Pre-match: International Friendly: USA vs Netherlands; March 26th 2020

How is it a mistake? To me more often the good defending backs tend to be better in the air than ball at feet. So what I am looking at, instead of Brooks and the supposed footwork and we lose to Argentina 4-0 because he can't mark, is pick someone who can defend, get it down to 0-0 or 0-1, and then if they get that random header in the net that night, win or tie.

Contrast, I put Ream in the middle to get reamed by Canada, because he supposedly can pass, and we get no assists and lose on the marking.

The argument is also misleading. We have discussed "playing from the back." If "passing backs" correlates to "playing from the back," recent history is that works out negative and goals allowed, not as some positive. The selection choices pair up with tactical instruction to try and dribble and pass through a press, we get stripped and shredded, we lose. Some of us have argued that whacking it long under high pressure is just common sense. Maybe if we get better mids who attract more defensive attention......but as is you can sit on our backs and mids. They may need to be sufficiently skilled to work through reality when it presses upon them, but I don't know if I want that, yet, by design.

Right now I feel like y'all want a bunch of passing backs out there to pass through Mexico, Mexico presses, giggles, keeps stripping us, 0-3. How about going back to the less fashionable choices who pitched a shutout and we won 1-0 same opponent. Granted, that was an ugly game for purists, but I prefer wins to purity.

Also, and this would just be repeating myself, normal wisdom for starting players is get ones who can play their position first and then worry about luxuries. Because in the sort of game they matter, they will have to defend well. To beat Brazil or England they will have to do their job. It's this weird crap where I think people are imagining them hitting 3 assists without having to really defend, which is more like Cuba shows up.

 

lol. Then I wouldn’t be able to read any posts...

 

i mean to me it's like the people who pimp zardes for chasing the ball. that's not what we have forwards for, primarily. in the big belgium game where you end up playing the guy picked "against type," you actually need a goal and your chaser whacks the sitter over the bar. or, in defensive terms, the guy who goes forward has to defend and gets burned. so start with the ones who can defend and then pick from them the ones who can also create. you can end up in a similar place of having some attacking value, but not having put a kick me sign on your back to get there.

 

honestly this stupid crap is far more annoying and non-pertinent than anything you think about what i am typing.

this is a soccer board. this is zero soccer content. which makes it unrepentant trolling since there is no hint of soccer to hide behind.

my personal experience is that blockers want the freedom to sh*t-talk people without having to actually view their material, which over time poses a basic intellectual contradiction. i get truly ignoring but once you start talking mess "behind their back" you're a hypocrite who wants to say things without having to read things. and since you are no longer reading what is your basis other than sustained prejudice for talking mess. wouldn't even know what you're talking about.

 

Here’s an “intellectual” aphorism for you:

Brevity is the soul of wit.

 

???

 

FYP

 

If he had more time, he would have made it shorter.

 

Post of the year candidate right here.

 

I keeping seeing this nonsense posted. Look, Niko was under contract with another team. He had a loan opportunity with LAFC. It didn't work out--for whatever reason. Did he try out with a bunch of other MLS teams? No. Did he play enough games that showed he sucked? No.

He had one very short loan opportunity with one MLS club. A single MLS club. 3 appearances. What does that have to do with not being enough for MLS? Nothing. Do you know the financial terms of what the extended loan would have been? No. Do you know the buyout? No.

He has been on multiple SPL teams of the week.

And he just won Man of the Match against Rangers, a team that would walk MLS.

⁦@KilmarnockFC⁩ Niko Hamalainen was the ⁦@officialQTS⁩ MOTM against ⁦@RangersFC⁩ last night. Here he is in our 1869 suite along with Connor Johnson. 👏⚽️ Well done Niko👏 #WeAreKillie pic.twitter.com/jBPVKWIXK0

— Raymond Montgomerie (@ray_montgomerie) February 13, 2020

 

Because the MLS players had their opportunity in the January camp.

 

the snobs think quality is evident in your status. so they treat good players like wood and horvath like crap. treated weah like crap when he was being loaned around. the funny thing being for two of those three -- except wood -- when they played, they played well. weah had a good strike rate last season when used, and horvath allowed a single goal in three games this year. it's not that they actually suck. it's that they don't get to play to show the opposite. these are two different things. [in contrast, bobby wood, who has played 6 times this season with no goals and then idiotically turned down his salvation and chance to get in the NT before quali started. but the big picture point being that disuse in and of itself doesn't tell the whole story, and you do well to drill down to the specifics. some rotting players deserve it. some don't.]

the logical/scientific flaw being that if a player isn't being used, bench status aside, we actually don't objectively know what you have, and in some cases might have hints that they have something from their limited use. the snob instead assumes that if you aren't at the right club something is wrong. if you aren't starting something is wrong.

and then two weeks later reyna is playing first team minutes and their whole tune changes on him. late to the party.

snobs act like they deeply know soccer but they are basically like the flip side of GB only being willing to go with people getting first team playing time. stuck on status and rep. a good coach can see through that to how you can help him.

the kid plays a need position and is starting where he is now. that should suffice. going back in his resume to say "but you didn't start before" is trying to roll the clock back. it's 2020. or it's trying to play the snob game of pre-judging players based on affiliation instead of running them out there and seeing from that whether they can hack the level or not.

the interesting thing being the more chances you give players from different leagues patterns might emerge. should be evident by now Championship level players, at least some of them, can hack NT. or at least the odds of success based on experience put the question in debate enough to jump the snob hurdle. SPL has previously supplied NT players, and from a scientific perspective if your theory is SPL can't hack it anymore and is inferior, ok, let's trot out some players and prove that a fact, or falsify or question the thesis.

 

Morales is an outstanding athlete. Please don’t lump in with Arriola

 

morales to me is like trapp in the sense that they have been on the doorstep so long as prospect people don't realize their age at this point. morales is 29 and will be 30 in may. he might even be on the downslope of his career by the business end of the cycle.

i think his energy needs to be on the roster and he needs to be around as a sub hard man. but to me he's like raw and never fully developed the tools. i start to like him in that mexico game and he gets juked on an island for a goal. like trapp, the pieces just haven't fully adhered.

 

Rangers wouldn’t “walk mls” that’s nonsense. That’s beside the point. He doesn’t play for rangers and he’s playing in a lesser league.

 

With all of the injuries, I'm caring less about the overall makeup of the roster and seeing how fringier guys look. I'd be happy just to see Pulisic, Adams, McKennie, and Dest all healthy and on the field together.

 

Sorry I dont know if this was said, I didn't check back tbh lol

But MARCH camp should absolutely be EURO-ONLY. Might help if it wasn't an Olympics Qualifying year because rosters might be limited, but next year - March should definitely be Euro's.

 

Well, we don't know that he's not good enough for MLS. But we do have a good sense that he may not be good enough for a mid-table English Championship club, because under several managers over several years he's failed to break through at QPR. So, as a QPR supporter and semi-regular watcher, I have hardly had the chance to see him play.

As for this season, under a new manager, the position was grabbed by Ryan Manning (23yo, 0 Ireland caps (1 call-up in October), several Ireland U-19/21 caps) who now starts at left back (though also plays left mid) (28 starts of 33), backed up by Lee Wallace (31yo, 10 Scotland caps, former Rangers starter, but mostly as they climbed back up the leagues) (10 starts).

Sure, some teams/managers get it wrong. And, sure, Niko might be improving rapidly with regular play in the SPL. But he wasn't able to edge past the competition listed above this season and, in his career, he's made one league start (in October 2016) for QPR.

Kreis had him into a US U-23s camp for a week in September, so he has been given a look fairly recently. But, having been capped by Finland, if Kreis doesn't have him in the mix for the Olympics, is he likely to make the one-time switch just to maybe get a cap in a friendly?

As a refresher, here was his take in a November '19 interview: "I didn't want to make a decision to play for Finland or USA yet until I was playing first-team football somewhere club-wise." "I think it has to be soon, or soon-ish. I have to be ready, but it has to be soon. Obviously if I pick Finland, it's the Euros [Finland qualified for Euro 2020] and then if I pick the USA, maybe it'll be the Olympic team.” “I am still thinking about it. It is difficult. It's a tough decision to make.”

http://www.americansoccernow.com/ar...er-hamalainen-pondering-international-options

That said, they could do like Kreis did -- call him into camp before he makes the switch just to have him around the guys and see how/if he fits.

 

I posted this a couple days ago in Yanks Abroad, but I might as well repost it here:

 

I've had just about enough of the informed opinions around here! Can we please get back to just blowing smoke?

 

There's a significant gulf between MLS and mid-table Championship, so I'm not sure of his C'ship experience's relevance to the discussion.

What is relevant is that he has been earning honors in a legit league and in the case of Rangers, against better than MLS-level teams.

This is his first year as a starter. And young players often improve rapidly. Antonee Robinson was beaten out by Daniel Lovitz, after all. Now the former will likely be playing in a top-5 league, come next season. The latter got shifted to Nashville FC for $50k.

I don't know his time frame for making a final decision. Perhaps after Olympic Qualifying. If the US fail and Finland offers the Euros then perhaps he sticks with Finland.

 

I think it's a very good idea to circle back to Alvarado at this point. I haven't watched Alvarado play recently, but I did think he showed potential in 2015--good speed and good on the ball. He was just way too prone to defensive lapses, but experience can fix that.

I'm getting low-key worried about the options at CB. For years we've been operating with the assumption that we're pretty well set there, but as of now, Brooks is the only CB I'd trust in a WC game. Ream, Zimmerman, Long, and Miazga are all fine for CONCACAF, but probably not above that level. CCV and EPB are about a year from full-on bust territory, if they're not there already. And the one legit high-level prospect we have at the position, Richards, has been mostly playing as a RB in the German 3rd division.

 

the alvarado push reflects our veteran/nostalgia bias.*** kind of like all the germans people want to bring back. the answer is always we are overlooking some 30 year old and not to dig down into the younger, bigger upside end of the pool. basically let's recreate the klinsi dog of a team with a few kids sprinkled in. there is a reason he's fired fwiw.

what people forget is he had fought into a starting role c. 2015 under JK and that coincides with the ill fated gold cup. as we are flailing about he gets to start a string of 4 games and we win 1. jamaica semi, peru friendly (only W), brazil friendly, costa rica friendly. he is then on the bench when qualifying arrives, and gone for the hex. and gone under bruce.

to be fair, i looked at the highlights on those losses and it's never "his goal" per se but he also kind of feels like standing around when big things happen, my brooks beef as well.

the one thing i see i like is some foot speed. but what i saw was like not dominant and just kind of "there." some ricochet would come off the pole to the brazilian and he's "correctly" in formation but the scorer 5 yards away is unharassed. the use of that speed should be to rapidly close people but i didn't see it.

***i could see a shallow retort of don't you tout lichaj. the difference is lichaj was on the last team that beat mexico (2018), has gotten a result (win or tie) every time he has played this cycle, lost 4 times in 16 caps, and the last game he played we lost was like 2013. some veterans are worth rehabilitating, ditto wood. some there is a nostalgia problem where the reason they are considered now is because people forgot why they disappeared. you can tell which is which if you do your homework.

 

custom built for GB Ball -- Leon goal 2.