My difficulty arises when somehow you set yourself up as an expert on the ability of central defenders ahead of a coach who has won 110 MLS matches, an MLS Championship and scored 105 MLS goals. Perhaps I have missed something, but what exactly qualifies you as a better talent advisor than Jason Kreis? Really, I would enjoy hearing. And given your exalted opinion of your own analysis, why is it that Major League Soccer coaches become your problem, when they evaluate talent a bit differently than yourself? It would seem your observations themselves might be sufficient.
Appeal to authority. Why not just shut down the forum if discussion of a coach's decision isn't allowed? And I never said that I know more than Jason Kreis, but I and others are certainly allowed to critique coach's. I don't know why you are trying to come after my opinion because I'm criticizing a coach. Klinsmann had a terrific football career, and has coached much better teams than anyone on here. What was your response to those people who criticized him? You were part of it. I gave my opinion of why he shouldn't be in contention for the next USMNT coach that included many things, but you are so into trying to make this into not liking Kreis because of one decision. I think he's not done a good enough job to be the USMNT head coach. Does his decision about Tommy Redding help? Of course, not. I thought he made a bad decision with his CB pairing, but I don't think he's as good of a coach as he gets credit for. He was good with RSL, but since then has been far from good. Do you want to argue for him? What has he done well with the last two teams he's coached?
http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017/01/26/armchair-analyst-22-teams-22-starting-lineups-now Doyle guesses the starting 11 of all 22 teams. He admits it is premature and that he is but one man. By my count 99 of 242 starters are USMNT eligible (including Dwyer, Manneh, and Frei) Percentage lower if you exclude goalkeepers.
They are very worrying. I read the article disagreeing about which players should start, but realizing that Doyle is probably correct about most of the players that will start.
I agree. That's another effect when you stop spending a lot of money on a few big name players and invest in a bunch of unknown 20-year-old attacking players from the Andes. But I digress.
Well, ok. But in the context of 1) MLS expanding towards 28 teams and, who knows, beyond. 2) USL providing a wide safety net for full professionalism all over the continent, and especially... 3) MLS becoming the most lucrative league in the Western Hemisphere in the next decade or more, a destination for Central and South Americans, Carribean players, and second-tier Europeans, (and rewarding returning US internationals with a payday)... I'm ok with it. I'm ok with Wilmer Cabrera signing half of the Honduran national team, FC Dallas signing and playing all the youth of North and Central Texas (and also feeding Schalke's academy) DC United starting 10 Americans and Portland starting 1....Club Tijuana having more Americans than a third of MLS teams. It's ok. There's variance. We have the leverage and scope for this. We are an enourmous nation, and are taking baby steps towards becoming an enourmous soccer nation.
Looking through those lineups, I don't agree with a lot of the projections. He has Veron and Royer starting for RBNY. At realistic most, 1 starts. Veron sucks. They've proven they won't start him just because he's a DP. One or both of Grella and Muyl start. Jay Simpson played for Leyton Orient last. The Union were flying last season early to mid in large part due to Sapong. Then he got injured, they suffered for it, and he didn't come back the same player. I think Sapong starts. No Delgado, even though he was young and played a big role last year. No Caldwell, even though NE love him. I'm not going to go through the whole list, but those are some examples where I think he's employing grass is greener philosophy. And in regards to that, what about the rookies? Rosenberry, Campbell, Morris, and Vincent started last year. I'll bet guys like Harkes, Yueill, Dunk, and Robinson end up starting eventually. They're naturally going to undersell the homegrown too, which are apt to be American of course. They are largely unknowns to them. That's probably several more Americans who are incorporated unexpectedly. At the end it should be near half.
I largely agree with @thedukeofsoccer on the "grass is always greener" issue. I have been paying close attention to the percentage of minutes given to domestic players over the past few seasons. One of the things I notice is that the first few weeks are disproportionately foreign, but domestic players quickly bounce back. I think that the bloom comes off the rose fairly quickly for some overseas signings and/or some American players step up and win a spot. We'll see. Maybe it will tilt further to foreigners this year as we continue in the TAM era with somewhat higher caliber foreigners.
the numbers IMO are slightly more bad than good. I was worried we went a bridge too far, and I think we might have. We gotta do something to swing the pendulum the other direction to ensure more domestic based players getting starting time. What is a fair way of going about doing that though? ensuring that gameday roster must have 8 US based players, 4 in the starting 11? I dont know the answer, but we gotta consider reigning it in a bit IMO.
I may be a minority here on this one, but I don't see it as all so negative. If there were only 10-12 teams in the league then it'd definitely be a problem, but with expansion, enough Americans should be able to earn enough starting spots. Moreover, they would probably benefit from the international exposure. Nonetheless, I believe what needs to happen is more of a push to play HGP's and force teams to develop local talent. With expansion, there is more opportunity to unearth more talent. To accomplish, I'd say, keep the salary cap the same; but give every team 4 DPs which the new rule should be those players are totally cash exempt from the salary cap. You can may them $1/year or $1 billion/day, it doesn't matter against the cap. Then, I'd say that HGPs are also forever exempt from the cap....meaning Yedlin could come back to the Sounders and play without counting against their cap. And, offering cash incentives to play HGPs where every team is promised a certain amount at the start of the year if they play local/HGP talent. For instance, (made up number for example purposes only) every team will be able to earn $500k if they reach their HGP/local/youths quota of having, (say for example purposes), 6 HGP/local players to play at least 900 minutes throughout the year... that bar can be adjusted accordingly (just using as an example for discussion). And, for team that do not reach that mark, they have to pay a tax to the league; which based on how close to that mark they reached. This would force teams to strategically incorporate developing players.
i like that idea, we need to incentivize getting HGPs more playing time, that is important down to the community level. A team like San Jose is a lot more tolerable if there are 3-4 guys that are homegrown from the area starting in the team giving their all. We do need to incentivize the homegrown process more, if we do swing the pendulum back to domestic, focusing on the HGPs is where we should do it
Yeah, the problem with San Jose isn't so much where they typically stand in the table as the fact that they do virtually zilch with one of the better hotbeds of youth soccer in the country (Northern California). I mean, to date, we've had Tommy Thompson. Hooray.
And even at that, Thompson had a pretty chintzy connection to the SJE academy. Anyway, 41% would be a pretty significant decline for USMNT-eligibles. The figure last season was around 47.5%.
As MLS continues to expand the % of US eligible players who are starting can drop while the total amount of US eligible players can stay the same or even grow. It will likely be very close this year once the real numbers come in. With a league this size and growing, % means less than total amount of players IMO. And this acknowledgement also is bolstered by the fact that we have more players in Mexico and Europe (either playing or seeded) than at any other time in our history. Now we just need to hope that these 3 branches can combine to produce a decent 23 players for a US team in the future.
My take is this. Either add better foreigners and make MLS a better league or most of them can leave the league and MLS can be a feeder league. I don't think having a league full of mediocre foreigners that take playing time away from Americans is good for American soccer development or MLS. Do you think anyone is mentioning MLS as a top league now because of these foreigners that were added?
I don't think this is the proper question to ask. The better question is whether MLS is a better league by having foreign players in it vs having mostly Americans. Since the US team can only hold 23 players, I would be happy if we continue to have around a 100 US National team eligible starters if MLS improves, especially when considering the numbers in Mexico and Europe and any dual nationals that will pop up over time. MLS does not need to be a top league to still show plenty of improvement IMO. Whether that happens or not we need to wait to see. My opinion is that with the amount of US players in Europe and in Mexico, there are not enough decent caliber American's left to fill a majority of the starting positions in a 22 team (and growing) league.
Full sell on rights for academy players you develop, a homegrown player minimum on your roster of like 3, and no salary cap to spend more evenly so foreign attackers don't receive such disproportionate salaries and you're not compelled to play them even when they're worse. The sport is not going to take it to the next level of popularity in this country off foreign players. It will pique the interest of European and South American futbol fans briefly, before they go back to watching the real thing. What will make a real dent is success of the US national team, which will be driven by a better domestic league with a healthy amount of Americans many of which are developed by them.
So last night in the NYRB/Timbers pre season game there was a play that I think exemplifies the level of coaching, teaching of the game, and baseline soccer IQ of this country. NY's RB is under pressure from a couple Timbers just inside his half but breaks through and forces the next line of defense to step and Portland to shift to his wing. He plays a decently hit low diagonal to Dan Metzger's feet. Metzger is in a pocket of space in front of the backline with a teammate open, square to him but more central. Metzger tries to force a return throughball back out to the RW, through the space Portland's defense has overloaded into. The first two actions and the defensive reaction is a pattern of play that happens dozens of times a game. Fullback breaks pressure, plays to CM someways ahead of him and more central, makes a run up the wing. The textbook next step in this should be for the mid to turn up field, look for more forward or central (aka dangerous options) and then try to switch the point of attack to exploit the defense's failed overload. This is a pattern of play that players in decent tactical environments can execute in their sleep and here it's almost a cause for celebration when it comes off. Our players have no concept of what's going on on the field outside of the 30 yards in front of their faces. How does this relate to the % of Americans playing in MLS. Well if we can't teach kids that this should be done, how to do it, and then pick the best of them at doing it then the only way for the league to get better is to rely on foreign labor.
At risk of threadjack, here is an article from Fourfourtwo (who provides a periphery and relatively uninvested and unserious barometer of international legitimacy) that may be a corollary to the discussion. Top ten most intriguing signings of the MLS offseason. Guys brought in to START here, at cost and with investment. http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/10-most-intriguing-signings-mls-offseason-transfer-news There are no Gerrards, Lampards, needle movers, Lothar Mattheus cash grabs here (although those may more traditionally happen in the summer). Nikolić, Almiron and Rusnák are young and have recognized value internationally. They add quality without sideshow. Gerso Fernandes, João Pedro, Alberth Elis, and Calvo are young and talented, exciting, quality players. Do they provide competition and raise the level of play, or do they limit American opportunities? Jonathan Mensah is an internationally experienced center back who should help stabilize a squad for Americans like Wil Trapp and Ethan Finlay. He brings pedigree. Jay Simpson, formerly of Leyton Orient, could take a whole bunch of minutes from CJ Sapong. And welcome home Jonathan Spector for your reasonably overpaid swan song. We did not, like UANL, sign Eduardo Vargas from Hoffenheim. Not there yet.
One way to incentivize clubs to sign American players would be to count less than their full salary against the cap. Make it so that an American player's salary counts only 75%. If your club wants to sign an American for $300k, the cap hit would be only $225k. You could also make it even more beneficial for younger players, e.g. an American's salary would count 50% against the cap if they're under 25, even if they're not a HGP.
Why add quality without "sideshow?" I mean, I was listening to a show in Dallas today, and the host talked about this great player that Atlanta signed but couldn't name him.