It will be hard to remove any past nat with WC expirience as BA love veteran players. He would have to be totally blown away with the performance of new blood to push even Eddie Lewis to the street. He has some guys that he still likes that did not make the trip to WC2002 because of injury, so they would still be considered. I hope he lightens up in this regard and lets youth be served. The more friendlies we play, the better. In that regard, I like the fact that we are playing ES and kind of treating it as a fact finding mission. It used to be that we had to get a good result just to save face. We have turned the corner in that regard. Hopefully we treat Mexico the same way in the coming years.
Originally posted by L127 "It will be hard to remove any past nat with WC expirience as BA love veteran players. He would have to be totally blown away with the performance of new blood to..." Donovan, OBrien, Wolff, Mathis, Beasley, and Mastroeni all got WC starts and were not International 'Vetran' players. All came thru Big Time. Quarter Final time, even. BA gave them thier shot over Lassiter, Burns, Waldo, etc... I bet he he brings in new talent wherever he can find it. He has so far.
I think in 4 years time the Nat team will look so much different then it did this year, and it alwats has, 4 years is a long time especialy when you had some veterans on the team and when new blood is produced at a rapid pace. Just look from where we have gone in large leaps from '90 then '94 and again from '98 to '02 . I would bet you that there will be at a minimum 12 to 16 new faces, even some names we don't even know yet.
I think you've named three of the key four core guys, and there is a lot of sentiment here that Mastroeni is in that category too. That being said, who in '98 would have expected the USA to get the level of play in '02 that it did from O'Brien, Donovan, Beasley, Mastroeni, Sanneh and Mathis? Plus Hedjuk and Berhalter played better D in WC '02 than many would have expected in '98. It shows that many things can happen in four years. The USA is now legitimately a talented soccer nation. The exciting thing is that American fans can expect to be competitive at WC '06. The entertaining element is that some of the key players could be folks we haven't even thought to mention here.
However the Nats are a totally different situation from DC. In League soccer you only worry about THIS season or at most the next. So that's a good reason to play your favorites from one season to the next. In international soccer, needless to say, only one competition really matters. I'm confident Bruce knows this. I'm also confident that from having such a dominant program in College soccer he knows how to transition to a completely new team in just four years.
Yeah, it's strange isn't it? People perform well, and then these wackos go and change their opinions about them. I don't get it, it's almost like they're admitting they don't know everything. Well, I hope that at least the two of us can agree that discussions here would go a lot better if people decide once and for all what they believe, and then stick to it regardless of what other people say or what the results are. One day, my friend, one day.
You are an idiot, before you star putting that people are two old then check their ages. Again, look at Stewart, 33 this year. The only people I count of the next World Cup are Agoos and Stewart due to age. I think that Bruce will figure it out, a lot better than our speculating. I trust, shouldn't you??
Re: Re: Cleaning House - Rebuilding the Team. Thanks for the kind words. Point being I assume that the actual numeric ages don't work out to be that old for many of the listed players when you do the math. Bravo, you are correct in your math, but I think you missed my underlying point. That being that these are players we have seen a lot of over the past four years or so whether or not they will be under the age of 35. in 4 years. At the same time we have a several new, young players that haven't seen a minute with the senior nats squad. We have 4 years or so to assemble our next Nats squad, and I think Bruce will have a lot of experimenting to do with new faces in order to determine who could contribute and where. The alternative of going to the same well of players again and again for the next four years seems like rather a bad approach. So, I would hope that Bruce throws out some dramatically different lineups early on rather than trot out that same list of players. This of course is just my opinion, and highly specualtive. Sorry that it upset you, so I will try and remember in the future that these boards are not the place for opinion or speculation.
While the wacko tag may certainly fit, I haven't changed my opinion of Sanneh's performance in the World Cup at all. I thought he was outstanding. I also think that he COULD be an integral part of the the team leading up to and possibly in 06, as could several players on that list. However, the point was that we have several years ahead of us, and more young talent to look at than we ever have before. Banking on Sanneh, Reyna and company this early on just seems like a premature handicapping of what the team might become. Sure, when qualifying starts having experience and leadership will mean a lot more, but as of now, assessing which new faces might actually enhance the team is more important in my opinion. Lastly, I would never openly admit on these boards that I don't know everything. The BS Union of Omniscients Local 224 might revoke my union card, and I'm already under investigation.
Arena weights in This article is probably noted elsewhere on bigsoccer, but seems particularly relevant to this discussion: http://sports.yahoo.com/mls/news/ap/20021020/ap-mlscup-arena.html
Personally, I hope Rimando never sees a USA jersey. He's a great MLS keeper, but I could see him getting Jorge Campos-ed at the international level. The only prediction I will make is that 1/2 of the team will be made up of players we're not talking about seriously today and that at least 3 players aren't being discussed on BigSoccer at all. In 1998, how many of us knew who Landon Donovan or DeMarcues Beasley were? And if I had bet you $10,000 thatMathis, Wolff, Sanneh, Llamosa, and Maestroeni would be on the 2002 World Cup Team, everyone here would have taken it. Sachin
I remember talking about Mathis to people in France during WC 1998. As for Sanneh, he was in the mix in 1997 as a future prospect, so in 1998 saying he was a possibility for 2002 was not crazy. Llmosa was also mentioned as a possible in 1998, but his citizenship situation was not settled.
I totally disagree with you ChrisE, or was that said tongue in cheek? There are plenty of BS posters who hold onto opinions long after an abundance of evidence to the contrary is produced. Are you saying it is better to hold an opinion when evidence proves you wrong? Or is it better to learn from the evidence in front of you? I don't think very many posters could have or did predict just how well Sanneh would play at right back in the WC. Does the fact that he never showed that well before then take away from his performance? The key question I think, is 'could he do it again?'. It's pretty hard to argue that Sanneh could never play that good again on the international stage. That doesn't mean he ever will, but the 'apparant' odds are certainly much higher today, than they were last May.