Pre-match: Concacaf Nations League Quarterfinals @ Jamaica (Nov 14) & v Jamaica (Nov 18)

Puli has in fact played RB (Tuchel did it on two different teams). Musah has played RB recently. Wes has also played RB - Obviously more RWB than RB, but he has done so. I wasn't endorsing any of them playing there, but pointing out that half the team has in fact played fullback.

 

And so has Weah.

 

whatever. how on earth can you half heartedly say "it's [not] silly to want to look at different players" -- i mean we only have a losing record for a year and a half -- then chuckle at me getting grouchy that his first roster barely changed from berhalter/varas' one, which then barely changed the next time.

you either mean it or not. if you didn't see this list and cringe you're not paying enough attention.

lot of the same people losing all year. lot of the same guys who played jamaica in march, gave up a goal in 1', and had to chase the game into OT after a very lucky own goal.

but keep pretending. sure.

and, yeah, i'd have cut lund, too, but then if you noticed the net result is zero specialist left side backs besides jedi. not a new face.

and i'd have cut a list. or, to be honest, the roster would have changed the first time for the harmless friendlies, but we're scared to lose those, and now we're scared to lose this, and so next to zero change. scared of our own shadow despite losing results.

the only time we seem not scared to tinker is january.

i could understand your calm and arrogance if we just made a world cup semi, but we also wouldn't have lost more games than won for a year, fired the coach, and looked like crap doing it.

 

I don't really disagree with anything you said, although I'm probably a bit more optimistic about us having more control over our destiny than it seems you do. I do believe it is extremely important to get good results in both games but I think Pochettino has already indicated he is trying to achieve two goals: Win and, to a lesser extent, evaluate. 25 in camp, 23 gameday right? If that is correct, two won't make it and if one is Zendejas, my guess is that he is done.

I think this quote sums up Poch's dilemma and approach:

"We select 25 players on the roster and we try to find the best balance, thinking not only about [performing] today if not to build something for 2026," Pochettino told a news conference on Sunday.

"That is the main objective. Of course the objective is always about to win because we need to be competitive but it's important because we are not going to have too many camps to see players."

Pulisic, Weah headline USMNT squad for Concacaf quarterfinal - ESPN

So, he is still trying to put the best team possible on the field while evaluating (some only in training) but none of the players (except perhaps Steffan?) are a huge surprise...right? No new caps. The main surprise was the distribution of players but perhaps that was strategically done.

 

re your RB gibberish, dude, do you get that i cannot literally have weah playing both RF and RB same time. or musah MF and RB. you cannot double count starters we routinely use elsewhere. nor can you escape "count" issues by moving them back from one spot for cover --- without then creating a hole someplace else.

or do people forget how we came to be playing MF rubbish at wings for the mexico game? i remember lectures before that one about how we needed to trial CFs. then watched sargent suck. then watched pulisic go home and us have little offense as no weah/reyna and CP sent back.

and while in theory we could move a few starters back, in reyna's absence pulling CP back would cripple one side. or weah going back would leave us as one sided as last time.

but continue your pedantic re-telling of transfermarkt.

common sense is maybe don't have 20 CB and DM but not enough wing options where you can sub or stand an injury at a position which my own personal experience is --- that spot is exhausting. particularly when you ask what we ask of jedi.

 

Pretty sure both Weah and Wes played FB for Juve in a 4 man back line, if only briefly.

 

Weah has in fact played as many games as a left back than as a right back in club soccer.

We have backup fullback options.

This isn't a 47 game death march thru some Cambodian jungle.

Its two games against Jamaica.

For Pete's sake.

 

you're missing my point. a key problem with US MNT right now is every freaking game is the world cup final to be played with some approximation of the A first choice.

even as the A first choice sucks, which puts in question if they should be the A team.

but we cannot challenge that because the jillionth regional tournament of the cycle is all important. even though history says we have won this tournament every time without any other success pieces falling into place around it.

as i said other comment, i would personally have used the previous 2 windows to play around, completely justified by the summer in doing so. but at some point with finite games before our world cup arrives, you have to expend some pondering if i have overlooked something.

and to point out the big hole i see in our process, since every game is the super bowl, the only game we treat as meaningless is the january game. which is a MLS/MX affair almost exclusively.

which ironically means that we have a european B team size donut hole. we will play the A team as status quo understood. we will experiment with americas B players. but there is little window for european B guys -- some of whom are the most elite prospects.

this results in such absurdities as aaronson beating reyna, richards, weah, sargent, and co. to regular NT status. because aaronson can duck in with MLS in the january game. while the euro based prospects we will wait until they are like first team stars at their elite clubs before they make it. so we sandbag the good ones.

and thus no surprise cole campbell, now dortmund first team and lauded by schalke's U19 coach as a future star, is down with the U20s. just like GB sandbagged miles, weah, sargent, and others to U23 when he began coaching.

zero guts. zero glory. this is the team that has often rode donovan, beasley, or pulisic to improvement but seems scared to call that type player now. and it's weird it's the same fans who otherwise are club snobs.

 

again, you seem to have some basic confusion. in weah and reyna's absence last game, we struggled for much offense. your swiss army solution for any backline issue is send weah back. at which point, depending on game situation, you have removed your right side strength and recreated our last window struggles.

what if we are both down a goal but then down a wingback?

sorry, but to me it's like when GB would do qualifiers and maybe pulisic is out and his only answer is aaronson, except he also had aaronson as his only MF sub of any productivity. and we have 2-3 games that window and god forbid he wants a sub.

or it's like arena going down to couva with basically dempsey off the bench and that's it, throws a tired team out there, ships a couple goals, and he has one good reserve attacker and a bunch of stalemate DM meant for a game scenario that didn't actually take place.

or, what if jedi and weah get tired, and it's even on aggregate, and we need a goal. i can push weah back, but he's tired. and i still need that goal. i don't get to phone a friend. i have what i traveled with.

 

Dude, are you thick or what? He’s barely even as familiar with the pool as you or I, and he’s had one opportunity to see them in person. One camp!

 

last point but i think unless they are disguised one legged attacking backs, like dest, sidedness isn't that big a deal for backs. i played both sides in college. you just reorient to what leg to use and what types of balls to play. if you have 2 legs.

which dest didn't on defense. dest couldn't defend left. but to me it's exceptional for a pro level 2 legged player to be unable to play both sides in a pinch. the real issue is certain fans and coaches just badly want the correct crossing leg. but i had a left footed cross goal in college. it's kind of fake.

but to me if you use athletic wingbacks with defensive nous most can play either side fine. this sidedness stuff is a debate had by the sort of folks who think backs should be picked for offense. which we have seen for 6 years has its counterattack consequences.

the deal is if you don't call enough guys you don't have a 2 sided replacement to try.

 

lund was freaking obvious. he was hitting blind flick balls to the other team, repeatedly.

he is being paid, what, $3-4m or more, to do a job. that job is not to just show up at camps and run guys through drills, then manage a game or two.

part of his job, in his 3 off weeks every month, sitting at home, is watch some darned tape, scout the opponent, scout our team, scout new players.

when i see a xerox roster, except for give or take, one guy, who played badly right in front of god and poch and everyone, how hard do you think i believe he scouted? especially considering we just got whooped by mexico.

sorry but this reeks of USSF is making the lists and he just parachutes in for a week and orders them around. or he is not trying very hard to scout in his "down time."

all these posts making fun of me act like we won two games 4-0. we barely beat panama then got clobbered by mexico. after a year and change of crap play and losing more often than winning.

 

I love how there are posters who think they're better talent evaluators, tacticians, and strategists than Mauricio effing Pochettino.

Mauricio Pochettino was only technically hired in September.
He hasn't had a lot of time to evaluate this pool and expand his net.

He's had one camp. If he didn't discard a player after that one October camp, its because he sees traits or skillsets that he wants to work with. I imagine that evaluation was happening in the training sessions as much as the games.

Give him time to evaluate these players!!!

 

1856283295866089886 is not a valid tweet id

 

Just ignored juvechelsea and got 3 hours of my life back. #lifehacks

 

to me the pivot point on this gutlessness was klinsi-arena. klinsi, having his own resume and gravitas, was willing to take risks on green and pulisic off age group ball, morris from college. give or take sarachan's period, when the team had been reduced to rubble and had to be rebuilt from U20s, this has since become an overly "safe" team that befuddlingly thinks its mid-age regulars are its best chance at winning soccer games, even when it should know better. GB underlined it when early in his tenure he shipped half his future lineup down to U23 so i could watch zardes and trapp lose gold cup.

to be blunt, where i am upset is i expected poch to be more of a swashbuckling change agent. to come in with a half dozen dual nationals he had convinced with his big name and high energy. to point out another handful of kids he had personally scouted, and that with poch's name, he could vouch for. and to generally, quickly, shape this in his image with people he found with his own two eyes.

if he's just gonna run out GB People and glacially paw at the team, why isn't USSF analytics department coaching this?

i figured when we got him it'd be, oh, here's 2 new germans, a couple argentines, koleosho is now down, we'll lock in kochen, here's some kids on the cusp of elite first teams like campbell.

even the lackluster GB it was like, oh, here's dest, here's musah. they managed balogun in a lame duck period.

but i have to be ok with "this." ok. sure.

 

yeah well i learned zero soccer from your rubbish post.

 

ok, does he see a minute? because if he doesn't play, he doesn't "trust" him that much. and he's then no closer to cap-tied. and i know that takes 3 games now but at this point still short 3 games.

and like i said, i would have done more of this sept/oct but the way our schedule is set up half or more of the games are going to be some sort of league or tournament or quarterfinal. which we won't risk anymore because couva.

at which point you can't then declare the rest of the schedule off limits for being important friendlies we need to win at all costs. but we just spent two windows on 80-90% of the same people who blew the summer. plus this one. but that's no cause for alarm because we trust the coach. apparently independently of him doing anything different i guess.

or else it telescopes down to A team training games and a single B team january friendly using only americas players. and a big donut hole to elevate european prospects from.

 

I should not have engaged. I didn’t realize he was just here to bash a couple guys and pump up some others, under the ruse of critiquing the coach. My bad.

 

Diego could have gotten more playing time at the U20 camp and already was called in to the last camp to get a feel for the environment.

 

"technically only hired in september?" as though he wasn't applying for the job weeks before that. as though we wouldn't have (hopefully) demanded he convey some clue about the team we were considering let him coach.

as though we don't have videos he could watch that might save him some time on, say, zendejas.

can you imagine showing up for a job interview with no clue about your potential employer? tell your boss, ummm, if you hire me, can you like do half my job for me for the first 2 months? like i know you hired me to be part over HR but i won't be personally picking any of your new people for a while. so have the HR people below me pick them.

yeah, see if you get that job.

and fwiw "he watches the practices" only works if he does a winning job. we had wet behind the ears coaches at houston i heard the same excuse for. ramos, for example, won 18% of his games here, then 22% at hartford.

it's basically a lame call to authority for a coach whose results are already being questioned. he's coach, i'm not. ok, then make some actual changes and get some results. then i will trust he watched the practices better than i watched his games.

 

When did Klinsi call in Green and Morris? Was it the first camp? Second camp?
No. Green was March ‘14, the spring before the WC. Morris was called in late Aug. ‘14.
Klinsmann needed a minute just like Poch does.

 

Every time we've tried to call him into the U20s, Barca has rejected the call up. So I suspect there may be some element of that here.

Also, recruiting. And we're desperate.

 

you're missing my point. there is a contest for his services. the question is not strictly following meritocracy even if he walks like vargas and esmir just did. then smugly telling folks "well, he wasn't ready yet."

it's can i get him on the field enough to lock him down, merit or not. you sort out merit and his developmental needs AFTER. you don't have some adult NT aggression and he'll be taking peruvian or venezuelan or spanish phone calls. and maybe gone.

sorry but on what planet does riding the bench sell commit here?

when you got brought in to guest play for a tournament in select, would sitting the whole weekend sell that choice? sure. if you go to x college and sit as a frosh, does that encourage not transferring? exactly.

and i actually agree with poch that we should reward the players who commit hard here. but that means reward as in, give some minutes.

i mean, you have already done half of it. he's here. he should be working towards 3 caps from 2 windows. maybe 15 here and 15 there. one more and he's set. and it's not like we can't use another GK option with the gaffe machine backups.

 

You're writing this after putting Julian Green on your alternative roster? How is Green any less "B team lovefest" than those guys? And Maximillian Dietz, you're expecting him to be above B team level based on what exactly? Why is your username even juvechelsea and not greutherfurth??

Also Poch didn't call up guys like Horvath and Lund so he IS dropping some guys...