It also means he shouldn't have been picked for this tournament. He's a very good prospect, but it makes it harder to qualify when our YNT coaches treat this as a prospect showcase. Zelalem wasn't one of the 20 best players for this team. He shouldn't have been picked. That says nothing about his potential. He currently just wasn't good enough for this level.
Its hard to say. We often want our youth coaches to pick the players with the most potential as opposed to the players that give them the best chance of winning right now. Zelalem has a different skill-set than many of our midfielders in the U23 pool. We have a lot of the holding midfielder and two-way midfielder types (even guys like Acosta, Davis, Stanko, etc. that didn't make the qualifying roster). The failure of guys like Gil, Guido, Danny Garcia, etc. to advance means we are in fact looking desperately for players with a modicum of playmaking ability. Anything would be nice.
I am far less confident making that statement. Gil, Trapp, and Hyndman (by a little) are superior to Zelalem but Davis hasn't shown me anything special. I would guess that he'd be a lot like Fatai Alashe or Jordan Allen or Marco Delgado in these recent youth tournaments in the sense that he's a solid pro but isn't going to be a difference maker, or anything better than another option for that matter, at the international level. The fellas on this board will note that Zelalem plays in a far weaker league ... but for one second, can we please not immediately associate Rangers with the Scottish Championship. Rangers haven't lost a point. They're head and shoulders superior to the league, and GZ is a central man when healthy. So he may be playing weak competition, but he is starting for a team that's good enough to finish mid table in the Scottish Premiership. If our setup was better, I agree with you that he shouldn't sniff this roster. But our deep playmaking depth in the 19-22 age range is very weak and thus, GZ is sitting at 4 on the depth chart and not 14 where he would be in a successful youth setup. I know he won't but I wish that he plays a bit with the U20s in the upcoming cycle. He won't be a regular for the national team and him developing some chemistry with Swanson/Scott/Akale/Sabbi would only be beneficial. Additionally, implementing a guy like GZ into that group immediately allows Tab to play a 4-2-3-1 press or a 4-3-3 and actually try (god forbid) to play proactive soccer. Doing this would only help the U20 group as a whole.
Regardless of whether or not he's better than certain players, his performance wasn't up to par. Maybe we just don't have enough good players for this level, but he certainly didn't show that he belonged at this level. I do agree with you about him playing at the U-20 level. I hope he plays with the U-20 team, but I think its unlikely because he's already being hyped up to the moon and isn't really showing that he has to earn a spot on these teams. Normally, if a kid struggled playing up a level, he'd immediately be sent back down, but I suspect he'll continue playing with the U-23's because of how poorly the youth programs are being run under Klinsmann. I even feel like Carter-Vickers might benefit from playing at the U-20 level. He did excellent at the U-20 WC, but I thought he had a bad U-23 tournament, and isn't quite ready for that level either. He's not in my top three best U-23 CB's right now and I want him to be playing youth international soccer at some level, so U-20 for now might not be so bad.