Agreed. He has zero goals in five world cup games. Zero goals in competitive matches against Mexico. Zero goals in knock out Gold Cup games.
How about competitive matches against top teams ? I can think of the goal against Spain. And he's played in like 10 total games in world and confederation cups, plus a few games against Mexico and Costa Rica. So he has like 1 goal in at least 17 to 20 big games that matter? Honestly this is all just from memory, correct me if I my wrong.
Brazil, Ghana twice, Portugal, England. Does Egypt at the time count? That was a huge goal. Costa Rica These are just off the top of my head
Yea don't think we can accuse Demps of not performing. By far our best big game goal scorer of all time.
Quote me next time please, I won't be so late to respond. If you're going to include Honduras, you may as well include Panama, whom he's scored against in the Hex, who would've made it to the WC if it weren't for San Zusi. But to continue with the discussion we'd need to define what "decent side" means. What are the 20 games? Now, I'm not enough of a fan to have followed Jozy early on in his career, but 20 games seems rather high. I think you'd find that even a stalwart like JJ would struggle to get 20 competitive games vs top teams (I picked him because Altidore hasn't been around that much longer than him). Certainly KALM's post sums up that simply looking at appearances doesn't tell the whole story. And even then, I've yet to see these "20 matches listed". I'll go do a little digging and try to do that.
We have 10 World Cup and Confed Cup games. How many times has he played against Mexico in a competitive match between qualifers, gold cups, and concacaf cups? At least 5-7? Throw in matches against CR, and I think we easily get to 20 significant games with only 1 goal. And I'm not even including games against Honduras.
His Wiki page is actually really detailed. Normally I only see a list of goal-scoring appearances for international players, but Jozy's page lists them all. Props to the guy that took the time to do that. 12 games in 2010 WC cycle. Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, England, Ghana. In the 2014 cycle, 6 apps: Honduras, Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ghana. In the 2018 cycle: 2 games, Honduras, Mexico. Funnily enough, exactly 20 appearances. A total of 1026 minutes, or 11 games worth. 2 goals, once against Spain, once against Honduras. In Jozy's other competitive games, he's got 25 apps (didn't want to go through and tally up the minutes, it was already annoying doing it once), and 13 goals. For comparison, 18 of Eric Wynalda's 34 goals came in competitive matches. Compared to Altidore's 15/34. Brian McBride, 24/30 goals in competitive play. Clint is 32/52, and Landon's 38/57. Jozy is scoring more in friendlies than competitive games, but not outlandishly so. And he's gotten only 11 games worth against high-level competition.
I don't think you can automatically reduce his 20 games to 11.5 games like that. Forwards often do not play entire games, more than any other position in fact. So you are cheating a bit in his favor there. And counting a goal against Honduras as top level is questionable.
So take out 5 games and 400 minutes, now you've got 1 goal in 15 appearances in 600 minutes. Doesn't make them much worse. "Forwards often don't play entire games"...so? It still matters if he didn't play a ton of minutes. To go a little more extreme, if he had 10 5-minute sub appearances, would he still be lambasted for not scoring in about 1 half of soccer time? It's not MY metric, it's the one seemingly presented in this thread. If you have another metric, feel free to present it.
"Josmer Volmy Altidore" re-arranged makes "I Am Jose Voldemort, rly." Probably good enough for now, but he's going to need a partner up front for the Hex. If Dempsey can't be it, we have several choices: - Pulisic: but he's a kid, not integrated by Klinsmann yet; - Wood: doing well enough, let's hope he keeps scoring at a higher level; <-- my pick as of now - Morris: JK seems a bit letdown by him, probably in the bubble only; - Wondo: proven scorer against Central American opposition, handy to have I guess; - Zardes: already slotted as a winger/wide forward, so he's taken. Knowing JK prefers the tried-and-true, that's probably it. Boyd and Aronjo may come into the picture later on, but they have to work to regain match fitness yet.
he's owed 1 amazing tournament. Hopefully 2018 he will be healthy and bringing it. we've had so few actual goals by strikers in the WC
some guys only score in friendlies, some guys only score in qualifying, some guys score in tournaments.
Honduras has qualified for the last 2 World Cups, so yes, I consider them a serious power within Concacaf.
If you are watching the games, seeing the respect he demands, the space he opens, the passing, then why are you focused on the goals?
I would also add to his resume the knock-down header to MB in SA and also the centering pass to Demps that ended with LD scoring. (Jozy had another pass earlier in that game that led to Demp hitting the post, I think.) While the truism that you want your strikers to score is self-evident, it is also silly to not see what a strong, active striker with a feel for his teammates can do. (for instance, on the LD goal, LD gets that ball from the keeper and is running full tilt toward goal. Jozy is smart enough to slide right off the shoulder of the defender, forcing him to chose between Jozy and LD. Which leaves Jozy open for the pass. It's not some amazing feat of soccer prowess, but we've all seen CFs clog the wrong spot in those cases.) It's been said often. Jozy is not nearly the best in the world, but he's one of the best we've got and we do tend to get goals when he is on the field.
Sounds nice, but over the aggregate, strikers need to score, which is why teams shift the ones who don't.