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

Hamaleinen gave us a chance, came in for U23 despite a resume string of finlands, if we tried a March experiment we probably get him. as i have said a jillion times, a friendly experiment is costless, and we could even try 2 such experiments and give them each a half. but even trying likely gets you his loyalty.

finland isn't making a world cup. we are. same logic that got us Aron Johannson -- then iceland suddenly got good afterwards.

but if we fart around then the impression will be of disinterest and he'll take finland. something better than nothing.

repeating myself but the snob critique is pointless because exactly what LB options do we have in top notch leagues? and of the ones who do exist when called did they played like they cared? thanks. for a tool like this to be useful there have to be positive options embodying the tool otherwise this is just a talking point. i have suggested some older -- lichaj -- or dual national -- toljan, tillmans, laursen -- type options but we don't care. in which case we need to turn over any rock available. for SPL to matter there needs to be someone good i am missing. what am i missing?

chandler? FJ? hahahaha

 

the league heuristic is fairly worthless without factoring in whether a player is awesome, above average, average, below average, or sucky for that league. but y'all aren't even going to admit that much because there goes the easy version of the league A is better than league B. but unless there is some nuance all you're saying is the hollow easy version.

the basic theoretical flaw here is we don't tend to have awesome in a great league, we might have awesome in a meh league versus meh in a good one, and that's not straightforward.

y'all are trying to pimp easy and there is no easy except if you're pulisic playing well in a top league. once below that it becomes mush and a form player in a league that doesn't excite a snob may in fact be better than a rank and file toiler in a league that moistens their panties. which they will not acknowledge until the player literally moves there.

the pretense is usually to compare to average MLS but if the coach is doing his job right he's not calling average domestic players. he calls ones above average or awesome for MLS. at which point comparison to the midpoint of MLS doesn't work. they aren't average MLS. they are typically the sort who could be abroad but aren't. the question is not could san jose beat wolfsburg. the question is whether a specific player here is better than a specific player there.

the ones who are more average tend to speak to GB's selection issues and not the value of properly selected players. a fairly competent player abroad would be better than baird, trapp, etc. but then a fairly competent coach wouldn't have picked them.

 

Alvarado is only 27, not 30. So, in his prime and the same age as Long and younger than Ream.

He was poor in that GC, his club career got derailed after. But now he has been playing well for a decent Liga MX team. Nothing world beating, but he could be better than Zimmerman.

We spent 2019 giving major minutes to such mediocre MLS players, as you can make a case for almost anyone to get a shot.

 

bears noting the photo with coach and scoutee is taken right after the game he gets caught in possession for the goal (on the video i posted). i wasn't kidding when i was like, wow, i think he saw something he liked.

 

i am not against giving out looks. i agree with you on that. to me it's not so much that we "tried mediocre MLS" like that triggers something, as that "we didn't solve the problem." it would be like worse than arena to not only not find a solution but stop looking.

my issue with alvarado is it's not a new solution. there are people out there like richards who haven't been tried. there are people like CCV who played well in recent years then got forgotten. there are people like EPB finding their feet at a younger age. you could play mckennie back there and see what he can do. my deal is if i start formulating a list of who could help he's not the first, not in the first several. i would give him a chance if we started over last january. but we have 2 games and then LoN and quali. it needs to be the sexiest options you can come up with. reyna, richards, those kind of talents.

to me there is this weird confusing nostalgia in turning backwards for solutions when backwards didn't qualify. there is a thumb on the scales in favor of previously capped internationals, but it's basically circular logic because if i cap a new international he becomes as much an "international" as your nostalgia choice. it's basically conservatism dressed up as soccer wisdom.

i mean, i agree with the sentiment all he has to do is be better than zimmerman. i agree with we should see new people. but this particular choice feels like bringing back omar or bradley. why right now is it never some uncapped german or rookie sensation, it's some discard scrapped from the barrel because "international" because "experience." maybe "because i like that league."

 

I think that all makes sense in general. Stop going to a well that had been dry for years when there are new ones you've never checked.

With Alvarado, though, I feel like he was looked at and discarded. Looking at in prime players a second time makes sense. The Olympics are a distraction and many players will be there that are U23, like Richards.

I don't have much optimism that Alvarado will be an answer. Liga MX is a unique league and defending is different there than in most of the world. Defenders from there don't do all that well on the USMNT. But it is encouraging Gregg is looking as "there are MLS guys that play that position."

 

On that "turn" you could tell he was trying to impress Berhalter with "on the ball skills". Berhalter likes to tip off the opponent with ball carrier pirouettes which give the opponent time to scope out where the possibilities are. I know it's the trendy thing but I was never a fan back to the days when it was routine for Nagbe. It has its place but can become a habit which backfires.

 

I have no question that he is better than Zimmerman. I expect him to be better than Long.

It is amusing that people want to ignore Alvarado because he wasnt ready for the international level in 2015 when he was just breaking through at America, but they are fine with Long who was having his breakout season with the Sounders II in 2015.

I agree with guy wanting to try younger players, but would hope we get the prime age players right... which I dont think we were close in 2019.

 

this goes into a lot of my thinking too.

im not against giving him a look (without points on the line, so this march set or bust), but im not remotely clamoring for him. if anything i think people are underselling how bad he was- he had everything you want in a player except soccer ability.

clearly that can, and seems to have, changed. its hard to imagine it not. he didnt earn his way into the team, he was a klinsmann genius idea. sittingly in the most horrific klinsmann debacle (that i will never get over him not being fired on the spot for) finishing FOURTH in the gold cup. the gold freaking cup.

we are/were spoiled in some ways, people think qualifying for world cups is a birthright which is ridiculous (even in concacaf). but fourth in a gold cup? THATS unacceptable.

anyways, back to alvarado- sure. bring him on. but as patrick noted i think scoring in league one is more impressive than being a "top" defender in mex (and i dont know that anyone even thinks that- hes basically the tim ream of mexican league yanks, "respected", "captain").

on resume/league alone i would also go with mls, colaship, belgian league over mex. a mex league defender and scottish league defender are roughly equal to me. that clearly isnt looking at the individual player (or even individual club) at all, and im not REMOTELY saying thats the whole story. i just mention that to try to explain my lack of enthusiam for a guy who was god-awful before but supposedly had greatly improved.

maybe, but id just as soon see brendan hines-ike. what makes alvarado more deserving?

 

You really think "people are underselling how bad he was" and he didnt have "soccer ability"? I think his performances were incredibly exaggerated at the time. The anger people had for Klinsmann clouded most views on players. I dont think Alvarado was really worse than the rest of the players in that tournament. The only regulars from the WC were Bradley and Johnson. Brooks, Chandler, and Diskerud all struggled. He made plenty of mistakes but also showed positives that most ignored.

I am not sure why he didnt earn his way into the team. They were looking for upgrades at CB and he was breaking out at his club. He split time with Gonzalez and even with all Alvarados mistakes, Gonzalez didnt out play him.

 

Why arenot you people discussing the matching of US players with their opponents, like strikers taking on the Dutch defenders, midfielders facing the Dutch midline and the defenders facing the Dutch attacking force?

 

We have just about zero idea of what our roster will be, mainly.

Secondarily, regardless of who we got, we will be at a disadvantage just about (if not) everywhere vs you guys.

Care to speculate on the Dutch roster for this one?

 

Our frontline has been wiped out by injuries (Depay-Malen)
The defense most likely will be
Dumfries------de Vrij/de Ligt----van Dijk------Wijndal

midfield
de Roon/Ihattaren-------Wijnaldum------de Jong

attack:
Stengs-----Boadu------Bergwijn

 

Boadu has a big chance to become topscorer.
It's amzing to realize how many top scorers were AZ players like Altidore etc.

Topscorers per 23/02:

1. Dessers (Heracles Almelo)....... 15

2. Berghuis (Feyenoord)
Linssen (Vitesse)............... 14

4. Boadu (AZ)...................... 13

5. Idrissi (AZ).................... 12

6. Promes (Ajax)
Malen (PSV)
Matavz (Vitesse)................ 11

9. Vuckic (FC Twente)
Pavlidis (Willem II)............ 10


Our frontline could see Promes too in stead of Boadu if back in form after injury.
Berghuis could be a swap with Stengs.

So our attack could look like this:
Berghuis/Stengs---Boadu/Promes----Bergwijn

 

Our backline has some interesting things in the making.
Dumfries has shown (and was put in several team of the week listings) very good form in a struggling PSV. He has to assist the wacky central defenders of PSV, but still manages to become the current co topscorer of PSV with 6 goals.
On that spot however is Hateboer also candidate. He personally lead Atalanta to a blistering victory with Atalanta over Valencia scoring two goals (almost a hattrick!) and iirc also an assist and named man of the match. An odd candidate for that spot is Promes, who's capable of playing as a defender too.
In the central defense positions Koeman has a wealth of choices with de Vrij/de Ligt/van Dijk as the most expensive ones.
At the left my preference goes to Owen Wijndal, but Koeman has several options there too, like van Aanholt and Zeefuik (who with a broken hand was a threat against Ajax).
Both wingback sides has players who are very good in going forward and scoring goals.

 

i do really think those things. hence me saying them.

the only confusion i feel re players under klinsmann is evaluating them having been (mis)managed by an indecisive four year old. i thought jf torres was a pretty solid cm, an attack-leaning 8. pretty terrible left back, though. morales probably wasnt as bad as he showed due to being shuffled though at least 4 positions (while danny williams was pretty decent in spite of that same nonsense). bringing in a college kid (morris) is nutty, but he was decent-very good from the start. wood was barely playing in bund2 and he was very good.

alvarez was a hot damn mess- not only being poor positionally, but actively running upfield as teams played around him. he couldnt tackle. he was like a basketball player who wont box out cause hes already heading up the court cherry picking- wil trapp offers more defensive resistance. he was like (not to put this all on one guy, its a pretty common occurrence) ayo akinola as a youth player- really impressive physically but cant...do soccer.

klinsmann just decided to do things, either out of the blue or just to be petty about mls. some worked, some didnt.

but yes, imo alvarado was terrible. but as i said that was then, im fine with him getting a look. i just dont think hes any more deserving than any other players who are regular players for average-ish teams in average-ish leagues.

theres just nothing that screams "gotta get this guy in" more than for a lichaj, morales, hines-ike, palmer-brown.

 

I thought it was weird that GB after that performance is down there chatting him up. He gave up a goal. His team lost.

I feel like I get painted as pro MLS when what I am is pro performance. If a MLS dude outplays the abroad guy you know who I want. However I would say the opposite if the opposite was true. I feel like MLS wins some of the position battles, particularly when eval shifts from anecdotes or league snobbery to objective criteria. Do we win. Do we score. Do we allow goals. These are the sort of things functional, successful soccer teams look to.

The irony is I might even have a fair amount of interest in abroad players, as the people I critique. I just don't fetishize and abstractly defend them beyond their first cap. Once they have a cap it's a business. As I have said a jillion times my complaint is that club affiliation or minutes are "scouting" tools. But once they play for me I am beyond scouting. Did they do the thing well or not. "Scouting" sensibilities should not be applied to players with track records. Track records should be.

Alvarado is a tweener there. I hear what you are coming from, but he has a track record. Also, viewed from a "scouting" perspective -- if he gets that indulgence -- I can watch him get beat for a goal last weekend, and I don't know if objectively he would be the first one off a scouting list if it was like, ok, who else in the world can we try.

I feel like the program goals are vague abstractions. I feel like the coach, who has no winning history, is a vague abstraction. I feel like plucking Alvarado from all possible choices is a vague abstraction. I want to get this back to what tactics actually work. What coaches and players actually get results. I am bored with "in theory this is for your own good." Theory isn't working for us.

Re Richards and the Olympics, assuming he is allowed to go, fair point this time, but the team has had 2+ years and the coach has had 1+ years. I generally favor experimenting in friendlies but I think the issue I have here is how much wasted time we have and haven't tried so many. I don't think some of the capped guys like CCV EPB etc. will be released for Olympics ball, McKennie is graduated out, etc. Too many ideas I would want to try, and having burned all sorts of dates, too few efforts to try them. You finally get a date where the Olympics basically force an experiment, and you're going to burn it on Alvarado? Really?

I feel like this safe, go in circles mentality is how you end up with last cycle's LB and CB issues. It's like we identify the problem, but then go around in small circles of approved candidates without acknowledging part of the problem may be the approved candidate circle itself. That you have settled upon too narrow a pool of players not performing well enough to earn their place, and not trying anyone outside them. To me it is not rigorous as it essentially assumes the conclusion it wants to reach. We play Omar because the coach against all good sense believes in his head he can handle the job. Whether that follows to reality seems beside the point. Lo and behold the player picked on an assumption fails in reality. Maybe quit assuming and start comparing.

And even better he is literally one of the musical chairs players from last time. Let's bring back Omar and Cameron to make this complete. Just great. I have also said about 20 times I don't know how this bunch earned "our best chance to win" when they didn't actually do that. If your "experience" is either being booted from the pool or riding us on off the cliff how is that meaningful experience. At what point does the program start moving forward?

 

Because you have to get your house in order, use the right tactics, and be calling the right people -- look competitive -- before you start worrying about games in a matchup sense.

There's also a hint of an ego thing in "talk about us instead." To me it's the sign of a very bad team or disaffected fanbase when you start talking about the opponent rather than your own roster.

 

Well, Gregg did bring Omar back incredibly.

I'm agnostic on Alvarado. Gregg, if he is going to keep playing the way he has, needs CBs that can pass. No American CB in MLS is any good at it. There are some young ones that are trying to add it to their game as the world is heading that way. The same is generally true with the CBs in Europe. Miazga might be the best right footed CB at passing, but that is not saying much as Zimmerman and Long are horrid. CCV puts up high passing complete numbers and is good on the ball, but I don't think his range is that impressive or he would be more consistently in demand as a player at a higher level.

This is part of the "loan army" life. Players are not generally playing for ball dominant teams.

Maybe Alvarado can pass, I have heard as much. He was always quick, if not terribly soccer smart. But, I haven't seen him at all in 5 years.

I don't know if Richards is any better of a passer than Miazga. 6 months ago, I would have thought he was very good. But what little I've seen lately, he is not asked to try and pass through pressure. He didn't show a great passing range at the U20 WC, showing more very good intelligence and excellent 1 v 1 defending.

If we are going to continue with Long, Richards seems a natural replacement. But taking a window to see if Alvarado can operate in The System is smart.

I totally agree with you that, like the team in the Mexico friendly, the easiest in terms of USSF politics, safest decisions were made in 2017 and we ended up with zero minutes of Adams and McKennie and major minutes for Zusi, Villafana, Omar, and many others that were ineffective and not missed. I just wish Gregg had not spent 2019 on his dumb experiment on bringing club football to international football. And that we didn't completely waste 2018. Now, as in 2017, every potential new player seems like a risk.

 

Long-time lurker, but I've come out of lurk mode, to endorse what our Dutch friend posted. Is this a pre-game thread or a just a general BS thread? Not that the discussion of Alvarado hasn't been fascinating. My view is that if you don't have anything germane to the thread subject, don't post it here. God knows there are plenty of other threads for complaints about USSF, Berhalter, Klinsman, Arena, US soccer media, past player selection . . . .

 

GB was photo'd at Alvarado's game the other day. The implication with games in around a month is he is in consideration for the selection for a call. It's not just an abstraction or disconnected discussion.

You could respond, well, but maybe he's not scouting for March. The flaw there would be that our next official date would be LoN in June, followed by quali in the fall. Those games count. Alvarado and the like have not been recently capped. Though Klinsi would call new players for games that count, and I admire that approach, I don't see GB having the guts. I see him as like Arena in that you will likely only be considered if you are capped in the past year and change. So odds are if Alvarado or others get their tires kicked, it's March. Or bust and we won't see you until January 2021 at earliest.

Our Dutch friend could be seen as simply stirring the pot in saying why don't we talk about his team instead. He has previously stirred the put in defending our crazed tactics. Did you consider that?

More to the point, while this is a pregame thread, yes, at this stage beyond a game will be played, at a stadium, on a date, at a time -- and the U23s will mostly be elsewhere instead -- there would be little factual to discuss. Who is in the U23s and unavailable? Unknown. Who are we calling to senior team? Who knows. Who are they calling? Who knows. How do we match up? You have to know the selection to discuss that. That's not even ad absurdum. That's strictly applying "we don't know that" to the very discussion you want to have.

So the discussion inherently involves speculation and rabbit holes until we get a roster, no? Even for our Good Buddy's desire to talk about their players, who haven't been named either.

That being said, assuming speculation is OK, one of my basic arguments against Alvarado was having these two specific games to play -- and then a lot that count following -- we should call our best prospects instead. Lost how that is irrelevant to the Holland game. And let's be real, most friendlies -- other than say Mexico -- are just We Have Another Game in March. We don't call players for matchups. We don't dissect the opposition in depth because it's a friendly. We are in fact usually more interested in our players. It's not a 34 game season with predictable lineups. If people get tired or injured they get left off. Friendlies are routinely used to try old ideas on new form, new names, and morally (if not legally) tie dual nationals down. So seemingly abstracted discussions of Alvarado and Hamaleinen relate. If we don't call Alvarado now he's not involved in 2020 probably. If Hamaleinen is passed over he's gone -- or he may already be gone and we'll figure that out when he shows up on Finland's next team sheet.

tying this thing in a bow, if you go back to the earliest pages of this thread -- which i assume you did before reaming us over relevance arguments -- these players were on lists of people different posters were saying should be tried this time. these discussions are in essence the specific playing out of those lists as a debate about particular players. thanks.

 

Klinsmann intended Alvarado to play dmid

 

Well then I completely disagree.

Your overly harsh view on his 2015 play is held by most around here. My observation was that your and others hate for Klinsmann clouded their judgment significantly on this player. Many fans assumed every decision made was wrong and would argue such blindly. You seem to have been able to see all the positives the kid brought. He was quick, fast, read the game well, good with the ball at his feet, great recovery defending, string 1v1 defender, and strong tackler. He lacked concentration and the game was too much for him at the time as he lacked experience. He made plenty of errors, but still showed potential.

He has since improved significantly. There are tons of clips of his play, but instead of trying to follow him, people just claim he wasnt good 4+ years ago. If you havent watched him play, then how can you claim he shouldnt be gotten into a camp. Given the way Long and Zimmerman have looked over the last year, I'd suggest getting Alvarado, CCV, EPB, Hines-Ike, and whoever else into a camp.

Why does this fan base have such an obsession with rating leagues. If that is the basis of decisions, then it is clear that Liga MX is much better than MLS.

 

Speaking of Zimmerman, why wasn't Blackmon in Camp Cupcake? Bradley and LAFC certainly rate him over Zimmerman. Funny how our coach is suppose to "know MLS", but all his guys have been discarded by their MLS teams.

 

So now your tactic is to throw around lies?
I never defended tactics of your team. Why would I as these arenot interesting to me. What I did constantly attack was your absurd obsession with 4-3-3/Dutch style of football as being useless and not to be followed.
If one makes a search of dutch posted by juvechelsea you get a pages long list and the bulk of it consist of throwing it in while it has nothing to do with what you were posting about.
I wonder what your life would look like if you hadnot 4-3-3 or Dutch football to post unreadable long slabs of text about. With what would you fill your days then?