Even with 23 man rosters, there were always guys that didn't play. With the short run-up to the game with no month long training camp, I can't picture Gregg using Tillman. So the complaint is the guy who has 20K professional minutes was the break glass in case of emergency player?
I think this is the key. Add in the French manager didn't fill all of his spots because he didn't want to deal with players not playing and how Reyna reacted to hearing he wouldn't play much while Roldan was probably told he wouldn't play at all bar disastrous injuries and Berhalter just didn't want to deal with young players not getting a minute but knew Roldan could handle it because he already had in qualifying.
Arguing w/me to argue? I remember what Bedoya did? Hell I remember he’s a guy who blew a chance at an equalizer against Germany on match day 3. He was a glue guy in ‘18, watched the Couva match and more importantly unlike Roldan he combined “glue w/talent”. The guy “stuck” in Ligue 1 as a regular for 3 years and half his career was over in Europe. Nearly 3 dozen goals, started in Europa league etc. Night and day ceiling compared to Roldan but he also added glue guy chemistry. That’s who you take, not guys who only have the glue. That was my point.
Not to keep going too much on the Pefok stuff (yeah, already way off subject in a Tillman thread) but I think we really get carried away with fit things and making demands of players to do specific things or they're useless. Most of what I see about Pefok that is negative is about how he doesn't press enough or press with enough speed/urgency. Yet, we got what one chance (the Pulisic miss against Holland) that came from pressing in Qatar? No one else was able to get us anything in that mode so not really sure exactly what we are missing if we have Pefok up top not pressing hard enough. We did miss a strong arial threat as we kept pumping crosses into the box. We seem to set up weirdly specific requirements for some positions that leave out quality players. When those players are also in the very small group of guys we have that actually produce, we really handicap ourselves for no good reason.
I think the problem with Pefok is that his skill set is incredibly specific, and not a good fit for the talent we have available. I don't really care about the pressing as much as I care about the pace in general, and being able to get into spaces where he's dangerous when we start an attack or play out some attacking combination. He's not terribly effective at either, but he is a guy that can finish random sloppy chances inside the box and crosses which is why I'd have him on the edge of the roster until we start actually turning all this possession and this midfield+Wing Forward into chances on the regular. Until that happens, Pefok has relevance because he is capable of finishing the rare chances we do generate, which is not true of guys like Ferreira.
But I can and would picture him using Pepi. Pepi didn't make the 26. That's my concern, wasted roster spots. There are other guys too, LDLT shouldn't have been on the plane if there was no intention of spelling Musah or McKennie with him as well. If he was insane enough to prefer Shaq Moore to Scally, might as well have left Scally at home, rather than subject Moore to the abuse he wouldn't have received if Berhalter had any sense w/that evaluation etc.
Roldan and Bedoya have a lot in common with regards to smart movement and work rate. Roldán Is a better athlete and goal threat, he just got caught in a numbers game with the team.
I agree that he should have brought guys he was actually willing to play outside of an emergency and Pepi might have been a better choice as he was in season but Gregg wasn't picking Roldán vs Pepi.
Soccer is very much a team game, and there's a lot of things in that require a decent portion of the team, if not the whole team, executing together. The best defenses in the world, for example, have everyone contribute. And if you press, your striker has to press. (And pressing is about more than just generating direct chances off turnovers. It prevents dangerous counters, it drives better possession, and it can be very integrated into what you are doing offensively. For the US, the fundamental control of the game came from the press, not our possession abilities. So it's not a small thing to drop.) That does exclude some players. But every team set up has fit considerations. Even if they aren't "system" driven, there's player interactions. If you want to play Andrea Pirlo, you need to protect him with strong, active defenders, for example. If you have an attacking fullback, you want a RW/RM that can and will track back. There's no getting around it. It really comes down to which players do you build around, and which players get fit in afterwards. Pefok isn't at a level that I would build around. I'd try to see if I could make some aspects work, but I wouldn't rework something that works for a large portion of my best players for someone like Pefok. But we obviously disagree on the evaluation, and that cascades to the rest of the choices.
Bedoya was a relevant international player circa 2012-2018, Roldan was relevant in 2019, and just inflicted on us since. Is Roldan at the ceiling Bedoya reached in his prime ('10-'16 or so?), I tend to doubt it. Bedoya saw piles of minutes in Ligue 1 as a starter, relevant minutes in Europa League etc. I don't know if Roldan was ever reaching that level of valuation or interest? But maybe scouts would see something of similar value? We're not going to agree here ever, I'm not about to argue that Bedoya was a weapon as an attacking player in the international game, he wasn't, he was more of a defensive stopper at Wing, but Bedoya's utility for us, and for Nantes and elsewhere simply made him relevant in a way Roldan never was. Roldan might have been goal dangerous and dangerous as an attacking player with Seattle (its why I wanted him in camps circa '18 or '19), but he never was any of that in the shirt which made it all irrelevant at the USMNT level and once that's covered, I prefer Bedoya, period. He can sub on for a specific purpose. What purpose is Roldan serving? To illustrate that club play doesnt always translate to international play and vice verca (Weah, for now anyway?)\. Whatever the purpose is, after dozens and dozens of starts, he didn't serve any value other than in the locker room whereas Bedoya did, which is why I preferred Bedoya in comparison as an international.
Yeah, I think Pepi should have been there. But we went into the World Cup with McKennie at about 60 minutes, Musah coming off an injury, a healthy Adams and Acosta, de la Torre clearly not fit. If you want to bring an offensive player into the midfield, Aaronson was fit but small and Reyna was clearly not fit. Looking at that crew, I've basically got Kellyn Acosta being the only option for both CDM and a defensive minded 8. I've got minimal real experience there. Lack of development of a backup real 8 aside from de la Torre was definitely a gap this cycle, but going into the World Cup, there's simply no way I don't use one of my three extra slots for a CM with defensive chops. That's Roldan. Tillman, Lletget, Busio, all these guys are better on offense than D. We saw in January that Williamson has the physical attributes but he's not exactly disciplined (and he was coming off injury, too, I think). Sometimes you just need emergency backup, especially when they were gambling on multiple players' recovery.
As it turned out, most nations at the event didn't need the extra two roster slots. For the USMNT that might have been a guy like Roldan. Now people are arguing ad nauseum about these guys on the fringes. But whatever................... When it comes to Tillman, I think the answer is simple for why he didn't make the roster. He got some chances in friendlies, and didn't do particularly well. He didn't WIN a roster slot. So people can whine and complain about how "guy X" is on the roster over Tillman, but the truth is Tillman didn't do enough to win that spot. Tie went to the incumbents. [If Tillman would have committed earlier, even as a youth player, then maybe he would have had more chances to win a role. Just a thought.]
You ought not to use a roster spot on someone who can’t help the team (as much as an excluded player) because they are unlikely to play, IMO. There are so many unknowns. You fill the bottom of the roster with people who can help in some way should the need arise, even if it is unlikely to. But that is number 131 on the list of weird decisions made by Gregg.
Yep, and if he was picking Roldan over Tillman he also made a mistake because Tillman has utility on the field and Roldan doesn't and that was illustrated by the total lack of usage (hell even before the WC). It was like a golden star a teacher gives a kid, it made no sense. Add in the fact that we didnt have enough strikers, and instead of allocating an extra striker for a wasted roster spot, he chose to waste the roster spot. It doesn't matter that Roldan vs Pepi isn't a thing, it does matter that 24-26, Pepi and Roldan were things, and one of them clearly didn't belong on the plane compared to the others in terms of utility. But to be fair to Roldan, this also applied to Shaq Moore, and to LDLT amongst others. There were just a lot of stupid mistakes and they all cost us to some degree or other. If Roldan had on the field utility, I'd change my mind here, just like Moore, or a healthy vs a dinged not match fit LDLT, but none of those are in play so they were all mistakes, not just Roldan.
The one trait that both Bedoya and Roldan currently have over Tillman is work rate. That is the one complaint that you read from the Rangers sphere, Malik sometimes seems detached and disinterested on the pitch. Berbatov was very successful while seeming disinterested so ... Tillman is leading Gers in tackles with 2 per so he does put in some defensive work.
It's still bizarre to me how Roldan is the "model player" and the "doesn't complain" guy when he literally complained about not playing more at the Gold Cup, something we heard about directly from Gregg... and then we had public statements from both his club coach Schmetzer AND his brother Alex saying that he should be playing more for the national team. Meanwhile Malik Tillman seems like just about the nicest and most humble guy ever, if anyone has actually bothered to watch a single interview with him, so obviously there was a real danger of him suddenly turning into Mrs Reyna
Roldán doesn't have dozens of starts. He's got 13 starts over 32 caps and 1500 minutes. I would love to not talk about the guy in these other players' threads but he's the favorite scape goat. @gogorath you have the who's a good defender vs attacker thing backwards. Roldán's probably a better defender than any of the MLS guys at midfield or wing. He's definitely the only one I see who's started 4 MLS Cups as a DM and he wins a higher portion of his ground duals and a much higher portion of his headed duals than any of them. His 2 way work is the key to a lot of Seattle's defense and attack. The more legit complaints people have about him are his dribbling skills and those complaints are generally way overblown.
Tillman is likely a great guy who didn't know how to be a 8 two months ago and only recently trusted to take on mighty Ross County in that position.
His new manager seems to think he's on the way to putting that issue behind him. When I saw him last Fall he seemed to not understand what was needed as far as effort off the ball. He was already very busy on the ball defending so it's not sloth, just inexperience.
Maybe I wasn't clear, but my point was that Roldan was partially on this roster because we had no depth at CM in terms of reliable defenders. If you bring Tillman over Roldan, you have Acosta as a strong defending midfielder and literally no one else. With McKennie, Musah and de la Torre coming off injuries, and our primary set up putting a decent amount of defense on the 8, it makes sense to bring Roldan over someone more offensive purely out of a role basis. So yeah, I think he's a pretty good defender. And I think we were very thin in midfielders who could defend once we factored in injuries.
Because of why he was brought, he represents an issue. In some ways its not fair to him because decisions like taking Shaq Moore, were infinitely more egregious (combining misallocation of resources and poor evaluation of a player), but the decision with him was equally foolish when you are fundamentally making mistakes at the edges that significantly negatively impacted our chances of success. Berhalter might have suddenly dropped Pepi to fourth or fifth in the pecking order of strikers, which is bad enough of an evaluation, but when you have only 3 guys to play striker in a roster of 26 (when traditionally you'll see 4 go in a group of 23), and 2 of the 3 are probably poor fits, and/or not well integrated into the squad or approach (Ferreira and Wright respectively) you're harming the bottom line of the roster a great deal and the upside of it. If Sargent goes down you're left with 1 guy you deemed as not good enough to make a roster once between 2019 and March 2022, and another guy whose never scored against anyone of consequence whatsoever in international competition and shown a propensity to struggle against size (which literally every single one of our opponents projected through 4 matches had) and with finishing. To just roll with that anyway? Was so thoroughly asinine it beggars belief, which is why people trot out these names over and over. Roldan was a luxury. Moore was an inexplicable luxury, LDLT and Scally if they were never gonna see the field were luxury's. Pepi was a necessity, but deemed an unnecessary luxury? People called this in November and they were 100% right, before the tournament and 1000% right after. Doesn't matter anymore, it's water under the bridge as they say, but they sure as hell better learn from the mistake, because it was an opportunity lost and some of it was self-inflicted like poor decisions of that sort. Btw, I get what Gogoroth says in terms of Roldan being a next man up #8/#6 hybrid/WF depth option after Musah/LDLT but if Berhalter preferred completely rendering Musah and exhausted puddle of sweat, over playing LDLT a minute, let alone playing Roldan, it kind of illustrates why it was a waste. I get his point, Tillman's not ready for the defensive requirements, what the hell is happening with Tessman, who knows, for whatever reason Williamson wasn't deemed relevant etc, but honestly, if these are the scenarios in play, drop LDLT, keep Roldan and take Pepi. It's not 1 for 1, you've got to be able to manage a roster better than that. Did noone ever mention that you know, Wales, England, Iran and the likely R16 opponents Netherlands and Senegal are all across the board tall and big, and could muscle Ferreira out of games easily? I know I was listing CB heights before the tournament and why it was essential to take Pepi and bench Ferreira. Against those back lines athletic+big+tall, this had to be considered, but it wasn't. Or was deemed not as relevant as taking Ferreira regardless. A lot of decisions at the end of the day seem odd in retrospect: Why all the wasted minutes on Long when he was then thrown to end of the bench? Got started like every June/September match. Kind of seems wasteful in retrospect. Scally end of the bench, w/Moore, spotty window call ups and blatantly obvious inferior player. No minutes for Roldan or LDLT when he knew he was going to run MMA into the ground? Use Pepi nonstop in qualifying them dump him aside apparently preferring Wright, Pefok, Sargent and Ferreira down the stretch? Dumps Arriola for Morris when Arriola has more utility as an attacker/defender than the verticality but nothing else one footed Morris? I hated on Arriola plenty during the cycle but I had him on my 26 all the same, he earned it. Steffen dumped off after being the unquestioned #1 stupidly though it may have been into window 5 of qualifying? I might agree w/that, but it's still kind of crazy handling of the pool. So much of what happened will not make sense, just pushing all the Reyna stuff to the side. And I dont begrudge the Tillman stuff, he wasn't ready, he needed more time, I can see that, and with a rational pool, I'd sign off on that, but once you start doing looney stuff like bringing Shaq Moore, and leaving Pepi at home, I'm putting Tillman on the plane because he can definitely add 10x the value as some mystical world where Moore "add's something in the attack"-HA!! A long rambling post I know, but this stuff is all connected to just curious decisions and galaxy brain level stupid that happened in the final roster selection in November.
Roldan had nothing to do with the results at the WC. But here we are arguing about him and someone else who wasn't there and likely also wouldn't have anything to do with the results. Tillman has more talent than Roldan and should be a significantly higher contributor to the USMNT from here out. But he wasn't ready. It was timing. And after the fact it appears he was dissed when he wasn't. But BS will drag a carcass behind the truck for weeks.
I disagree that a player who was trained in the Bayern youth system and played as a CM (#8) until U19 and has played CM for Bayern II and Bayern somehow did not know how to be a #8 2 months ago. In fact he has mentioned Pogba as his role model. He came on as an early injury sub at CM against Ross County, he was not scheduled to play in that match.