we just have different opinions on this. bob had to win the gold cup. with logic as my friend, i'd go out on a limb and guess that the players with the most minutes at the tournament he had to win, would be the ones most likely to be in the starting 11 of his first team when available. mikey was one of them. again, this thread is about bob playing favoritism. be it to his son (which i know is inconceivable as his son won the iron man award when his dad was coaching the metrostars), bornstein, or any other player he previously coached. everyone has their opinion on this. mine is that if your son is playing for you on the national team and getting a lot of starts and minutes, he better be MUCH better than your other options.
Sorry but logic has failed you. Obviously you don't need to play your best players to win a match. Bob just needed to choose a lineup that's good enough to beat the opposition. He did that. Bob took the opportunity to get a pretty even look at his 4 options at C-mid while winning the gold cup. He'd be fair game for all the criticism he could handle if they lost but they didn't. i.e. Dunga and Copa America.
in the group stages maybe. not in the knockout games. anyway, you do realize that these are all opinions, right?
They won all their games. Of course Bob picked a lineup that was good enough to beat the opposition. Yes and this forum is a "News and Analysis" forum. Throwing out the nepotism card is not analysis. Neither is cherry picking data, making uninformed claims, or stating something as fact that never actually happened. Maybe I'm crazy but I'd like to see this forum be a News and Analysis forum.
if its not enough news and analysis for you, then don't read it. the rest of us can "analyze" bob's decisions how we see fit. if we think its favoritism, than that's our "analysis". you can disagree and accuse everyone of everything under the sun so long as they don't perform their analysis the way you do. which bradley are you exactly?
Better ball skills? Nope. I would take Rico dribbling or shooting the ball over Bradley every day of the week and twice on the weekends. Speed? Also by leaps and bounds Clark. Decision-making in the tackle .......... again, leaps and bounds to Clark. I like Bradley. When he was playing for the Metrostars I was defending Bob's decision to start him. Quite frankly, the Metrostars had no better options there than him. however, this isn't the same situation. Clark is better, fairly easily right now in my mind, but Bradley is an automatic starter when available over not only Clark, but over Feilhaber as well. Bradley is a good player to come off the bench in 2010 WC or maybe even fight for a starting spot that year if he continues to improve OR start somewhere soon after that most likely. The problem is that his father thinks he's an automatic starter in 2007.
This is conjecture. Which would be fine except for the small matter of you not wanting anybody else to have the same freedom. You can say that it's fact that the distribution of playing time was colored by the future availability of the players in question, but do you know that for sure (i.e. are you Bob Bradley or have you spoken with him about the situation)? I believe that MaximumOptimal is correct in his assertion that Mastroeni and Bradley are Bob Bradley's first choice pairing. Do I know this for a fact? Of course not--it's conjecture--but I don't see why my (or Max's or stinky's) statement of this opinion should get your dander all up.
Well actually that argument hurts your point. We're discussing whether the wrong guys are getting a chance based upon who is in Bob's circle, as opposed to who is best. So here you are admitting that if he hadn't won the Gold Cup, then he'd be fair game. But let's look at how the Gold Cup was won: First, one of the guys we are discussing as being the recipient of this extra "love" by Bob is his son. Well, in the knockout rounds, this same son nearly cost the US the game by yet another one of his boneheaded, stupid, flailing, cleats up, from the back tackles. He's shown the door, and Canada later gets robbed of a tying goal by a clueless linesman. You can believe that the US would have been able to hold off Canada thru another 30 minutes of extra time if they hadn't had that goal stolen from them, by i would call BS on that. Second, in the final, Mastroeni gets the start over Clark (again). Mastroeni is so ridiculously bad (again), that even Bob has bite the bullet and bring in Clark, who quite frankly changes the entire game with his presence. I point that out to say this ......... you are giving Bob a pass for putting out lineups that even you now are backing off of saying were his best, because he won. Do you really think that you can only make a negative judgement after a loss? If so, what do you think of Bob right now? How did you feel about his judgement when he son was slidetackling people from behind, from his own half of the field i might add, while the US had a league in the semifinals? Or that judgement when you clearly saw, with the same team around them, Clark do everything that Mastroeni couldn't do? Bottom line is that you are correct, all 4 guys have gotten a chance. The problem again is that after getting those chances and Bob watching 2 guys performing better, Bob has still chosen the OTHER two guys who has more ties to.
There's no question in my mind that there's method to BB's madness, but what (do we think) explains his handling of Bornstein/Pearce? I'm not asking which one BB prefers - that's obvious. But if you decided to give each of them a (friendly) game, why wouldn't you bring Pearce to Sweden and Bornstein to Chicago? Also, no one (as far as I know) has ever addressed my concern re the Ching 'fiasco' in Sweden. I would have questioned flying Ching in at all - last minute or not - but an injured Ching, who - according to BS posters - was known to have limped off v. Dallas immediately prior to said call-up? Why Donovan v. Sweden, for that matter? So he and Bornstein could bond on the long flights from and to LA? Anyway, I would like to have seen Clark brought in v. Brazil. I like the potential of the Feilhaber-Bradley pairing myself, but I think they'll get fully acquainted during U23 Olympic qualifying (and such Euro friendlies as we can schedule). Edu should get himself into the U23 mix, but (an older) Clark won't get the same number of convenient opportunities to develop a CM partnership with the other guys.
One more thing. Since you're so worked up over this idea, I want to state my opinion that his method of "cherry-picking" is preferable in a statistical analysis to your idea that all data is exactly the same and must be considered as such. To wit, every time all of the "big four" have been available, Mastroeni and Bradley have started. This is fact and is not at all "cherry-picking". It is setting the paramaters which define your study and give it a controlling vision which is at the same time it's causa causans.
If you can't handle the fact that I criticize your posts because they are worthless drivel then don't post. You guys want to yell nepotism or favoritism without backing it up and then expect not to get called on it. You people would be just as pissed off if Clark had played Bradley's minutes and vise versa. I can hear it now. Why did Bradley get to play against Argentina, Paraguay, Columbia and twice against Mexico and Clark only got to play against crap sides like Canada, Panama, Guatemala, and El Salvador. You guys are ridiculous. I'll just add you to my ignore list and hope that no one quotes your stupid posts.
[ANGLES FOR A RUN AT MichaelMc'S EXCLUSIVE IGNORE LIST] Just for fun, let's all remember to quote stinky's posts at every opportunity. [/ENDS RUN AFTER RIPPING IT RIGHT THROUGH THE BACK OF THE LIST]
Junior plays for second-tier club in second-tier European league. It's not even Ajax, PSV or even Feyenoord. His club Heerenveen was a runner-up in 2000, and that's all. Junior started for USMNT which won Gold Cup and U20 NT which has impressed at U20 WC. Many of his colleagues (USMNT and U20 MNT) have already moved up (Adu, Szetela, Zizzo, Feilhaber, Pierce), but nobody in Europe got impressed by Junior, so he stays at Heerenveen which is bottom-feeding right now in Eredivisie (ok, they played 3 games only). I agree with someone here who guessed correctly - yes, Senior starts Junior in order to keep him over EPL work permit limit.
It's not conjecture it is based on looking at every game played so far under Bradley, not just 2 games. 15 games is enough data to see a pattern, 2 is not. I'm basing my opinions on 100% of the data available unlike Stinky and Maximum Optimal who have based their opinions on faulty data (player availability) and only 13% of the games played.
Okay. My mistake. I was confused by your wording in which you called them colleagues immediately after mentioning the U-20 WC. Sorry.
You guys are making this harder than it is. Michael Bradley is the first choice D mid for Bob, and would certainly have played in Gold Cup over Rico Clark absent the WC U20 tournament. So the argument really quite simple, whether Bradley is a good idea as first choice D mid, or whether he's not. I say not, in that Clark seems to me a better player for the 2010 cycle, at least for the qualifiers. I'd rather see Clark as the automatic starter with Bradley trying to prove himself as the second choice replacement, than vice versa.
Nope, you are wrong and you are clearly cherry picking. Nice try though. All 4 were healthy and available for the first Mexico friendly and Mastroeni and Clark started. Feilhaber and Bradley weren't even called up. Cherry picking data wasn't enough for you? No you want to falsify the data? Jesus. Of course you are cherry picking the data when you want to ignore 80% of the data available.
Hmm. Consider for a moment the fact that Bob Bradley has been a MLS head coach for 3 clubs over 9 seasons, and even before that was an assistant to Bruce Arena at DC United. Anyone want to guess at what percentage of MLS non-rookies HAVEN'T played for Bob at some point?!
I'm torn between my desire to qualify my statements so that I don't appear as stupid as you believe I am and my desire to not have this conversation anymore. Given that your opinion of me and many others appears set in stone (to say nothing of the fact that I don't really need validation from you), I'm going to go with the latter. So you can revel in the knowledge that you have won. Huzzah!
I don't know what that percentage is. But among the current pool of national team players, there is enough of a division between Bradley guys and others to make things interesting. On defense you have Boca and Bornstein. We'll have to see how things shake out between those guys and the competion: Conrad, Spector, Pearce, Parkhurst and maybe a couple others. At left mid you have Beaz. The competition here hasn't reached an acute phase because his main rivals (Mapp and Adu) aren't ready yet. By 2010 it will be very interesting. And finally you have central midfield, where enough ink (or whatever the electronic equivalent is) has been spilled in this thread.