I'd think in order of priority from a national team perspective is World Cup Qualification, Olympics, then way down there is Gold Cup. Olympic Qualification Event has been confirmed for March 2021. Same format that was planned before the pandemic.
The Olympics versus Gold Cup debate has been going on for 20 years now. What I was trying to say is that this time there's a difference. Due to all of the matches that have been cancelled and will be cancelled, the USMNT won't have played many games together prior to our top priority. That's WCQing, starting in September 2021. [Looks nervously at the calendar.] And even when we're getting games, it seems that due to travel restrictions we'll have two different pools. The Euro-based pool in some games and the domestic-based pool in other games. So just for this cycle, the 2021 Gold Cup is one of the few opportunities currently on the calendar to get the entire pool together prior to WCQing. The chance to gel a pretty young team in games that matter. For instance, its amazing how few games the trio of Adams, McKennie, and Pulisic have actually played together for the USMNT. None of them have played a game at any level of the US program yet.....................with Gio Reyna. We can't just roll into WCQing with a couple of preparation friendlies and one or two nations league games. There isn't an early round where we get to "practice" against Guatemala and Barbados. These guys need to go to battle together in games that matter. As I said, we can still send a "good" roster to the Olympics. A lot of our U20s are developing and growing, and will be able to take the Olympic mantle. Maybe its Ledezma, de la Fuente, Mendez, and that gang that go to the Olympics. Maybe Richards if he hasn't broken thru at Bayern yet (fingers crossed he does, though). The pool is getting deeper. There are options.
I agree with you. It is all really moot though. The Olympics, if they happen, will end at the start or into the European club season. After everything that has happened, and all the money our guys are making now, I doubt those clubs will want to lose them for all of pre-season and a 3-4 game chunk of the regular season. Plus, even if they were released, do we want Pulisic and others playing in a tournament in Japan, then getting back quickly to play in England/Germany/Italy, then flying to Honduras to play a Qualifyer a few weeks later? 10 games in a month and 35000 air miles? I like the Olympic dream roster as a thought exercise, but it isn't going to happen. Nor should it.
Olympic Tournament is July 22-August 7 Gold Cup Tournament is July 10-August 1 The vast majority of our starting XI is eligible for the Olympics this cycle. What I'd do is send a more veteran team to Gold Cup. Try to find some guys in an age bracket that's been very weak for us. Our main team which is filled with Olympic eligible players plus 3 overages send them to Olympics. If I'm a club and US Soccer is taking a player for one of these tournaments I'd want my guy in the Olympic Tournament. More global tournament would increase their value if they play well.
The team needs to get ready for WCQing. It needs games. Euro-clubs tend to not be interested in the Olympics.
Again, over and over, it is not up to USSF. USSF can get any player they want for the Gold Cup. They have no say on releases for the Olympics. Undoubtedly, the tournament that starts earlier and ends earlier is the one they would "pick". The idea that Chelsea would think that playing games in a youth tournament in Japan would put more eyeballs on Pulisic and increase his value over actually playing in the Premier League is laughable. If MLS survives the pandemic and has fans in the stadium next summer, they are not releasing their best players and hurting ticket sales. And again, nobody in UEFA or the leagues there care about the Olympics. They are not scouting players there. German teams don't seem to be interested in O20 players either. 24 yo Justin Glad is not getting a move to Stuttgart because they never could see him play in MLS and then watch him in the Olympics. The Olympics are big in America, but not for soccer even. I don't know if they are that big elsewhere, but not for Men's soccer anywhere. Everything hinges on WCQ'ing and again, even if the players were released, do you want important players playing 6 games in 14 days in Japan, flying to England to play for a few weeks, then flying to Miami with a connection to T&T, back to Miami with a connection to Minnesota, then flying back to England? Insane schedule. The Gold Cup is a much more relaxed travel schedule, involves no third world countries, the best players only need to play 4 games at most, over three weeks. Plus, we get to beat Mexico rather than lose in the semi's to Brazil.
Yeah, pre-pandemic, I had some hope of getting one or two ringers for the Olympics. But now, Gold Cup is going to be for solidifying our WCQ team. And the Olympics will be what's left over in the age range. Which is fine.
Pulisic is a different story. Gold Cup you are traveling all over the United States. Olympic tournament is by far less travel than the travel you'd do during a Gold Cup. If you look at 2016 Brazil, 2012 Mexico and 2008 Argentina the Gold medal teams in those Olympics they are loaded with players from huge European clubs and those Olympics all ran later than Tokyo 2021 will run. USSF doesn't get to choose but hey were taking Player X for Gold Cup, would you rather him in Olympics which is less time? Club X will say Olympics. More global tournament than Gold Cup. A lot of players already have things like Olympics negotiated into their contracts if they have a good agent.
The only real value I can come up with is PR. Olympics is a pretty big deal in the States. I feel like if the USA had a good showing in soccer it'd probably help rejuvenate some interest that's been lost since the 2018 debacle. Plus we haven't been in over a decade, I think it'd be cool to see a US team participate. However I'd rather prepare for WCQ qualifying personally and gold cup is presumably the superior opportunity to do that.
8 or 9 of our starters are Olympic eligible. Add in Steffen and Brooks as overage players and in what way does that not prepare your team for qualification. It would actually get them playing matches away from the United States, something we have to get used to. We generally send a weaker side to this installment of the Gold Cup. I'd try to find some veterans who can contribute out of this Gold Cup.
theres not an answer to your question. its not so much as "well, its not apples to apples" as it is "well, its apples to decibel level, a year and a half later". the value of the olympics is whatever you think it is in comparison to the gold cup, or qualifiers if theyre in the same time frame. but solidifying the world cup team cant reasonably start until, say, six months prior. we could, in theory, figure out that epb is the best partner for brooks whenever we start playing again, but thats still only a tenative answer. richards still isnt especially close to regular first team action, so what does knowing epb/brooks works matter a year and a half from now? we dont know if de la will be a part of that wc team- he could start a dozen matches this year or never play a first team minute for barca. adams could do his knee again in march of 22 and none of his play between now and then matters. we are a long, long way away from finishing qualifying, much less figuring out and solidifying a wc team. thats on a completely different timeline than the olympics. i cant see how the two are remotely in the same equation.
I'm writing about solidifying the World Cup Qualifying team. The GC is the best comp available to get the team ready for Qualifiers.
ok, thats comparable- though its not unusual to have upwards of 30 players get big minutes in a single wcq round. im too outdated to respond, i think. at some point the olympics/gc were in the same time frame and we also had qualifiers within a month of that, so any participants in (lets say gc) would be on the verge of overworked playing both the tourney and qualifiers in addition to club duties/travel. we would have needed essentially 3 squads. but the qualifiers have moved again (i dont know to when) theres still nl and friendlies...i honestly have no clue on timeline anymore. youve got to be the kind of nerd that genuinely fully understands mls salary mechanisms to keep intl dates in your head at this point . my personal, admittedly confused, answer would be make the olympics the priority to whatever extent possible. clubs will refuse to release enough (pulisic, adams, mckennie, dest, etc) that the gc wont be grossly undermanned by any stretch.
Nobody is disputing the Olympics have value. The problem is that no club team is required to release players to ANY youth event. And that includes the Olympics and U20 World Cup that we'll hopefully have next summer. Talking about the Olympics is putting the cart before the horse anyway. We've failed to qualify two times in a row (and 3 of the last 4). We're going to have an extremely difficult time getting any first team players from Europe for the CONCACAF U23 Championships, which are the qualifying event for the Olympics. There's almost no chance of getting any player in contention for Euro first team minutes. [Pulisic, Reyna, Weah, Sargent, Dest, Richards, Robinson, Carter-Vickers, Adams, McKennie, Ledezma, Palmer-Brown, Cannon, Llanez, Soto, de la Torre, the list goes on ad naseum. Schalke has been a stickler in the past with McKennie, so I expect Taitague to be a problem.] Folks may not remember this, but MLS clubs started flexing their muscle in this regard in 2019. Atlanta United refused to release their first team players to events they weren't required to. That included Miles Robinson, so dream on if you think Miles Robinson or George Bello will be made available for the Olympic qualifying team. They refused his release to January camp if memory serves me correctly. MLS clubs can deny release of their players just like Euro or Mexico-based clubs can. So will we get Ebobisse and Tessman and Yueill and McKenzie and Araujo and Aaronson and Ferreira and Lewis and Servania and Mihailovic...........................? That's a big fat "probably." Many, but not all.
Olympic quaification is no guarantee. One of the best US youth squads ever assembled, maybe THE best youth squad ever assembled..............was the 2004 Olympic qualifying team. The number of senior USMNT caps from that team is staggering. Donavan, Beasley, Convey, Beckerman, Eddie Johnson, etc. Even the role players were capped USMNT players. Brad Davis, Chad Marshall, Eddie Gaven, Logan Pause, Alecko Eskandarian, the list goes on. But the team had a fatal flaw.....................in defense. They couldn't get Oguchi Onyewu released from Europe. Disaster stuck when Zack Whitbread got injured during the competition. Torched by Mexico in the deciding game. (They also couldn't get Conor Casey released, and he would have helped too). A similar fatal flaw was front and center in our 2016 failure. We couldn't get DeAndre Yedlin released (among other players). In our do-or-die game against Honduras, who did we start at right back? Boyd Okwuono, He got absolutely torched by Alberth Elis. Elis scored a hat trick and that was the end of that. Okwuono played in 5 games for RSL and was quickly out of the sport. So yes..........................we have to worry about qualification first. Cuz we've got good problems. And the problem is that we're going to need to count on a likely "C" team in the qualification effort. At right back you won't have Dest.. You won't even have his backup in Cannon. That's just an example.
Not much would be lost in going with Duncan, Herrera, or Araujo at rightback. 2016 Olympic Qualifying team was horrible, talent-wise. So long as MLS cooperates on the release of players, there should be no problems putting together a good team. There is plenty of depth.
This is why Gold Cup going on essentially the same time will help. Basically, hey were taking this guy he'll either be flying all over America for a month or going to Tokyo, you decide.
The GC is going to be b-team opponents. It's going to be a lower level than you'd see at the Olympics + it's semi-competive. Thus it's worse prep for WCQ. We won the '15 GC & proceeded to get bounced from WCQ. Ended up gaining nothing. In '08 the US competed in the Olympics, w/ no shortage of players who would help in qualifying & the WC. The Olympics are also a better shop window for young Americans trying to make the jump to Europe or inside it. The US would also have an outside shot at winning it if they brought a strong squad. It would be a more meaningful W than the b-team GC. Thus Olympics should take priority.
Our best Olympic team essentially is the WCQ team, at least for the starting lineup. There's only two overage players right now who are clearly better than an under-24 option at their position (Brooks and Steffen) - and that may be down to one by this time next year, depending on how much the defensive prospects progress. Another illustration of why the Olympics matter and the Gold Cup doesn't: when people were evaluating Bruce Arena's overall career as NT coach, how much weight did his three Gold Cup wins have in those evaluations? Pretty much zero for most people, I'd say. Any Olympic medal, on the other hand, would be seen as a real accomplishment for the team's coach. Nobody cares about the Gold Cup. If you have to prioritize a tournament, make it the tournament that somebody cares about.
Guys, this isn't even a debate. It has nothing to do with the value of the Olympics versus the value of the Gold Cup. That's completely irrelevant. We WILL NOT have our "A" Olympic eligible team for the Olympics. The last time we qualified for the Olympics, clubs were required to release U23 players to it (we only had three youngsters on that squad from big Euro teams anyway. Altidore at Villarreal and Adu at Monaco. Bradley was in the process of moving from Heerenveen to Gladbach). They no longer are. The European Club Association fought to have the tournament taken off of the FIFA calendar completely, as they see it as nothing but a distraction of limited value. You know, the very clubs that you think are going to release Pulisic, Richards, Reyna, Adams, Dest, Weah and company. They're not going to release them. As I said, the whole discussion is premature. Of all of the competitions the USSF participants in, its the CONCACAF U23 Championships that have been our biggest "house of horrors." Assuming we're going to qualify for the Olympics is the simply hubris.
If there is no vaccine by then, I believe we will see another tournament played in a bubble like in Orlando as we did with the MLS IS BACK.
Right, but with Gold Cup going on essentially at the same time you still have access to those players that's leverage when wanting a player to go to the Olympics. You leave the option up to the club, hey were taking Player X do you want him playing in Tournament A or B eventhough you don't have to release him for Tournament A if you don't allow him we're taking him for Tournament B. Clubs will rather have the player in the shorter tournament with less release time and travel. Thus, most clubs will just let USA players go to Olympics. It is a bit premature but this is a message board that's what we do and its been implied if we qualify seeing as its an Olympic thread and the tournament hasn't been played.
Other Concacaf teams will be in the same position. So it's more likely the quality of competition will be better than in previous second GCs. At Couva, Arena had decided to run out exactly the same team on 3-day's rest. This had nothing to do with the GC or any other preparation. Obviously, the timing of WCQing and the Olympics was a key difference when compared to that of previous cycles. The other key difference was that in the cited '10 cycle, only 5 players under 25 made the WC team. Under-25s are projected to form a much larger core of any potential WC'22 team.