Not sure about picking "bad" players but Poch's job right now is exactly that. His job is not to pick the best team to win now, it's to have the best possible team in 2 years.
Didn’t Pochettino say he plays to win, including friendlies? I don’t want to hear “at least we looked at players” if we fail to win the competitive games before the World Cup.
You should always play to win but it is also important to prioritize. A coach needs to have a good idea of who he can trust in pressure situations and if a back up only gets time in friendlies against pushovers and garbage time vs top opponents, it can make evaluation more difficult. That being said, the actual result of those competitive games before the world cup are much more important than the friendlies....of course a we "should" be able to beat a team like Cuba with a slightly experimental team.
As an example of this, Poch released Pulisic rather than fielding him against Mexico. That may have cost us a result, but it reduced Puli's injury risk.
And you have to credit Wigan and Fulham (and AC Milan) for seeing the potential that Everton clearly didn't.
And it also gave him a chance to evaluate others against a quality team, in a role he normally would not see them.
I don't think we have a clue how Pochettino is going to approach this. We'll know soon. He needs as many games with his "A" team and players as possible to install his system. But he also needs to work on expanding the pool. Even re-adding the players who were out for the last window will lead to some turnover (Weah, Johnny, maybe Adams, maybe CCV, etc. etc.) Jamaica has played our "A" team pretty tough over the last couple of years. Experiment too much and you risk progression. And I'm assuming that making the semi/final stage of this competition is important to the staff.
Good point ... as it happens, the manager who gave Antonee his first big break at Bolton was Phil Parkinson. He's been doing very well at Wrexham
Not sure if this was in reference to my post or not but I do believe that the game against Mexico and the game against Jamaica come under two completely separate categories. The game against Jamaica has the triple (at least) benefit of being a game against an opponent that should give us legitimate competition (even though we SHOULD win), It is a game which has the added benefit of adding at least one (hopefully two) games of relatively difficult competition in a game that matters. Finally, trophies are good...playing for a trophy increases the importance and the pressure of the game above and beyond what a game between the same two opponents would typically create. The Mexico friendly, however, was a unique opportunity to play a game where, other than bragging rights, there is little to no actual value in the result, it is still a game against a pretty good team, in a hostile environment, that, due to the rivalry would be playing the game as if it isn't just a friendly. That creates an excellent environment for evaluation over and above that of a typical friendly...especially a friendly against a weaker opponent. I am/was 100% in favor of resting Pulisic (and the others) against Mexico. Against Jamaica, the top priority, imo, should be advancing.
Jedi isn't Parkinson's type. Parkinson likes a team full of wily old pros who'll kick the crap out of opponents for 90 minutes while somehow avoiding yellow cards and score on the break. Editing now I've checked the stats, second bottom of League One in terms of possession, mid table in shots and SoT but excelling in goals per shot on target.
I'm in 100% agreement with you. You enter competitions like the Nations League to win. I expect Pochettino to reincorporate some of the "A" team players that he didn't have in the last camp. The Weah, Johnny, etc. types. That will lead to some inherent turnover. I don't expect this to be a camp to experiment with young and fringe players. But we honestly don't know what Pochettino's approach will be............................... We have two longer period events/camps as "casting a net" opportunities. January camp and the Gold Cup. We haven't heard whether we're having January camp. And we don't know what approach Pochettino will take with the Gold Cup. But if we don't use those two events to expand the pool and for Pochettino to look at young/fringe...................then its not happening. We really don't have many opportunities until he has to make World Cup squad decisions. Klinsmann did this wacky thing where if the team won, he kept the same players in the team. So if he called up Michael Orozco or some other fringe player, and the team won, the fringe player stayed in the team. And then of course he had one of the best stretches of the USMNT with some real fringe guys at times. In a stretch of 2013 we went 15 wins 0 draws 1 loss. Loss on the road in Costa Rica. You look at a roster from that stretch, and you're like "What the hell is this? Did we really win with this lineup?"
I think it was one defeat in 17, book-ended by a win over Germany and a draw against Scotland with a win in Bosnia the middle. The rest were all against CONCACAF opponents.
Sure, we were beating the teams we were supposed to beat. Not drawing against them. We were beating them and beating them comfortably. .................its the reason that Sunil felt like he needed to extend Klinsmann before the 2014WC. In hindsight that was a terrible decision. At the time it didn't seem like it was so terrible.
Huh? In 2013, the US won three straight games with Orozco starting at center back. Then Besler became available and was inserted into the line-up, with Orozco dropped to the bench. What really happened is the exact opposite of what you've claimed. That was the best we could offer at that time. For comparison, in Bradley's swan song, we featured the likes of Jonathan Bornstein*, Freddy Adu, and 18-yo Juan Agudelo. Nowadays, players like those wouldn't get anywhere close to our squad for such a big game. *At the time, Bornstein had spent the previous few months benchwarming in Mexico.
This is not true. Here is Antonee against a strong opposition in 2018. I can think of a single game by any MLS player under Berhaltef that was better than this Antonee performance. Also, anybody who needed to see Lovitz 6 times to know he had no business playing international soccer should be employed in this sport.
First, Antonee only played 80 mins vs Jamaica. Lets assume that you are correct that he was awful. Is 80 minutes enough to judge a player (i mean lovitz and other MLS guys got handfuls of caps to prove they didn't belong)? Should you judge a first time player in a game with an experimental formation and lineup where everyone played poorly? Should you judge a first time wingback when the two CM were Trapp and Yueill and the player in front of you is Mihailovic? If playing poorly in friendlies before the GC are disqualifying, why did so many guys who played poorly in thise friendlies go to the GC? Trapp was awful in every game. Long's half against Venezuela was one of the worst in USMNT history.
That doesn't sound that whacky. If you want to see whacky, go back and look at what Berhalter did before he got serious after COVID (actually plenty of whack stuff adpfter COVID as well). Look at those early rosters. Look at the number players that called back after playing poorly in losses. Look at some of the lineups in WCQ when he over rotated.
Not my fault you have selective memory. In 3 of 6 of Lovitz's starts Jedi wasn't available. Of the other 3 were at the 2019 Gold Cup and two in the Nations League. After recovering from long-term injury in 2019 Jedi started the 1-0 defeat against Jamaica and spent the rest of the year with the U23s.
I dont have selective memory. I recall Antonnee making one naive mistake and one poor clearance in an other words fantastic game against Brazil in 2018 while the BS crew turned him getting beat for speed to the ending by a top player into the biggest mistake in soccer history. We also know that Berhalter started with a core of MLS players (we all saw all of them play themselves off the usmnt) and only included top players in that first camp in March. The euro based outsiders had a camp before the GC and friendlies with lineups full of crap MLS players. Your commentary on this player has always been bullshit.
That is just more revisionism on your part. Berhalter selected Lovitz over Jedi for 13 caps in 2019. If you were OK with Gregg's choice fine but stop pretending it was anything but GGG's choice.. That was all discussed in real-time in the Berhalter Coaching Philosophy thread and others. Do you believe those post just disappeared?