When JK was first hired there was a thread in USA Men asking posters to name the players who would be most helped and most hurt by his hiring. I haven't checked back, but my recollection was that I named Mix Diskerud as the most likely to be helped. I thought JK would have an appreciation for a two-way mid who had a bit more of the piano player than piano carrier to his game. I thought other players who could contribute some creativity and rhythm to the attack would also benefit, Adu and Feilhaber being among those who came to mind. Since those early thoughts, we've gone through the following developments: 1) A very impressive showing by Mix as a U23 against Mexico and in the Olympic qualifying tournament. I thought he was our best U23 player by a fair margin. And I thought Adu was pretty good too. Even more interesting were comments by Porter about how Mix was much more of an "8" rather than the "10" he was expecting. An honest, two-way player rather than a "luxury" player. 2) A tendency by JK to shoehorn every increasing numbers of piano carrier type players into the starting lineup. 3) Even when he has brought in a new mid, he has favored someone like Zusi or Williams, whose game leans more toward industry and work rate rather than cleverness. 4) Early on there seemed to have been some enthusiasm on JK's part to play someone with some slick passing skills rather than high work rate in the middle. But even that early fancy for Torres has given way to using him in a more peripheral role. These developments have left me baffled and disappointed. I thought we were headed in the right direction when Torres was given a prominent role, although I thought that Mix's superior athleticism and industry would eventually lead him to being a better option for the role that Torres was seemingly being groomed for. I am left to conclude that US soccer has taken a giant step backwards with the replacement of Bob Bradley by Jurgen Klinsmann. I understand that players like Mix and Adu and Feilhaber have had more unsettled club careers than some of the alternatives. And that for some of the call-ups these unsettled club careers or poor recent form could justify the exclusion of these players. But I can't help but point out that similar considerations have not precluded others such as Morales (not that I think it is a bad idea to call him in) to be given looks. More importantly, I can't help but note that Bob Bradley showed a much greater appreciation for guys like Mix, Adu and Feilhaber and interest in looking for times when their form and club situations suggested an opportunity to call them up. My disappointment is intensified by the belief that the US would benefit a great deal from having a foreign coach, the right foreign coach, and that the hiring of the wrong foreign coach will make it less likely that someday we will give the opportunity to the right one.
I'm looking at the Mexico roster: Johnson and Corona each have an attacking mid background. Zusi is an attacking mid trade. Torres is an orchestrator by trade. Donovan is in the team. Looks like a decent amount creativity in the squad.
I love the change at the top of the coaching. While I do not agree with everything JK does, I love the change in direction in flow for the game. Time will tell if JK has the right guys for the new tactics, time and results will tell us that. Oh and I love the fact that we play the big boys as our friendlies!
I'm sorry, but this thread is a MASSIVE overreaction. JK has done fine so far. You don't know how well your coach has done until you have (1) qualified and (2) results in the World Cup. Everything else is nonsense. Both Bradley and Arena had their head scratchers (which sometimes turned out well, sometimes turned out badly), and both Bradley and Arena had their strong, 'never done that before' moment (like Klinsmann beating Italy in Italy) and their mini-disasters...but also their lucky-breaks-that-saved-their-ass too. It is all noise, all nonsense until we either qualify (or we don't) or go deep in the World Cup (or we don't). Klinsmann is trying stuff (formation, personnel) as any good coach would do in this period. Sit back and enjoy the ride, but don't act like the guys who came before him were any better or worse at this stage, because we didn't know then and we still don't know now.
OK...all this because Mix's career has stalled, Adu is Adu, and Feilhaber is no longer the Benny of old? None of those 3 particularly deserve a call-up, imho. Though yeah I root for Mix too and hope he can resume his climb. But he didn't stick in the Belgian league right? So yeah it's Mexico in the Azteca. But really, it's just another friendly. Personally I like Klinsmann calling in newbies and baptizing them by fire. The real games are in Brazil in 2 years, until then, he stirs the pot and gets us through qualifying, with some newbies now getting their chance along side a spine of usual suspect USMNT vets. What's not to like?
Shea, Orozco, Castillo. Losing 4-0. Playing dmids out wide. Not trying new CB's earlier in his tenure.
By this stage Arena's team had finished third in the Confed Cup and Bradley's had won the Gold Cup. Klinsmann's teams, meanwhile, have failed to shut out Antigua at home and could only manage a draw against a shitty Guatemala team on the road. You're right, of course, that he deserves time, and that Bradley and Arena both certainly had their "WTF?" moments. But Klinsmann's first year has been markedly less impressive than any of his three predecessors.
You want Shea to stay in purgatory? Me and Klinsmann are bigger men, and hope to revive him : ) Castillo has improved and is 10x better than the guy we no longer mention, who the last coach had an obsession for playing in Castillo's position(s). So I got no problem playing Castillo in the Azteca. Orozco....well...I'll think of something positive to say. Maybe tomorrow. Finally, you may have noticed that coincidentally with Dmids wide = fewer goals scored by the opponents. Generally. Though yeah a little more flare would be nice. By the time we get to Brazil.
Shea does not deserve a callup, you don't callup a guy just to boost his confidence, the national team does not serve that purpose. Castillo cannot defend. He's more of a LM and should be used properly or not be in the squad. Dmids out of position, with 0 creativity, which result in an over-reliance on the fullbacks to provide width.
Why I would have left some players home: - Bradley: Working his way into the Roma rotation. - Dempsey: Home stretch on his club situation. - Lichaj: New coach. Has to re-earn his place at AVFC. - Altidore: Verbeek known to frown on the Friendlies. Keeping peace. - Chandler: Still has people in his ear making him think Germany is possible. - Kljestan: I explained his club situation here. - Cherundolo: Better left at his club, and better to start looking at back up talent now. - Bocanegra: See Cherundolo. And he needs to sort out the club situation. - Onyewu: Was awful in last round of games. Now to the players you mention: - Mix: I did not think he was that good in Qualification (he was against Mexico prior to the Qualifiers starting when Morales did the dirty work). But, he has had little action (virtually none) since and was rejected by a worse team than the one Kljestan plays for in the same league. Difficult to make the case he forced his way into this game's picture. - Morales: The difference between the US team that pounded Mexico and the team that choked in Qualification was Morales as a defensive midfielder. Not sure why his inclusion bothers so many when he is called in. - Freddy: I try to stay away from this topic, but the earliest I would call in Adu would be after this season, and only if he shows a professional commitment and consistency throughout the year. - Feilhaber: This is the one confusing omission given Benny's production with the US in the past. I agree that the Final Third is the one area in need of most improvement in Klinsmann's system, but the options you are calling for are not in my mind going to improve things much, sans Feilhaber. I am encouraged by this roster by Klinsmann, but I fear we will see - again - too many central midfielders on the field at one time, with many of the same issues we saw in the last round of games. Here is to hoping that I am dead wrong. I will be the first to say so if I am. Nevertheless, Mexico is a damn good team, Azteca is one of the world's toughest venues, and results-wise I just hope the US can stay in the same Zip Code.
It's all well and good to say things like "we're playing the big boys in friendlies!", but please tell me the utility of taking a B team at best down to a venue where our A team usually loses and gets dominated? This roster is going to get beaten senseless down there. I don't see how losing 5-0 in an arena which we've never won with a roster half full of guys that will, at best, play a peripheral part in any WC run, somehow prepares us for anything. This match will only serve to put the icing on top of a fantastic 2 years for Mexico.
I think he's also laying the groundwork for a *potentially* higher ceiling for this team with tougher games including traveling for many of them and with pushing guys to train at a higher level in the MLs offseason. He may end up reaching the same heights as Bradley or Arena (or not even that high), but he is trying to do more in the long term for US soccer. Hopefully it works out in the longer term, but we won't know for a decade or so and even then we won't know for sure how much of any successes are attributable to him. Tough spot for any coach if you ask me. This isn't to say I don't have problems with many of his choices of course. I would have left Shea at home for sure. On recent form, I can think of a few dozen players who make more sense.
I dunno- I thinking beating Italy IN Italy is as impressive as winning the Gold Cup. But I don't put much stock in either. Arena had an impressive 2006 qualifying run (he looked like a coaching GOD), and then we stank at the 2006 World Cup. I think, only in the end, can we judge.
Yeah...no. Playing a quasi-indifferent Italian team that spent 55 minutes in 2nd gear and only tried when it thought it was going to lose is not the same as playing a fierce rival in a meaningful game with 90,000 people going against you in your own country.
it's very likely we'll lose by that scoreline I do not want to see Torres or Williams out wide ever again.
I'm going to stop after this, since there seems not much point... To refresh your memory, remember Bradley lost the 2011 Gold Cup final, which could have been Klinsmann's to win if Sunil had bothered to do his job and bring in a fresh coach after the South Africa Cup. But since Klinsmann wasn't coach and instead was parachuted in mid-cycle, first, you can;t blame Klinsmann for Bradley not winning the 2011 Gold Cup. You could say truthfully none of the predecessors beat Italy in Italy ; ) Anyway, a mid-cycle resuscitation/re-orientation gig isn't comparable to the positions of the coaches before Klinsmann, on that we can agree I am sure.
IMHO, an overreaction from a usually very astute poster in the OP. While I am also somewhat frustrated with JK not calling in more CAM types (especially Feilhaber and Kljestan, I'm not sure Adu and Mix warrant senior calls yet) and his willingness to play worker bees in attacking roles (Williams/Zusi at RM, Jones as an attacking mid), I think this roster has a decent amount of attacking prowess. Donovan, Torres, Zusi, Jones, Corona, and Johnson can all create at times. Gomez & Boyd up top. Beasley and Shea on the wings. The biggest crime was calling in Shea over Pontius.
My opening post was not really addressed to the call-ups for the Mexico match. It was a general reflection on what I've observed during JK's tenure, in particular the "five match tournament" we played this summer, which imo gave us the best representation of how JK wants to take this team forward. I suppose I could cut him some slack for not including more attacking players in his lineups given Altidore's lack of match fitness this past summer. It will be interesting to see how he lines things up when having a choice of in-form attacking and wide players as well as the usual selection of piano carrier type center mids.
I think it has something to do with Klinsi's make up. JK was agreat goal scorer but from what I've read of his career he was also a workhorse. He probably favors this in a squad he is managing on some deep level.
Whenever I hear of Freddy Adu and his lack of use for the U.S., I can't help but think of the way that Mexico continue to use Giovanni Dos Santos despite his incredibly unstable club situation. I dunno. The issue for me seems to be that Klinsmann is so commited to possession that he's trying to bang it into players who may not actually be suited to it. It's good to see a coach try to get a team to play a uniform style, but the simple fact is that there are guys more suited to this style. Guys like Freddy Adu, Mikkel Diskerud, Benny Feilhaber, and Sacha Kljestan have either barely or not gotten a sniff for Klinsmann. I think it's also good that Klinsmann has priorotized playing time and a stable club situation (What coach shouldn't/doesn't?), but the U.S. is clearly lacking in the attacking third right now and there are players sitting at home who can clearly solve this problem who don't fit all of Juergen's criteria.
Gio is not struggling to make an impression with the marquee franchise in a top league like the Philadelphia Union.
Think Diskerud, Kljestan, and Feilhaber are overrated on these boards. They are not better than Jones, Edu, and Torres for instance, who are part of JK's core, whatever that means. With only 3 German-Americans in the roster, JK has to make do with FMX and MLS players, which he's done. Hopefully, six subs will help out a little, but expect him and the USMNT to get wiped out.
Seeing how we still haven't seen Mix or Feilhaber (seriously) under JK, it is hard to judge. Klesjtan has been, meh. This is the point though. JK experiments with some guys, but not with others, and some of those guys have looked darn good in a national team shirt before. Mix played well at the Olympics, and looked good under Bradley. Feilhaber was one of our most important players for a couple of years. Torres has yet to become the player everyone wants him to be, and my guess is that he will eventually play himself off the team. He isn't that good, and with him in a midfield role, we won't score many goals. In my opinion, JK continues to show poor tactics, a lack of understanding of our player pool, and a rare naivete about the games he is playing. Going into Azteca with this squad highlights this. As did the idiocy of the 5 game mini tourney which could have cost us serious points in WC qualifying. I suspect we will see more of the same into the Hex, and I dare say, we will have major trouble qualifying for Brazil. The real question now is how long vets like Donovan, Bradley, Dempsey, Howard, etc. will put up with average results? At the end of the day, the JK has gotten the job done in the games he had to succeed in. So, we can't complain to much, but I think there is a growing sense that he is not really growing and progressing this team in the right direction.