It's obvious just by watching him but I can provide stats: Year: Goals LA Galaxy 2013: 4 2014: 16 2015: 6 2016: 2 2017: 2 Columbus 2018: 19 2019: 13 2020: 12 Galaxy - 1 goal every 3.85 games Columbus - 1 goal every 1.85 games
His xG while at Columbus is 1 goal every 1.92 games so his finishing is at/slightly better than expected.
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve stated above. I think we would disagree on the value of being tactical. But that would be a whole other conversation that has nothing to do with the USMNT. I also think Europe isn’t for everyone and a player like Morris or Donavan is better off in the domestic league. They are able to self motivate and improve on their own without external forces pushing their development. I’m watching this happen with Mueller at OC. He may become a top MLS player within a year or two.
Oh, by tactics you meant play as a forward and try to score by taking as few touches as possible. LAG moved him out wide after the 2014 season and even recall them trying him at RB. In his one season under Berhalter he scored a goal every 155 minutes. Very close to matching his goal every 150 minutes in 2014.
Berhalter keeps repeating that the measure of a national team is the number of Champions League players it contains. Players that never leave MLS can never make the Champions League. Sounds easy enough. But where does it leave these players that you describe? Most UCL players are pro at 17, which makes the whole college pathway suspect. Donovan himself realized that MLS was not preparing him well enough and worked a loan to a good EPL side in the half-season before WC 2010. I wonder if we see Morris make a loan move like that to stay relevant. After this cycle, I doubt we see such players like Morris and Long and Zardes anymore. MLS players will be high upside youngsters given a taste to spur them on. The path Aaronson is on. One cupcake call up and his next call he will be playing for a UCL team.
I think their path is to produce with the Nats while they are young like Morris, and keep producing when they get their chances. Playing UCL means that you most likely can handle international play, but not playing doesn’t mean you can’t. Just because Morris or Donavan never play UCL doesn’t mean they can’t be good internationals.
Depends on how you define good internationals. On the Worldcup stage you have two classes of soccernations, the top nations and the rest. If your goal is to be a top nation, you have to beat the top nations, not the rest. So you have to beat countries that reach the last 16=becoming a last 8. When one looks at the wc2014 and 2018 you see countries loaded with CL players in that phase, which makes sense as the chances you will beat a team with CL players while your team hasnot got them, is rather slim.
The first touch he was criticized for incessantly has improved enormously and he seems faster and more direct. Just generally he seems more confident. Take the goal he scored on Saturday as an example.
Most people on here can't think like that. They are focused on putting the best team on the field and measuring them versus our teams in the past. Of course, any past success outside 2011 to 2016 is greatly exagerated. They desperately want to believe playing in MLS is good enough and use a couple of outliers that didn't achieve that much to defend that view.
Some people believe that if you don't agree with exactly what they're thinking then you must be diametrically opposed.
Technically you could break it down as winners vs. non-winners, since no one has a goal of simply reaching the QFs (which many countries have done, including the US). I think, realistically, you need 8-9 of the best players in the world, and maybe 1-2 generational greats to be a WC finalist. Players also would be on the top 15 or so clubs in the world (after all, despite both being in CL, we all acknowledge there's a big difference between Porto and Real Madrid). 2026 would be a great chance for the US to really go for winning it. We'll have the players in top clubs and they'll be in their primes and playing at home.
No-one is suggesting that the US take a squad full of non-CL players to the World Cup. That's where the world's best players play. But there are one or two non-European based players who might be good enough to start. See Uruguay in 2018 and Costa Rica in 2014.
Why am I questioned about something I donot claim? I only added to the post I quoted by remarking that to be capable to reach the last 16 and for sure the last 8, the team has to have CL-playing crew members as proven by looking at the last 16/last 8 of the last few Worldcups.
Yeah. What you need is the backbone of the team to be top of the bill. CD-Midfielder-Attacker is the minimum.
It was a question. Because some ppl are going to claim Morris (who’s been are best player) shouldn’t play based on such a statement.
Croatia had top players playing at top clubs. All but one starter was in a top 5 league and that player was at top Turkish team. Only other players on the roster not in a top five league were at top teams in Belgium, Russia, Ukraine, and two in Croatia. Here is the starting line up in the final.... ----------------------------Juventus----------------------------------- Inter Milan---Barcelona---Real Madrid---Frankfurt ---------------------------Inter Milan----------------------------------- Sampdoria--Besikitas--Liverpool--Atletico Madrid -----------------------------Monaco-----------------------------------
Morris beat up on minnows. He hasn't been our best player. He was ineffective in the GC final, but drew a penalty against Mexico coming off the bench in the role he should play for us.
Beating up on minnows is required as part of CONCACAF. Its most of our opponents. That's a baseline for us. If we can trust Jordan Morris to consistently score against CONCACAF, then he has a role. We can all see the revolution coming. In the coming years if a player wants to be a key contributor to the USMNT he's going to need to be playing in a top European league. That doesn't mean we won't call up players from MLS, but they'll likely be the youngsters with a Europe ceiling (the Brenden Aaronson types). We're not quite there yet. We can have a reasonable argument that MLS centerbacks are the equal of a player like Matt Miazga in 2020. [Anderlecht's backline is 3/4ths former MLS players.] One can make an argument on the right wing until one of these youngsters like de la Fuente, Weah, etc. etc. truly emerges. So we're not quite there yet. And when we dig deeper on our depth chart than the starting XI, then we're really not there yet.
True, but one is a generational great who won the Golden Ball in that tournament and the Ballon d'Or. Still, they were a little lucky to make it to the final, IMO, avoiding many traditional powers along the way (like Germany who shockingly didn't escape group stage) and they sorta got brushed aside by France. It's a rule or thumb more or less. The US could be somewhere at that level circa 2026, frankly. Sustaining that level is a different story.
Not any more its not. There'll be the odd minnow in the Gold Cup but that's about it. The Nations League and the automatic qualification for the Hex mean that it's unlikely the US will have meet the likes of Montserrat anytime soon.