USYNTer Tanner Rosborough. Another kid on fire. 16-YEAR-OLD TANNER ROSBOROUGH WITH HIS 4TH GOAL IN 4 GAMES FOR @NYRBII ‼️🔥 pic.twitter.com/HLhzsiDbvg— Footy Access (@footy_access) July 28, 2024
Andrew Carleton didn't fall by the wayside because of his political beliefs. He just didn't develop as a prospect. That happens to prospects in Spain, France, Argentina, and Japan too. Look thru Brazil U17 WC rosters and you'll see half of them barely make it as first division professionals. Andrew Carleton was a good prospect in the U17s but fell by the wayside by the time he got to the U20s. Long before the political stuff. He only had 2 caps in the 2019 U20 cycle. It happens. [He's only 6 months too old to be on THIS Olympic roster.] Our pool of youth prospects is getting deeper and deeper and deeper. The impact of prospects not making it isn't as damaging as it once was. Why? Because Andrew Carleton was a winger. We had so many wingers on this U23 pool that we could have fielded two squads. On the youth forum, we also talk a lot about how he signed for Atlanta before they even existed as a team on the field. Maybe not the best organization to start a career with. They didn't know what they were as a club yet, much less how to develop and deal with youth players. Of that first wave of Atlanta homegrowns.........................the success rate was extremely low. Bello is about it, and he'll have a decent professional career. Patrick Okonkwo, Chris Goslin, Lagos Kunga, etc. etc. Its actually true of many clubs. The first wave of homegrown signings doesn't work out. Look at the best academies. Philadelphia's first wave didn't make it in MLS. Zach Pfeffer, Cristhian Hernandez, and those guys. It takes a while to figure out the kinds of players you want to sign and how to help them develop into professionals. So now when we post about prospects in the NYRB, Philadelphia, Dallas, etc. academies we know that the pathway is in place for success with those clubs. That doesn't mean they'll all "make it." A number of them will, though.
It’s crazy to think of the percentages of players who appear so close to being a breakout who never go on to a productive career. I’m currently worried about the u20’s even though we have dominated CONCACAF qualifying (so far). There are a lot of players on that roster who seem to have a long way to go before they actually look ready for prime time. And we have casually lost 2 of our best players in that generation (Buck, Vargas),
Buck has not been lost permanently however (while Vargas has). And in general we should get more and more used to losing players. It’s the sign of a growing program as teams like France lose players all the time (as it’s very hard to break into their team).
That's not unusual in sports, though...............right? How many drafted or internationally signed baseball players "don't make it" to the major leagues? Most of them actually. Even players very high up on any Top 100 Prospects list. There are #1 overall draft picks in leagues like the NBA, NHL, NFL, etc. that don't make it. And its as true in soccer for France and Argentina as it is for the US. Not every prospect makes it. Some prospects change allegiances. Some prospects get hurt and fall by the wayside. We should EXPECT a significant failure rate. That's not a sign that something is wrong. As long as the success rate is also what it should be too. We can do a deep analysis of Andrew Carleton's U17 World Cup squad, and see that other guys on that list didn't make it. Blaine Ferri was a starter too, and he's now with Tulsa. George Acosta, who spent time at Boca Juniors..........was mostly recently seen at a team in Colombia nobody has heard of. Chris Gloster is with New Mexico. Chris Goslin disappeared. The list goes on. But there were also World Cup starters (Dest, Sargent, Weah) and a group of solid professionals that have USMNT caps (Sands, Booth, Reynolds). Another group that are playing in MLS, but probably don't have USMNT ceilings (Durkin, Vassilev, Watts, etc.). That's the way its supposed to be. If you'd told me in 2017 that Carleton would be out of the sport by 2024, would I have been surprised? Yes. But it became readily apparent by 2019 that things weren't trending well for him.
Best thing about MLS for the national team is that we have more venues than ever for young players to develop, especially with more and more teams actually caring about their academies and second teams. Used to be just a handful of kids got spots on the national teams and a lot of players with potential were lost, but now a kid can never sniff the youth national teams, still play regularly in a pro-environment and get repeated chances to show himself over time. It's always a crapshoot picking which players who are good as kids will be good as adults, keeping more of them involved at a high level is the best way to make sure you end up keeping track of those guys who do develop instead of using a small number of chances and hoping you picked correctly at ages far too young to really make good decisions. We see youth players all over the globe fail and even the best teams with the best development systems get more picks wrong than right. Just having more places young players can keep growing to see how it shakes out in the end is a huge step forward. It's pretty amazing to see how many of these young players are beginning to pop up regularly and a lot of them aren't necessarily in the picture for national teams. I think as the development system keeps evolving, we will see a lot more players who grew up outside the national team setup that develop into top players later simply because they have more places than ever to keep playing and keep growing while we wait and see how it all shakes out.
On the other hand, look at Griffin Yow. He was low on my list of players that I expected to emerge. I thought he didn’t possess the necessary athleticism to get to that next level nor the technique to make up for it. That said, he seems to be on fire right now.
Multiple players on Atlanta United, Tata Martino: Andrew Carlteton needs to work harder and become a professional: Andrew Carleton: posting pictures of purple drank and parties all night the night before MLS Cup Big Soccer: Why didn't Andrew Carleton pan out?
The most interesting thing I noticed about Yow back then was it seemed he was the only player on that team that Reyna trusted. I remember worrying about that with Reyna but when he went to Dortmund he wise fine. Even deferred to their players as he'd found a whole team of players he could trust. In that interview that Pulisic did with Zlatan the big Z said mentality was 50% of making it a pro.
Definitely one on the radar. Here's another angle of that goal. If that was an Argentine 17 year old, people would be saying "we don't develop prospects who do that in the states." A player who left NYRB for first team playing time with the Rowdies. Trying to go the Jonathan Gomez route (not that its necessarily worked as planned for Gomez). Maybe it could go the way of guys like Diego Luna and Fidel Barajas......................... What a moment. 🔝📐Game winner in 87th minute.In front of 6k home fans.Against 1st place Charleston. pic.twitter.com/n5R1lTJWiC— Dave Worth (@worth_dave) July 29, 2024
A good day for the U23s at the Olympics, but also a great day for the U20s at the CONCACAF Championships. Beat Guatemala and qualified for the World Cup. Our U20s had a bunch of injuries and release issues. Another great sign regarding the depth of this pool. Goal by the Galaxy's Ruben Ramos. So, first mission accomplished. Now to win the event. Semifinal opponent one of Panama and Canada. FULLTIME🇺🇸 USA 1-0 GUA 🇬🇹Ruben Ramos Jr. 49’ ⚽️🇺🇸The United States have qualified for the 2025 FIFA u-20 World Cup in Chile! pic.twitter.com/Wc3T5O6TOH— USMNT Otaku 🇺🇸 (@USMNTOtaku) July 30, 2024
What a strike from Ruben Ramos Jr. for the @USYNT in the quarterfinals of the Concacaf U-20 Championship! 🇺🇸👏 pic.twitter.com/wMroTxwMfs— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 30, 2024
https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/1egcrai/owen_wolff_cooks_the_monterrey_midfield_and_finds/ Supposedly, Monterey is one of the "good" LigaMX teams, but Owen Wolff absolutely cooks the entire team here. Like, the WHOLE team.
In case people didn't see it elsewhere, the U20s beat Panama and are into the final of the U20 CONCACAF Championships against Mexico. Nice goals for Vazquez (Philly) and Raines (Houston). Brooklyn Raines! 🤯💥The @usynt leads 2-1 🇺🇸 #U20Championship pic.twitter.com/BHJw8rRAKP— Concacaf (@Concacaf) August 2, 2024
Gameday. The 2024 CONCACAF u-20 championship final is set. 🏆 🇺🇸 United States vs Mexico 🇲🇽🗓️⏰: August 4th at 5pm EST. pic.twitter.com/ct9FSLIDJC— USMNT Otaku 🇺🇸 (@USMNTOtaku) August 3, 2024
By the way.........................Andrew Carleton's brother this weekend. He actually had a brace in this one. 🇺🇸 Incredible goal from Alan Carleton (‘05), who has been inconsistent for Atlanta United 2 but has shown flashes of real potential 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/G6TeRDSzoZ— American Ultras Talk (@ameriultrastalk) August 4, 2024
More like this is a B/C team and also pretty young relative to the age group. Whereas this was Mexico’s A team for the most part.
I don’t follow this things very closely but who all was missing? I guess the 05s like cremaschi and Tsakiris? Would 04s have been included as well? Who all are we talking about?
I think for one you have a number of guys playing up like Berchimas. I’m sure I’m missing guys but off the top of my head Kochen, Beavers, Banks, Akinmboni, Wynder, Murray, Baker-Whiting, Miller, Campbell, Fletcher, and Cremaschi could all be with this group. And that doesn’t count dual nationals like Buck, Barajas, McFarlane, and Esmir. Some of the people who follow youth players more than I do seem to think there are players we should have called by didn’t but I’m less familiar on that front. Props to the team for getting the job done and qualifying but it’s not really indicative of things given it wasn’t close to our first choice group.
I’m guessing you can count Cremaschi, Kochen, Beavers, Baker-Whiting, Campbell, Miller, Fletcher?, Brennan? McFarlane, Vargas, Esmir, and Buck would have been nice to have. But we seem to have screwed the pooch with dual national recruiting this cycle. It would be generous to say this wasn’t an A team. It’s a B team if we didn’t lose all those dual nationals. But here we are.
Yeah I don’t count him since he switched. He could technically switch back since he’s yet to play a game for Mexico but it’s not happening. Esmir may be provisionally tied to Bosnia soon also in way where he’d be unlikely to switch back (if he plays in the September window and wants to later switch he’d have to wait three years).