I mean, some of this discussion reads passive. An introspective team might consider its role in player health. Some of the guys are just injury prone. Some of the guys are not really part of the team but hustling to break in when they get hurt. But some of them are, say, picking up injuries in NT games, in post game warm downs(!), or perhaps from overuse even if the injury happens during club season. Fix what you can fix.
There is something to be said about having players peak at WC which may mean choosing when to have them participate in international duty. Especially the youngsters. It is a balancing act and of course qualification is a must. No one right answer.
You're kind of talking like we don't have any experience in qualifying before. We did it several times. What worked, what didn't. What are our weak points. For example, the pre-November game camp seems like a good idea for healthy MLS for that game. Also leaving off dinged and tired MLS players. We used to use almost a B team for semi round quali. That doesn't apply here but shouldn't be forgotten. We used to leave Reyna, Friedel, and others off to rest some friendlies. Nothing besides the marketing department says we have to have them there. I think the value of chemistry for a team that meets up once a month or every other month is overrated (except for world cup prep). You want natural chemistry, players who work well with others. I don't think we should send our best team to LoN. We should be locked for rank by then, and our goal is healthy players for September. Treat it like we used to treat Gold Cup. Or we can obsess and test whether our players are exhausted by November. We hopefully learned from TnT to squad rotate the second game of a pair. No, I think we learned a lot of lessons, and then it's like we decided to imitate Europe, and we forgot a lot. Such as club form doesn't necessarily mean squat. But if your goal is more keeping up with the Joneses than pragmatism, you start subbing in theory for practice.
Curious if anyone thinks that Berhalter is on thinner ice with his brother gone from the C-suite and his former boss Stewart "promoted" out of the NT GM slot.
Do you think he has any say? I got the feeling Ernie didn’t want to GM the women side and they didn’t intend to pay them the same so they promoted him to his new role. Hired a GM for Women’s side who runs that side. Then hired McBride called him GM of the men’s side but is really just doing the things Ernie doesn’t want to but doesn’t have any real say.
It depends what they did with the job description of the GM. Originally it included hiring-firing the USMNT manager (i.e. Berhalter). You will recall Gulati's long years of service came to an abrupt end after he fired Klinsi and hired Arena to pilot the team thru the treacherous waters of Couva. McBride had a succinct review of the failure in the form of a hot take but it was among the best imo. If McBride is not there to fire Berhalter, I would nonetheless think his input in that decision may be valuable.
Yea I don’t think they clearly outlined it. I know they talked about so of it but not bullet point list of responsibilities if you know what I mean. He may have a voice but I just don’t see him having any real say. At the end of the day, it’s all Ernie now.
Interesting article with Berhalter being the one to stick up for and value US players going abroad to grow the game and the national team: https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020...an-reach-next-level-continuing-export-players “For me, the next level now is continuing to export players,” Berhalter said in a panel-style discussion about MLS’s future. “You know, I was watching the Chelsea-Bayern Munich game yesterday and the best player on the field came from Major League Soccer. That was Alphonso Davies. Tyler Adams at [RB Leipzig] and Zack Steffen that we sold to [Manchester] City, that's the next level for this league and I'm confident we're going to get there.”
I saw that article. What 3G said was in line with the new emphasis on MLS as a 'selling league' that Garber has been stressing.
Here's the logic, and I'm not saying it would have worked or been the best outcome, but it's pretty simple: In order to play through the middle, the US is going to want to have numbers in there, which means supplementing the midfield from the perimeter positions at times. The inverted fullback role adds another central midfielder, putting four in there Whoever plays that role has to have both strong soccer IQ and be able to cover large swaths of ground at high speed -- as there will be times where they will have to get back on defense across a massive bit of ground as well as it just being a fairly active and rangy position at heart. Adams has both those attributes. Bradley and Trapp are simply way to slow to play a perimeter position at all, much less one that might need to recover fast. Johnson is a perimeter player who is already 32. He doesn't have Adams' speed anymore, and certainly won't in two years I think someone like Dest completely changes the equation here -- his skillset at the outside back position is ideal to play an inverted fullback at times. But pre-Dest, when the other choices at RB included a less-than-skillful Yedlin and a solid but unspectacular Cannon or Lima and not much at all at LB, you can see why there might be interest to put Adams there. RB Leipzig had begun to use him similarly - not because it's his best position, but because he's the best suited to play it when you have more central mids than outside backs.
It's a fullback role. Johnson barely plays. Is over 30. And is frequently injured. RBL, in 3 out of the past 4, used Adams as a wingback, rather than an inverted fullback.
Good post. And can understand the idea. The issue is, and always has been, putting our best or 2nd best player at a less influential position to accommodate Trapp or Bradley just made zero sense. Can understand RBL doing it. Don't know their team much, but I doubt adams is by far their best midfielder. They used the tactic to get him on the field because they presumably saw that he brought value. His value to the US team was in the most important position on the field, not slid over so Trapp could lead capably, or so Bradley could get the caps record. (edit - when we have a better DM than Adams, and assuming he is still a high end player, I am all for giving this tactic a whirl. I think it leaves us completely vulnerable on counters, but think the idea is at least interesting.)
I think Berhalter came up with the idea when Adams was still very early in his career at RBL. It was probably a good idea when he (GB) mentally committed to it. The problem was that he stuck with talking about it past the point where it made any sense. He definitely could have moved on more quickly. But, it appears that he has. I've got bigger issues with Berhalter.
At RBL, Adams wasn't being as an inverted fullback. Implementing the concept was destined to fail because playing out of the back, through the middle required an overhaul of the pool, something which GB was never prepared to do.
There are two competing tactical/personnel philosophies in play that cause the crux of this debate. 1) You put your best 11 players on the field, even if it means putting some of your best players in positions where they aren't in their most valuable positions. 2) You identify your best players and determine where their most value lies. You then develop your tactics and personnel around these areas. If you are teams like Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, etc., you can get away with Option 1. When your entire roster is likely starting for Top 4 or Top 5 leagues, you can move players around. In the case of the US when they simply don't have that talent level, I think you have to go with Option 2. For the US, this means getting your best players into their best positions and figure out what adjustments to make tactically and personnel-wise. For the US, that means putting Adams at the Ertz-style 6 position, McKennie at the 8, and Pulisic on the wing in a 4-3-3. Or, you play a 4-2-3-1 with McKennie and Adams as a double pivot. I realize this means you may have to play Altidore more when healthy since he would be better as a lone striker, but that may have to be the case.
Agree with most of this, but what made it so ridiculous was Egg was using his own nonsensical third philosophy, which was - 3) You put some of your best players in positions where they aren't in their most valuable positions in order to accommodate a player who isn't among the best 11 players. Like I said before, if we had a 6 better than Adams, I don't think anyone would be unhappy with Egg's use of philosophy #1. But, presumably, and from what I've seen here, Egg has apparently moved on from these ideas, and ready to install Adams at the 6 and do away with the other scrubs. The real issue may be when/if Adams is injured. Might be Trapp/Bradley again, rather than moving McKennie back or Morales.
Even if we had a 6 who was better than Adams, implementing a system that utilzed an inverted fullback would still require an over-haul of the pool. You need the GKs and CBs who can play out of the back. You need attackers who can possess. Berhalther never demonstrated he was prepared to do this.
I don't think Option #1 is exclusively for talented teams; I actually think it is more important for shallower teams than top teams. Teams overflowing with talent can make fit choices easily -- the gap between the best players and the next level down is lower and doesn't create weak links. It's teams like the US that need to get all the best players on the pitch because the drop off can be huge. If McKennie, Adams and Pomykal all end up being in our top 6 or so in terms of talent, we need to find a way to get them all on the field even if they are all preferred as 8s, for example. The issue that everyone had, and continues to have with the inverted fullback has a lot more to do with Michael Bradley or Trapp at the 6 rather than Adams playing a flexible role. Which I understand. Neither is the defensive presence most want back there. But that said, I also think the days of a pure destroyer are over. And I think before completely judging a tactical choice, I think we actually have to see how all the pieces interact. We never really got that here.