Dual nationals who could suit up for the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Richardson

son of Michael "Sugar Ray" Richardson, American NBA player banned for drug tests, bounced around Europe playing hoops until age 47. son is French/ Moroccan/ American. if he doesn't already have a passport with an American father it would be immediate.

19, 6' 5"!, M, Le Havre, some French U20 appearances.

 

It's a proxy argument when we can look at actual players. I don't need to do league comparisons to consider Pefok, Nico, or even Soto. We've seen them. What do your eyes say. It's really only a half useful scouting heuristic when we have never laid eyes on someone. It works better for Richardson's kid as a risk matrix than for the ones we know of.

For the ones we know of, it neglects that someone might be an average or marginal first division player vs an excellent MLS player. Now, to be fair, an excellent first division player is likely better than even an excellent second division player. But how many first division, no doubt, stars do we have? So we're often trying to distinguish between a bench rider in an elite league and a starter someplace else. That's more complicated. If you want to assume anyone in a first division is better, that's trash. Have you never seen the back end of the first team numbers in a cup game. That's the whole reason FA Cup (or like tournaments) is a contest. If Newcastle runs out their scrubs and they can't get on a page they might be worse than a 2nd or 3rd division team. At a point on a first division roster the Venn starts to overlap with lower leagues.

You're also assuming players are participating wholeheartedly in your great capitalist sorting machine and haven't made choices to maximize playing time, or out of loyalty. Gooch was capable of solid, if unspectacular, EPL play. He has followed his youth team down out of loyalty. To me it's beyond sloppy to call him a "League One player." For reality, fine. For talent eval, trash. He's good for 5-10 goals at his level and could at least hack Championship. He hasn't been capped since Sarachan, who for all his coaching issues, I see as a sharper judge of talent -- we are bringing back all the people he identified, eg, Weah, Sargent, Horvath.

Any idiot can read a spreadsheet or a wikipedia page. Takes 5 seconds to make these sort of facile dismissals. Watch the tape. When covid's over, watch them in person. Figure it out for yourself. Quite a few of these club coaches are just wrong. I get there might be some truth to who is where. Sometimes. Not often enough to assume it's true. Which is what the heuristic aims to enforce. He gets paid to scout the opposing teams and scout our talent. Assuming based on wikipedia and transfermarkt is lazy. Assuming their club coach is right is lazy. Do your own work. To me the rote following of the hierarchy is CYA. Does reality follow the hierarchy? Not routinely. We have had plenty of people come in from, say, German youth situations and set the world afire. On paper that's 3rd or 4th division. Is that their level or are they stuck? Exactly. Bayern 2 can't be in B.2 even if it wanted to. Hence a lazy man's on-off switch, 1st or 3rd division. We then see their surplus can go someplace else and start B.1. OK, maybe my Comparator is broken then.

When it gets really stupid is this coach periodically fights his own eyes and cycles back to prestige, Steffen, Brooks, Ream, etc. I go back to, the real test is how they perform and compare within our own camp as a "control" situation. To me the constant "but he plays at......" arguments are tossing aside track record to go back to scouting analysis. We use scouting analysis when we've never seen someone. Once you've seen someone, go with track record. These arguments basically underline how strong the abstractions are at the expense of concrete games. I don't care where Brooks plays. I care how he looks in our shirt.......

Last point, we have a short list of players actually starting in elite first divisions. People act like this is Brazil or something. A significant chunk of this team sits abroad, plays in a second division, plays in MLS. Factor that into being dismissive of a second division player abroad. Maybe we can have this discussion when MLS catches up to the elite and we have 40+ players in elite situations. We instead quickly get to having to make random distinctions among players spread through more prosaic leagues.

The real comparison is how does someone compare to Gold Cup or to the back end of a GB quali roster. And remember who has made some of those lists, Yeuill, Pines, Arriola, etc.

 

I feel like bad, stupid things happen when this turns into an abstract discussion. It's concrete. We have dudes x y z a b c. How do they compare? That focus maintained a lot of the stupidity drains out. Who performs best for the NT. Period. Cuts through much crap.

Pefok had a huge goal in Nations League. Pefok then got caught up in the "club form" idiocy GB radiates (inconsistently -- doesn't seem to hurt Steffen). Pefok is better than Ferreira, Nico, Dike, Sargent, Soto, a list of people who get fanboyed. Even Pepi doesn't consistently score.

For me, they are already in the NT "club," so go on track record. Who looked good? Who produced? Silliest darned thing ever to be like, woah, but their club ball. We're going back there? What about Honduras? And it's inconsistently and sloppily used. Pefok had a goal on Man U. Does that not have any weight?

Wondo is a MLS record holder ahead of much better players including NT hall of famers. Jozy would have 30 goals one place and nothing next stop. The utility of the club driven discussion is limited.

To me the strikers should be Pepi Pefok Nico. Alternate is Zardes, like it or not (and I don't), based on production. Dike isn't productive enough for us, Ferreira with the exception of his first game is meh, the kids are not ready. If you start feeling frustrated with the specialist 9s then before I brought in trash I would be shfiting Pulisic or Morris to striker.

 

Sargent is a classic example of a player who keeps suffering by following the snob blueprint. Sarachan saw the promise and got him some NT games and goals while he was struggling to get to their first team. But then GB held his club situation against him, dropped to U23. Silly. He finally made Werder's first team and GB woke up. But he's a little soft and has struggled in B.1 and EPL. To me he should be playing someplace like Holland, technical, less physical. I then believe this naive coach would see the games and minutes and goals and ignore he'd just be a confident version of the same player. But a confident Sargent would be useful. We could use a more technical soccer savvy element at 9. To do that he would have to go off snob-script. Holland won't rate to certain folks. So what, it's a better fit. And if he had his stuff together then 9 is fairly wide open. Not if you're sitting the bench for Norwich.......

He also might make an interesting wing option, not speedy, but more precise. I think we need more Weah, more team speed, more separation for crosses, but we could also use at least one wing who could come in off a bench and put an inch perfect ball in. Not what he often plays but he feels like the type.