There were plenty Across these tournaments, the US finished ahead of numerous teams whose rosters had superior club/league affiliations.
It doesn't. If Canouse can stay healthy he will challenge McKennie and Adams for a spot at CM and could be an ideal complement as the DM in a 3 CM set. Lets not forget that he was considered one of the best players of the 2015 U20 squad before he got injured. Last year after joining DC he averaged 3.5Ts and 1.8Is per match while making >91% of his passes. He is rangy, tactically astute, technically very good and is very tough in the tackle. He is a BuLi trained CM. His style is very similar to a young Stu Holden as far as range, work rate, and simple positive passes. He was out with a knee injury the first 4 months of this season but since returning has sent Durkin to the bench and has played an important part in DC's resurgence. If DWill is not ready against Brazil, we should consider a central trio of Weston Canouse Adams. IMO, France's 4-3-3 should be our prototype 4 backline formation moving forward. Weah Wood Pulisic McKennie Adams Canouse* Robinson Brooks Miazga Yedlin Steffen *DWilliams if he gets game time this weekend.
Depends, if we have a new coach he may want to take a look. If we go very young again they may want him there as a leader depending on his personality (this can be done with him training and not playing too).
We don't have a new coach, and as of right now there is no indication that we will get one any time soon.
Beat me too it. In fact, the opposite is true. There is every indication Sarachan will helm the six friendlies.
I think the first place I heard this was here: link: https://player.fm/series/planet-ftb...to-bolivian-included-a-copa-libertadores-game Around minute 24 or so they go into it, and I remember being infuriated at the time because like many around here, I read multiple sources, and read you guys, and I never heard any of this, until this podcast, and then they just carpet bombed him (Strauss really shredded him, Wall in a rare instance is actually putting it out there, a little bit, too). Then in June we get this at the ringer: https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/5/...ory-jurgen-klinsmann-sunil-gulati-bruce-arena "...In one corner of the cramped locker room sat a glowering Geoff Cameron. The veteran Premier League defender was irate from being left on the bench during the past two matches — a decision all the more galling now that his replacement, Omar Gonzalez, had opened the scoring with a horrifying own goal.Cameron’s anger was just one example of tension inside the U.S. locker.... Arena’s delicate balancing act between fixing the team culture and getting the most out of an already shallow talent pool was personified by Geoff Cameron....From the start, his relationship with Arena was rocky. Cameron and some other players didn’t respect the level of experience that Arena’s assistants brought to the team....As tensions at practice sessions grew, Arena’s staff came to believe that these players were more interested in earning a ticket to the World Cup than in the overall health of the squad...As it was before, when the results were good, team chemistry wasn’t as much of a problem. According to one source, Cameron’s attitude was exceptionally positive during the team’s hard-fought draw against Mexico. But when the squad struggled, like in its 2–0 loss at home to Costa Rica in September that again put qualification in doubt, the locker-room problems resurfaced. Tensions with Cameron climaxed during the team’s next qualification match, a must-win against Panama in October. Before the match, rumors around the team swirled that Cameron would get sent home. According to a source close to the team, Cameron himself asked about leaving after hearing from Arena that he would not be starting the match. But Cameron elected to remain with the squad, and in the middle of the resounding 4–0 victory — which put the U.S. within one point of qualification for Russia — Cameron allegedly grumbled to his benchmates about his lack of playing time even as his teammates dominated on the pitch. Word of his complaints reached Arena’s staff, which sealed Cameron’s fate: He would not play in the final match against Trinidad...." The first time I heard about this was on the Planet Futbol podcast last winter, and then we get this heavily researched piece from theringer in June which doubles down on the Cameron angle. And there you have it.
The worst thing a coach can do is leave a malingerer on the bench. While it’s tough to cut a player whose talent is starting quality, if a coach feels he’s poisonous to the locker room that you’re trying to build, he has to go. iMO, JK did this with LD and the team performed admirably even though we left a well-known talented player at home. If arena thought that GCam was a bad egg, he should have cut him, maybe we would’ve qualified.
Ehhh, I think #1, Arena should've realized Cameron was flat out way better than than Gonzalez, mistake or not, and not let his comfort level, or ego get in the way, but failing that, yeah, send him home then, but really, it should've been 1. Regardless, Cameron isn't why we lost that game. Not turning over the lineup, complacency, entitled b.s., playing grabarse instead of taking the game seriously, and then sleepwalking through the game and not playing with urgency....failing to close down the goal scorer, Howard being old and not what he was on that first goal etc. There were a lot of reasons we failed, and Cameron being a pain in the rear on the bench was a part of a larger problem, but that had more to do with the whole seven year slowly unfolding implosion of the team, rather than a specific game, or even a hex. The hex was a team wide problem, and fed based problem, and 2011-2017 was a fed top down and bottom up problem. As much as the Cameron stuff bothers me, it's not why the team humiliated itself. It took 7 years of missteps and stupidity and entitlement and complacency to get us to that miserable day and all the crap days that lead to it.
7 years of missteps? Nah. Arena had 10 hex matches, a Gold Cup, and a January Camp to get this. Plenty of coaches have turned around far worse situations in less time.
That's simply a reference to the USMNT really being on a downward trajectory on a senior level since at least 2011, the fed itself, probably since 2007.
That is my point. The Ringer report and incidents around Arena's camps is the only report of issues with Cameron. Arena brought in amateur hour coaches like his son, Sarachan and Williams and a MLS-first adenda. Several players including GCam had concerns. If the Ringer reporting is the basis for your attacking Cameron for locker room chemistry perhaps you should re-read the section on Bradley and Deuce's response to him.
How could a program that tied its best single season record in 2012, broke the record in 2013 along with setting a consecutive win total, get out of the GOD in 2014 was a Wondo sitter away from the QF, played for the 3rd place match at Copa 100 in 2016 be on a downward trajectory since 2011? Bruce Arena and the GOBs spent most of that time sniping at the program and when Arena finally got control at the end of 2016 the team failed to get 13 points from 24 with 18 against the bottom 3 teams (Panama, Honduras, and T&T) in the Hex. The downward trajectory started when Arena took over.
The decline of Jones and Dempsey marked the beginning of the downward trajectory. Arena needed to overhaul the roster. He didn't.
Jones, Dempsey, Bradley, Gonzales, Johnson, Cameron were all in decline. Brooks, Yedlin, Johnson, Cameron, were frequently hurt. Wood was hurt then lost all form. Pulisic's break out masked a tremendous drop off in health and form from the Copa. Overvaluing experience and ignoring other young players, who admittedly were just emerging, compounded the problem. Other young-ish players were brought in but got hurt. The three young-ish players that got the most time, Villafan, Nagbe, and Acosta all seemed to lack the aggressiveness to get results in CONCACAF. Having a coach that was basically retired and didn't need the results for his career compounded all the problems too. Arena coached like this was all a big testimonial for him. A victory lap ending in Russia. A coach that needed the results to put on his resume would have been more desperate to get those results and less complacent.
Attacking is kinda a strong word. I'd put it more simply, and like I did in the past, if the reports were true (and until I provided those links, I think I've pretty consistently added that caveat though it shouldn't be necessary) then he should be gone. You cant behave the way he was behaving and be considered a leader, or a key piece of the team going forward especially at his age w/o him providing some sort of mea culpa and owning that #1 why he may have been justified in his criticism of the decision (and he was) #2 the team itself, and qualifying for the world cup was WAY WAY WAY more important than his feelings and his bruised ego. He did nothing of the sort, he was such a nightmare they almost sent him home. How often has that happened in US Soccer history? Pretty much never? Other than Mathis, I can't think of a player off the top of my head that so frustrated coaches that they considered drastic action since the days of Wynalda-Harkes. Either you're a part of the solution or you're a part of the problem and it seems pretty clear to me that Cameron became a key part of the problem down the stretch. Nobody should have had to spend a single second worrying about Cameron's feelings with qualification for the cup slipping through their hands, but they did. That's a problem to me. Again, he's not why we failed to qualify, but his behavior ensured he wouldn't be helpful to the qualifying effort down the stretch either.
Forgot to mention, The Ringer, Grant Wahl, and Brian Strauss all covered this. Three different people, not just The Ringer. I don't understand why they saw fit to mention NONE of this for years, and then suddenly did a megadump over Cameron as a persistent problem child in 2018 after, as far as I can tell, never mentioning anything of the kind in previous years. I agree that's bizarre, and it's another reason why Wahl most of all, and Strauss to a lesser extent, are a part of the problem with US soccer in my view. They don't challenge the fed in the way the media challenges everyone and everything else in Pro and College Football, Pro and College Basketball, Baseball and even Hockey.
Look at the play itself. I was amazed at that insane run they had as well, but look at the quality of play as well during that time period, and #2 and #3 what I'm talking about is a large, overarching overall decline in the program, rooted in terrible decisions by Gulati, the Fed, Klinsy, Arena, and the failure with the kids born between '90 and '94 which was underscored by the steep decline in performances at youth tournaments starting with the '07 U-'17, and reaching it's nadir with the failure to qualify for 3 tournaments in two years (U-17, U-20 and the Olympics) and the epic prat fall at the 2013 U-20 World Cup. All of these things are tied together in a giant tapestry of failure, it's a forest for the trees scenario. Yes there were moments interspersed that were fantastic, that undefeated ridiculous run, the early part of the Ghana game and the comeback against Portugal, the heroic defending and keeping against Belgium that kept us in a game we should have lost 4-0 etc. But interspersed in all this is epic failures at all levels of the program, and some progressively worsening quality play that finally began to collapse circa 2015-2017 (the performance at the Copa America Centenario remains an odd little exception proves the rule). I don't disagree that there were moments of outstanding play, and even years where we compiled excellent results, but overall the caliber of play, and the development of the program worsened and worsened over time, starting with the 1990-1994 kids, and culminating with the total collapse the past three years or so. The story of our failure only makes sense when you tie together all these pieces, and when you do, sure, there are some weird aspects that appear to be exceptions, but they strike me more as dead cat bounces, rather than bull market runs, they just served to camouflage and paper over problems which made the implosion that much more likely, and when it came, that much worse than it needed to be. It's my view that if we'd had serious, accountable, thoughtful people running things, rather than the people we actually did have in charge, we would have qualified, and w/o much of a problem. But of course that also plays into, "well, if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle," colloquialism.