I agree. I don’t blame US Soccee for mishandling this, as there’s no indication that they did. I was just picking nits with your post.
Noel Buck Simon Rusk on Noel Buck: He’s a committed lad with a good attitude. That’s the first thing that we look at. It’s great for Noel that he is coming to join us and it’s great for the squad.#NERevs https://t.co/e1qCr3UD4o pic.twitter.com/l2n9y44RUl— Seth (@SethMan31) September 9, 2024
We have 10 players on this current squad that are U23s (eligible for our youth forum this year due to the Olympics). 9 of the 10 are dual-nationals. [Balogun (England and Nigeria), Pepi (Mexico), Cowell (Mexico), Johnny (Brazil and Italy), Musah (England and Italy), Morris (Canada), Lund (Finland), Kochen (Peru, Venezuela). The only one who isn't is Wiley, as far as I know.] Like always, we pick dual-nationals over other dual-nationals. Particularly in the young age groups. Just the nature of our pool. We can't keep everyone happy all the time when it comes to senior national team callups. If a guy like Esmir wants senior international callups in games that matter RIGHT NOW, the US wasn't a choice. Its just Balogun and Musah in reverse. We recruited them with senior international callup opportunities while England wanted them in youth teams. And, by the way, England made the right choice. Neither would have been anywhere close to their recent Euros team.
So from the 2005s we have lost (1 and 5 on this list) Esmir B who was one of the two best players in January camp alongside Diego Luna (also a dual nat, who didn't make the Olympic roster) but then not on the Olympic roster, and Obed Vargas who is apparently the 16th best teenager in the world and only MLSer in the Top 100 but not on the Olympic roster.... Obed Vargas is rated as the 16th best teenager in the world, the only MLS player in the Top 100. https://t.co/NO068TKfPR pic.twitter.com/zyleIiQ4Nb— Jeremiah Oshan (@JeremiahOshan) September 12, 2024 Noel Buck is another 2005 (#3 on the list above)
A USMNT coach who can speak both English and Spanish... dual-language can't hurt with dual-nats 6/ Love this nugget about Poch speaking Spanish and this being attractive as a tool to recruit dual nats. A couple things in here make me think there might be more than 2 years being planned out here. Don’t want to get hopes up but seems like there is potential. pic.twitter.com/aC7TClvW2E— USMNT_STAN (@StanUsmnt) September 12, 2024
"Rumor" was Esmir was going to switch regardless of if he made the Olympic team or not. Not making the Olympic team made a nice convenient catalyst to speed-up the switch. Obed Vargas was rooting against the USMNT, because his feelings/loyalties lied elsewhere. How is that helpful to the US teams? At least he was honest about it. Saved the US from wasting more caps on him. In reverse, we are hoping Koleosho switches from Italy. From the Italian point of view that could be "so you used us for the United States". They could be right. But Italy will quickly come to realize, its not the end of the world, and they will quickly move on.
Can that help? I guess so. Is it that big of a deal? Not really. Berhalter's top assistant Estevez was obviously a Spanish speaker. He was supposedly a big recruiter. Varas, Luchi, etc. etc. There have been lots of Spanish speakers on the USMNT staff. I think Pochettino's reputation will be the driver of recruitment. Players will think his tutelage will be beneficial for their careers. Maybe. But we don't actually know yet what his approach to young dual-nationals will be. We'll see.
The thing is we’re invariably going to lose some guys no matter what we do and even if we do everything right. It’s also hard to separate the disappointment and that arises from teams like the Olympics and the comments that come out after. Maybe it was always the case they were always going to pick someone else or maybe it was influenced by disappointment and the comments made are mostly motivated reasoning. But one never actually knows of Esmir and Vargas would have picked differently had they been locked in with the Olympic. Or if they go to the Olympics and have a great experience and that completely shift things. But in the end Esmir did not deserve to be on the Olympic roster on merit and it’s a tough roster to make considering the how small it is. Ironically Vargas would have had a decent shot once it was clear Morris wasn’t going to be released.
Vargas and Esmir DID NOT WANT TO PLAY FOR US. Vargas literally has a video describing why he chose to play for Mexico. His heart is with our biggest rival. I will never understand why people pine for players on the USMNT forum that don't want to play for us. Its the same with like.........Julian Araujo. He literally wrote a column explaining his decision. It had nothing to do with how the USMNT or USSF or USYNTs treated him. In fact, he thanked us for the great opportunities we'd provided. His heart was just with Mexico. That was it. These players have a choice and their choice wasn't us. Get over it. If Esmir Bajraktarevic wanted to be in our program today, he could he. It wouldn't be with the USMNT or the U23s. He hadn't yet earned those positions. He would be on our U20 World Cup team. Same for a player like Noel Buck.
How much recruitment could Poch even do in two years? The only player to recruit is Luca Koleosho. Everyone else is either unproven or not good enough.
Arnie Chase has played with Japan at U17, U20, and U23 levels. He'll be called up to their senior team imminently based on the Japanese media. [He already trained with the senior team in 2022, but wasn't capped.] There seems to be this delusion on the USMNT boards that all of these players in other national team programs will just want to play with us........................because we're the United States or something. Oh yeah, we'll just call up Arnie Chase and he'll switch to us.
If you don't ask you don't know. I know its unlikely but Poch should at least pick up the phone. I was responding to the statement that no dual nat other than Luca had the quality to help out. He could possibly pitch a much quicker route to first team minutes.
Yeah, just like the delusion no high level coach wanted to coach the US and GGG was the best we could do.
We can't just say "LET'S GET ARNIE CHASE!" and assume anything. I'm sure we're in touch with him behind the scenes in case he's interested. We literally are one of the best recruiters of dual-nationals on Earth. We had nine dual-nationals 23 years old or younger at our most recent camp. [Balogun, Tillman, Johnny, Pepi, Kochen, Lund, Morris, Cowell, Musah.] People think the USSF doesn't know about Arnie Chase? We called up Johnny from Brazil when he'd made one appearance in a first team soccer game. Chase is provisionally cap-tied to Japan. He played for them at the U20 World Cup. He played for them during Olympic qualifiers (although not selected for the Olympics). He's trained with them in senior Japan camps.
I haven't read the whole discussion, has anyone said LET'S GET ARNIE CHASE and that was all we needed to do? I was just responding to you saying it's delusional that dual-nats will want to play for us because we're the US. There seems to be at least some evidence (from coaching side at least) that being a part of the team that is host country in 2026 and the growth of the program is creating additional level of interest.
Again. I don’t understand your need to degrade fans. That said, I would strongly encourage the USMNT staff to be in contact with Chase, Koleosho, Buck, and others in order to sell our best pitch to them. Should we promise them a starting spot ~ especially regardless of their form or what not? Of course not. Are we going to win over dual national that we go after? Of course not either. But if we’re attacking fans for wanting the US to take an aggressive stance to get the best players on the field just feels unnecessarily condescending.
Because they don't seem like "fans" of the USMNT. They're fans of some fictional program of their own design. I have no way of proving it, but I guarantee you that we've been in touch with Arnie Chase. He may not be interested. What do you want to do? Put a gun to his head? How do you force Julian Araujo or Obed Vargas or Esmir Bajraktarevic to play for you............WHEN THEY DON'T WANT TO! This board behaves like some pathetic teenager rejected by the prom queen. I'm sorry that Arnie Chase wants to play for the nation of his birth, and the nation that he's represented at the U17, U20, and U23 levels. What do you want the USSF to do? Does gnashing your teeth on a message board help? I don't know.
Who says the USSF ISN'T taking an aggressive stance? I know for a fact we are. But there are only so many spots on so many teams, as we all know -- and, as Vargas, Araujo, and Esmir (and Neven Subotic before all of them) have shown, some of these spots are taken by players trying to get other nations to notice them.
Did I say they weren’t? Or did I say that it’s okay for fans to want the USSF to take an aggressive stance?
Honestly, you sound angry about this for no reason at all. No one is saying we must force these players to play for us. Moreover, we don’t know where Chase stands, do we? I haven’t seen any statements to indicate that. We don’t know if we don’t inquire about it. Players switch all the time. It’s not going to hurt us to reach out to him. [Am I saying Chase is the be all for us? No. We don’t know that yet. But we should know that, at the moment, he’s the best long term prospect at center back by a long shot. His competition is Jalen Neal, Noah Cobb, and a bunch of other players who have never played a senior professional game yet]. Simply, we just want our program to demonstrate the initiative to reach out to these players. If the player closes the door, ie as Amir Richardson did so, then we move on. All of us understand this. And yet, all of us should want the best team we can get on the field.