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

Indeed. Koleosho is very different from Chase. Koleosho has actually been in the US program pre-COVID. Then the cancelled 2021 youth cycles reared its ugly head. We lost a chance to foster a relationship with a pool of dual-nationals (Noel Buck is another).

To me, the Koleosho recruitment will work a lot like the Balogun recruitment now (for both the US and Canada).

We here on the boards were saying we should recruit Balogun hard. Offer him the senior team while the pathway to the English senior team looked treacherous. We didn't know if it would work, but it did. He actually filed a one time switch sooner than I thought he would. I thought he might stick thru the 2023 U21 European championships. [Which England subsequently won without him. ]

I saw an Italy depth chart the other day on twitter or X or whatever. The tweeter had Koleosho waaaaaaaaaay down on that depth chart for wingers. He was there, but way off the top choices.

Arnie Chase has been Japan programs all the way thru, has been in camps with their senior team. The path to the senior team is there already for him. Japan has one CB in a top 5 league. that they've called in over the past year. Itakura of Gladbach. Heck, I won't be surprised if Chase is in their next camp. And indeed, Japanese dual-citizenship is extremely difficult. We had this same discussion with regards to the goalkeeper Zion Suzuki.

Arnie Chase is a little bit of a pipe-dream.

Koleosho? Not so much. Is there a chance that we're trying to get him for October? Sure. I hope we are.

The only question is will Koleosho stick with Italy thru this U21 cycle and then see? He might.

 

He's been in pretty poor international form in the last 18 months, but Tajon Buchanan is still probably the starter as the right-sided attacker for Canada. Assuming Davies stays at left back, Koleosho would probably more likely play ahead of Shaffelburg on the left to get into the starting 11.

I think Koleosho fits so well with how Marsch wants to play that he would have a really good shot at starting. I wouldn't have though he would be likely to do the same with the U.S., but you know better than me. Obviously, his American ties are significantly stronger. The only advantage Canada might have is that he was in with the group early and knows the players personally because of that. And Marsch is going to be recruiting him hard. But I believe he was offered a roster spot for Qatar and didn't take it.

I have a hard time seeing him stick with Italy. He's having a hard time making much of an impression or getting opportunities for the U21s. I don't know that's he in a rush to change, but I do think he will before 2026.

 

I don’t have any idea how good Chase is as I haven’t watched him play and he’s only just starting to break through. But no harm in making the call and worst case he just says no. Its not like we are overflowing with centerback options.

 

I mean, we've known about Arnie Chase for a while on the youth boards.
If we know.................the USSF knows. I believe that.

I assume, and I know its an assumption, that they've been in touch with him for quite some time.

But I still think it's a pipe-dream.

This is a player firmly entrenched in another program.
We can be overflowing with CBs or not, and do whatever kind of positional analysis we want...........................he's always been in another program. We can't put a gun to his head and make him want to play for us.

There's this weird manifest destiny attitude on these boards. Oh yeah, we're the United States. All we have to do is call. He'll want to change in order to play for us in October! It's stupid. What on Earth would be the rationale for Arnie Chase to switch from the program he's always been in? I don't get it. Dual-citizenship for the Japanese is highly unusual. It can't happen. It CANNOT happen unless he's willing to go to the extreme measure of rejecting his Japanese citizenship. Use COMMON SENSE!

 

I'm just very curious about how complete his initial list of our player pool was when he was hired, and how much he knew about the guys on the fringes. Especially those with promising trajectories.

I have no doubt that he could talk a lot about our core 10 guys or so. Maybe even our regular 26-man roster. But I don't know if he has a real strong sense of our GK depth yet, for example. Or, if you were a confidant, if he could give you an opinion on Brandon Vazquez. Etc. I assume that his assistants are working on exactly that as we speak. But it would help to have someone familiar with the American soccer scene give fill them in on the guys that they aren't so familiar with.

 

Players switch all the time. Until he says definitely not, we ought to inquire.

 

I'm sure we've checked in, and did a long time ago with youth teams.

But y'all have yet to provide the slightest rationale that makes any semblance of sense for why he'd switch from Japan.

I guess its "just because."

 

To me, I guess folks are hoping since we seem to have a dearth of good, young CBs playing in top European leagues.

 

I don’t have to provide anything. That’s on you you to provide a statement from him or his agent, or another reliable source, to definitively say, he’s not interested and never will be interested. Until I see some hard evidence that he’s not interested at all, then we ought to pursue.

Again. Players switch all the time.

 

Clint Eastwood is the contrarian indicator on these things. Now I think we've got a chance.

 

I agree that we should inquire and it seems we pretty much always do. But, we should not be under any illusion that any specific player will come if called or think it is necessarily anyone's fault if a guy wants to play for the country he grew up in when he's still got the potential to do so, especially when that country is much more established and successful on the world stage. There is a difference between the completely rational idea that we should always be reaching out to guys who could help and thinking any players that doesn't pick the USA equates to a giant failure on the part of US soccer.

 

This for me is THE question around which almost all of the other big questions revolve. (Except GK. That's a separate issue.)

 

If everything plays out predictably, this is probably the biggest personnel change we'll see, at least up front.

We have a quandary in the back, because playing a high press (which we had had some success with with this pool of players previously) necessitates a different group of CBs than the ones in our pool who can play out of the back, both of which are typically Poch mandates. Everything, I think, hinges on what Poch makes of that situation and how he adjusts to deal with it. Our two REAL problems are the incompatibility and general weakness of our CB depth chart to playing this way (which well serves the rest of the team), and our weakness at GK.

The issues up front I think are fixable, and we'll probably see a much more lively, dynamic attacking group creating more overloads and taking risks more quickly than we think. Unless he has to completely rejigger his plan based on our CBs not being able to keep up with it.

 

Yeah, the center back issues and the lack of a solid option in goal are the things that to me are the biggest issues this team will struggle to overcome. As you move forward you get into one of the most talented US teams ever. But, those are just some really, really important pieces and we're lacking much quality there relative to good teams. I don't know that I've ever seen a really good team that had poor center backs and a poor goalkeeper. And it's even harder to have a good team under those circumstances that remains dynamic in attack. If Poch can do something to solve those issues, he will be earning his money.

 

For the record, I fully accept if a player’s heart and desire is to play for another country. For example, I don’t blame US soccer for Amir Richardson. They reached out. He politely said No. We moved on.

That’s all I would ask for in this situation.

Maybe US Soccer has already reached out to him. We can assume that. But until we see hard evidence for it, it’s okay for us to encourage US soccer to reach out.

Finally, I get it if he wants to stay with Japan. There could be a number of contributing factors for this: Loyalty to the program. Maybe in his heart he feels more Japanese than American. Also, he could even rationalize that currently the Japanese program is much better than our program. On and on.

Never would I stress that we must force a player to play for us. But at the same time, I also believe you can’t complain that the pretty girl won’t go out with you if you never had the balls to ask her out.

 

I suspect that we will see players who can play a higher line and then try to compensate on the passing side. He could go the other way, of course, but here's my thinking.

Pochettino definitely wants to push numbers forward. He's aggressive offensively, and he's always been. He'll start that way -- maybe not the very first window, but he's not going to give up on that before he tries it.

Press or no press, that requires guys that can defend in space. He puts his CBs out on a limb all the time; while I can see him giving guys a chance to show they can defend in space, I think the one on one wins out.

Especially because he likes to bring numbers back in the build up. He's going to ask the CMs to run a ton -- both come back to create numbers in the build up and the go forward to create numbers in attack.

In the end of the day, he's going to try to get our better passers to defend in space or get our better pressers to pass better, and I think he's going with the latter because it's easier to find ways to get Miles to pass better than to get Ream to defend in space.

 

Some of the poor passing is due to players standing in one spot and not moving to give outlets. This is where the lots of running comes in. Standing around leaving others with no passing options may be a good way to go to the bench or not be called up at all. Getting Dest back would help a ton as he was a great outlet. Adding in mids being taught where, when and how to get in good spots added to that may be enough. I also am sort of confused as to why Berhalter stuck with Ream when Robinson and Richards got healthy as they were both starting ahead of him before that (along with Zimmerman who also got injured). The team was able to play a higher line and that helped the offense by not having to game plan protecting Ream. I'll guess that Richards, Robinson, McKenzie and Zimmeran are first out of the gates with schemes and running that makes them look better.

 

High up on my list to ask Berhalter if I ever got the chance and thought I'd get a real answer would be why he abandoned the pressure defense that served us so well in the World Cup.

Did he think it tired us out too much? Was he merely reverting back to how he wanted to play the whole time? Was it an attempt to focus more on developing possession offense thinking his job was more safe? Was it an acknowledgement of how long the past year was for most players?

I think it was a big mistake, and I think the Ream decision is wrapped up in that.

Pochettino will add a lot of value in the build-up, I think, both tactically and the requirement of movement.

 

Ditto. That's the very first question I'd ask him if I thought he'd give me an honest, complete answer, actually. Secondly, and adjacent to that, was the obsession with prioritizing passing out of the back over, well, defense.

At the moment, I think our first 4 CBs have to be Richards, Miles, McKenzie, and Zimmerman. CCV just isn't good enough at anything to be more than a back-up, and frankly, I don't believe Trusty is, either.

 

Meh, it's pretty obvious a significant number of players had been underperforming, out of form, or injured. GGG didn't make the needed adjustments. Such are the pitfalls of a second cycle coach.

 

I was wary of him but thought it might be different because the players were so young it wouldn't be as much of a problem. I guess not being worried about your spot is more important than being young so I'm against second cycles for any reason going forward unless a coach wins the WC and then he gets a second just as a reward. Don't think I'll have to worry about that for a while.

 

You are treating players as individual units rather than a collective unit. It's American and we may yet devolve the game into a lot of robo muscle that can be analyzed on a clipboard but for now I'd say we need to find the 2 man or 3 man collective that can mark, pass, defend aerially in the box, score aerially, hold or press, etc. We are more likely to find that in a 3 man gang, especially with no real physical 9 in sight.

Why do you think the Prem can't hack it? (not a rhetorical question - they just don't seem to perform up to expectations in UCL)

Atalanta 0 Arsenal 0 – Raya’s brilliance, Odegaard missed and is Serie A posing a threat? - The Athletic (nytimes.com)

 

I'm sure he'd love to be able to play for Japan and the United States. But to quote the dad from the movie Sweet Home Alabama, you can't ride two horses with one ass. As the father of five kids with dual citizenship, I doubt having more of an affinity for one over the other has anything to do with his description.

 

My guess it had to do with how much energy we expended in the group stage playing that way and not really having the depth behind it. I also think he wanted ways to get Gio in the midfield.

But it’s also important to note that he didn’t have a healthy Adams for most of the second cycle. A healthy in form Adams who can play 90 minutes covers a ton of ground and can compensate for others in that sort of aggressive defensive structure. And no one else in the pool can really do that.

 

I think with Ream it’s that in 2022 he basically had a career year and a great World Cup and Berhalter was basically going to continue to keep riding him till it was clear he couldn’t.

Zimmerman has also had a ton of nagging injuries since the World Cup that have prevented him from coming to many camps.

I too would have liked to see Miles Robinson play more but he hasn’t been as good for the national post injury. I’d argue pre injury and in the Gold Cup and qualifying very few players performed better for the national team.