In general, yes. I mean, there's no good way to communicate the level to any sort of specificity. We're a young, athletic team. Applying defensive pressure is going to be a strength of ours. It's not -- and shouldn't be -- a 90 minute high press. But select moments of counter pressing and triggered pressure will yield our best scoring opportunities. I also think we simply aren't good enough to have guys taking defense off. If we want to be at our best, we need to have everyone contribute. I'm surprised this is controversial. People are right -- this isn't a 38-match club season; the games that matter are usually in tournament format. We can't really pace ourselves and expect to deliver a best case result. Lastly, I've never really gotten the offensive-player-sits-up top and all the frustration when attackers come back at points. The former is static to me -- and if you've watched Pulisic at all in the past year, where he's most effective has been coming back to the midfield and creating some space for him to run into. He's much better at that than rolling it out to him on the wing against a set defense. People keep saying they want to counterattack -- but you've got to force the turnovers and that means applying some pressure. People also strangely say they want to play direct with this team, and that really doesn't make any sense that you'd leave Pulisic up forward. He's not good at receiving the ball with his back to goal. If he's going to play direct you want him back so he can run onto something. Or better, you want him coming back and dribbling the ball up. Bigger picture, I don't get why so many people on here are so insistent that the best thing we can do is line up in a basic formation, have everyone play a vanilla game, and then expect this team to perform to it's talent? That doesn't work for anyone, unless they have overwhelming talent, and we don't have it. It's not going to be revolutionary for Pulisic to drop back into the midfield and interchange with Gio Reyna because they literally do it every week with their club teams. But that's weirdly being portrayed as some difficult movement that two players playing at the highest level can't figure out.
I'm agreeing with what most of what you are saying here. I think we've just been wording it differently and slightly emphasizing some things and not others. Not everything in football is so black and white. There is a lot of gray area. Pulisic is best when he comes short and attacks defenders dribbling at him. It's hard explaining everything we want from the team when we don't have a dry erase board up giving a complete explanation on how we'd want the team and each individual to play.
With the unique challenges due to COVID-19 in the United States, U.S. Soccer has decided to forgo matches for the #USMNT during the October FIFA window. The USMNT continues to explore playing friendlies in Europe during the November FIFA window. More information:— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) September 22, 2020
Im guessing those friendlies in Nov will be all Euro based players? With that in mind...anyone have a potential roster?
Still a camp, just no matches? Or, no camp at all? I'm happy it is the domestic games being called off instead of the European ones just because we've seen a heck of a lot more of our MLS guys than we have the Euro options. Lots more work to do with that part of the pool.
Sadly, give it time. I'm not going to be critical of calling anything off right now given the risks, but I do find it a bit odd given the amount of club soccer being played.
Yeah, people ask me if I'm up for doing this or that in a month or two months and my response is generally.... come ask me in a month or two when we have some idea where we stand. Nothing is written in stone anymore.
Weah for Boyd, Dest to RB, Robinson at LB, EPB at RCB. I don't know that any of those swaps are completely deserved, but we've seen a decent amount of Boyd, Cannon and Miazga. I think the other folks, as long as it's reasonably close in camp, should get a look. Good minutes at least, and minutes with the starters. I feel a little bad about the EPB / Miazga switch as he hasn't gotten as much time as Cannon or Boyd, but I still feel like he's much more certain versus EPB.
Given they'd probably be friendlies backups would probably get 30-45 minutes. I'd prefer Weah up top or on the left wing so that's why I kept him off. I'd be fine with the fullback changes. I'd like to see EPB, I'm just not sure if it's completely deserved yet.
We have to figure out our centerback pairing, to my mind, and the Europeans in the possible consideration set aside from Brooks are Miazga, CCV, EPB and Richards. Miazga, CCV and EPB all started last year at either the Championship or the Austrian League. The latter is probably a bit worse than the Championship, but EPB's performance seemed to be stronger year long. In other words, I think you've got to try to see all three of them. Stylistically, I think EPB, due to his history of play at CDM, probably has a slight edge in my mind on CCV. Miazga, like I said, I think I have a better grasp on.
Wow, just saw something tweeted that makes a pretty strong case that we're missing a chance to go check out some of our European based players, while Mexico schedules two games. Mexico with two october friendlies in europe. Unrelated here are some euro based americans by caps in the berhalter era3 dest, morales2 brooks, holmes1 adams, antonee, ccv, llanez, horvath0 reyna, weah, richards, epb, chandler, gioacchini, green, moore https://t.co/iuvioVatUT— ol velasquez (@away_goals) September 28, 2020
I've seen two theories: 1. Too expensive 2. Would hurt MLS's feelings to not have a camp with their players Hard to believe Mexico has the money and the USA does not. But, just because they have the money doesn't mean they want to spend it. It might not have to do with "feelings"; but it could be a long time bias to always look to include MLS players in the USMNT. That it never occurred to have two camps and not have MLS players at either. So, naturally, one of each. But they couldn't even get that done; most likely because MLS complained that they didn't want to release players. So, USSF defaults to including MLS. But then MLS says, "we don't want to release our players". So, USSF says, "Ok, you got it." But then, it is too late to do two Euro camps, which saves money, and they can blame travel restrictions. Win-win.
I'm torn on this one. On one hand, I think Covid is very serious and don't really think taking chances is a good idea. On the other hand, seems like lots of other teams have figured it out and our guys in Europe are playing already anyway. I'll only really be pissed if they cancel the November camp as well. Since this was already earmarked as the domestic camp, we don't know how much behind the scenes had already been negotiated with player releases and all that. We may have already told our guys in Europe that they could stay with their teams now and would be called later. That could be difficult to undo without creating some club issues.
Right. They should have had two Euro camps. But that wasn't the plan for whatever reason. Canceling the redundant and unnecessary MLS camp is not a big deal once you've made the mistake of trying to have an MLS camp. Not having any camps in October or November would be a tragedy and a real failure. I think the health risk to the players, beyond what they are doing now, is minimal. If there are guys in high risk areas, don't call them. But I don't think Pulisic playing in Germany or Italy is any more of a risk than him playing in London. When Champions League starts he will probably be doing that anyway. Gregg and the staff have plenty of time to go over there for 14 days before seeing anyone; if you wanted to be ultra safe.
We couldn't organize anything for October when everyone else could and we still have nothing for next month? So are we just giving the federation another pass on completely ********ing things up? Are we going to pretend they did the best they could with the cards they were dealt, just like failing to qualify, not hiring a coach for 14 months and then pretending to look for one only to hire the guy we could have had the day Arena quit? Or insisting all youth coaches living in Chicago is better than not having any? This federation is a godamn joke.
I think for this month, once the domestic friendlies fell thru, they could have wrangled together a camp for the European pool, ahead of next month's hopeful live opponent. Last we heard there was supposed to be a game against New Zealand. But there's been nothing since. If we go the rest of this year w/out a game for prep, US fans should be going from Bruce Banner to the Incredible Hulk on Chicago House.
Sounds like they are working on a game against Wales and another somewhere else in the UK. Why this hasn't been worked out already is a mystery. Mexico is playing tonight and has games lined up through the end of the year. We are still working on it. I think they released this "news" just to pacify people wondering why Netherlands v Mexico is on ESPN2 right now and the USMNT is doing nothing.