According to the November 25 edition of the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz, Pierce is currently training with 1. FSV Mainz 05 of the German Bundesliga. "Im 05-Training mischt zur Zeit ein junger US-Amerikaner mit, ein Defensivspieler für die rechte Seite. Der 25-Jährige kickte zuletzt bei New England Revolution. Rustin Pierce spielt auf eigene Kosten am Bruchweg vor, er will von einem Trainer hören, ob er tauglich ist für den europäischen Profifußball. "Er bleibt noch bis nächste Woche", meinte Teammanager Axel Schuster nach dem Zwischenfazit von Jürgen Klopp. Der 05-Trainer eilte gestern nach dem Training zu seiner ersten Sitzung im Lehrstab des Deutschen Fußball-Bundes (DFB) nach Frankfurt. Vielleicht formuliert der 37-Jährige demnächst auch seine Prüfungsfragen für die Fußballlehrerlizenz ..." The above pretty much states that he's made (and paid for) the trip himself, is taking the chance to work out during the MLS off-season, and apparently is using the opportunity to solicit coaches for their opinion as to "whether he is suited for European professional football." FYI, The Magpie
Nothing as good as John Little Chicken (as in former Sporting midfielder Joao Pinto), it's always worth a laugh putting this sort of stuff through Babelfish. "In the 05-Training at present a young US American mixes together, a defensive player for the right side. The 25-year old kickte last with new England revolution. Rustin Pierce plays at own expense at the break way, it wants of a coach to hear whether he is suited for the European professional football. still remains more "Er to next Woche", team manager Axel shoemaker meant after the intermediate result of Juergen Klopp. The 05-Trainer hurried yesterday after training to its first meeting in the training staff of the German football federation (DFB) to Frankfurt. Perhaps the 37-Jaehrige formulates shortly also its test questions for the football teacher license... "
NO SHRINKING VIOLET our Rusty. Sure hope he finds a club to take him. He's been playing for MLS wages long enough and deserves to get a good payday if he can pull it off. Good Luck Rusty
Semi-Official Translation: A young American has thrown himself into the mix in '05 training - a right side defender. The 25-year-old last played for the New England Revolution. Rusty Pierce is participating at his own cost and on the verge of a breakthrough. He wants to find out from a trainer if he's good enough for European professional football. "He'll be staying until next week.", said team manager Axel Schuster after a progress report from Jürgen Klopp." The remainder of the German passage has nothing more to say about Rusty. I'll be looking for the original source to see if I can find any more hints. -Dougly 1. FC Nürnberg, 1860 München, Austria Salzburg, Juventus Torino, Pompey FC, and naturally "da Revs".
What?? C'mon Doc I'm usually on your side of the fence on Revs related issues, but a good pay day? Why would Rusty Pierce deserve anything more than an average or below average MLS salary. The guy's an average at best defender.
Bit more info. courtesy of FDA: http://www.boston.com/sports/soccer/articles/2004/12/01/man_of_style_and_substance?pg=2
My point was that NONE of the players in MLS gets paid anything like they could get paid in Europe. If he's able to get a gig, even if it's not playing Top Flight he will still get a big pay boost. I agree that Rusty is just a good, middle of the pack defender by MLS standards. It will be interesting to see if he can catch on overseas. I suspect he could get a spot alongside Woldi and Dunseth up near the Artic Circle
I think you guys have a somewhat inflated opinion of the quality of an average MLS defender. Here are the MLS defenders that you could make a case are better than Pierce (I personally only think the asterisked defenders are clearly better) Jim Curtin Pablo Mastroeni* Cory Gibbs* Ryan Nelson* Robin Fraser* Franky Hejduk* Chad Marshall* Eddie Pope (big drop-off in the past two years) Jeff Agoos Danny Califf Tyrone Marshall Nick Garcia Notice the lack of Revolution players on the list. I'd also hazard a guess that if you took the mean salary of the players on this list - it would be well above 50K. I just personally find it a bit tiresome when people make repeated, sweeping, and often hyperbolic statements about a player's absence of talent, but never feel compelled to back up these broad declarations in any way.
I'll take Chris Albright (counting him as a defender), Jeff Parke, Jimmy Conrad, C.J. Brown, (even at his age), Chris Wingert, maybe even Mike Petke, Troy Dayak, or possiably even Ezra Hendricksen above Rusty Pierce. I think everyone on your list outside of Tyrone Marshall is definately better than Rusty. I think that the ones I've added are at worst arguable, outside of Albright, Parke and Conrad who are clearly better imo. I know you, Rodan, and I like to try to come up with objective analyses as much as anyone. Unfortunately that's difficult to do with defenders. However, here's a list of 20 guys that I'd put ahead of him in the league. With ten teams, presuming 40 defensive starters in the league, I'd call that pretty "average." If you want to say, 'well that just means he's a solid starter, think of all the guys who don't start. Fine, but if we're running down the MLS depth chart Rusty sure as heck is pretty deep on the list. For example. Without even rambling off a bunch of names, where would you or anyone describe Pierce in terms of talent in the league. Top ten defender? Top twenty? Middle thirty or fourty?
Then why did Arena call him in at the end of 2003? Pierce is probably a better marking back than any of the above mentioned players (including those in Rodan's post). Yes he's too small and too impulsive to be a good centerback, passes too poorly to be an outside back in a 4-4-2, and tactically is nothing special, but if you need someone to mark a striker out of a game there is probably no one better in the MLS, and arguably in the Nats pool as well. Pierce is very well suited to play R back in a 3-5-2, and is easily one of the top 3 players in the MLS for that special situation. To compare him to other centerbacks and leftsided players as a generic defender is misleading. If Nicol plays 3-5-2 again this year we will miss him.
Well unfortunately in soccer you don't really get to sub in role players to take advantage of certain situations. In every position on the feild your game has to be relatively complete. People talk about his man marking skills I believe because of his physicality. I think that physicality stems from making up for a lack of speed and skill. Somone in the Yanks Abroad board called him the Bill Lambier of MLS. That's fine, but in the NBA you have six hard fouls to give before you get booted from the game. In soccer it's possiably only two and you're gone. I can go up and look at his number of yellows and reds compared with other guys in the league, it's probably not that dramatically high. However, he's never shed that image of being one play away from absolutely killing his team. You talk about call ups, which is fine. But we saw Ramiro Corralles get a call up too didn't we. Lots of players get called into a camp, especially a single time. To me just because he got a single call up doesn't define him as anything more than average. Other than that, kudos for a fine analysis.
The Pierce thread in the Yanks Abroad forum is a kangaroo court, not a real discussion -- they've got him tied to the stake and are crying out for a match. The Magpie
It seems that some here would be willing to offer them a Bic. maxim, here's my point. I think Rusty Pierce has been a very good central defender for the Revolution. I base this opinion on the following: I've gone to or watched 90% of the Revolution's matches since he's been a member of the team and have rarely seen him a) get beaten by his mark in a way that leads to a goal, b) give away the ball in a crucial situation that leads to a goal. To be more specific, in the past two years I've seen two individual mistakes by Pierce that I thought led directly to goals. In the periods in which the team has achieved it's greatest successes, Pierce has been on the field. In the Eight years that I've followed the Revolution, only one player (Francis Okaroh) proved as reliable a defender. And he only had a two year career with the team (can you name another?). In the games in which he played, the team showed a marked decrease in it's GA average (pending confirmation). Upon what observations you base your opinions? BTW, while I can accept Albright and Jimmy Conrad as nominations for defenders of Pierce's calibre, the rest seem simply silly to me (C.J. Brown??????!!!!!). I'm not trying to deify the guy, and I frankly doubt if he'll get much of a shot in Europe, but please, let's give an ex-Revs player his due. And if Pierce is still in MLS next year, how much success do you see for Taylor Twellman or Pat Noonan if Rusty Pierce is his mark. It's a thought I definitely do not relish.
I'm a big C.J. Brown fan. You mentioned the decrease in GAA. Have you ever run those numbers or ran then league-wide by chance. I have a couple of stats related projects I want to work on in the off season and I think this might be one of them.
That's a very good question. And the answer is no. Someone on this board ran the numbers last year, and they were really eye-opening. In the short term, these kinds of numbers are probably junk. But over a five year period they can be fairly convincing. I've been waiting for the astute mind who put together these numbers (I wouldn't even know how it's done) to bail me out on this one. So far - no go. So I'm left with three premises until the numbers wizard comes though.
Well, box scores would help too. I don't know what kind of programming you could do but if it was just grinding out the numbers it'd be fairly easy to do. Obviously you'd have a lot of combinations. For individual guys it'd be somewhat easier. Running it for defensive lines would be pretty time consuming. You'd have to do it as GAA in the game. Maybe defensive lines +/- is more telling but I think that stat is pretty much worthless when applied to individual players.
I suspect it might be like most soccer stats, useless with too small a sample, but interesting if the sample is significant. It's also probably (just a guess) more meaningful with club teams, where the lineups tend to be more restricted, than with national teams where the combinations (and the opponents) can be pretty haphazard.