But one is 19. Even on the same team with the same teammates, which do you expect could get better with experience? How does he get that experience?
I think the Big Soccer conventional wisdom of always go with the youngster all things equal is likely not what many coaches would do. Many coaches go with experience every time. Yong players have club ball to grow and improve and gain experience until they are actually be better down the road. Then they win the spot.
I am pretty content with the overall development of US Youth players in Europe right now. Not sure if we have ever had as many players on 1st team squads and getting this many minutes and it looks like that number will be rising in the near future. There are certainly still weaknesses... like the lack of true strikers and depth at GK. I actually think the most glaring weakness is the lack of central defenders. Brooks is still a good option even though he can **** the bed on occasions.... but aside from him the Euro cupboard is pretty barren. Miazga isn't even a regular starter for Reading and he is out with an injury. Ream is on the downside of his career. Vickers hasn't been playing but he may get a transfer soon. Richards looks very promising but is likely a couple of years away. Not much else in Europe... who am I missing? Really concerned with the depth and talent we have at that position.
No doubt. Coaches are mostly wrong in hindsight though. Arena certainly was, twice. The whole construct of, "win a game tomorrow", is also a Big Soccer falacy. We don't have to win a game until September 2020. To constantly play the player that might be marginally better now, but sigificantly worse later, is poor coaching. In this particular case, Zardes and Jozy have more than enough NT experience that I doubt they can get any better with more or any worse with less. So, until we really have a must win game, we should try other players. You can argue about being too experimental. But Pulisic is a lock, Mckennie too it seems. Probably Morris at that point. So, there is room for experimentation and development at striker because the rest of the forwards are known knowns.
Do you think it a coincidence that the three positions you listed are the three positions that peak later and take longer to develop?
Fair enough. Let's break some of the qualities of the three. Whos is the fastest? Zardes Whos is strongest? Jozy but plays like a lightweight. I think Sargent plays stronger Better touch? Sargent by a country mile. Better finisher? Sargent Better aerial game? Sargent. Better passer? Sargent/Jozy Better motor? Zardes Better free-kick taker? Jozy
A lot of strikers look stagnant up top all alone on a team with no possession, and no one to provide decent service when they get possession.
I don't think this thread is about winning a game tomorrow. Or who should play. It is (at least for me) how much we are improving given the current generation of your players. When I say give me Zardes or Jozy if we need to win a game next week, I am using that as a rhetorical device.
Better at finding the ball? Zardes by a country mile and Sargent is so bad at this that all of his other qualities are practically useless. If he would fix this one issue he would blow away the other two. But just this weekend he touched the ball like three times before he was subbed out. Every time his team crossed the ball he was on a completely different page. I’m worried he’s going to lose his spot soon, and then the minutes he needs to grow won’t be there.
I think this is a good point that we often neglect. We seem to have a lot of players who struggle to get on the ball in Europe. It's a real skill to show well for the ball and to demand the ball that our guys seem to lack.
Your comment goes completely against what his coach just recently said. Sardes links up very well. He is a relief valve to a troubling midfield. There is very little attack. He definitely is not a Dempsey that always happens to be where the vall is going to be. Jozy is the same. As for Zardes, well, he did score with his face on a rebound, not sure if you want to give him that much credit.
Zardes also played a lot more. Sargent isn’t a world-beater. He’s a borderline starting CF in the Bundesliga (a league that imo isn’t all that talented). But he’s just a better player than Zardes. MUCH better first touch, better instincts off the ball, better passer.
And that makes sense, a manager is getting paid and will take the safer route with experience he trusts even if there's no upside because he fears the game gets lost because of one of his youth 'experiments'. Fans want the higher ceiling and no more 'been there, done that' roster choices that bring yawns at best. I don't think your closing statement of gaining all your experience at club before a natty team run is absolute. If the national team is as poor as the USMNT is at this moment in time, the level of club has to be taken into account versus the journeyman that has gotten the US to where we are now. How much it's weighed, etc is up for argument. But if I see someone in a big 4 league get PT and look like they belong, and maybe they play a position of great weakness with all experience taken into account, I want them to get minutes. Now. I don't care if they have 100 minutes total at club. If I've seen the flash, then the future of the national team (the present being lost) is at stake.
I’d pay more attention to what the coach does (yanks him after 60 minutes) than what he says. Again, the kid is very solid when he’s on the ball; I think he lost it like once last game; but he is invisible. The other little forward was way more active and found the ball two, three times more. It’s why he stayed on the field and Sargent was subbed. I don’t know what happened after he was subbed as I stopped watching the game.
Rashica is the focal point of the offense. He is probably their best player. The team is a mess. Almost anytime they get the ball into the attacking third, it is a long ball to Rashica or Sargent or Sargent dropping in and laying it off. When Sargent drops in or flicks the ball on for Rashica, then I guess people want him to immediately be ahead of play. But he is in the midfield. Bremen are so poor, that when Rashica cycles possession back around, and Sargent can get forward, they almost always lose it. The team can't string 3 passes together. The midfielders pass at less than 70%. They have no healthy defenders. The team is just a mess. Sargent is not capable of carrying that kind of team. But Zardes would absolutely not be able to function in that team. Altidore would look like he did at Sunderland. Extrapolating from what Sargent is doing at Bremen at the moment to what he could do with the USMNT is trying too hard to be negative. Jozy looked like that at a horrible Sunderland for two years but still functioned for the NT.
All of this is fair. I’d challenge the Zardes comment. He wouldn’t make the quality touches that Sargent makes but would probably be on the end of one of there few crosses
It surely could be... but for what reason? Is it because the vast majority of our talent is still U23 and we need to wait a couple of years until a few of these position players emerge?.... Or is it because the US is poor at long-term development? Just think it is kind of interesting (and a bit disheartening) that GK and CD (to a lesser extent) used to be strengths for us and now it is slim pickings at best.
The most optimistic take is that if we are having a wave of talent, that the last positions to emerge will be CF, CB, GK. This is all just very noticeable because of the incredible hole of talent we are coming out of.
Well, we have Steffan, playing for one of the worst teams in the Bundesliga and Horvath who hasn't gotten off the bench all year in Europe and a bunch of mediocre in MLS so yeah, it's a weak spot these days, especially if we're going to ask any of them to play with their feet.