As long as the league and profile keep growing at the pace it is here at home the "golden age" is only going to go platinum eventually. I actually may be alive to see it. Wow. Damn, I just jinxed myself didn't I? Maybe I won'y eat those shelfish tonight.
Thanks for that. Pretty hilarious that he gets complemented for his defensive smarts and forward work "nothing to write home about" when a year ago, the kid was a striker.... Then again, so was Spector (a striker) a year before he started playing some for Man U.
And didn't we have huge thread wars about a year ago about how the US wasn't developing enough defenders? Not as much to worry about now, it looks like (Spector, Karb, Marshall, Gooch, et al.).
Something interesting about 3 of the 4 players you've mentioned. (At least.) Except (so far as I know) for Marshall, the other three were ALL moved into more defensive roles, where they're flourishing. Spector and Karbassiyoon were strikers in youth club players, and Spector was even an attacker with the U-17s until just before he signed with ManU. Onyewu was a fullback most of his youth career. (I think--I know he played alot of fullback, I don't think he played much in the center, but I might be wrong there.) The point? I dunno. Maybe the point is that we as a nation, at all levels, need to be more aggressive about moving wings to fullback, AMs to DM, fullbacks to central defense. Look at Clint Dempsey...as an attacking mid, he's got some potential, but really, he's never gonna be better than Landon, and they're about the same age. But Clint as a DM or a box-to-box two way mid, that's exciting. The thing is (and I say this as the 2nd biggest Clintfan on bigsoccer) I don't know if he is a good enough defender to pull that off at the international level. I hope that at the club level, he's asked to play that kind of role, to improve his tackling and positioning. To bring it back to Danny...the problem is that players here don't get grouped in with other elite players early enough. Danny was probably exceptionally skilled playing for his club team in Virginia, so the coach, of course, played him up top. But at Arsenal, his skill wasn't striker-level. But the kid is athletic and skillful, just not Arsenal-striker skillful. So they moved him to fullback, and maybe we've got something there. I used to believe that MLS was almost always a superior environment for development; it's better to play at the 2nd level than practice at the 1st level. But I've changed my mind somewhat. The advantage of Eurotraining is that those clubs are a tight concentration of talent, so they'll look at a guy like Karby, and put him into a slot where he can be a great international for the US, instead of another guy filling up the roster.
Some nice points Superdave, you touched on a subject I have tried to push. We tend to look at it as attackers who are made into defenders... Spector, Karbassiyoon, heck lets go back a bit and use Vermes as examples. I look at it another way, these may be defenders that were played out of position as a forward for a decade or so before being moved to a position where their talents shine. Why does this happen, because as others have said, these are talented players who can play anywhere in youth leagues against average competition - so are often place in places where they can score. I like to look at it this way because the alternate almost suggests that you become a defender just because you can't quite hack being a forward - as if you are a forward you can play anywhere (which we all know isnt' true - right?).