Man, he chose his MLS favorites with captain mope around at the 6. This is what MLS, USMNT, LA BRuce and MB wanted. And the results were self-evident. You don't win games with marketing. I thought LA BRuce did a great job initially, you know why? Because for once he didn't play afraid. But after the mexico match he went MLS heavy, his guys. They left CP to die on the vine. They played to their MLS level and they lost. The only people I blame are the MLS executives who pushed for JK's firing and the MLS players who sabotaged him on the field, starting with Kaptain Walk-about, Michael Bradley.
That never stopped any MLS coach from playing non-dmids as dmids. Haven't you see the powerpoint explanations?
This is stupid as are all conspiracy theories. If SUM was picking the team, they could have put out MLS defender of the year Opara and best 11 LB Justin Morrow instead of Liga MX players Villafana and Omar to say nothing of best 11 keeper Melia.
I was trying to sift through your original nonsense of "What bothers me most about some of you posters is that you think you profit from MLS profits." MLS fans "profit" just like fans of any other soccer league: they get to see pro soccer played locally. MLS ruining the national team is a different idea. And one I don't I agree with since I distinctly recall qualifiers we lost where Euro-based players chosen by Arena played just as awfully (if not more so) than the alleged MLS favorites.
That does not mean that SUM put him up to it or had input on the roster and lineup. I just gave a few way more MLS friendly moves that he could have made. I would have been happy to see Morrow-Besler-Opara-Yedlin Melia
it doesn’t have to be explicitly SUM/MLS mandated to be a huge problem. The USSF (where MLS has significant influence) chose a replacement whose beliefs entirely aligned with MLS. That’s enough. the fact that they made bad choices among their MLS bias doesn’t negate the bias.
No. The complaints of Donovan, Arena, Wambach, anonymous MLS US players, Preston Zimmerman, Garber and his MLS honchos were that diaspora-Americans were taking spots from MLS-produced players. That there were too many of them. And they wouldn't fight for the badge the way a 'real' American would. That a MLS-produced player may have been getting called up over a more deserving MLS-produced player was not a serious complaint.
That goes back to the original point. Arena was the problem. He didn't put the players in the best situations to succeed. We could have been a very poor man's Germany or Spain and run out a club CB pairing to much better effect. We could have easily thrown in their GK for max comfort.
"no reason?" i think he actually said, with some reason, that he perceived attitude and effort issues among the germans. those who saw how FJ acted some nights know this isn't made up. the team had a sad track record first half of the cycle. your more reasonable argument is he went too far that way. i mean, no germans on his last call sheet. to me the problem with USMNT is it's been since maybe Bradley or first cycle Klinsi that we've been in the roster maximization business when selecting. klinsi had his favorites. arena had his. GB is even worse down his weird road.
no, sorry, the complaint was not "taking their jobs." the complaint was "playing favorites." ie that the germans hadn't all earned it but got it handed. that there were better MLS available. two different things. arena then had, to be fair, a "taking jobs" type response. but the real beef was you had players getting by on rep, which is still a problem and actually cuts both domestic and abroad. pomykal made a variation on this argument saying he thought the kids sitting now were better than people playing. that we are pro veteran. the common implication of all this is players wanting to be judged on performance. i would be happy if we got rid of all the snobbery and counter snobbery and got back to brass tacks myself.
i mean when we get our heads kicked in away to guatemala, or away to costa rica, and even look of indifferent energy to those situations, no, sorry, this was not a xenophobia thing. this was a"sick of losing" response. this was a "we don't play like that" response. i wish i heard more of that now. the problem then was where arena went with those complaints. but the reason he got the job was JK was so busy playing favorites the team was suffering. or at least that was the argument at the time. you can argue the pendulum went too far the opposite way. now with GB it's swinging around some more. how about look for the middle someplace. no system bs, just here are the best 23 we have, here is how they are best used, let's go win games.
We've been thru this domestic versus foreign-born argument/kerfluffle many times over the years. Many of us are old enough to remember the Steve Sampson "passport babies" era. He was desperately looking for players with a pulse to contribute during the 98 cycle. He called up David Wagner from Germany without ever seeing him play. Michael Mason was another. There were a bunch of others. That reached its xenith of controversy when he recruited David Regis to play left back and left out popular locker-room leader Jeff Agoos. Caused a huge rift in the community at the time between those that just wanted the best player available to play left back................and those that believed we were sacrificing team chemistry to do so. [Regis, it should be noted, was not the reason we struggled in 98. He did fine.] I think the majority of fans just want a coach that'll call up everybody, and choose the players that perform the best in a face-to-face competition. A coach just has to sit down with all players and understand their motivations. That's true for USYNTs and the senior USMNT. IF a coach has real concerns about the motivations of a player, then he has to leave him out. Keep in mind that a lot of our foreign-born players are children of US servicemen and women. So as American as apple pie as far as I'm concerned.
I have no problem with anyone's American-ness, and I just want to see the best players on the team. I find it interesting we've swung from (apparently, I wasn't here) MLS supporters claiming MLS players weren't getting a fair shake to the opposite. My main issue with most of the perspectives on here are the folks who select an all-Europe team (EDIT: on principle) or assume a European-based player is better. There's no reason to create a heuristic like that when we can compare the actual players.
it was not just would they fight, which kind of assumes superiority but says will they try. it was also in fact whether there were other better choices. i don't think players complaining after a key loss are saying, i like x, just make him try harder, do better next time. they were questioning whether the right 11 got sent out and this is only punctuated by whether they also loaf around or lack fight. to be blunt if they are saying this i have a feeling they have other names they trust more. pomykal when he threw his fit mentioned sargent in particular. he moaned about a MLS veteran who gets to start basically because he's more tenured. oh, hmm, who could he possibly be talking about. you don't say he's playing favorites without having unfavored people in mind. if you instead thought the team needed to look at unspecified different people for a change of blood you would word the whole thing different.
also i think people are forgetting the history here. he publicly made examples and dragged jozy, dempsey, bradley over career choices, skipped them for friendlies. he then implements all his germans second cycle. he went with the people making the career choices he wanted, and we turned out not very good. having alienated the domestic core i am sure he had few domestic friends left, on a team which is split home and abroad. when he struggled they were happy to push him off the cliff. i then think arena took it in his own distorted direction. but the pretense that this was an arena problem exclusively is not true. it is a feature of the last 6 years or so to not pick the best people and have your own weird obsessions and agendas.
I think that within days we're going to find out that the Olympics have been delayed. Apparently, the members of the IOC are having a conference call tomorrow. Yes, the Olympics aren't until late July. Federations, sponsors, etc. need to know now, though. Having tens of thousands of people from all over the world go to one of the most densely populated cities on earth.....................seems like the absolute, polar opposite of "social distancing." What's happening in Italy right now should really, really scare folks. They've had 700 deaths in the last two days Hello? That situation is what's led to the drastic measures taken over the last several days in the US. Boston, where I live, is essentially shut down. Like............shut down, shut down. Staging the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as Planned Seems Unrealistic https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/16/olympics-tokyo-2020-coronavirus-postponement-likely
https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/17/tokyo-olympics-still-on-ioc-meeting-decision-coronavirus The International Olympic Committee said Tuesday that the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games will be held as planned in July despite the spread of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide.
Well...…………..that's awkward. Our qualifying tournament was cancelled. CONCACAF is the only region that hasn't selected its participants. Based on the current situation in North America, it seems unlikely that we'll have a qualifying tournament any time soon. It'll be interesting to see how CONCACAF leadership figures this out. By the way, the top 2 seeds in the qualifying tournament were Mexico and Honduras. Not the US. That's based on performance in the last several U23 events. So if they just take the top seeded teams, it won't be us.
Only 57% of the Olympic field has been determined. I'm not sure how the rest are going to be determined by July. Qualifying competitions have been delayed. Training has been disrupted. Realistically, the Olympics will need to be postponed or cancelled. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...riticises-ioc-for-olympics-preparation-advice
I agree with her. A very bizarre decision. For the men's football tournament, I believe all but CONCACAF has already been determined.
I agree with her. A very bizarre decision. Now, its true that the outbreak in Japan hasn't been as bad as feared. But the idea of the Olympics is that people are coming from everywhere. It seems that bringing thousands upon thousands of people to a city with one of the highest population densities in the world.........................is a bad idea at the moment. For the men's football tournament, I believe all but CONCACAF has already been determined. Its basically impossible for CONCACAF to reschedule a tournament. The nation that can do it is the United States, but we're not in a position to with our public health policies in effect. View attachment 170634
If things can get ramped up with a modest amount of lead time before the Olympics, they could re-format the tournament to simple knockout and get it done in 4-5 days. Change the current groups into two 4-team knockout brackets, winner of each bracket qualifies, no need for the ultimate final between the two qualifiers. More likely is that the Games get pushed to 2021.
Copa America and the Euros have already been cancelled for this summer. Its taking a little while longer for the Olympics because its such a humongous financial undertaking, but its going to get moved to 2021 as well. As of now its hard to envision how the Olympics move forward, and I have no clue when they'd be able to schedule the CONCACAF qualifiers. There are even such mundane topics like the travel restrictions in place at the moment. Hell, our players aren't training or playing games. We know that MLS is completely shut down until at least the end of April (and they'll undoubtedly revisit that timeline soon). Our Euro-based players are likely done for the season.
You have unfinished qualifying in various sports in various countries going well beyond soccer eg US Track Trials. You have a whole supply train behind the scenes that needs to be prepared and right now is going to disaster/health care/civilian use. You have how long this lasts. You have even if this is contained in Places A and B that a world meeting risks co-mingling and kick-starting things again. The least of our worries is when would they hold a NAm quali reboot. If Tokyo was viable then you could hold that in the summer. To me the whole pandemic would have to fizzle for the Games to be viable at which point you could run quali in offseason for most leagues in June. If it's not fizzling enough then this is headed for cancellation. I would assume IOC and Tokyo are waiting for some sort of definitive legal cover that lets them claim Act of God on all the various lucrative contracts surrounding this thing, sponsors, vendors, etc. They may be waiting for other people with a say eg governments, to effectively rule it out for them. Then it's "well, Japan has banned outdoor sports this year, we have no choice." I don't see postponement because many other sports run on specific 4 year cycles and there are off-year world championship events. Track worlds is supposed to be in Oregon next year. There are TV and sponsor deals surrounding that. It will be interesting as the year progresses because if all these sports try to re-activate their seasons later on (assuming things calm), there will only be so much TV time to go around. Or you're playing twice a week for months. Or you forego a season and the weakest teams are in dire straits.