The Eredivisie is higher-ranked than the Super Lig - 6th versus 12th. And it's not even close. The Erdivisie has 59.3 coefficient points, while the Super Lig has 32.1, about the same as the gap between Ligue 1 and La Liga.
Since his return from injury (20230306) Wright has scored five goals in six Super Lig games. In the same time frame, from 20230304, Pepi has scored two goals in six Eredivisie games. But Pepi has done so for the second weakest team in his league. Wright has done so for a mid-table team. However, without Wright's goals Antalyaspor would be in the relegation zone. So it's between the 7th goal scorer (11/3) in the 6th league in UEFA, and the 4th goal scorer (15/2) in the 12th league in UEFA. Close, but Pepi ranks a bit higher.
Which was my point. IMO both of them deserve a lot of credit for their mental toughness over the last few seasons. In Germany, both were playing for clubs that weren't entirely sure what they were doing with them and in Haji's case wasn't at all sure what it was doing, period. Add that on top of the cultural adjustment and the language barrier and it would have been easy for Pepi to fold, as it looked like Haji did, and to stay folded in Haji's case. Whatever their ceilings may turn out to be, they both have decent futures at higher levels than they're at now. And that includes higher than Augsburg.
Both these guys are making a lot of their less-than-ideal situations. The main difference is Wright just turned 25 - he's basically on the Pulisic career curve, whereas Pepi just turned 20. That five year difference is substantial in terms of what a club might invest in a player, but plenty of players have a very good season early in their career and can't ever build on that success... Will be interesting to watch both over the next few season.
Transfermarkt shows him with 15 league goals, ahead of Icardi by 2. https://www.transfermarkt.us/super-lig/torschuetzenliste/wettbewerb/TR1/saison_id/2022 We also need to keep in mind that he was sidelined for 6 straight games with a thigh muscle injury, so his current tally is very impressive indeed.
Out of curiosity I just took a look at the leading scorers in the Turkish League this season. Talk about a blast from the past. I can see why top 4 leagues would look at scorers from that league with a fair bit of skepticism.
A real treat and blast from the past is a scrolling through the rosters of SuperLig teams. You’ll constantly find yourself saying “oh…… that’s where [insert name] went. I forgot about him.”
I did a piss poor job of writing that sentence but note my point in front of it (and what I’ve written elsewhere): what I was trying to say was we’ve got our #1 Pepi and we’ve got Wright and nothing else consistently producing. I don’t disagree w/your point in the least and meant as much in the sentence preceding it. I will add if Sargent can score a couple more you can throw him in.
He's double'd his career high goal total this year which is a nice trend, but the negative is that half of it was in 1 month, 8 months ago. He also had the secondary assist on the goal vs Wales, and appeared to be on the cusp of maybe decent play vs Iran before getting hurt. Lets just say 2022-2023 is the most promising he's looked since 2018-2019, w/everything inbetween being a mix of dire to disappointing. I would not put Sargent ahead of Pepi at this point, but nobody else in the pool has a clearly stronger claim, nor a weaker one, after Pepi, it's basically a collection of guys w/clear issues and then the figure of Balogun in the distance ready to slay them all. But yeah, if you go by club form, I take Pepi, then Wright, if you go by quality of play with the senior team, I'd go with Pepi and Sargent because while Sargent doesn't get the goals, he plays more effectively with his teammates than Ferreira, or Wright or Pefok for now.
I know, I know, he looks nice in his uniform and he seems to be loved by his mates. And we're all familiar with him. And I'm sure he's a great kid, yes, Sarge is. But the purpose of a striker is to score goals. Josh has 23 games with the NT. He's only scored five times. Two of those in friendlies. In actual games, he's only scored against Cuba. So unless you're a fellow redhead and your core identity is tied to his, it's time to move on.
Going back to 2015 U-17 we have CP, Wes, Adams, LDLT at leas, maybe someone else. So another nice guy from that team jumps over Pepi, and then exactly the same guys want Gio off the team. It's good Zendejas switched to us.
Disagree. Maybe three/four years ago, not now. Now MLS is about par with the Greek league. IMO, of course.
I love MLS and I think it's vital to the development of the sport in the US, but I'm not going to deceive myself: it's not that good. "Terrible" is relative. The Vietnamese second division is terrible. The Finnish fourth division is terrible.
Fine. I’ll rephrase….The Greek SuperLiga is really bad. Poor quality. Not technical or tactical aside from a team or two. I’m not even comparing it to MLS. I just saying in general the Superliga has declined and fairly quickly. I assume because of the country’s financial crisis and clubs not being able to attract the players it once did.
MLS is stronger than 3 years ago. It's around Belgian league, and probably better. I'm not adding IMO, as every single post here means that.
Since there's about zero inter-league play between MLS and anyone other than Liga MX, there's no way of making a comparison between MLS and any European league. You could use players who move to/from MLS from Europe and how they did before or after their move, but you'd need a larger number moving back and forth every season to get a useful sample size. There is the option of comparing the average wage budgets in MLS and the comparitor league; football transfers being a global business, Stefan Szymanski's research showing a 93% correlation between the wage budget and a team's place in a division, etc. The problem there is comparing like with like. MLS is still a parity-drive league, while foreign league pyramids are pretty much free markets: while Turkey's Big 4 (Gala, Fener, Besiktas and Trabzon) have BL1/La Liga-type budgets, Antalya would be around the middle in MLS and the smaller clubs wouldn't be that far ahead of the richer USL sides.