I think we could see Scally against some of the weaker teams but against a team with a very athletic LW, it wouldn't shock me to see Weah or just another quicker than Scally.
He's pretty athletic. I'm not sure I want him out there versus Vinicius, Jr. Toss in experience as well.
He's athletic in a way that says a move inside with a back three might be in order. But, his defensive instincts say it is probably safer to keep him outside.
It’s the reason we don’t agree on some of these issues why I think that was the way to lead your argument. It’s not my reasoning, I believe Aaronson could do as well or better starting at the same position. Your argument is that Weah is the best choice based on the qualities you see and hold as more valuable. The qualities I like in players are different. But if a large part of your reasoning is that the LW position under GGG has been tailor made for a certain type of player than I can understand anything you say to support that. I agree if that was the intent all along then Weah IS the better fit. My argument, aside from championing Aaronson for the role, is that making that position so structured, and only looking for certain types of players to fill it is not the best tactic. It’s why 99% of the base doesn’t support Greg and why an interim coach had our guys playing better to nearly everyone’s eyes. It’s why we played the same formation and players all four games of the WC when all four opponents were very different from each other. I see your stats for the USMNT, and again, it’s not that i don’t rate Weah, I see the qualities he brings, the “deft” touches and all the other things he’s praised for, despite what some head-up-their-ass BS posters would like to insinuate. I just believe ilbelieve the tactics and formations can be shifted to include the best players, and in my opinion that’s Aaronson over Weah. It’s not a huge gap, both have good qualities, both have produced at the national level. I believe Aaronsons best form for club can be transferred to the Nats. It’s not plug and play, they are not like for like. It’s a choice of which qualities you think would help the team win, that’s it.
If you refine your description, which I agree with, it's easy to see that Aaronson plays higher, against defenders, where he can press against the ball and use the ball in tight spaces to create chances while Weah can use more space and time to plan his moves - see his WC goal, e.g. - from the fullback position, especially since his defending has been sterling at Juve against wily Italian competition. Notice how Weah has moved from attack to fullback while Aaronson was moved steadily, at Union, from one of 3 mids into one of 2 attackers in the 352 towards the end of the season when relegation was looming. I think a lot of people on here don't judge players by how they are developing at club. Take Pulisic for example. I always liked him on the left side as long as he picked the ball up in midfield in the attacking end near the centre circle. His left foot never served him well from the wide position on the left. Moving him to the right at Milan showed how he could do stuff with his right foot much better while still having a great shot on goal with his left when the opportunity presented itself.
lots of fallacies all over the place. The reason he starts for me is that he makes us hard to play against. The game is 90'. Too often we play against top competition that has a game plan for us that they never have to change up because it's just too easy to play against berhalter's rigid game plan. I mean, Trinidad played us in Austin and kept it 0-0 til the 82nd minute ffs.
So I do not believe that the majority of people know what Gregg’s system is and that means they fail to distinguish when there are changes. What is true is that throughout the vast majority of his (and Hudson’s and BJ’s) tenure(s) the team has shifted into either a 3223 or a 2323 shape in attack. Some call those a 325 or a 235 or a WM or a WW. The biggest change has been in the defensive approach. He went from a contained midblock in a 442, which does a better job of controlling across the width of the field, to a more high pressing 433 as his standard setup. The smaller changes are who rotates from where and the types of players operating in those spots. We’ve had Jedi, Dest, and Scally all play high and wide, tucked in on the DM line, and further back closer to the CBs. We’ve had an AM type RW who drops inside into the RAM space and more of a wide, field stretching RW (same on the left). We’ve had CMs who stay back and CMs who push up onto the AM line. We’ve mixed and matched all these and a bunch more. Against England, in the WC, we went back and defended in a midblock 442 with Weah and Haji as STs. Against Mexico in the first NL final we fluidly shifted between a 343 and a 442. In the home NL match against Canada that saw Gregg switch defensive approaches we played a 4231. There is tailoring going on. A big question is who do you tailor a team to. For me Pulisic and Gio are the first names on that list. Then probably Dest, Wes, and Antonee. The further you go down the list the more those guys have to fit into what the guys at the top need. They are the role players and the water carriers. Brenden gets in where he fits in. He has to operate in a context where Puli and Reyna and Dest and Wes are getting their looks because those guys are difference makers.
Good points on Aaronson's positional transformation. Also, I think Weah is the most natural replacement for Dest at this point.
This to me is the biggest issue. And I agree, for me it's also Pulisic and Gio. Dest, Adams, and Aaronson would be my next picks. As for the formational tailoring, i've noticed the tinkering and it's not as rigid as I may have made it seem, but it is/was more rigid than it needed to be, especially regarding personnel. Also, as these players evolve the same flaws that were present a couple years ago may no longer be a factor. My main gripe and the reason I became so involved today is because I see people unwilling to change their views on certain players or tactics and continue to parrot the same old narratives.
I would disagree with you on Weah playing because of a rigid system. Reyna played that right wing spot at first but then got injured. What a lot of us noticed was that a lot of players were all bunched up inside close together and that made defending easy for the other team. Arriola was the first to play that spot differently being more a runner to open up space and then Weah had a talk with GB about what he needed to do to get playing time. Basically was play like Arriola and play better defense. He did and as a puzzle piece he fit with Dest, McKennie and Pulisic. Its a bit odd that we don't have a bunch of speedy winger types but for some reason we don't. Aaronson is quick but not really fast. Wright might be able to play similarly on the other side and with Pulisic playing mostly on the right this year that may be the best fit if Weah plays right back.
Sargent has been in the form of his life. I want him to start to see once and for all whether he can score against anyone better than a depleted Cuba.
--------------------Turner------------------ ---Robinson---Ream---Richards--- Weah-------------Adams-------------Jedi -----------McKennie------Reyna------ ---------------Balogun----Pulisic----------- 352 with 343 morphing. Pulisic roaming under Balogun.
Pretty much exactly what I saw. Only thing I'd add is that whatever Weah wasn't doing must have been pretty nuanced because when you look at him in NL '21, and earlier, it's pretty similar. I also will double down/agree in particular on the Reyna piece. There was already evidence that Berhalter was considering moving Reyna to CM precisely for what you mentioned, he and Dest and McKennie together in CM/RWF/RB basically clumped up the right side of the mf and made it far easier to defend. Arriola and Weah added pace, and the ability to pull 6 and 8 attention and LB and LCB attention to the sideline with their runs, positioning, pace etc, and when they plugged that approach in in window 2 it paid immediate dividends. It never really made sense to play Aaronson there because the net effect would be too similar to a poor man's Reyna in causing congestion and a slow down on that side, and would also neuter some of what Aaronson can do is a connector since it would even further isolate him. He makes more sense as a direct replacement for Pulisic, and a game model option for central midfield at least to me anyway. I just think if/when we'd play him at RWF we'd get similar problems as we did before. The stretching vertical option just adds more. The one caveat I have is if we don't have Dest, then we don't necessairly run into the same problem of too many players clumping into that space, Scally is a bit more of a stay at home guy, but I don't think that really changes much. I get the sense that Berhalter will have a lot of variables he'll be considering, but I think Aaronson is basically going to be functioning as a backup to multiple positions with a 65+ min sub tag on him as well. He can be really helpful the final 25 mins on the ball because of his ability to help generate turnovers through his pressing on tired players, his finishing is quite good on junky loose balls in the box and he can make good runs into the box as well as precise passes. I think he's probably Pulisic's backup, probably a heterogeneous sub for multiple CM looks, and a 65 minute little ball of hate sub to either maintain/stretch leads or help generate turnovers when we're looking for a late equalizing goal. Those are just my hunches though.
He can and we know he can. He scored against everyone as a U17, and U20, he also scored against Bolivia, he has goals in the EPL against erm, Watford (including a scorpion!), his Bundesliga goals were against midtable and crapper sides, but he still scored against Frankfurt, RBL, Augsburg, Arm Bean, he really seemed to like scoring on Hertha Berlin and Frankfurt and Cologne (7 of his goals were against those 3 sides across like 3 seasons). You watch him enough, you can tell, dude can score with service, and one of his best attributes is that he can score in a ton of ways. The problem probably is, he's not mega elite at anything, he's just solid at almost everything. I think if we'd just started Sargent period and pressed on, even with how crappy '21 was going he would have bagged somewhere between a half dozen and dozen goals the last 2.5 years at least. But he's been injured and fell out of favor. It's obvious he can score. What makes it less obvious is the fact that all of his Bundesliga and EPL career has been with incredibly awful teams, and his time with the US has been spotty (he's missed more than 60 of the available windows since 2019 if not more). People think he's just been consistently terrible forever, but the truth is, he's barely played with the USMNT, and when he did, it was in periods of time when the US was not scoring with anyone at striker, not just sargent. If we started him this past March if he'd been healthy and this June period, he'd have bagged some goals and probably would so next month, but will we? I don't think so. At all. I just wish he was healthy so he could better show what he could do.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. Josh Sargant hasn't been healthy enough to consistently contribute since WC22. [And lest we forget, actually came off injured against Iran and couldn't play against Holland at the World Cup.] And he seems to be dealing something now. We know Berhalter likes Sargent. He started Josh Sargent in 2 of our 3 group games at the World Cup. He's tried to call him up multiple times this cycle. He called him up to the Nations League, but Josh had to pull out injured.............again. It was only when Josh pulled out that he called in Wright. So as of a couple of months ago, Sargent was ahead of Wright in Berhalter's mind. So yes, in theory is Josh was ever available............we likely would score against somebody better than Cuba. But the fact is that he hasn't.
I know, but if you consider who he's scored against, his pedigree, how he's done in the shirt, basically his dry spell is largely: March, June, and September of 2021, and the WC. He scored in drips and drabs in a handful of matches in '18 and '19, none against great teams, then after the covid reboot he had an assist and that was it in the Jamaica/N. Ireland Window, nothing in the June NL window (though he missed a bad angle breakaway chance in the final in the first half, and then in window 1 of qualifying he basically stunk it up, and then got somewhat Llegeted for the nest year. So to my mind anyway, this Sargent can't score thing is more about some random matches here and there in a sprinkling of windows erratically, and crappy dry spells for Bremen in '20-'21 and Norwich in '21-'22. That's it. I don't think it's a he can't thing, I think its mostly about unavailability and randomness. As an example, there were no striker goals at the WC scored at all beyond what Wright did which was actually, I'm pretty positive, simply an attempt to kind of backheel flip it back into the box to create danger, that went in (so both deliberate and not deliberate)...We look at Balo, can't score with us much, really the only time the strikers score for Berhalter is when we're playing at home against crap sides, and/or when Reyna is on the field and healthy, or Pepi is starting. So I don't really think this is a Sargent thing, even though the record is the record, it's not a lot of games, and its spread out across half a decade of not a lot of games. I think its just weird stat noise, plus the problem that strikers have in this system in getting opportunities to score at all no matter what their name is when we are playing teams that aren't straight trash (and at home).
The issue I have with this is the assumption that Reyna and Aaronson are very similar players. They are not. Aaronson is in between Reyna and Weah in style. He can pinch in and play CAM or SS, but he can also play wide. He’s faster and quicker than Reyna, but isn’t as visionary. I think he can fit in fine playing a more wide role and doesn’t lose a step if he’s asked to play more inside. Reyna shouldn’t play wide, I don’t know why it’s been tried or desired so much with the USMNT. We have enough quality wide to let Reyna play exactly where he should, the “10”. I know Aaronson isn’t as fast as some of the other names mentioned for winger, but I’ll take less speed and more skill/vision any day. If you haven’t figured it out by now (not trying to be offensive btw) I value possession much more than explosive plays. Both are valuable, but I’d rather bring on subs for explosiveness when needed and let the more skilled and/or possession players create the tempo for the game. And since we’ve struggled with meaningful possession against quality opponents, that’s where I’d like to focus more.
Reyna has played wide a lot for Dortmund also but I think coaches put him there foe experience before moving him inside. As to not being offensive it's no problem having differing opinions. It wouldn't be much fun arguing and debating myself. You're making us hone our viewpoints and hopefully we are with you.
You are right, he has. I guess for me since we don’t have another 10 like him, I can’t imagine putting him anywhere else for the nats. Thank you, and yes, definitely honing our viewpoints.
We don't rally get to test out our theories / rosters. Maybe some day there will be a simulation and we can play different combos 20-30 times to prove or disprove. Right now we just make educated guesses based on experience and preference.
This has been a really good--and shockingly respectful--discussion over the last several days. Props to all who've been contributing!
thats pretty common practice with younger players for a myriad of reasons- "youthful" mistakes are less likely to be punished if they happen out wide, not having the physicality to play centrally, etc. thats why aaronson is still used wide (if not as a "wing" in the half-space (i feel gross using that term) so often, hes just a slight dude and doesnt have the frame to put on much more weight/muscle than he is. however much that may frustrate any of us as fans imagine how it is for him- hes a crazy tough kid, tenacious as hell but even against 34 year old, part-time pros in lower concacaf sides he can be manhandled. as for reyna, i agree (with @JAVez1983) that he should play centrally. period. even 2 years younger hes built solidly enough to take some hits (and skilled enough to skate around way, way more). no, hes not as fast/quick but i think he just has ability that makes that irrelevant. but the biggest factor brendan can be more effective wide (to whatever degree) while gio belongs in the middle is something he shares with busio- not a very common comparison, right? busio started as a striker (im talking u17ish), but was quickly dropped to a 10/am just due to his size. his development from scorer to playmaker was pretty quick but- aside from vermes not being the best guy to give minutes to kids/develop players- what really clicked things in for busio was dropping him again to a 6/dlp. he was never really used wide, but i think what really changed things was putting the game in front of him. thats the same reason gio wide will never be as good a use as centrally, you want the game in front of him. reyna and busio have a very similar ability to read a game, where openings are, where they and/or the ball should move. dont get me wrong- gio is a significantly better player than busio (and thats in no way a slight to busio), but there is a big difference in playmakers/tempo setters and guys who can play wide; having the game in front of you vs next to you, so to speak. its why gio did so well playing essentially a 6 vs mexico. youre moving him further away from directly dangerous areas, which seems (and is, to a degree) counterintuitive, but it only makes it easier to read the game. even when pressured theres even more time on the ball and much more space- how many times did mex players close on him just to sidestepped like they were nothing? they werent close to getting the ball off him, and the game is front of him was a panorama at that point. i think the comment that aaronson is right between reyna and weah is spot on- not in "style" necessarily, but in the areas they create and are the most dangerous for us. there are overlaps and stark differences in a lot of individual abilities with those three but big picture, as part of the whole of the nats gio reads the game and is able to move the attack where it needs to be. even more than his direct attacking danger weah creates an incredibly outsized amount of space single-handedly. brendo is an absolute menace pressing, throwing his tiny, tiny body in there and attacking directly (which is why his best role is off the bench, and hes a great change for at least 4 different positions/roles). one of the biggest differences between myself and bs at large is "can vs should"- ie wes can play rb and we can just put musah in his place, but should we? we can use gio as a narrow-wide attacker but should we? we can start aaronson but should we? i want us to maximize as many spots on the pitch as possible, and it seems like thats a (pretty heavily) minority opinion.
Posting one because I don’t think I’ve seen it yet (guys who are hurt but would start in parentheses): GK: Turner LB: Jedi CB: Richards CB: CCV RB: Scally/Weah (Dest) CM: Johnny (Adams) CM: McKennie CM: Reyna LW: Tillman RW: Pulisic ST: Balogun Assuming GGG’s 433ish formation. Basically, put Pulisic in the spot where he just had a career best year, and Tillman where he broke out. Scally versus Weah is a coin flip for me, as both are coming off of subpar campaigns. At striker, I could be convinced of Pepi or a healthy Sargent as well. Balogun actually had an ok season that I feel is being pooh pooh’d a bit too much. Especially against good teams, I value his threat in behind and willingness to make the near post run. CCV is a flavor too, I don’t really trust any of our CBs. Johnny just had a better season than anything Musah has accomplished at the club level. Still love Yunus, but Johnny made a leap.