What we are left with is all the eggs in one basket with the senior team. Now it is “no no wait until the senior team takes the field, we are going to play well, wait until they start qualifying.” We seem to always keep pushing down the road what needs to happen now… What could happen now is a year from now we are saying “Told ya, it’s the senior team that will break the mold” or “Well at least we qualified to the World Cup playing bad” or even worse “We couldn’t do it but really this team is set up for 2026.”... https://bolavip.com/en/soccer/fernando-fiore-interview-20210405-0003.html
He is absolutely correct. We can fantasize about where our guys are playing al we want, but the only thing that will matter in the end is results and we are still in wait and see mode to know what they will actually accomplish. Failure this time around with the players at our disposal would be a much greater screw up than last cycle. Frankly, if Berhalter can't qualify out of CONCACAF with this bunch, his coaching career should be over at this level until he goes somewhere and proves something. I expect we'll qualify and we have the players to play well. But it is absolutely correct that we are still in a holding pattern until we actually see the full squad in a meaningful game. That's simply not happened yet.
With all due respect to Mr Fiore but he is thinking of 10 and 20 years ago. Olympics and Youth WC are no longer a true barometer of future talent. Mexico has won gold in U17 and Olympics (results!) and it has done diddley for their senior team. It's still the same level as two decades ago, elimination in the first knockout round. Similarly, Honduras has done well in the Olympics but it's not really a better team for it unless getting to the playoff match is supposed to be some success. That said, yeah, we have yet to play real games that matter.
Mexico’s problem is that the domestic league produces talent that typically doesn’t thrive outside of the country. There are successes, yes, but to jump a tier in the world and compete with the teams above them, they need to start having more of their players overseas. The Mexican league is not improving. If anything, it’s main struggle is to keep lesser leagues like MLS at bay.
Shrug. I tend to agree with everything Fiore said about the Olympic group and the USMNT in the interview. That one little snippet posted at the top of this thread don't reflect the comments in total. Yes, we can't talk about the Olympic program without mentioning that all of the best U23 talent was there. To not mention it, is silly. Also, the development infrastructure in MLS (the players that were available) should be good enough to produce a team capable of qualifying without those Euro players. I personally think it is, and the coach got everything wrong. He's also right about the current state of the USMNT. Just the trio of Reyna, Pulisic, and McKennie have never played a game together, much less the rest of the group. Plus, Pulisic is always hurt. Reyna seems totally burnt out. So the reality is that they weren't available for Olympic qualifying. The truth is that this particular "Best XI" people keep writing down, literally hasn't played a game together ever on any level. Virtually everything about this USMNT group is theoretical. And its possible that this young group will take the field in their first game that actually matters, and get punched in the nose by a team like Honduras. As Fiore correctly said: Results will be the metric; results can hit you on the head and hard.
I'm surprised he put it out there. Fiore is pretty good at predicting results during the WC but I must strongly disagree with this prediction.
Mexico has a much better domestic league players than we do. When our boys get better they are living to try there had in Europe. Our U23 players are head-and-shoulders better than their U23. We will never see it because our U23 are also the sr. team.
I don't know about the latter part. I think it will take time to gell, and figure out how to play together, but a lot of these guys have before. Pulisic and Adams did the U17's together, Sargent and Adams played on the U20's together, Weah played with Soto, Ledzema, Richards and Dest and of course by extension Richards and Dest played together on that U20 team. They aren't totally unfamiliar with one another, there are some that haven't played with any other member of the group at all till this past year, but I think that's basically limited to Reyna and Musah amongst potential First XI guys, nearly all of them have played with multiple members of the squad before. McKennie, Adams, Pulisic, Sargent, JAB, and whatever MLS guy is the other CB have logged a reasonable amount of starts since '19, and you can add that Weah hasn't been in in a long time, otoh, he did play with the group in '18, and with some of the U20's in '19 (Dest, Richards, Ledezma, Soto). For me, I have to acknowledge that the lack of familiarity from playing years together like with Mexico, Costa Rica, and Honduras, is a fundamental advantage they have, along with the atmosphere at their home games, the heat and humidity etc. However the sheer talent of these guys is legit orders of magnitude superior to the '16-'17 qualifying guys, just, way, way, way better. A midfield that incorporates Pulisic, Weah, Reyna and Aaronson as wing options, and McKennie, Adams, and Musah as central mid options should and would be devastating against anyone in Concacaf not named Mexico, and should be against Mexico as well, especially once they've had multiple camps together. Will it be? Well, they have to play the games, and World Cups are littered with elite on paper teams that completely ---- the bed, and weren't close to the sum of their parts, so there is that, but it's hard to imagine for me anyway, anything other than injuried and Berhalter slowing this crew down, especially in Concacaf. Time will tell, they have to play the games, but the argument strikes me as borderline silly, when I make sure I incorporate the caveats of Berhalter and injuries to cover my backside lol. There is that, but just on sheer talent, I point to qualifying, i think it's telling that we broke Mexico's hold on U20 regional qualifying crowns in back to back tourneys in '17 and '19, and outplayed them in defeat in '17 and '19 at the U17 level. That's telling to me, especially the U20's, as are the CV's, and the way they've played together. We'll see. Veteran wiles, vastly superior coaching, and smart, committed, familiar talent are on Mexico's side, and veteran sides like Costa Rica, but is that enough? It sure as hell shouldn't be, the talent disparity is massive, and if our guys are healthy, and Egg doesn't ruin them, they should dominate. Time will tell, of course. We'll see. Mexico's got decades of dominance on their side (other than the aughts), and we just recently went through the trough of troughs, but I'm super optimistic going forward.
Yep. It's pretty simple to me. The conditions, especially on the road with crappy refs, worse fields and hostile crowds make CONCACAF significantly qualifying harder than you'd think based on the club designations of the players there. And our talent is leaps and bounds ahead of 2017 provided there isn't a massive wave of injuries. While we don't have cohesion yet, it's starting to gel. And while we don't have experience or muscle, both of which are helpful in CONCACAF, the talent increase is massive. I think CONCACAF competition has gotten a little bit better in talent -- while Panama and Costa Rica seem to have fallen, Canada, Jamaica, and a number of other Caribbean teams have significantly improved, adding a bit more depth to the federation. But not nearly as much as our talent. We should qualify, barring an epidemic of injuries to key players. But those expecting 5-0 road romps in Honduras because we have Champions League players are likely mistaken.
As far as the eggs in one basket, I would say that would be true whether or not we qualified for the Olympics. If we won the Olympic tournament, but failed to qualify it wouldn't be a success.... While we can say that we didn't use our best players in Olympic qualifying, if we had used them and won the tournament, it would only have served to hide the true problem in that tournament....coaching. we had the players to qualify. we didn't. That is on the coach and the coaching staff. If we fail to qualify, (I can't imaging how) but lets say we fail to qualify, that would be a reflection of hte organization (USSF), not a reflection of the players or player development or even soccer as a whole, in the US. I have confidence that Berhalter is a better coach than Kreis (relatively low bar imo), and I am confident that the team will qualify for the wc, I don't know if Berhalter will be able to take this team to the next level. I would say that the next test that will tell us a lot will be the Gold Cup against Mexico. As he said, we haven't showed anything yet....other than that we can beat up little undermanned, half strength, Central American Teams that haven't had any time together.
NL final against Mexico will be a far better measuring stick. That’ll actually be as close to an A team as we’ve fielded with this group. Really hoping for no end of season injuries.
We'll see. I just agree with Fiore's overall statement in the article (as opposed to just the snippet that was posted). There's a danger of US fans "crowning" this generation before they've actually done anything. The US is seemingly in a constant state of high expectations and underdelivering. Its been this way since the end of the 2014 cycle. There are PLENTY of built-in excuses for the Olympic qualifying performance. But hell, we weren't seeded at that event. Honduras was. Honduras was, according to seeding, the favorite in that game. And that was based on our previous performances at that level, which have been dismal. We talk about the Nations League this summer. Just the trio of Reyna, Puslisic, and McKennie has NEVER played together for the USMNT. This team needs a hell of a lot of gelling time before we can expect them to beat Mexico's "A" team in a match that matters. And that's because our greatness is completely theoretical at the moment. People like writing out Best XIs as if they mean something.
NL is the only real scheduled measuring stick for the near future. GC group is Canada and two Caribbean teams. Maybe some point in the knockouts we get tested. WCQ we start out with 2 "repechage" teams outside the top 5 before Honduras and Jamaica, Mexico and CR WCQ wait until October and November. We will see one in NL second game and maybe in GC knockouts. That being said, I am not sure measuring sticks matter. Mexico twice should have been a measuring stick. Canada NL group was a measuring stick. He was only going to risk being fired if we blew the home game as well. Now, we have since swapped Parlow and McBride in for Cordeiro and Stewart. But it is unclear if we would remain as indulgent. I hope not, but I can only guess. I am sure he would like to discuss this as "my system needs time" or "this unit needs to gel." He's had 2 years to select the right people, and only seemed to arrive at who we wanted during U23 trial games. It's his fault if key people have barely seen each other, when we saw a year of Bradley and Guzan and Zardes and such. It amazes me people indulge saying that a system takes millenia to understand and implement. This is soccer, not rocket science. I think this plays off the idea we are soccer rubes. That underrates the sophistication of the players before they arrive. This indulges arguments like we are a kickball team from the 90s and hadn't already gotten fairly advanced and ball on the ground already. I am with Fiore. If the system worked great you'd get fast results. If he is a decent coach he'd pick the right people and get results. Put up or shut up. Most coaches who get a second term here have to earn it and can't just argue they are on a "project" that will turn the corner at some undefined point in the future. Players have limited career windows, including golden generations. If he screws up 2026 then that's most of this unit's careers frittered away.
U20 is the truer signal of full sided development success. We are fine. U23 is undermined by the availability and graduation issues. It's not just we can't get everyone we wanted, it's players like Weston and Pulisic never even played with them. Since Mexico has more of a domestic squad and they don't graduate the best from age group ball, they are playing with a fuller deck. U23 is also undermined by being run out in a naive 433 regardless whether the players they can get fit the formation. We then selected a bunch of DM types for the mids. Anyone with a brain would have gone ahead and turned that into 451 or instead found technical players. We can't seem to make up our mind whether we want qualification at all costs or whether it is a "teaching" tool where maintaining and indoctrinating the formation means more than success. If we really wanted to qualify we'd acknowledge our roster weakness and show up with a gelled unit playing defensive soccer. Also worth noting that historic YNT US success was based in part off the Bradenton residency and the ability to camp collegians for months. They had played together a long time. We are now professionalized. Some did January camp then went back to club -- but with the senior side -- and then before qualifying they all parachuted in. We might consider the value of a lengthy pre-MLS camp for U23 alone. Otherwise part of what our plight reflects is everyone is pro and we defer to that and they are barely released. An afterthought. if you are that obsessed hammer out a camp with as many players as you can get.