We should be more enthusiastic that we have a young talented player who is an integral piece for a Champions League club. Malik Tillman's PSV career:◉ 2x Eredivisie Champion◉ 2x Eredivisie TOTS◉ 22 Goals◉ 19 Assists◉ 74 Matches Played◉ 8 Champions League Goal Contributions⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️#usmnt pic.twitter.com/NZriTsVjQZ— USMNT Report 🇺🇸🇹🇷 (@USMNTReport) May 18, 2025
Just scored in the match as PSV become champions of Eriedivisie. He and Dest both looked great watching the game with human eyes, but you can never really know these things until all the nerds crunch their numbers right?
See this is an error of thinking, that because I am saying something that is “critical” of a player that must mean I am against them or for someone else. I’m simply for the truth and what is best. A guy with bad underlyings who vastly overproduces them in a small sample (a good deal of it against weaker competition playing/down a man) is not putting together sustainably good performances. Malik doing much worse in the CL than the league when his teammate playing the same role doesn’t is concerning. For the record Tillman is in my XI for the GC.
Dest was a little rusty and the goal came down his side (a lot of moving parts so not saying it was his fault). Malik struck his goal well on the half-volley golden chance that fell to him.
Evaluations of this nature in a vacuum, as in without comparison to a similar US eligible player, serve what purpose? Its not only been “critical”, its been relentlessly negative. The facts, underlying tertiary statistics included, are that he’s played very well in league and CL and produced consistently.
I don't think your take is without merit, I just think the fact that the team instantly went into the toilet and fell out of contention after Tillman's injury, and then made an epic run that when combined with Ajax stumbling drunkenly down the stretch, resulted in an out of nowhere title, you have a problem with your argument holding up. When the coaches, and the local fans alike seem to be pointing to Tillman as the straw that stirred the drink this year with that struggling side (and to a degree last year), the argument that he's just one cog in a machine that defenestrates Eredivisie crap defenses begins to fall flat. They struggled with him gone for two months, 2 losses, 3 ties and the 3 wins in 8 games, all against lesser sides in the league. After he came back into the team, they lost to Ajax and then finished with 7 consecutive wins, Tillman producing 6 goal contributions down the stretch, including four in the final week. The team seem quite challenged without him (and Dest and Pepi) and not very challenged, when he and Dest climbed back on the Pepi-less train.
Understanding the true performance level of a player is critical for any evaluation or future projection. If one thinks that Malik is a proven top performer at the CL level, then they should assume he is certain to be a highly successful player on the international level. However, if they watch his matches and see that he has struggled to be consistently impactful against tougher competition (aka what a proven high level player does), then the failure to quickly succeed at the international level is not inexplicable or especially surprising. Players who dominate in third tier leagues (Holland, Belgium, Champo, MLS, etc…) who haven’t shown they can consistently perform moment to moment at a higher level are guys who can’t be counted on to be international level difference makers. Some end up being that, some don’t. Some are capable of succeeding immediately. Some take time to adapt. Some need to improve and do. Some never make it. I could go into some indications of who is likely to fall into which category and why but that’d take too long, I’ll just refer to my body of work. The nature of this game is that a guy can be shit for 89 minutes and do one thing right and be a hero. If you’re trying to evaluate a player accurately you can’t ignore those 89 or 540 or 1300 or 5000 other minutes. Those minutes tell you how likely a player is to be a “hero” in the future. If one doesn’t know anything about a player other than those box score stats, they are the true “spreadsheet merchant”. A spreadsheet with only two columns that can easily mislead. Getting lots of chances is the best way to score regularly. People intuitively knew this before stats. People constantly talked about how one team or the other deserved or didn’t deserve to win based on their observations of this. How one team “could have scored four”. xG is just simply a generalized shorthand for that. That’s it, it’s nothing to get too worked up about. It’s easier to remember each rare goal and assist and harder to remember all the shots and how hard each chance was to score so it’s also something like a memory aid. One can argue that it’s wrong or it or its use is misleading, especially in a one game sample. To do that they need to have actually watched the game and remembered all the relevant facts. I’d love it if everyone could live up to that standard but I don’t think that’s the world we live in.
Harsh but we're at a spot where tough assessments need to be made to understand why what we think the team should be doing and what they are doing are very different. Tillman does need to improve and he still has time because he's still fairly young. A lot is between the ear stuff and more experience should help. I wish the team could ever have a mostly healthy team for a year or so so we can see if injuries are a main cause of our problems.
Malik laat die tequila nou staan pic.twitter.com/YaPREqpBZS— Opa Toivonen (@OpaToivonen) May 18, 2025
For me the gap between the top 4 and Ligue 1 is as big as the gap between Ligue 1 and the 6th best league. So it’s the top 4 in Tier 1. Ligue 1 in Tier 2, then a bunch of leagues clustered in Tier 3. This pretty closely matches the economics as well. Look on the bright side, Ligue 1’s TV deal may collapse and the subsequent drop could see Holland, Portugal, and Belgium up in that second tier.
There is really a false narrative, improperly using xG, being spread about Tillman v the rest of his PSV teammates. I posted this table in the YA thread but it is more appropriate here: Yes some teammates have higher xG totals, they certainly take more shots. Tillman overperforms them in actual goals. That is just his offense, there is almost no talk of his outstanding defensive work. He is a CM not a striker FFS. PlayerMinutesxGGoalsxGDiffxG90Shots LDJ245319.0714-5.070.798 Saibari178711.8711-0.870.684 Til202611.7410-1.740.5264 Tillman19217.19124.810.3458 Pepi6837.13113.870.9434 Bakayoko15806.5992.410.3860 Lang19056.25114.750.363 Perisic18074.9494.060.2542
I don't think it's true at all that Tillman has struggled against the highest level of competition. Stats are great but they are bound to leave out an enormous amount of important context. Curious... how do you square the idea that advanced stats (whatever that means) are so vitally important when measuring a player's ability and then support criticism that he is "lazy" and lacks "work rate?" In fact, a huge part Tillman's quality as a player is what he contributes on the defensive side of the ball.
Wise words from Malik to wrap up the day. See you tomorrow 🙋♂️#OnsEindje pic.twitter.com/kErLVQSq1e— PSV (@PSV) May 18, 2025
The Eredivisie spot is really challenging in league rankings. The top teams in the Eredivisie are well advanced of MLS, Championship, Belgian, etc. teams. But that league is dragged down in rankings because the bottom teams are sub-Championship or MLS level. So when Malik Tillman goes out there and plays well against Gronignen, what am are we supposed to say? Yeah, great job. But it doesn't tell me a lot about his qualityfor the USMNT or international level. His performances in the Champions League and other top Eredivisie teams tell me something, though. He passes that eye test. Its not as bad as CCV and Trusty at Celtic. CCV will play Aberdeen shortly to clinch his third treble in a row in Scotland. The question arises: So what?
This!! He had the highest number of tackles and was highly contributing to PSV's defensive play in tracking back, closing lanes etc. Stats only show you what you can put a number on. The most important player of PSV has been Perisic, because of what you can't catch in numbers. He has taken the role of LdJ as the leader of the team. He was the guy, who was the 100% professional, when other players swerved away from that and in the locker room and on the pitch, both in the trainings ground and matches, was the one to ruffle them up. Malik was the essential ingredient, key to both the attacking and defending side of the team. When it comes to the USMNT, if you want that Malik to show up, look at what put in the midfield with him.
With the USMNT, he'd likely play in that central midfield trio with Adams and McKennie. So in the starting lineup of the Panama game, we'd replace Tessmann with Tillman. Definitely a two-way midfield role. [Poch actually brought him on for Johnny against Jamaica. Played quite deep. Which also looks like the direction Reyna is headed in. If and when he's actually healthy.]
I said “struggled to be consistently impactful” and I 100% stand by that based on watching him play. He hasn’t. He’s improved and he’s not a weak player but he’s not played like a starter on a contender against top competition. Yes, stats can leave out context, which is why npxG/90 is better than G/90 because it includes significantly more context. Some context missing from Malik’s CL stats are the teams he is getting his production against, the number of men on the field when he is getting those box score stats, and for his chances created the quality of the resulting shots. I don’t see where I called Malik lazy so I have nothing to defend there and am interested in where you got that from. Having watched Malik from Rangers to now I can say that he was “selectively engaged” on the defensive end in the past. So much so that he got subbed at halftime multiple times by his PSV manager last season. He has improved, like many young players do, and his manager spoke about his improvement.
tertiary statistics: Malik Tillman🇺🇸- 24/25 At PSV Eindhoven pic.twitter.com/OUOl8MI2f1— Kieran (@NextUpBallers) May 19, 2025
It's not that stats can leave out context. It's inevitable that they will leave out an enormous amount of context. That doesn't make them useless. It's just that they should be used as supplementary information, or in the case that they are a primary source of information, they should be taken with a big grain of salt. Tillman is a force on the field in possession and out of possession. He has displayed this against low level competition and high level competition. He hasn't shown that in his limited minutes for the US, yet, but there aren't any stats that could convince me that there is a high likelihood of him being a major contributor for the US sooner than later.