As we have been discussing possible new players for 2006, the concept of what constitutes giving players “a fair shot” at the national team has come up. This issue initially surfaced with a discussion on why Kreis hardly got any minutes in the last cycle, while Kirovski got over 2000. The theme continued during the discussion of Steve Ralston, with one poster saying he wanted “Ralston to get 500 minutes” with the Nats, so “we might have a better idea if he can be productive against better competition.” Another poster complained that Ralston’s only national team appearance of note occurred on a rainy sloppy day and that Arena never gave Ralston a “fair shake.” And, finally, in an instance of déjà vu all over again, the notion of Jeff Cunningham getting HIS shot – again -- in a Nat kid has resurfaced, sorta like a persistent case of athlete’s foot. There is, in addition, a corollary to the concept of “Player X deserves to have such and such number of caps or so many minutes,” or some sort of standard “fair” evaluation. Namely, that certain players who HAVE received callups weren’t getting ENOUGH playing time to “master” their positions. The reason, of course, was that other players were getting the lion’s share of minutes. This inevitably led to a degree of apprehension among some on BS when Armas went down. There was a bit of a panic about whether Mastroeni, or any other possible substitute for that matter, had the minutes necessary to prepare him for the d-mid position. Well, I want to want to address these issues here. Dispense with the issue of “fairness” RIGHT NOW – “Fair shot”, “fair shake,” let’s disabuse ourselves of these notions TOTALLY. Why? Because they are simply not very helpful or useful . Too bad that Ralston got limited minutes in a sloppy rainy game. But what would be a “fair shake” in contrast? Would 1 game starting and playing 90 in pristine meteorological conditions count? Two? Six? Fifteen? And why, as one poster said, should Ralston get 500 minutes?? Why not 300 minutes? That's THREE full games plus. When is enough enough? When is too much too much? And when is a little TOO little? We waste bits and bytes when the arguments turn in this direction. A national team coach – as well as fans – need to project potential international performance based on observation – This seems obvious but it’s worth repeating. Will a coach – or a fan -- always be right?? Of course not. Will he sometimes BE right?? He certainly may. Can he be criticized for selecting Player A over Player B? Sure, criticize away, and make your arguments for Player B, and arguments against Player A. But there are way too many players, and way too little time, to establish some arbitrary standard about what constitutes adequate or “fair” evaluation. Club performance is NOT a sufficiently exclusive indicator of Nat potential – Some drip with contempt toward Arena when he points to club performances as a key factor in Nat callups, but then doesn’t call up, or call up enough, key MLS starters like Jason Kreis, Ralston, or Jeff Cunningham – while continuing to cap guys like Frankie, or Jovan, who don’t even get on the substitutes bench. But this line of argument is very flawed. Club performance is ONE indicator. In fact, in some cases (say Jeff Cunningham) it can be a very misleading “false positive.” The most important considerations are the player’s INDIVIDUAL talent level and mental capabilities, not his club numbers. It’s whether Player B has “what it takes” APART from his club – his understanding of how the international game works, and the fitness, work rate, technical skills, and brain for the game necessary to succeed in the international game. This can be understood in the context of club performances, or international appearances, but it is not DEPENDENT on club appearances. Some players are ALWAYS international level players, and can be quite productive even with LIMITED minutes for preparation -- We have to simply accept the fact that some players, gaudy club numbers notwithstanding, have ALWAYS been wanting as international level players. At the same time, we should also understand that certain players were ALWAYS international level players, even with limited minutes under their belt. That’s why a Pablo Mastroeni can step into a key role with limited experience and function adequately. And why a Frankie Hejduk can assume an entirely NEW position, and handle it with aplomb. Both of these players have “what it takes” despite limited minutes and limited experience – while other players, no matter HOW much time you give them, don’t have it now, and likely never will.
Some good points and all, but don't expect any of them to persuade people not to question why their favorite players do or do not get calls. I do think the main gist of the arguement is true. If I am correct in my summation, it seems to me you are more or less saying that the US team, or any national team for that matter, is not a democracy with some sort of identifiable code for who should get calls and how much time they should get. It is instead a dictatorship, currently serving under General Arena who will call up whomever he sees fit for whatever reasons. Sometimes he will make the right calls; sometimes he will make the wrong calls. He uses his own criteria, and no amount of whining is ever going to prove that some guy who has never shown signifigant international success, by lack of chances or failure when called, would actually make it, regardless of club performance. This is all simply the nature of a national team, and no coach will ever be able to silence all his critics. However, I think that there is no harm, and perhaps some value, in questioning the decisions of the man in charge. Anything that drums up interest and discussion is fair game around here, and due to the nature of one of your points, that indeed no coach will always be right, you can't possibly expect everyone to just stop thinking that one of their favorite guys could be a better choice than someone else. I think the whole Pablo for Armas switch at the last minute shows that there are sometimes guys waiting in the wings that can be just as effective as those getting time. I don't really think anyone on here says much else. And I don't think you or anyone else could ever convince posters that they shouldn't put forth their ideas on player selection or anything else freely. If they did, I think this board would be a very dull place.
Bruce is hardly perfect, but it seems to me he's more often right than wrong. But that's a subject for another thread. As far as questioning his decisions, anyone of course is welcome to fire away! And sure, argue for your favorite player! But to say that "so and so needs X number of minutes to get a fair shake" -- well, that doesn't really help advance the cause of knowledge very much, if at all.
Re: Re: Abandoning "fairness" and other useless notions Goose does NOT belong in the same sentence as Albright and Williams..... The man has had a great national team career.....and I believe I'm in the minority when I say I don't fault him for the OG against Portugal.....That ball NEEDED to be cleared....he just got unlucky...
must...not...do...this...fight..the...temptation.... Ah, fook it. I think the panic was that we were going into the biggest soccer tournament in the world with Chris Armas starting in our midfield. Pablol Mastroeni is, and was from the day he became a citizen, a better option than Armas.
Fair enough - some good points, Karl. But.. 1. I agree with those who say this is the place to criticize and defend the coach and his decisions. Some of that comes down to minutes. 2. It seems inherently unwise to assume that someone is "born ready" for the international game -let alone a world cup. 3. That's partly why a few of us fools were clamoring for Pablo Mastroeni to get quality playing time with the Nats last spring - and the year before. 4. I bet you were saying similar things about Pablo/Armas last spring as you're saying about Cunningham/ McBride right now. Basically taking your stand with the coach. How tough or fun is that? 5. Don't be too awfully shocked if Cunningham gets some decent time with the national team.
Pablo may, or may not have been, a better OPTION than Armas, but I always believed that Armas was ALWAYS an international level player. This is a distinction with difference. But there we disagree perhaps, and it is not worth going into now. On #4, well, I don't recall EVER slamming Pablo the way I slammed JC, so I don't know whether that analogy holds. I was somewhat skeptical of Pablo, while I thought JC was then (and probably now) completely unfit to be a significant Nat contributor. On #5, I'm not quite sure what "decent" time means. I won't be shocked if JC gets a callup or two, but I certainly WILL be shocked if it develops into anything more than, say, his brief sojourn at Gold Cup -- unless, of course, he REALLY tranforms the way he plays.
It is not very hard to explain if some players get more chances or playing time. Let's say this In Forward Postion--5 players are needed: McBride, Donovan, Mathis, Wolff, Moore. Donovan, Mathis and Moore can play in midfield too. Anyone think Kirovski, Razov, Cunningham and Keris are better than them? No way. Kirovski and Razov did have more chances, but they do have more production in NAT's game then Cunningham and Keris. If Keris and Cunningham can at least have one game Kirovski had or can contribute like Razov did in WCQ (Kreis was in the team that time but did nothing with his sub time), they probably would get more time, but they will not beat the numbers. In the right midfield--Stewart and Jones. If Ralston is in left side, he may beat Lewis for a spot, but he cannot beat Stewart and Jones in the right side. Jones got lucky because Olsen was hurt.
To me this is all about the fact that LIFE is not FAIR. Nothing is fair -- some get the breaks for a number of reasons, some do not. The powers that be have limited time and ability to evaluate talent. And there definitely must be a balance between evaluating that talent and getting results. We can all sit here and say that now with no qualifying, etc. looming, we should be bringing in all kind of new blood etc. However, if we do that and fail to get any good results over the next 6 months, it could have a very damaging affect on our rankings. If we can hold our current rank, it's entirely possible we could be a seeded team in the next World Cup. Yes we need to evaluate new talent -- that needs to be a never ending process. But NOT at the expense of current results. Evaluating and developing that talent to feed into the senior national team to obtain results is the purpose of the junior teams and to a lesser degree the professional leagues.
From another angle... I think the "fair shake" does occur, it just occurs in a place where few of us can see it... Training Camp. This where the evaluation takes places against their peers (meaning: other international level aspirants) to see how they fit in... It's also where, speaking of fitting in, Bruno (or any other coach, for that matter) sees how they can handle the coaches system, and how well a players plays with others...not only in a soccer sense, but maybe even a social sense as well... Let's be honest...team chemistry is still a vital part of any success the US has on the pitch...we are not to the point (few teams are) where we can afford a talented yet disruptive prima donna... (paging Mr. Keane, Mr. Roy Keane...) ...who has his own set of rules. We may never get to that point, frankly. That may not be a bad thing.
In general, I might agree with this. But it is also useful to understand the context of a players' performance when evaluating a player from a fan's perspective. So in the case of Ralston, it IS useful to point out that his major in-game shot came in a Noreaster. In other players' cases, it IS useful to evaluate other variables, like the quality of competition that player was up against, the quality of the US Team that player was a part of (e.g. Was it the "A" squad or was it an entire squad of evaluation players?), etc. I agree that fairness plays very little, if at all, in player valuation, but we should be careful to temper our enthusiasm or disregard for a player's performance with an understanding of the other variables surrounding a particular performance. Absolutely agree. When talking about players, we should be careful to realize that there is simply no panacea for the woes of the MNT. The selection of one player will not solve all of our finishing problems, nor will the selection of another solve all of our defensive problems, etc. When we look at players, recognizing both their strengths and weaknesses and discussing whether the qualities of a certain player make the MNT a better team seems to be much more effective than saying Jeff Cunningham deserves a callup because he's had a great season with the Crew. We should also recognize that different people value certain qualities than other people. Even different coaches do this - I strongly believe that if Phil Scolari, Guus Hiddink, etc had been the coach of the MNT in 2002 we would have seen significant differences in the style and personnel of the team. And each one of them might or might not have been equally effective. Fairness does not fit into this subjective equation. There is no one "right" way to do things. Again, I find myself agreeing with this, but at the same time I see room for discussion. If a dissenter wants to make a case for Ralston, for example, it is not enough to say that he's had a great season for the Revs, which he certainly has. Instead, said dissenter could point out the qualities that Ralston might bring to the MNT, and how he would augment an existing weakness the team has. For example, pointing out that Ralston's work rate, crossing ability, and creativity as a natural right winger would fill a void that the departure of Stewart brings is, in my mind, a completely valid argument. Would Ralston fill that void as well as Ben Olsen, or even a converted right midfielder like Donovan or even Reyna? That's the type of discussion I find interesting, as long as homer biases and trash-talking stay out of the discussion. I think a lot of people would also do well to try and see things from another's (even Bruce Arena's) perspective and recognize that their solution might not be the "right" one. Here is where I would disagree. I see this as seeing things from a limited perspective, and Karl, it might do us all a bit of good to recognize that players will excel in one system and fail miserably in another. You ask us not to rely on an arbitrary standard to determine whether or not a player deserves a shot, and yet here you offer an arbitrary standard of your own - that being the vague standard of the Internation Level. In my mind, there is no one standard for Internation Soccer. Instead, the job of the coach is to assemble a team of players that can compete and succeed on the International Level. How a coach, or a fan, might want to assemble that team - including the players he would choose - is up for discussion and is an interesting topic.
I don't like these types of arguments. Ralston got 67 minutes in five years. Even if we can't agree on the exact amount of time, this is very low. I'd like every player to get 10000 minutes and then we could be very sure. Unfortunately, that is impossible. Something like 5 or 6 full games (or equivalents) makes sense. Something more than a couple of games to be sure. This is where I disagree somewhat. Replace Bruce Arena (or any coach) and you'll get several different players on the roster. So if you say that Steve Ralston isn't good enough for the Nats because Bruce Arena correctly observed that he wouldn't be, I can only think that coach X might very well have played Ralston. Who is right? I have no idea. I might have a better idea if Ralston got the 500+ minutes I wanted. Again, I can only partly agree. As a fundamental principle, I disagree strongly with the club/international dichotomy. There is no difference as far as I am concerned regarding how well a player will perform. EXCEPT that MLS is below the international level. So if Jeff Cunningham was playing well for, say, Tottenham, then I would immediately play him for the Nats without question. The purpose of giving players minutes is to measure their ability. I'm not that concerned about "experience" You make claims like so and so was "ALWAYS" an international player. I agree with you, but I believe we can only know this, at least as regards an MLS player, by playing him at the international level. A few other points. We're mostly discussing our second tier players here. Cunningham or Kreis may have "gaudy" numbers, but actually there are always MLS players with better ones. It is precisely with the second tier players where coaches tend to disagree. I simply can't accept that Arena is "right" about Ralston because I have no doubt that some other coaches would have played him. Instead of just agreeing with whoever is the current coach, I will stick with a basic formula. If the player is doing very well in MLS, TRY to give that guy minutes. I realize this isn't always possible, but we're not talking about a million players here. If a player doesn't get the minutes and is a very good MLS player, then I can not accept that we can be sure that he isn't good enough at the international level. Having said all this, I have no major criticism of Bruce Arena here. In fact, I think he probably did a better job at giving MLS players opportunities than most coaches would have.
An argument against the concept of "fairness" in a philosophical sense essentially runs counter to the basis for many, if not most, of the advances made by Western society, and particulary those with a foundation in the British common law, of which the good old US of A is the best example. The ideals embodies in a "fair deal" a "fair shake" and the underlying ability to trust are vital to successfully organize a society. The belief (however naive) that one will recieve fair treatment is the bedrock of our society (see the US Constitution, as amended). And the demand for fair treatment in the impetus for most positive social change. Selection of the USMT is no different.
No problem with that at all -- my objection is aimed at those who would say "because other variables affected performance, Player X did not get a fair shake." That's wasted motion. As do I -- again, anyone can, and should, argue for this player or that player on the basis of whether the QUALITIES that player brings to the table. It's just not helpful to say, "Well, we don't know because he didn't play ENOUGH or in the RIGHT circumstances." Such a view -- even if it is true, which I doubt -- really doesn't advance the discussion very much. Well, actually I have in mind a whole bunch of not-so-arbitrary standards, but really didn't get into them in my opening post, which was verbose enough. But I think there are some very well-defined standards that set an international player apart -- and objective ones at that -- we might all be able to agree on. THAT could be the subject of another interesting thread. Moreover, I think that it is often quite easy to recognize on-field performance that is NOT of national team caliber. It's like pornography: you know it when you see it. As for coaches assembling teams, I think it is quite clear that most -- at least the more successful ones -- have a well-defined set of criteria they expect players to have. Standards, if you will.
Re: Re: Abandoning "fairness" and other useless notions Again, this doesn't advance the discussion. Argue for why Ralston is good, or not good, or why you're not sure. But it's simply empty to say, "He's gotta get minutes in order for us to tell." Note that I said club performance is "Not a sufficiently exclusive indicator" of Nat potential. It could be an excellent indicator, or not-so-useful indicator. My point is you need to look at the CHARACTERISTICS of play, not necessarily success WITHIN the club environment. Disagree completely here. This is not the ONLY way to assess ability. Observation in club play, evaluation in training, are two key ways to determine potential. There isn't just one kind of audition -- there are multiple kinds. Nope, not good enough. A Nat team callup is not a sport jacket you try on and take a look at in a three-way mirror, and then put it back on the rack if it doesn't become you. You need to make a case for yourself with the quality of your play in both club games AND in nat camp training before you can step out on the pitch. You're welcome to doubt whether a player ISN'T good enough to get a call up. Argue for it as agressively as you want. But don't say, "Gee, he didn't get a call up or enough minutes, so how do we know?" Again, such a line of reasoning does not advance the discussion. I think you are correct here, though it would be interesting to compare Bruce's "capping patterns" with those of other international coaches. But if you're -- I dunno, "complaining" may be too strong a word -- about Bruce's call ups and distribution of minutes, when you in fact CONCEDE he did a pretty good job of spreading the opportunities....well, I shudder to think of your reaction if he had done LESS of that than what he actually did.
Re: Re: Re: Abandoning "fairness" and other useless notions I'm not complaining about Bruce Arena at all except I disagree with you that you can tell with any certainty that a player who performs well at the MLS level can't play well at the National level. I apologize if that doesn't advance the discussion. Perhaps it does not. I am convinced it the correct response. There should be no assumption that a good MLS player is not good enough for the international level if he hasn't played a significant number of matches. As far as I can tell, Bruce has included EVERY great (USA, obviously) MLS player, some good MLS players, and one or two questionable mediocre MLS players.
Keep in mind, we are limiting this discussion to a small number of successful MLS players. Part of the problem is that we may not agree on what a successful MLS player is.
Re: From another angle... Fair enough, but then you can't conclude that player X who doesn't fit in with team Y is not an "international" quality player.
Re: Re: Re: Abandoning "fairness" and other useless notions Your kidding right? He could have kicked the ball out of bounds, trapped it, anything, but instead he launches a rocket volley upper 90. Better than any goal Ronaldo had all tournament. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=18479 Mr. Mejido has made a profound observation over on the Metro Boards, based on which I want to say to you "ToddP25": JEFF YOU SUCK!!
In general society, sure; but this is, ultimately, entertainment we're talking about. There's no neccesary fairness in that.
I just don't buy the idea that being in training camp constitutes a shot at international level. I think most of us have been around sports long enough to have witnessed many players who play differently in practice and in games. Sometimes a good practice guy falls apart in games. (I have a sneaking suspicion that Jovan is a star in practice since he always gets shots despite his ineffectiveness in games.) Still, other players are so-so in practices but excel in game situations. That's why club games must be thrown into the mix when evaluating players. And, if the discrepency is big between what he's show in club games and what the coach sees in practice, I personally feel it would be a good idea to throw the guy out into a game condition and see what happens. That's what friendlies are for after all. Sure, he may fail, but he may also raise his game for the occasion. Guys who do that tend to be valuable players in the long run.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Abandoning "fairness" and other useless notions I'm not really sure what this means at all.....basically because Mejido's posts are too f-ing long and self involved for me to bother reading.... As far as Jeff (which is WAY off topic at this point), the man got UNLUCKY.......Yes, he could have trapped it, he instead tried to CLEAR it....it didn't work out...things happen....didn't cost us anything........ I love how people always need a punching bag up here...... I'm going to start picking on Sanneh for not turning on that perfect Mathis pass against Germany....if he didn't 'suck' so bad, we could have gone to the semi's.....
I never thought Agoos was any good in the first place, but I really can't see how even an ardent Agoos supported could think he was anything other than awful during the World Cup. We were fortunate not to have been hurt by his blunders, and I think he was just lucky to be injured so that Bruce didn't have to bench him.