January 2020 Training Camp Squad

I'm going to be very interested to see the response here to the roster.

 

Here's the December camp collection (after injuries/replacements) for reference, courtesy of @lil_one :

GOALKEEPERS (2): Jane Campbell (Houston Dash; 3/0), Casey Murphy (Reign FC; 0/0)

DEFENDERS (8): Maycee Bell (UNC; 0/0), Malia Berkely (Florida State; 0/0), Imani Dorsey (Sky Blue FC; 0/0), Sarah Gorden (Chicago Red Stars; 0/0), Hailie Mace (Rosengård FC, SWE; 3/0), Kiara Pickett (Stanford; 0/0), Margaret Purce (Portland Thorns FC; 1/0), Kaleigh Riehl (Penn State; 0/0)

MIDFIELDERS (7): Vanessa DiBernardo (Chicago Red Stars; 0/0), Jordan DiBiasi (Washington Spirit; 0/0), Jaelin Howell (Florida State; 0/0), Sarah Killion (Sky Blue FC; 0/0), Kristie Mewis (Houston Dash; 15/1), Brianna Pinto (UNC; 0/0), Ashley Sanchez (UCLA; 0/0)

FORWARDS (7): Bethany Balcer (Reign FC; 0/0), Makamae Gomera-Stevens (Washington State: 0/0), Ashley Hatch (Washington Spirit; 2/0), Paige Monaghan (Sky Blue FC; 0;0), Sophia Smith (Stanford; 0/0), Ally Watt (Texas A&M; 0/0), Morgan Weaver (Washington State; 0/0)[/QUOTE]

 

Good for Sophia Smith! Happy for her, but it doesn’t seem Vladtko was impressed a whole bunch with the December Camp

 

The problem is who do you remove from the current roster.

 

It appears that Vlatko doesn't want to retire anybody on the WC team without a look-see at a camp. Fair enough. Give the old horses an opportunity to show that they can still pull a plow.

And there are lots of old horses there.

 

They want to win another gold in the Olympics. By that time most probably retire or leave the national team.

 

There are good reasons why winning the WWC and then Olympic gold has not happened. There are two "mistakes" that can be made and the gap between them is very small.

Mistake #1 is attempting to simply roll the WWC team into the Olympics and replace few, if any players. Since the Olympic roster is smaller this strategy is doomed to failure unless there is tremendous luck involved and that does not happen.

Mistake #2 is not taking WWC performance into account and replacing too many players and/or changing too much in the style of play.

As time passes the gap between the two mistakes increases and the effect of the first increases and the effect of the second decreases. The problem is the the gap between the WWC and the Olympics is too smal for either "mistake" to be a clear mistake.

The coaching change makes it easier for the US to avoid most of the effects of mistake #1 but it also makes it harder to avoid some of the more insidious issues of mistake #2.

As I see it, at this point, the new coach is making a real attempt to avoid both mistakes by getting a good feel for the "veterans" early while still having time to bring in some youth.

Even if he is totally successful this approach has only a fair chance of success because of many issues the most important of which is the smaller roster any key injury once the rosters are submitted replacing that player with the best performing suitable player becomes harder than it would be with a larger roster. Of course this presupposes that the suitable player is left at home and that might not be the case.

I think we just need to wait and see and we may not know if the coach's moves will work until we are actually playing in the Olympics.

He may replace 10 players and be right or wrong or he may replace only one and also be right or wrong on anything in between.

My hope is that he does not tinker too much with "style of play" because it takes longer (more practice time and more friendlies) to change styles than it does to change personnel.

The bottom line is that no matter how well, or poorly, the changes are made it will still take some measure of luck for the US to win gold at this Olympics.

 

Andonovski's stated purpose for the December camp was a chance for players to earn call-ups to future camps to be evaluated against the veterans, essentially broadening the player pool. It was never going to result in a complete overhaul of the team, especially in the camp leading into Olympic qualifying. I do think we'll see more call-ins from this December camp though post-Olympics, and possibly even for SheBelieves.

 

Maxwell SmartPhone

 

Many of you might not get this..
But for the one or two that do...

 

I understand you're joking and you didn't mean any harm but that's not really funny to me. Why is it okay for older female athletes(some who are only like 30, 34,) to be called "old horses"? That's not a very flattering term and I shouldn't have to really explain why and it used quite often in other career fields when referring to an "old" female in their 30s and 40s. You do realize those same athletes held up the best teams during the Women's World Cup 19', with only Spain really putting them in a hole?

Does anyone ever call LeBron James an "old horse" because he's like 34 years old in another game where it's considered a "young mans" game? No, as long as he can play with the best and put up those stats every season, he's not going anywhere unless he decides. What about Messi and Ronaldo? Do people say they are old horses that need to be trotted out before heading to the glue factory? Should they retire because they are 34 years old? I don't see this logic ever applied to top male athletes that are the same age as Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd and are probably taking some youngins place on their rosters. No, because you know why? They. get. results. and they still play like nobody else.

Whatever you think of Rapinoe, she still plays top quality and scores goals and does her job to win. Even better, she has a personality that gets media attention, just like some male athletes, but she gets criticized because guess what? According to some Americans, women, and particularly lesbians shouldn't be so liberal and outspoken, it might upset..... the President. Ohhhh nooooo, nobody wants to do that right? That's such a disgrace...... yes..... a disgrace to speak your mind... how dare she do that?

Okay off my soapbox today.

Basically, if they are playing at the top and still beating teams and scoring goals and making plays, and they want to keep playing, let them finish out in the Olympics and go for a gold medal. That's all I'm saying. If they are top athletes in their sport, and they have proven themselves at these camps, friendlies, the meaningless friendlies and the friggin World Cup, they should be allowed to keep playing without people calling them "old horses" or "old cows" or whatever 1000 different derogatory words there are for women who are over 30 years old.

 

Is Lynn Williams the only one playing in Australia right now?

 

According to the USSF release:

Following the camp, Andonovski will name the 20-player roster for Olympic Qualifying.

Doesn't this suggest that the 20 player Olympic Qualifying roster will come from the players in the upcoming camp? Which in turn would suggest that the roster for the Olympics themselves most likely will come from the Qualifying 20 player roster, with any changes coming from the upcoming camp's roster?

 

I heard Smith was not impressive either.So much of this stuff is about off the field things. Im just going to watch and see what happens. Thing is Smith will score goals vs many of the teams the USA play. You will only truly find out at the very end of a very managed process. It would be so different if they actually played top teams all teh time or even held open intra squad. scrimmages.

The WNT is so well protected from any real opinions that they can and will continue to do whatever they want. The fact that you can win a WC with player like Morgan who are average at best in Club play tells you something about the inherent advantages. The RoW is the ONLY thing that will force the WNT to change and they are a ways away from forcing that.

I meant he USYNTs have 2 coaches across boys and girls. If they continue to win Internationals at full level in 3 years with NO real international instruction then we should all just bow to their superior knowledge.

 

i read it that way, but someone itk told me that was not the case. Lets see. If i had to bet, id bet with you

 

I used to kid about a former boss of mine. I said he was the kind of person that went looking to find boxes to think inside of.

@McSkillz seems to be one of the growing hoard of people who go out of their way to be offended by one thing or another. @Smallchief was simply using an analogy to say the older players deserved a chance to prove they should be on the Olympic team.AND his post made ZERO reference to political viewpoints or LGBT concerns.

Frankly, Andonovski could leave every 32 plus-year old player home (and Alex Morgan) and still win the Olympics. That includes (oldest to youngest: Lloyd, Krieger, Sauerbrunn, Rapinoe, Harris, Long, McDonald, Naeher, Heath, and O’Hara (who will turn 32 during the Olympics). Remembering the roster size is 18, so 5 of the World Cup players need to be cut anyway.

I said that he could, not that he should or he will.

 

I'm not complaining at all about the current roster, but:

"I have given her some credit for bringing in new people but it seems a whole generation of players are being skipped like Tymrak, O'hai, Hagen, Christie Mewis, etc. I don't see them getting a real chance on this team. Why is Sydney Leroux still there?

Seems like she has her set of players she wants and will force feed them into the team and positions.

When will the era of Jill Ellis ... be over and a different group and a new vision put into place?"​

Just for fun, I went back and looked at posts on BS around the time that Jill Ellis named her camp roster right around the same time as now, but four years ago. I found the above quote from a poster who I'll leave as anonymous. Based on the current camp's roster as compared to Ellis' roster back then, one could do a little editing of the above statement (using a current list of players that haven't been called in) and have it apply just as well to the current roster.

This quote had plenty of company over Ellis' entire tenure in terms of the general gist of the quote. So, are we going to hear the same now in relation to Vlatko's roster? I honestly don't think so. If I'm right about that, Why not? Is there a double standard at play? That's what it seems like to me.

 

In response to your rant, I have no problem referring to any athlete of any sex who is considerably older than the average for their sports as "old horses." I don't consider calling somebody an "old horse" demeaning. Quite the opposite.

By the way, Rapinoe is my favorite soccer player and athlete -- and I wouldn't insult the equus species by referring to Trump as a "horse" although I might call him a name associated with a closely related variety of equus. That would be a horse of a different color.

But undeniably Rapinoe and several other players on the WNT are "long in the tooth" (a reference to horses) compared with the average age of soccer players. "Baby Horse" Alex Morgan is getting close to being an "old horse."

 

Although in fairness, I don't know that anyone on the roster could be considered part of the "horsey set." I could be wrong, but ....

 

Ali Krieger and Allie Long for starters.

 

The difference is that Jill was a not a good communicator in comparison to Vlatko who is an excellent communicator, IMO.

 

Its been less than 24 hours since the roster announcement. Just give everyone time to post all their complaints about the roster....