Has USMNT over-exposed MLS under Berhalter?

I'm out for the night, but I will be back tomorrow to to tell you how much I think you and the league you follow is crap tomorrow.

 

This is how you reply to a long post with details and facts. You’re very petulant.

 

The winter camps are never in official FIFA windows, so no duh.

Back when some MLSers would go to Scandinavia, there would be the odd one or three guys from Norway because they were in the off-season. If I thought you had a point or even a clue i’d ask what you’re getting at. Instead, I’ll just hold your post up for ridicule.

 

It's also not 2016.

His last two caps were easily the two worst performances I've seen from a USMNT center back in over a decade. He defended in space about as well as an orange traffic cone.

 

He chose to turn down the call up to the gold cup. We should have capped him before he ever started a first team league match? What makes you think he would have left mid-season when his spot with Heracles was not secured? Was the camp in Switzerland worth losing your club spot? Idk.
"Mucho suck MLS dick"? Tell me you're losing an argument without telling me you're losing an argument.

 

Yurp

 

Why don't we just have a single bash MLS super thread?

 

Reminds me of when this subforum tried a dedicated Mexico thread for a while in order to corral the bickering. Actually those days seem rather quaint compared to the “everyone who disagrees with me is a paid MLS operative” era.

 

You must have an exciting social life..........

Accusing/calling @superdave an MLS schill.....that's adorable. It really is. Just like when you accuse me of over inflating the quality of MLS. @superdave is NOT a MLS Super Fan, he calls out the league on it's deficiencies all the time. Further, how many times have I pointed out to you directly that MLS is not close to the same quality of the 5 big Euro leagues???

Please tell us again how awful; Aaron Long was 4 years ago. While you're praising John Brooks, please remind us how well he played at Costa Rica in World Cup Qualifying in 2017.....


I have no idea who ;pissed and/or took a diarrhea poop in your cheerios today, but my goodness. Get away from the keyboard/phone/ etc and go outside.

 

There's a poster here who had or has a great sig line...something like, extreme positions are usually boring.

I'm a believer, perhaps naively, in the rationality of man. Some people are just assholes and trolls, but I think that some people adopt extreme positions as a pose, or because they're surrounding themselves with other extremists and lock themselves into an information bubble. Happens in politics, happens in sports.

Wouldn't the discussions here be alot better if we can, collectively, get the extremists to moderate their views to at least be in line with objective reality? Like, taking an obviously out of form player like Brooks is obviously a monumental risk in and of itself. Add in that he looked like dogshit his last few caps, and the idea that he would have had any value in Qatar is obviously silly. Yet how many posts on here are on the topic of whether Brooks should have been starting (obviously not; c'mon people, use your eyes, and if you can't use your eyes, look at his then-recent minutes played!) and also whether he or Aaron Long should have been Mr. Irrelevant. And the only reason we're doing that is because there's a faction of extremists (in the sense of having extreme opinions; I'm not talking about political extremism in a soccer thread) who are just blind about Yurp.

It's one thing to argue whether CCV would have been a better choice than Zimmerman. Both seemed fine overall; I personally don't put much stock in a small number of games which CB's mistakes led to goals because that's by definition going to be random over 4 matches. I look more at the overall play. And if someone wants to argue CCV would have been 5% better than Z-man or vice versa, go for it. That's reasonable. They both played more or less at the same level, and the fact that Z-man's mistake was punished by a goal and CCV's weren't is, to me, more coincidence than anythign.

But Brooks? Wut?

And the extremism bleeds over into things like classifying Moore and Yedlin as having that MLS taint, and not Turner, despite...reality.

Can we just not?

 

LOLz, solid move to bring up Brooks. That will show us.

 

You can't argue with crazy...

 

The funny thing is if Brooks moved to MLS and actually played he simply wouldn't be mentioned ever again from a national team standpoint like we saw with Morales and Hyndman. But as it stands he's possibly the missing piece that kept us from a quarter or semifinal.

 

I especially love how MLS status is retroactive for Yedlin and Moore... as in, Berhalter's MLS bias apparently caused him to call them up before they moved to MLS.

The mention of Gioacchini as a potential World Cup player too... he moved to MLS at the same time as Moore. And Moore started in MLS, while Gioacchini was kept on the bench by uncapped American Benji Michel.

 

Problem with this is that some people define extremism as any view that differs from theirs.

 

I love the MLS bashing just before the Sounders play in the Club World Cup.

 

OK, but so?

Im the one who brought up the word, so focus on my posts. Have I written anything extremist? If so, what was it? I’ll see if I can defend it.

 

Fixed your post.
Of course, should the Sounders get lucky and win, I might be singing a different tune. But their first match is against an African team that is generally playing in a league as weak, or maybe even weaker, as the MLS. An MLS team has finally won the CONCACAF champion's league but that "accomplishment" is little more than what they should have been doing for years. At least half the time an MLS team should come out on top of CONCACAF. It is not much of an accomplishment getting that far. We will have to see if they go any further and if they can even play with teams from truly strong leagues.

Being the best in CONCACAF is much like being the toughest chihuahua in a dog fight with rottweilers and dobermans.

 

This convo is dumb, with all due respect to my BS amigos in here.

Because it largely ignores the flow of talent in and out of the league in the current era.

If you're gonna judge a league based on how it stacks up against the top leagues, the reality is there's the top 5 leagues-------> then everyone else. And by everyone else I mean literally everyone else.

Simply look at CWC results going back 5-10 years. The most elite South American clubs are usually the best outside the UEFA champion but other than that matches are very competitive and a roll of the dice on who wins from other confederations. Liga MX clubs have regularly lost to Asian and Middle Eastern clubs at the CWC as an example. Get out of C'CAF and can still get rocked by Raja Casablanca or Evergrande or Kashiwa Reysol. There's a lot of decent clubs out there, dozens and dozens and dozens across the globe who can win on any given day.

But the bigger point is every league outside the top 5 feeds the top 5. And leagues 2-5 feed the Prem.

So how "good" a league is is somewhat a fool's errand of a conversation. Now can weigh what type of talent comes thru that league. It's why outside UEFA Bra/Arg have such great reputations. Not because their leagues are great. But because of the talent which originates from them.

Then we need to discuss when talent flows to top leagues. From Bra/Arg, it flows after players have a few years of 1st team ball under their belt. Enzo, the latest record breaking transfer to Chelsea last week is 22. Do folks realize all of 8 months ago he was still at River Plate? Endrick, Madrid's recent major signing is 16 and playing 1st team ball for Palmeiras. He'll have 2-3 seasons under his belt when he makes the move to La Liga.

Now consider unlike just about any other country outside UEFA, our youth ranks get raided before guys play 1st team ball. How many of our best never played in MLS(although some had academy connections). Pulisic. Reyna. Weah. McKennie. Sargent. Pefok. Then add those who grew up abroad. Dest. Robinson. Musah. CCV. That's 10 legit full team players. Now add in those who were sold by MLS within a couple years. Adams. Aaronson. Scally.

And the next player who appears most likely to break into our top 10-15 player ranks is Taylor Booth. RSL academy to the Bund and now doing real well in the Ered.

Simply put, given a unique situation around the American player with opportunity abroad as teens combined with access to EU passports for many, and the pipleline to Germany at 18 for non-EU passport holders, that's about 12 of our top 15 players who aren't in MLS. You can call it a talent drain or talent acquisition from Europe. Either way, saying MLS isn't good because our top players aren't there ignores the above.

Our top players won't be in MLS because they're either elite teens who get offers abroad by 16-18 or they get bought out of MLS within 2-3 years. For the most part.

All along a step in MLS's maturation was to become a selling league and a reliable stepping stone as Euro clubs gain confidence in the market. It is happening. And foreign talent is funneling thru MLS to Europe as well with Almiron being an obvious example. Also a top 5 LB globally came from MLS....Alphonso Davies.

So judging the talent in MLS is a mistake as the better it gets the quicker talent will flow thru it and the more money will change hands. As it's business between markets. It's an exchange of assets. The reason our best aren't in MLS is because they are more valuable assets than historically. Which is what people should want. Because again, you don't judge the Arg/Bra leagues by the assets in it but the assets which flow from it.

So when someone says MLS is hurting our NT here and now with a full A team roster. I would point to :

A) The academies. Did they assist giving a kid a platform to develop into a teen and a commodity for the global pyramid. Yes. Our NT has players at the most elite ranks who benefited from that.

B) Did MLS 1st teams offer a platform for those who didn't leave U18, to play 1st team ball and become a commodity for the global pyramid. Yes. Our NT also has those players at the most elite ranks.

C) Does MLS developing/selling Americans and foreign players to top league increase the confidence in the stateside product/assets, which increases opportunity for future players. Yes.

So when we get to the part of the discussion that we need MLS players to fill out our roster, it's largely due to we simply have about 10-15 players who are well above the others, then there's a sharp decline. We lack depth. It's not "becuz MLS" as the top talent has already flowed upwards for the most part. And in the years to come more will flow upward, decreasing the amount of MLS filler.

None of this means MLS is a top league. Which I think is a dumb goal in the first place as all the money is in UEFA. And every league outside the top 5 has its pros/cons.

But watch an MLS game. Then a game between Belgium clubs. Then Croatian. Turkish. And so on. The levels aren't much different outside the top 5 leagues. What they are are a platform for talent to showcase itself in the global market.

 

Al Ahly play in a fairly weak league that's mainly comprised of domestic players. And the national team didn't get a point in Qatar. But the club has won 23 African titles in the last 40 years, so they're probably the best club on the continent.

Unfortunately I don't think the game will tell us much as most of the teams are in season whereas it's Seattle's first competitive game in 119 days. It'll be backs to the wall.

 

I see that Seattle has used the "not in season" excuse quite well to explain their loss to a good African side. They sold that position to the announcers and, it seems, themselves. After plodding around the field for 85+ minutes they did manage to score. Unfortunately for them they scored on themselves. The goal was awarded as a score by the Seattle player that hit it but it appeared to be going wide until it was sent into their own net by the clumsy leg of a Seattle player.

At no point in the match did Seattle look in danger of scoring.
This was a pretty pathetic showing by Seattle. In fact the best looking players they fielded were mostly foreign born.

But I guess it does bode well for the MLS that a poor performance like this only resulted in a 1-0 loss. Maybe the MLS is really not so far behind Africa after all.

 

I didn't read it. Now that I have it said very much what I had suspected. It is nice the guy has moved on from trying to tell us Jorfdan Morris is our best player based on stats from 2019.

I am just exhausted listening to people clearly dont understand the game try make some dude in MLS into something he isnt. It has been going on consistently for over 10 years. We have had 7 years of overly friendly call ups for MLS players and I have to see one that would really want on my team.

It is almost like play in MLS doesn't really tell you what a player could do at the international level. It is almost like play in CONCACAF doesn't really tell you what a player will do at the WC. These guys refuse to learn thise lessons. Miles Robinsoon has done nothing to get the hype he receives from these little fanboys. Neither did Zimmerman when he was supposedly the best. Neither did any of the MLSers.

 

As awful as Long has been, and I agree he shouldn't have been at the World Cup... Brooks was worse in his last few caps.

 

You watched that? I dint ever want to see Roldan and Morris play again. Yes, I am sure we will be hearing a lot about how they are out of season.