Our Gold Cup starters included Hoppe, Dike, Williamson, Cannon, Sands, Busio, Bello, Vines, Turner and Moore, so I think we learned a lot. It was also probably the end of Zardes, Lewis, and Roldan as anything but a bit player. De la Torre probably would have started for Lletget at some point had he accepted the call up. We're headed to Qatar in a good state as long as everyone remains fit. And we won. Call me crazy but I'm guessing from reading between the lines of your posts that you don't like Lletget, Roldan or Arriola. I'm sure there are fans of every international team who disagree with their coach's picks ahem Harry Maguire.
Not sure how you define a good state, but I wouldn't use it. Our 5op players have played less together than they could have, even with all the injuries they suffered. We have generally looked inept offensively with little cohesiveness. Likely due to lack of time together and sprinkling hug weak links. I find it hard to believe two more games and a week before the cup will be enough. Nobody has a clue what Berhalter will do (many include myself think we we know, but those views vary significantly) in goal, the second CB, the number 9 and even smaller question about one of the 8/10 roles. Your post the other day claiming your experience as an England fan is enough for you to understand everything USMNT fans are going through was comedy. When you start off with my team won the WC when I was 5 and your league has always been a top one, it clear you are clueless about what long time US fans have gone through and our issues with this actual coach.
Injuries are the main reason our top players haven't had the chance to play more time together. Otherwise the first XI has been pretty consistent since September. Richards was injured, Turner was injured, McKennie was injured, Reyna is coming back from injury, Moore was in the Segunda playoffs, M Robinson is out for the duration, Dike is injured, LdlT refused a call up, Morris is still not fully recovered, this is the reason we haven't had a consistent lineup. And really it wasn't until the September window that Antonee and Weah started playing consistently well despite having plenty of chances and Musah is still a teenager.
It was a coaches choice to not play Robinson, Musah, and Weah in games for lesser players. The 4evolving door at forward has been mismanagement when one considers every option looked at after wasting time on Altidore and Zardes, could of been looked at sooner. I know you think Robinson was "pants" in 2018, but I dont see a much different player since then. The Brqzil game is often quoted, but can't think of game that Long has played better than Robinson in that one. I get it. You don't view the minutes as scarce and are fine with playing inferior players.
But what you won't acknowledge is that players who are a lock today weren't necessarily a lock even a year ago. Last summer Musah was a rookie 18 year-old and Weah and A Rob hadn't played consistently well. Altidore hasn't played since the biblical great flood. Zardes at his best was probably as good as any of the current CF contenders. But anyway, since last summer Turner, Dest, Zimmerman, Richards, A Rob, Adams, McKennie, Pulisic, Aaronson, Reyna, Musah and Weah would have played together a lot more if it weren't for injuries.
What you wont acknowledge is that Berhalter stacked the cards against them and played guys who weren't locks and would never be. Both Robinson and Weah showed they could hang with teams in 2018 and then Berhalter didn't give them a chance. The people who defend Berhalter are the ones who criticized another coach for asking younger players to beat out actual veterans. He also gave those younger guys a real shot to do it. Berhalter didn't give the younger guys a fair shot and announced the so called veterans. Berhalter ability to identify a guy who is about to break out is nonexistent. When you don't have veterans, that is what you need from coach. He announced guys who couldn't hack it in concacaf.
When a team qualifies with the youngest roster in the world you would expect a lot of caps from 4 years ago to go to players who have been overtaken. We also qualified with an xGD over 4 times higher than the 2014 cycle and more than twice as large as the 2018 cycle. It is true that Berhalter did not just commit to young talent all cycle and ride it, hoping he could bet on who would be good 4 years later. Even with that Musah, Pepi, and Konrad got chances in actual WCQ and the roster was the youngest to qualify and maybe the 2nd or 3rd youngest used in qualifying. Early cycle stuff just does not matter that much for the ultimate on field product at the WC. It’s a talent identification, culture building, and learning period. Major A-team tournaments matter more and WCQ matters more than that. Berhalter not overlooking Jedi’s unconvincing play early in the cycle against Jamaica ended with a tactical change to a system that was a better fit for him and Jedi being our clear starter at LB throughout WCQ (and another tough showing against Jamaica). The mistakes that really matter were: 1. What led to starting Sands in a two man DM away at Honduras. 2. The approach and lineup away at Panama. Why would you start Lletget against a physical team deeper in CM away in CONCACAF and play an open game with a largely rotated team? Go more physical, to press or for outlets if playing on the break. 3. Acosta as an 8 is also almost always a mistake. 4. Not originally having Weah as the starter against CRC at home. 5. Busio and Lletget over Luca in the November 2021 window. 6. Zardes.
Since some of you don't understand the game and won't listen to me, here are Jay and Gregg's thought on the topic... 1567903738765135872 is not a valid tweet id
I'm interested to see if next year when he has three former assistants in the league if they start a wave to do the things he mentioned and of course if they are successful because of it causing others to copy. he also rightly brought up a few reasons but seemed to think it could still be a lot better. I've heard lots say the game moves faster in Europe, more time on the ball don't think I remember anyone bringing up the compactness.
Everything Gregg says there is 100% accurate. I'll be curious to see if minutes (per team) for teens actually went up in MLS this year or not. With FCD giving few minutes to teens (because they sold them all ), it won't shock me if its actually gone down. Half of MLS has been founded since 2011. Its a miracle many of these academies are producing anything at all. As far as the style of play goes..........................yes, the game moves faster in some European leagues. They're also not playing in Dallas in July.
not very interested in being lectured on soccer understanding by someone who takes the best roster in the region and turns it into a 3rd place tiebreaker qualifier down to the last game. i am not sure what europe he watches because i think many teams over there are fairly soft, zonal, positional. all he is selling is xerox something he doesn't understand. my personal impression is he doesn't understand pep or the idea of committing defenders with dribbling and the timing of the pass -- we instead are basically passing too early playing something more akin to stalemate keepaway, denying the ball rather than creating danger -- and while having the roster elements of a defending team, as well as often the seeming intention to play controlled games, he wouldn't have the first clue what formation to run them out in to suit his goals. if you took our team and had them play like canada we'd win the region. numbers back, defend, counter with speed. but tactics have become aspirational and aesthetic as opposed to functional and pragmatic. and then his offense is low percentage junk. the attack of last resort should be wingbacks overlapping hitting hopeful crosses from the flag. and while pretending to pep, often enough we are passing so sideways and early that we shift the point of attack only slightly, while putting no defenders behind the ball. it's keepaway. keepaway is how to try and hold a lead, not get one. to get a lead there needs to be more directness, more combination play, passes to feet in the box, passes going between or over the backs, wings who can cut in and not just run to the endline. commit the defender and play to an open man behind them. pep 101. if you don't commit defenders and go for finding an open player then you're just farting around showing off. i think the technical level of play is improving in this era but the coaching is derivative fashion crap manifesting even less coaching understanding of the game than our old tactics, which while cruder in execution were well considered in terms of what was trying to be accomplished. the old tactics were at least you are trying to do x well i think if we play in a countering y i can expose you. chess. you take risks and i expose your over extension. how do our current tactics try to expose opponents? GB can talk a blue streak but ask him how we plan on scoring goals and stopping the other team. basic stuff. buzzwords will emanate. we are wasting a generation with improved technical talent on follow the leader tactics that at best cancel out the now-endless array of teams trying to play exactly the same way. you aren't that special in your cute little 433 anymore. el salvador lined up about the same as we did, tried to accomplish the same things. so what. the competitive advantage has moved on someplace else. they hired him for how he looked in 2015. the world has moved on. you need someone innovative for 2022 or who at least takes this someplace more practical or direct.
The difference in speed of play increases as you move up the ranks across sports. Obviously there's much more time on the ball in MLS compared to a top league. It's apparent in watching. And it's the biggest challenge for exports to adapt to.
personally i think he's half cooked and has just figured out that in the post JK era one can get the knee jerk support of a certain sort of european fanboy cult by talking down american soccer while coaching the USMNT. but to be real it's not the thinking part of the europhiles, who probably don't see any tactical genius in how we actually look as opposed to the rhetoric the coach rattles off. kind of like back when JK started this nonsense, we were to pretend coming home to MLS would ruin dempsey bradley altidore when it in reality did nothing of the sort. yay rhetoric. reality be darned. also, none of your ilk seem to consider that if you roster 2/3 europeans your confused argument doesn't quite work. this was a heavy MLS roster in 2018 cycle -- because the talent sucked -- and way back before 2000. most of the time it tilts europe in composition. so arguments about MLS aren't very convincing. particularly when most of the effective backs and strikers seem to at least start here, and particularly when you were only picking a few MLS anyway.
re speed of play, i think y'all are confused. as a former back i do think they have higher tempo around the back with more purpose. the idea is to quickly change fields and find space. we these days fart around and hit every back the whole way across instead of skip balls. and for some reason i haven't sorted we these days want to emphasize building from the back with the worst possible passing attackers. but once it gets going forward IMO the difference is that we seem to have diverted into some pure dutch or 1990s english take the ball to the flag 433 thing, emphasizing keepaway sideways passing and wingback crossing, and zonal and positional standaround defense, while teams over there tend to get more stuck in, and to be willing to be more wasteful to create chances. so what you're seeing as speed of play is simply the willingness to take more risks to create chances while we overvalue possession for possession's sake. we set out to imitate european soccer, diverted into a very soft dutch kind of thing. meanwhile a team like philly that actually plays the ball to feet in the box and commits defenders with passes and dribbling can score piles of goals. it's directness meeting defenses premised on guarding space. i see it the opposite. MLS is ripe for teams that either do what philly does -- direct, committing -- or conversely for some new team that would sit back and defend in numbers with speed wide. that would eat teams alive that want to commit wingbacks forward while holding in reserve some sort of soft zone with what is left. all you need is some fast wings a la alberth elis with some technical ability to convert the tactical jujitsu into routine punishment. the opponent then has to decide to not try to pass through your midfield, or hold the wingbacks back, or otherwise undermine their half commitment to attack. to me the best recent versions of the US i have seen were kind of like that, punishing teams like CR and honduras with wing speed. when they pretend to be baby pep they tend to suck because they default into lazy low percentage flag crossing. that is not what pep generally tries to create. pep is going to knock that ball around and find some crack in the middle of the defense. backdoor runs, combo ball. he would start subbing people off if all that was happening was dest and jedi whacking hopeful balls in the box, which i think is GB's dream, despite the fact he's not identified a target striker yet to get on the other end of those balls. and which to me, give or take the kickball, is more akin to 1990s england than ajax or pep.
There are reasons why we don't listen to you. This is from November 2019. This from February 2020 How did you skip over the whole section where Gregg praises MLS improvements in youth development and only focus on the speed of play? Maybe that is you finally admitting that MLS has made drastic improvements. To me it looks like a self-own more than anything else.
Gregg is a known fool right until he's criticizing MLS and then his haters declare a truce. Slow play is a hell of a blanket to throw over 28 teams, especially when at least a couple are playing uncut Red Bull ball.
If I heard him correctly he made a general point about the amount of time and space players have on the ball, and then a broader general criticism of the defense. I think both are fair. The former point meets the eye test for me. The latter point I have seen explained based upon salary structures, with defenders tending to get much smaller pieces of the limited pie. (The USMNT CBs being exceptions.) As generalizations they seem right to me.
also, his peak was he finished runnerup in a final at home one season where his team came out flat as a pancake and it was over in 15'. otherwise he's generally been a midtable coach his whole career. not sure how that plus turning the dominant regional team into 3rd place as some sort of project exercise is impressive.
Disagreeing with people you don't like is a great trait that a lot of MLS fans seem to have. In this case, people look like fools arguing against my comments in here on the speed of play in MLS. There is a reason you had to go back a couple years to find those comments. Of course they were true at the time. You can probably find posts from back then where commented on how things in MLS are improving. If you look hard enough, I know I have said pretty much the same thing Greegg said about youth in MLS today.
you're missing the point that if i play a 433 as a keepaway rather than direct attack exercise, you are going to have time on the ball, because you are trying to spread the opponent, play the ball before i as a defender can step to ball, and nibble around the edges. unless i am behind in the score i will give you that time because you are unthreatening and willing to just possess and whack in crosses. i think the time on the ball is an attribute of sideways passing and zonal defense. if you try to come at teams more directly to create chances then yeah i will play more man defense and get stuck in. my point is that because you are passing the ball 20 beats too early it's less effective offense because i am not committing your defense so much as just playing the ball around waiting for something to happen. it's kind of a dutch soccer thing. i mock it as "touch football." it's a fashion choice. MLS could get out of the fashion and i am surprised more teams haven't gone the way of nashville for their own competitive advantage. i don't like the "european" soccer nonsense because italian teams and teams like atleti play one way, dutch teams another, german another, and even those are stereotypes. there is no single "europe" and pushing the idea there is, and you are trying to engage it, is usually trying to appeal to snobs as cover from critics.
I agree with the first statement as generally true but there is more to it. There are quite few leagues that people on here consistently claim MLS is better than that the speed of play is much faster than MLS. The biggest factor is probably that the defense in MLS is just so bad. Or maybe its the the games don't matter... Berhalter eluded to itin mentioning turning it on for the playoffs. Id guess the uneven rosters have an impact too.
Parts of it's speed and part of it is defensive organization. I think a lot of it, simply, is that more money is spent on offenses than defenses (I think this culminated in 2018-2019, where you saw some pretty ridiculous goal records being set). The Eredivisie used to have a reputation for being defensively soft too. I make a distinction between organization and speed of play because international games aren't necessarily played at blistering pace anyway. Particularly the WC after the group stage can be played at a pretty leisurely pace in fact. But defenses are very rigid and well-organized.
i don't think our youth talent is worse than europe. i think the creme of the crop goes from FCD or philly direct to europe. so it never manifests in MLS and you only realize it's MLS if you trace back where, say, richards or mckennie first came from. i do think some teams are development-challenged. beyond that, i do believe MLS teams save a very few are so obsessed with a conservative sense of "competition" that favors the veterans and the status quo -- those who supposedly "have proven themselves" even if their team is bottom of the table and that should be a contradiction -- that they appear scared to promote and play teenagers. you compare that to, say, fulham, and they have jay stansfield starting. the implication their kids are better, that's bull. i think it's a combination of us sending our best there to start with, and then with many teams it's an attitude problem with scared coaches. the dynamo have several players who should see the field and either rot on HD2 or are being withheld to preserve a HGP claim (raines). and the coach just got fired. they then hire another YNT coach who ironically back to the wall prefers to play O-30 veterans if his job is in the balance. there is also an aspect dating back to the beginning of the league where many teams like to sign retirement home type players to sell tickets, who squeeze out the younger players. you even see it with GB who appears through analytics to favor established players who have first team numbers to discuss. some kind on a B team doesn't have any, even if he might be more talented. i thought reyna was wickedly talented on BD2 and we had to wait on GB to see him get a first team number. personally i think the history is fairly clear that the US benefits when it takes front end risks on younger talents (donovan and beasley 2002) and sucks when it tries to squeeze one cycle too many out of older farts on the back end of their careers (2006 and 2018). but i also think the mentality of coaches here is they'd rather be fired for doing the obvious with older players than taking risks on younger players. eg the dynamo's coach will happily run out marquee name brand hector herrera doing jack squat instead of gitau, castilla, palomino, or raines, the kids with upside. in some markets like ours i would see it as also a business related distortion. you spend money on HH. you play him instead of some kid. you hope he sells tickets. i think as the economics improve and it's less about being wowed by a name brand, it may shift back over to who can play soccer better.