Ok. You think he's better. So what? What exactly would Wright have done better than Ferreira against the Dutch? Proven at what level? He plays in the Turkish League. We can have disagreements on players but making proud, non-provable speculations that some player who was on the bench would have made a significant difference seems really ridiculous. I've never understood micromanaging a coach's decisions. You could nitpick forever. Why? And it just keeps you in a negative mindset no matter what. We made it to the Round of 16 and the defense didn't let in a run of play goal the entire first round. Those are good accomplishments and things to build on.
Morales started 18 games in 2015/16, 20 games in 2016/17, 16 games in 2018/19, and 18 games in 2019/20, despite missing chunks of three of those four seasons with injuries. That's an interesting definition of "barely got off the bench." His teams were mid-table in two of those seasons. (But then you're the same guy who complained that Alphonso Davies was "rotting on the bench" in a MLS season where he ranked second on his team in minutes played...)
I wouldn't have expected much from him, especially if he started against the Netherlands in a knockout game after zero group minutes like we saw with Ferreira. That was a bigger Berhalter misstep for me than roster selection. With a true forward pool as poor as ours it's basically just a roll of the dice. I wouldn't have been against Pepi or Pefok (like many I thought the former was a lock), but it's not something I lose sleep over. Wright did score so there's that.
NONE of our forward options consistently scored against good national teams this past cycle. None of them. So yes, Ferreira is now the guy with the target on his back because he was one of the guys at the world cup. It's his turn under the microscope. I get it. Never mind that it was Sargent.............the guy sprinkled with magical European pixie dust................the guy who hasn't scored for the USMNT against a non-Caribbean minnow in 4.5 years............that played in all three of our group games (starting two of them). Am I missing something? How many goals did he score at the World Cup? Pefok has 9 caps. 1 goal. Looked poor in most of those caps. Looked like he really didn't fit. And he doesn't speak English. Pefok does not speak English. Which we can try to excuse away and say "he speaks the language of soccer'..............and that is bloviating nonsense. You need to be able to communicate with your teammates on and off the field.
Balogun: I'm guessing if he was the coach, he would have given Balogun the ticket. Does that make Balogun from a maybe to a yes? Honestly, it probably does. So he shouldn't be discredited w/that argument if more than likely, Balogun does actually sign the switch in that scenario and it would have picked a position that bad luck and stupidity from Berhalter made a catastrophe. pefok - We've talked about him ad nauseam, but is anyone gonna argue that Ferreira made more sense against the Netherlands than a guy whose scored against PSG, Lyon, Lille, Manchester United, Atalanta, RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkeusen, Basel etc, scored nearly double digit CL/Europa L goals etc? I don't have him as a starter, but would I start Pefok or Ferreira there? Definitely Pefok. de la torre - Nobody is starting LDLT at the WC if he was too injured to play but honestly, if he was too injured to play, than why wasn't that roster spot used on a need like a competent healthy strker (Pepi or Pefok) in case of you know, a Sargent injury. reyna - I don't agree w/him on Reyna, but I think its emphatically clear that Reyna belonged more than Ferreira as a false 9 etc. Weah was and is my RWF. bryan reynolds: I don't know if anyone had him on the plane, but I will say this: If you knew ahead of time that Shaq Moore was getting a ticket, would you have added Reynolds instead? What if you knew that the dolt Berhalter (in this eval anyway) preferred freaking Shaq Moore and Yedlin to Scally and yes, even Reynolds? austin trusty - I think most of us can't believe what we're seeing and can't figure out if its relevant? terrence boyd - Loved the guy a decade ago, very happy for him now, have been bitten more than enough times to know I shouldn't overreact to his form, but as crazy as his inclusion is on this list, be honest. Boyd actually knows how to play Forward well and has scored a ---- ton of goals since getting healthy and moving back to Europe. Would I prefer Boyd to Ferreira? Right now, in a WC? Probably. He can actually play the position. He's got 10 goals in 1500 2nd division minutes, and 26 goals if you combine last year's #'s from the erm, 3rd division lol. I get that that is stupid, but honestly, if you're gonna tell me Boyd would've put in a worse performance against the Netherlands than Ferreira did I will call bull----. Otoh, Ferreira probably never plays an international game that badly again the rest of his career. malik tillman: Goal hungry super sub? Yes please, he's on the plane over Moore, over Yedlin for me easily and over LDLT too if we knew ahead of time that LDLT wouldn't see the field period regardless of how tired MMA was. taylor booth - I wouldn't have, guy hadn't broken out yet and I had no idea what he was at the time, but in retrospect we probably should've known he might just be relevant. chris richards - He was hurt.
I don't get the played scared argument? and the MLS ---- doesn't really fly either. Most of these guys are ex MLS anyway, it's not automatically poison, the big problem to me was his total inability to create an attack that was creative and effective at finishing in the attacking third, and his misevaluations of talent that he was often slow, or completely unable to correct. We won the qualifying campaign on the xG for xG against #'s, but our actual chance creation was still pedestrian considering the talent, and that shone through dramatically at the WC where the team could barely generate half the chances Bradley's 10 edition did and Arena's '06 did against World Class teams in a group of death (unlike our group of life). You can see the errors behind the #'s: Arriola over Weah as a starter in window 3, his reliance on Steffen who finished dead last amongst concacaf goalkeepers in xG allowed stats they use for keepers. We can dig deep in this beyond that, having guys like Moore and Yedlin ahead of Scally, having Aaron Long grab all the CB starts in June and September and then zero minutes in November, having McKenzie ahead of superior players (I think McKenzie gets back eventually). One could go on and on, but honestly playing scared wasn't the problem to me anyway. It was not understanding the pool in particular key places, like striker, like backup 6 and 8, like the starting keeper, like the CB depth chart, and yes, the system which was flush with attacking talent the made prior iterations of our WC teams pale in comparison could not figure out how to generate shots, let alone shots on target. It wasn't a case of being scared, it was a case of not being able to build something that worked. How much of this was on Berhalter (evaluations for sure) and how much of this was due to youth, inexperience, lack of reps together and fundamental issues for the player (vision, spatial awareness, soccer IQ etc) I don't know. But scared aint it, not in my view. I don't think its MLS either. I loved Turner, Miles Robinson, Zim, Acosta, Arriola (not as a starter but as the #5 WF), Pepi, Ferreira (as depth, but not on the plane for me), Aaronson and some other guys I'm forgetting this past cycle and they all came out of MLS. Same with other guys that will join up soon enough like Paredes, Cowell, Clark (if he can find his way back to form), Paxten, Gaga etc. I sometimes have slogged MLS too, more in '19 than recent years because I believed guys were getting free tickets to camps because of Berhalter's familiarity with them from coaching in the league and then spending more time w/them in his system in the winter and summer of '19, but at the end of the day, this evolved, and eventually most of these guys were found out and ejected catch and release style (Trapp, Baird, Lovitz, Bradley, Lewis, Yueill etc) back to MLS where they belonged, whereas some found a role like Arriola, Morris, Roldan, Long, Zim, Robinson, Turner, etc and some deserved it in my view (Arriola, Zim, Robinson, Turner) and others did not (Roldan, Long, and for me, Morris). I get that this thread has MLS as a premise, and I understand what he's getting at, but I don't really agree w/the premise so much as that for whatever reason, when he badly evaluates a guy beyond their abilities, just about all of those guys are MLS players, rather than European ones. I don't know why that is, maybe familiarity with the league and the simple fact that with cupcakes every winter, and the extra time in June camps with them, and even that October camp (where supposedly Arriola may have played his way out of a ticket according to a rumor which I can't remember the source of), he just has so much time w/these guys, that he has a preference for them w/regards to depth. It could be as simple as that. I'm not sure. I just don't see a conspiracy or an MLS bias, so much as just a lazy familiarity bias w/players he's just seen far more. Think about it this way, he got these guys in the covid December '20 camp, he got them exclusively in the Gold Cup '21 camp, he got some of them in the June camp because he rested some guys from long seasons and others were injured, and then he set up that October MLS camp for guys (where apparently Moore and Morris played their way on, and Arriola played his way off). W/all those MLS exclusive camps, it's hard not to see him just developing a greater trust w/guys he simply saw far more often in practice and in the locker room, and yep maybe he felt guys like Morris, Moore, Roldan and the like would handle not seeing the field much at all better than other Euro based dudes. Who knows? Just speculation but it wouldn't surprise me if all of this didn't play a role. The last thing I think played a role was MLS conspiracy, or some deep MLS over Europe agenda. I think it was far more familiarity and building out a roster and just being ---- at evaluating talent outside of the most obvious guys (by winter '21-'22 he was rarely making screw ups with the 11's, but he was still consistently making screw ups with the edges). This would change a bit when at least it came to Pepi anyway come November.
I'm not going to argue that Pefok was on fire or anything, he wasn't, in fact his play diminished enough to lose his starting gig, at least temporarily but while I do think all of us are guilty of this at times, I do think it's kind of bs to use that argument. Normally arguing that a guy who hadn't scored since September, clearly isn't hot, or helpful at all, but the implication is basically: Good lord, this guy hasn't scored a goal in 4 months worth of games, he must suck!!!! Then you notice, wait a second, dude has played 509 Bundesliga minutes between that goal in mid september, and his latest goal last weekend. You make it sound like he's gone scoreless for like 4 straight months of heavy minutes games when in reality, club soccer shut down in the Bundesliga for 2 of the 4 freaking months and he was benched in the half of November matches to boot. I'm not arguing he's great or anything, made that plain elsewhere, but lets be straight: guy has 5 goals in around 1400 total minutes. Not great, not at all, but this a board that celebrated Jozy while he was logging 2,500-3,000 minute seasons and scoring 1 goal in league play, I believe 2 total in like 6,000 minutes or whatever. Can we really just ---- on Pefok, when Ferreira's never scored against anyone of consequence ever, Pepi got shut out (although like Pefok, in extremely deceptive minutes (guy started like 5 or 6 games total for Augsburg in Spring and Summer '22, not exactly a lot of reps), Sargent got mostly shut out in the Bundesliga, and other than his scorpion game largely went 0 for for the entire EPL season last year. There's just a disingenuousness here that's always struck me as odd. We are familiar with Wood, Altidore, Sargent, Wright, Hoppe, and Pepi all doing next to nothing for very, very, very long stretches as starters in big 5 leagues, never even setting foot in a CL or Europa League game in general. Pefok's done both and scored far more at this level and in big competitions. Bad fit for the team yes. But productive? The guy didn't score in the Bundesliga for the equivalent of 5.5 starts. That's the drought. This isn't 1 goal in 3,000 minutes at Hull/Sunderland Altidore level stuff by any means, nor is it Sargent at Norwich level horror or Wood taking a holiday in Germany for his last 2-3 club seasons etc ad infinitum. Not a great fit, but yeah, at the end of the day, he's got 5 goals in 1400 minutes, and had a scoring drought for the equivalent of 2 months of a soccer season in terms of games, and 5 total games in terms of minutes. Not exactly anywhere in the same universe of what we've seen from other guys in the current pool or guys in the past.
Behalter missed the chance to integrate a starting CF and instead played Ferreira in the build up only to abandon the idea when the pressure was on. It doesn't really matter who it was, Pefok, Wright, Sargent, Pepi, Dike (when fit), they're all much of a muchness. It was a bit unfair to throw them into a fairly rigid system that they hadn't been a part of. Pick one and stick to him.
Again, a crucial mitigating factor is the lack of opportunity to integrate players before World Cup qualifying started. Most of our top players began to merit consideration for the national team in 2020 when we weren't playing games. Even after international play resumed, and travel restrictions forced us to maintain separate MLS and Euro squads for friendlies until summer 2021, with the MLS squad playing more simply due to availability.
he played ferreira as a target forward and sent the most crosses of any team at the world cup BY A LOT...according to his "game model"...yet used a forward like tiny jesus to try and do that ...instead of a player suited to that style like pefok....its not even about whether pefok would have worked or not...its more that jesus IN THAT ROLE HAD ZERO CHANCE OF WORKING i'd take the player scoring in champs league and bundesliga WHO PLAYS THAT STYLE i mean...how is this even a discussion?!??!
greggs squeeky butt approach to scrape by in WCQ (and same in WC) DESPITE CLEAR TALENT ADVANTAGE hampers his team's cielings. in WCQ it meant (in his way of thinking) no room to vet new players.....a better manager qualifies from concacaf with games to spare and uses those games to get players like CCV, EPB, scally, djordje, etc etc actual game time and not be saddled with "experienced" players who are dead weight at the WC. all these little things add up ....and they matter
The way the US played under Berhalter......didn't use a target forward..........It's not the way GGG's teams play. If you want to know how he wants his team to play watch footage of his Crew teams. Pefok doesn't fit this style. Dike isn't a great fit either, but he's better than Pefok. Pefok fits Union Berlin to a T. Also GGG is NO LONGER the coach of the USMNT so this thread is moot.
What are you talking about? I added a bunch of facts that gave much more context and showed why his post was at best incomplete.
Will never know. What we do know is that the MLS players Berhakter brought actuallydidnt succeed. I am 100% convinced that Pefok wouldn't have failed as miserably as Ferreira.
Every decision he made favored defense over offense. What would you call taking the ball to corner with seconds left of injury time to secure a tie as opposed putting the ball in thr box to see if could get a late winner?
Haha... I'm not sure anything in here is accurate. First, there were 4 guys who started at the WC that were integrated in 2018, but Berhalter didn't use until 2020. If that idiot would have just included them from the start, the foundation of the team would have been there from the beginning, and would have just had to integrate guys like Dest, Musah, Pefok, Reyna, etc when they broke through or committed. Of course, there never was an all Euro camp and the first fully mixed camp was in March of 2021. I have no clue what was accomplished in all those domestic camps. They were pretty much a waste of time and money.
I think he meant before the WC. He wrongly picked Long and Ferreria all year to then go with Ream and Sargent. Thise changes drastically improved the team. It is almost like these euro guys are better than the MLS guys.
Not sure how Berhalter not being coach means that his MLS lifers suck and have no business near the USMNT. The point of the thread is that a past coach overplayed MLS players enough that their weaknesses were exposed and made clear they weren't good enough. I for one, think this lesson some people needed to learn is talked about for ages so these types of players don't hurt the USMNT agsin.