This is based on HalfSpaces' point system. And if you're flexible to play Reyna in CM, it's Weah instead of Busio on this list. The @blharreld (follow if you don't) 2021 USMNT Year in Review best XI pic.twitter.com/HAEdIu0Bvg— Kranks (@dis_possessed) December 8, 2021 Moore would get overrated because of how heavy his minutes were in b-team GC (kind of case w/ Busio). Didn't even start the final v. Mexico. But it's reflective all our fb's have been lackluster per his system. RB, at least, was supposed to be a strong-suit. Would probably still be Dest, but it's tenuous. Scally can't get integrated quickly enough, especially for our more rugged matches. Brooks, incidentally, ranks pretty poorly in his system. +4 to Miles' +8.1 & Zimmerman's in the 7's. Richards is too new, but it would be a little climb. The disparity between Turner & Steffen is +1.5 (4.7 v. 3.2).
And the difference between Horvath (+6.6) and Turner is even greater than the difference between Turner and Steffen. I'm beating a dead horse, but Horvath was our best keeper this year, and waay better than Steffen. It's a really interesting article. I like it because it matches my eye test pretty well Hoppe = great year; Yueill = yucky; Lletgett = the new Ralston line; Ferriera & De La Torre = looked good in what should have been bigger samples, Gregg. Generally speaking, that list makes Big Soccer look pretty good at evaluation. Most of the performances of the players who have been called out for either being overly favored by Gregg or unfairly underplayed by Gregg confirm Big Soccer's collective opinion on the subject, not Gregg's. Richards and Dike are probably the two biggest Big Soccer 'overrated' (and even there I'd put a hurt Dike's rating & Richards getting thrown in the deep end into context).
That's a generous interpretation to Big Soccer. For example, Hoppe may be highly rated, but Zardes is striker #3 and Pefok and Dike have terrible ratings. Brooks is poorly rated, worse than McKenzie, despite drama there. Miles and Walker are the two top centerbacks, and no one but Berhalter would have come anywhere near that before the Gold Cup. Arriola isn't bad at all, despite playing hurt in the Gold Cup. And while some of the other guys are lower, so are Dest and Robinson. I mean, Shaq Moore didn't deserve to be called in over a number of guys, but he's our #1 RB here. It's a fun ranking system, and I like it for its attempt at reducing bias. Discrete models have their own bias built in, and his adjustment factors or his personal choices in the Gold Cup seem to have inflated guys more than I think even their supporters would have them (Moore, Busio, Hoppe all very high compared to how they actually played. All have most of their minutes in the GC). There's hits and misses on both sides. We're getting to look in restrospect here as well.
Yeah, interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, based on the argument they're trying to make. He's really touting Big Soccer's evaluations based on some really small, skewed samples against weak comp, off the bench often times, like LDLT & Ferreira. You're using Dike's rating w/ separated shoulder to discredit those who touted him. That's really dishonest. Truth looks somewhere in the middle. I guess people can really abuse statistics if they're so inclined. In my case, I try to put stats in context to edify me and others. For example, I have a theory Horvath is actually our best all-around keeper. But he makes it hard to select him w/ his club choices, and that rating didn't constitute a significant enough sample. So I'm not going to criticize Gregg much for his lack of further usage, rather Horvath & his agent.
My point -- and I stated so -- was that there were hits and misses on both sides. I usually provide stats, explanations and context, and I've more than many times over my posting history noted Dike's injury or how I'd like to see him again. It doesn't need to be in every post. Take your "dishonest" crap elsewhere.
That's what I was saying. You should have noted that context here, or just excluded that point. Because it's pointless otherwise.
It's weird that so many (including me) suspect Horvath is our "best" keeper yet USSF gives him no chance. I know he isn't starting with club but neither is Steffen. Also, why was there no interest in his services as a starter with another club?The only thing I can come up with is that he is too unorthodox and most teams are very conservative.
The point wasn't really about Dike. Just because you took it weirdly personally doesn't mean everyone needs to include every bit of context in every post or they are dishonest. I'll enjoy your posts being held to that standard.
You're welcome to do that if I ignore a player was carrying a major injury while they put in lackluster performances, to help fortify my point. But I don't believe I've ever done that, nor would. Anyway, the main point is he overstated how much that data reinforced the hand-wringing was warranted, and you under-played it. That's what the facts show. Generally speaking, if Berhalter is going to play favorites against others, they're not going to see enough minutes to allow us to tell one way or another. And the "favorites" don't have extreme low ratings, outside Yueill & Ream. Other than that it's a lot of mediocrity. Odds are their replacements would occupy around the same space. But at a point we have a right to know, because if you're mediocre or worse for long enough, it should be next man up.
Steffen isn't starting for a behemoth. Horvath's on the bench for a club where even being a starter would make him borderline internationally on average. Maybe we just need to get over it psychologically that Horvath's team makes such dumb career decisions and clubs in Europe scout in such a simplistic, linear way (bench at Brugge leads to bench at a club next tier down). Though sitting is not good for being in form, at least in theory. I think there's a false sense of security about our keepers. Steffen is a proven bad shot-stopper & yet people bury their head in the sand about it. And Turner's even worse w/ his feet than our past keepers. Both these players, on ability, would be the backup to our classic keepers. Horvath is the only one that could near rival them ability-wise & statistically. I think we're priced in to these alternatives for qualifying. But come summer I just hope Horvath and we can catch a break to justify starting him come the World Cup. I think he's the best chance we have to advance there.
I love @blharreld grades as they are the closest to being unbiased. The only thing better would be to somehow grade against ELO ratings to compare apples to apples. Also as he said in his summary several players have been pulling themselves out of holes because of looking bad earlier so Dest may look average but the last few games he looked good while earlier in the year a lot of us were wondering if he was overrated and was able to work hard and play defense.
That still likely applies. You should factor in comp like you suggested. He just was fortunate to play home games against mostly weaker competition. Still had some issues. Like, he got beat on the cross for the lone goal against v. CR & was fortunate his gaffe didn't cost us in less than a half v. Canada. The last road game he played in he badly struggled. He got to avoid playing at Panama, at Jamaica, & v. Mexico due to injury due to injury & rotation. Lletget had a marginally higher rating than him even & Seb's rep is probably better if 3 of 4 qualifiers he played in weren't on the road where almost everybody is worse. Sadly, none of our experienced rb's are all that good, in spite of the hype. We should integrate Scally & shouldn't have run off Araujo telling him how tough it would be to break in to this mighty group.
It's obviously not enough of an adjustment, because look how much playing in b-team Gold Cup still buoys them, and the typical night/day performance we get from our players home/road in CCAF. So that's gotta be tweaked.
To do it right, you'd need a good dataset and a decent bit of math. He's done it logically, but who knows how that translates to his dataset. With enough data, he could reverse engineer based on history. I think the bigger thing that *might* be driving the Gold Cup goodness is actually that I think he adjusts for friendly v competitive? It might be giving a more than deserved boost there? Not sure. I don't think that Gold Cup was all that B team from the competition, though. Most nations brought as close to an A team as they could them, health permitting. We were the only ones that IIRC completely punted on half our player pool.
I mean.....................Horvath doesn't play. Its pretty good that he's called up and considered based on his nearly total lack of a resume over the last several years. Steffen isn't the regular starter at Man City, but he plays. Will probably get ~15 appearances this year depending on fixture congestion. They're still in 3 competitions. He'll play more at one of the best clubs in the world than Horvath plays for a mediocre team in the Championship. I personally think Steffen's play continues to improve. He was really good against Leipzig this week. Zack Steffen shows Man City quality that makes Pep Guardiola the envy of all managers https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...all-news/zack-steffen-shows-man-city-22393840
It wasn't for Mexico or Qatar, but we didn't get near Canada's nor Jamaica's best. Haiti & Martinique's a-team are worse than b-teams. All games are at home. And Berhalter ironically rotated some for the final. So you get a skewed sample for some players, like Moore especially. He's faced dramatically different comp than Yedlin. So you could come to some false conclusions comparing Yedlin & Moore on this, even based on adjusted stats. Here's Yedlin's schedule: Mexico, Mexico, @ES, @Hondo, Canada (WCQ), @Panama, CR, @ Switzerland, @jamaica. Yet he got bumped up .9 & Moore got bumped up 1. In context, Yedlin's arguably out-played Moore, but @bharreld 's system displays a huge gap in favor of Moore. So while I appreciate the data for nat'l teams we rarely see, which is why I posted it, it needs a lot of context to be overly descriptive, because of factors unlike as much w/ clubs where players can face dramatically different schedules. Club play has a lot more built-in control for variables.
Yeah, Canada and Mexico both had injuries, but they tried to bring their A teams. People just got hurt. The home thing is big. I actually don't know if he does home and away but that may be something to incorporate.
It becomes hard though and level of effort is impossible to quantify. Switzerland, in their last match before the Euros, tried hard, with almost their best possible team. Northern Ireland, had a rotated squad of players who played hard looking to impress. Uruguay slept-walked through a friendly on a baseball field, but Chile gave it their all but their ELO ranking was inflated as they were heading downhill. It would be difficult to account for everything. I've seen guys do performance with ELO weighting but then leave in non-FIFA window games. Like the Bosnia team we will get next week is the actual Bosnia team. The Gold Cup this year skewed some results. The whole thing is a good, interesting, if not perfect exercise.
Moore did well as a winger with Tenerife. As a RB he never looked special. Berhalter played him as a RB.
All the more reason to be more interested in club level, club form, and club performances. You use NT matches, and that's how you end up with Lletget as a starter/12th man, because he miraculously scores in a couple friendlies.
It is going to be hard to use club form until maybe we have 30-40 players all playing at the same level or roughly the same level. We've had millions of these conversations around the team for years. How can you compare form when the club situations are so different? I do agree Lletget was in the team because he scored against hapless competition or in garbage time during friendlies. Now he has gone 6 months without scoring and seems to be on the way out. You would hope "scoring goals" is not the criteria in this age of advanced performance tracking. But it could be.
It's not about comparing leagues so much, but about how the players are performing in the league. A guy like lletget was in average form for an average MLS team. That should supercede a couple friendly goals. Same with a guy like Zimmerman or Robinson. By most accounts they had terrific years in MLS, and it leads to positive showings for the NT. Take the 40 league appearances and general form over 3 games against Haiti, Jamaica, and Martinique any day of the week.
Yep. That’s the jumping off point. Then you can asses them once they are in camp and in games with the US. Can players that have been performing highly against lower level opponents, continue against international level opponents? Can top level players play at their normal level with the other NATS players available, in CCAF conditions ( fields, weather, refs ...)? This is just a foundation. Next will be finding pairings that play “the best” together and so on