ahhh... the "Yurp" argument. People clearly aren't talking about places like Lithuania. Of course you have engaged in some ridiculous generality about MLS when the range of quality of the players in the league is larger than all the players of Europe's top divisions.
On the way to the 2018 CCL final, TFC used a 3 high-level DPs model to sweep aside Mexican opposition. Only injuries prevented their taking the final game in regular time.
No you have made deeply stupid point when actually the range of leagues to compare to MLS is simple to do from a salary standpoint. No one is claiming 'top divisions'. That underlines the stupidity of your comment.
Zardes is more of an Abraham style of FW, where Sargent is much more like a Giroud. And we can see CP is more effective with a Giroud style attacker than a Abraham.
You just made his point for him. If teams are spending 50% of their cap on attacking players (that’s who Sands is matching up with) than he is defending players that are at a level (according to TM values) even higher than top 15 league. I put all of this in your language, not it mine, because I think TM values and league rankings are complete BS for evaluating players, but for some reason this board loves this crap and has built a whole narrative around it.
Have you any evidence that either player is struggling to hold their own at the MLS level? Do you have any evidence they struggle at a level higher? Is your previous statement just an assumption?
Morales is a better passer, long-range shooter AND 1v.1 defender. McKennie is the better dribbler, better in the air and just covers a slit ton of ground very quickly. I think McKennie is getting pretty overrated on BS.
When I look at all these posts and I think about who our manager is and the various players who are "must call-ups because of the league they play in" I get the distinct feeling that we are not qualifying. there will be the replies about the 'quality' we are dealing with without considering how many of them will actually be playing in a quali on a hot nite in SPS. Nor will anybody consider how easy it is to plan for a DLP formation which Berhalter just can't let go of. Will Jamaica and Panama have a manager too dumb to take advantage? We can only hope.
I'm old and have been following soccer for longer than some of you have been alive. Forgive me for not buying into what the estimated transfer values say or what the supposed pundits think, and relying entirely on my own evaluations.
Also, I rank MLS in the #23 or #24 slot, worldwide, which is not bad for such a young league. With the important caveat that there are some leagues I never watch, but could be better than MLS. My estimation is based on average play. Not on how the top teams play. That's why I also rank La Liga as slightly higher than the EPL. Bottom EPL teams are quite terrible to watch.
Is this a joke? Morales is a yoyo 2.Bundesliga player. He wasn’t a lock starter for a team that got relegated this year. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but morales completed a career high 70% of his passes this year while McKennie was at 80%. I watched a lot of both of them including every McKennie game after the restart and have no idea how you came to the conclusion that morales was a better passer. McKennie started to take more long shots towards the end of the year and looked pretty good, but from the data points we have, I’d argue that neither of them is much of a long range shooter. Morales also is not a better 1v1 defender lol. McKennie is way more athletic and way more technical than Morales. McKennie could be moving to the premier league for $25 million while Morales, who’s valued at $3 million on transfermarkt (probably too high), will play for Düsseldorf in the 2.Bundesliga. They are on completely different levels.
This is why I want to see him playing off of Sargent more regularly. Sargent does a lot of one touch passes in tight areas. Bremen just never gets that far up the field often.
I think this has some merit because English clubs pay more for English players skewing team and player evaluations a bit.
Yeah, I didn't get this either. Weston's a better passer period. The passing %s you mention aren't as a consequence of pass type, either, Weston was better at short, medium and long passing % than Morales. And while he's not great at the short 1-2s and can get sloppy at points, he has a knack for really nice through balls that I've never seen Morales pull off. I watched Morales quite a bit over the last year or so when everyone was ranting about him. I didn't see a good defender, either, particularly 1:1. Virtually every game, he'd get badly beat in the open field -- he's simply not quick enough -- leading to a goal or a great chance on goal. He's tough, got a good work rate and works hard at it, but the guy isn't the ranging destroyer he's made out to be.
From virtually any and every objective data point, MLS is somewhere between the 15th and 25th best league in the world, probably shading to the back half. But it's improving and has significantly. Leagues in that range are not that far apart. I'm not quite sure why it gets re-litigated every week, though.
Yikes. So excellency has a partner. McKennie is easily a top 5 player for the US and an auto starter if healthy. Morales doesn't make the 23.
I think Morales's quality is inflated by the "grass is greener" syndrome. People see a guy who has a bunch of Bundesliga experience but few USMNT caps to really judge him in the latter environment and assume he has to be better than the guys we see more regularly with the Nats. But if you watch Morales in the Bundesliga, the best you can say is that he's a battler who is somewhat effective at clogging up midfield for a team that will lose the possession battle every game and has to rely on desperate defending and countering to scrape up any points (not that this doesn't describe the USMNT against plenty of opponents). I'm not opposed to Morales getting call-ups, but for me, he's in the mix with MLS guys for back-up roles in midfield. I think/hope we have better starting options at this point, unless there are injuries.
Yeah, I don’t get this stuff about Morales. He managed to just hit 70% passing this year which is on the higher end for him. He isn’t a volume passer which has some to do with Fortuna not having much of the ball but also that his teammates don’t seem to seek him out in the bit of matches I’ve seen. He is strong in the air and does battle but eh.
Morales would not be a competitor for his spot on any team. They're both bulldogs, but McKennie has much better athleticism. The notion Morales is a better defender is ridiculous. He gets skinned alive in any kind of space. Happened in our tilt v. Mexico. He can only defend when his team bunkers. And both are prone to costly turnovers to expose the back line. But McKennie's aggressive passing and combining adds to the attack to. Morales is out on the periphery. For the NT he's been invisible or a liability. McKennie also has the x-factor of being a force in the air. Morales has none. Morales is the Tim Ream of the German system (which is worse than the English). Good in the 2nd division, misfit at top level. And Ream primarily plays a role for us since he's left-footed. McKennie could well be on a Europa-League level EPL side next yr. Morales could never dream of this.
It's ironic you'd rank MLS so low then because they're a parity league. Also that you'd rank the EPL lower than La Liga based on bottom teams. They make so much more investment than those in La Liga. I think there's a Hispanic style bias here. You over-glorify Latin American leagues too that MLS now buys w/ regularity from when those guys show anything. Outside of Brasil, Argentina, and Mexico MLS has probably surpassed all the rest as a result. You're also grandfathering in perceptions. As you admit, MLS was a young league. So they're moving up the ladder while they are becoming competitive or surpassing some of the traditional powers who were prominent before tv and streaming $ became such a big factor.
Actually I'd say the media here is, for obvious reasons, a lot more Anglo-centric, that's why we're all bombarded by EPL stuff with fellow North European countries receiving also a lot of attention (and Germany, which is a cousin of England, historically and culturally --in fact, "German" comes from the Latin Germanus, "brother of the same parents" --the word hermano in Spanish comes from it too). We fail to recognize there are good leagues outside Europe and South America. Leagues like the Botola (Morocco) or the Chinese Super League (a very unbalanced league, with a terrible lower half, but four solid clubs that may be better than anything MLS has to offer already). What I'd suggest people is to keep in mind that amelioration is a worldwide thing. So the point is not just getting better (everybody is), but getting better faster than others. PS: Money is a very tricky indicator of value. England, and more so London, is a very expensive country. You need to earn a lot more there than you need to earn most anywhere in the continent. Plus, and this is a concept that may be hard to grasp for some, price is a descriptive element --it evaluates the world in a current state. Thus, English clubs spend a fortune buying top players at time X, while other countries (like Germany, going to what you folks know better) buy cheaper players projected to be very valuable at time X + n.
I could not disagree more with the notion that McKennie is overrated. I think he and Adams in front of the back line would cure a lot of ills.
Now, my position with respect MLS is that it is a must for it to succeed for us to have any chance to become relevant in the world stage. Yes, there are issues with the way the league exists at this point, but going back to zero would mean wasting a lot of time. And I agree with the pseudo-xenophobic remarks by Donovan et al.: if the US system relies on naturalizing players developed elsewhere, then the current system is not the one being tested in international competitions. The objective should be to develop our own players & use them to gauge where we are at a given point. It's not about excluding anyone, but setting a long-term objective.
What are the 20+ leagues that are ahead of MLS in your estimation? I guess you’d have to include all the second tier of the top 5, plus another 10+ European leagues (which ones) and 6+ Latin American leagues?