too much about getting routed; Mexico should be a good opportunity to try out cb/gk candidates against a determined opponent who doesn't lose much at home.


v. Panama
--------------------sarge
---------brenden------pulisic
-----aiden-----tessman--busio
---lund-----cb-----------cb----scally
----------------------gk

This saves ARob for Mexico when I expect he will be running a lot. I think we should be up on Panama by HT which will allow us to rest front 3 in the second half and pour it on with Tilman, Zendejas, Vazquez, Pepi, Haji, etc.

 

so, everyone thinks sarge wont be "injured" for our matches (before immediately playing for norwich following camp)?

ok then.

 

This is why it doesn't matter much if a couple of young guys are showing promise and climbing some ranks. Top ten pools have to have 50+ of those guys.

 

Demands on players, especially in top leagues, continues to increase and this will be an increasingly common result as our players get on with bigger and better teams and become more important to those teams. It's a good thing overall and a great sign that we have more players having to deal with these types of demands, but there are consequences.

 

Tim Ream and Antonee Robinson are addressing the media from #USMNT camp.
- Both are commenting about the intensity of the training and lots of individual meetings between players and the new staff

— Brian Sciaretta (@BrianSciaretta) October 8, 2024

Will be curious to see the exact comments when they become available.

 

https://prosoccerwire.usatoday.com/...ino-mls-players-european-options/75569111007/

 

Good he’s been filled in on the MLS quota I see.

 

The game is much more punishing than it used to be. So much more money at stake. So many more games. So many competitions. Tactics that require more running. My knees and hammies hurt just thinking about it.

 

How many hours of water torture did it take before he came around to "thinking" any MLS players actually playing might be better than Euro-based players NOT playing?

 

Two days into his first camp as #USMNT coach, Mauricio Pochettino has made his expectations clear.

“The message is that he wants to win.” ⁦@FOXSoccer⁩https://t.co/QpeJd3RfJs

— Doug McIntyre (@ByDougMcIntyre) October 8, 2024

Some of it here seems to be that the first day seems like it was more of a rest day for guys coming from Europe who played on Sunday and it was not so. But Ream also said it was one of the longer sessions he’s had with the national team.

And that he’s been meeting individually with all the players (unsurprisingly).

 

He is saying the right things but IIRC you said you were fluent in Spanish so please read the CNN interview to get the full context.

One of our past managers who said that the US would only be better when we had more of our players playing in Europe also said the right things.

We will see how it shakes out.

 

I don't really believe we have been hit significantly harder than most but I do think that there are a couple of things that make our injury issues seem more extensive than other teams:

1. We have had some of our best players out for significant lengths of time on multiple occasions. Adams and Reyna being the most frequent.

2. combine #1 with the fact that we encountered a relatively small number of injuries to our key players (especially Donovan and Dempsey).

3. We don't have the depth that the top teams (which are the teams we compare ourselves to) have.

4. I do believe that we have fewer injuries, as a team, than we had in the past. (This is not based on statistics but my impressions of the situation over the years). I attribute this to the fact that we had far fewer players with a heavy playing load...especially from a young age. In the past, we didn't have as many players in Europe, those that were often weren't starting, let alone playing a full season plus CL or Europa league minutes. There were exceptions of course but even Dempsey, for example, often found himself on the bench whenever he got a new coach and it wasn't until his later years at Fulham when he got the heavy workload...AND, he wasn't getting a heavy workload when young (relative to what he would have gotten if he were in a professional environment in Europe.

 

I think we've probably been hit harder than most teams. It's been a LOT of injuries. I'm not going to dive too far back into it, but during WCQ we basically had half of our core in terms of man-minutes. I compared that to Canada and Mexico and the difference was significant.

That said, the depth issue is real. The combination of a clear gap between the core and the backups is obviously a big issue. Though I think if you compare us to peer nations, it's probably similar. We have a tendency to compare ourselves to teams like England.

I think two other things have exasperated it recently. One was Berhalter's additional youth movement in the second cycle. There isn't a ton of depth in the veterans, but someone like Arriola certainly outplayed a Kevin Paredes in terms of complete game. Vets simply usually do a better job of locking down defensively and gritted out stuff. A consistently young team often struggles.

The other is that the style of play definitely gets hurt more by losses. Poch will probably experience this, too. But there's little doubt that a more defensive, more counter game where we muck it up is easier to plug and play.

I think teams at our level sometimes experience this -- how can you really effectively utilize Sergiño Dest to the max but also play a style that a backup with none of his skillset can step into? You can't. You gotta somewhat choose and then try to adapt.

 

Would you please share a link to the CNN interview you are referring to?

 

Steffen blows ---. This is Poch looking at the in system keepers the past half decade, and simply grabbing some names out of the pile that he's heard of/been used. There's no performance based justification for Steffen whatsoever, none. Same with Horvath, but I believe Stefffen's #'s are worse, while Horvath's "gettin the hooks" are worse.

Maybe there's a different rationale in play, I can't speak to it, I don't know what he's thinking, but when you pick a steffen, whose been out of the program for 2 years, and his club performance has been total --- in the intervening two years, you can't be reasoning out of any perspective other than either: "Hey, I remember that guy from the EPL/Man City-Badge FC Reasoning" or, "Hey, that guy has started a ton of games for them from '18-'22, lets see what he can do.

Either analysis is just idiotic, although at least one would be vaguely rational if you didn't have a pile of evidence that he's been god awful for at least 3+ years (in truth, probably 4 or 5).

As for Horvath, it's basically picking the guy that's been in the group for years, and not looking or caring about underlying numbers. Perhaps because he wants to evaluate CB's and FB's with keepers they've played with, rather than go with unknowns, that's really the only other reason that makes any sense at all.

 

https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2024/10/04/mauricio-pochettino-seleccionador-de-estados-unidos-orix

 

Only two are starters for England, though. We're missing Dest, Richards, Adams, Weah, Reyna, and Balogun. That's 6 starters.

 

Maybe he wants a goalkeeper has a foot?

 

Yeah, but England is missing starters too. Harry Kane and such. Probably missing their top 2 left backs. [I swear Antonee Robinson would start for England in this window.]

It ebbs and flows as to whether its 2 guys out or 4 guys out or 6 guys out.

The point is that injuries are inevitable. We need to build the depth to overcome them.
France at WC22 is exhibit A.

So if Adams and Johnny aren't at a camp, now we have a really good opportunity to challenge Aidan Morris and others.

I don't think we actually differ at all in opinion here. We can't be "woe is us" and feel sorry for ourselves. These are friendlies. A great opportunity to do what we need to do in building the squad depth. Because the odds that players like Adams and Reyna aren't available for games that matter over the next two years............................is unfortunately quite high it seems. Weah seems to always be dealing with something.

One of the challenges for Pochettino is really learning our pool quickly to build that depth chart. He knows this group. The "A" team. He can watch all of the USMNT games over the last two years to know these guys. But does he really know the up-and-comers? Probably not. He probably has no clue who Diego Luna is. Building that depth isn't so easy when a staff from outside the system starts from scratch. We want him to bring fresh eyes to the table and evaluate the whole pool. Maybe he'll say "Wait a minute. This guy Nkosi Tafari is actually quite intriguing." I expect some outside the box looks like that. Just exploring the landscape. And we can't obsess about it. Like the Zack Steffen callup. Is it really that big of a deal for Pochettino to assess him? No..........its not.
We have to take our preconceived notion of the pool and throw it out the window. Let Pochettino and his goalkeeping coach decide if Steffen has something to offer.