I think occasionally of all the players that these boards decide are the next big thing for the USMNT who don’t end up being an especially big thing at all. Some of them flame out, some get derailed by injuries, some have respectable but unspectacular careers and may even get a few US caps. Hell, some of the still-active ones might actually go on to make a difference for the US eventually. This isn’t a mea culpa or tua culpa thread. I just thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane by listing all the players that some notable contingent on this board thought would make a difference for the USMNT. Bonus points for players about whom people said, “If Manager X doesn’t fast-track this guy, he’s an idiot” or “If we lose this guy to some other country, it’s a tragedy.” Here’s an incomplete list in no particular order to get us started: Julian Green Gedion Zelalem Josh Gatt Kenny Saief Jonathan Gonzalez Lynden Gooch Konrad de la Fuente Jonathan Amon Richie Ledezma Nicholas Gioacchini Kik Pierie Mark Pelosi Andrew Carlton Andrija Novakovich Indiana Vassilev Erik Palmer Brown Matthew Hoppe Duane Holmes Terence Boyd Sabastian Soto Owen Otasowie Mike Grella
The all-time greatest for older posters like me is Vincenzo Bernardo. Young player at Napoli. There were people on this board, including his agent, who were hyping him to kingdom-come. This is years ago. 2008-ish. Whipped the board into a frenzy about how disgraceful it was that he wasn't being picked by USYNTs and the USMNT. That he was going to switch to Italy and we would miss out!!! That he was going to be the "next Giuseppi Rossi." Hardly................... [By the way, he's still working in the game. Founded a USL League 2 team in New Jersey.] As far as your list, we could add to it endlessly. Any former client of the Kleibans would be perfect.
Excellent call on Bernardo. And, yeah, the list is potentially endless. But I still feel a little bad that I left off Fabian Hürzeler and Charles Renken.
That was a good one. The Mukwalle Akale thread is an all-time great here. Prospecting is fun, but inherently inaccurate. I do think there's a real difference between the Bernardo's of the world (hype based entirely on being in a foreign academy) versus someone like Zelalem (skilled but soooo many questions about translation upward) versus someone like, say, Carleton who performed really well at youth levels versus like a Duane Holmes, who was discovered more as an adult, really. I actually think this board does better at holding down the hype than the fanbase at large these days.
I remember Emerson Hyndman being hyped up when he got a senior USMNT callup less than a month after his professional debut. There was some hype around Christian Cappis and Emmanuel Sabbi when they were getting minutes in Denmark. Cappis currently appears mostly off the bench in the Norwegian league. Sabbi actually got a cap in a Camp Cupcake friendly and was the worst player on the field; now he's a rotation player starting about half of his team's games in MLS.
Going back further, I remember there being a long BigSoccer thread on Peter Philipakos when he started a few games for Olympiacos and turned down a Greece U-21 callup. Maybe it was because of injuries, but in any case he bounced around and never established himself as a regular starter anywhere except for Chersonissos in the Greek third division; he also tried to come back to the US and had a trial with NYRB but was not offered a contract.
A lot of it is the list of kids who happened to be at academies of big European clubs. Many of them hit our radar because of it and never amount to anything. LIke..................95% of the kids we have in Spanish academies. Who are some recent ones? Rodrigo Neri? At Athletico Madrid and Valencia. Last seen playing for Atlanta's team in MLSNP. Could he amount to something? Yes. But the only reason we knew him was because he was at those big Spanish clubs when his talent level was MLSNP. Sometimes the falling off the face of the Earth acts are really unexpected. But the same thing happens in a sport like baseball. The "top 100 prospects" lists are really popular. The success rate of even those highly rated prospects isn't great. A lot of the time they don't even make the majors (or have a cup of coffee). The separate category of kids that get injured is the bad one. The guys that get broken legs or torn ACLs or whatever and never recover. Marc Pelosi of Liverpool. Kyle Scott of Chelsea. They fade to obscurity and we forget they existed.
He has a big-shot position at Arsenal now. Head of Football Platforms.................... Training Ground Guru | Danny Karbassiyoon: Ex-player helping Arsenal triumph with tech There was that Whitbread, Simek, Karbassiyoon, etc. era in England. None of them really hit the heights we were hoping form.
whoa most of these names are obvious...but i think its a bit much to hate on where sabbi is at the moment....vancouver signs him and all of a suddent they are in first place?dont act like he has nothing to do with that
Of course he's part of it, but he's not a key player for them. He's starting about half the time. They're winning both with and without him.
Sabbi's fine. I certainly wouldn't have him on this list. He's not like the others as he's had a good career in the sport. Just because a guy didn't end up being a USMNTer, doesn't mean he "didn't make it." There's a wide range on that list. Julian Green's been a Bundesliga/Bundesliga2 player for a decade & played in a World Cup. That's obviously very different than Sebastian Soto. Maybe under a different USMNT manager, a guy like Green would have had more caps. Sometimes its "coach's choice." There are whole generations of USYNTers that we could scroll thru. All of the Tommy Redding and Danny Barbir types. Barbir was at the Man City academy. Now he's in his prime and he's on the bench for Lexington in the USL. I could scroll thru 20 USYNTers that played at just FC Dallas alone. All of the Coy Craft, Danny Garcia, etc. types. Coy Craft's claim to fame was dating the owner's daughter, Gracie Hunt. She's now some social media celebrity. [Sometimes you can sense the downward trend and feel powerless to stop it. A "hyped" domestic guy I worry about: Nimfasha Berchimas. Trending out of USYNTs. I still like him, but are we seeing USMNTer?] One of my big lessons over the past 35 years is...................don't be influenced by the fact a young guy is in the academy of a big club. That doesn't necessarily mean he's better than a prospect somewhere less "sexy." Its like, Keyrol Figueroa right now. What evidence is there that he's a better prospect RIGHT NOW than an MLS-based 18 year old. None other than the fact he scored for fun against 14 year olds some years ago. The "success rate" of guys in those big European academies seems really low. We just remember the "hits" and forget the "misses." Its like "OH, GRAYSON DETTONI was at the Bayern Munich academy! Future star!! Well no. Not necessarily. Right now he's on the bench in Switzerland. That doesn't mean he might not turn into something. He's still young. But ya know..................he's older than Matai Akinmboni and a bunch of other guys developed domestically that we talk about. Or like.................Aidan Harangi of Frankfurt, Ethan Kohler of Werder Bremen, Drew Murray of Freiburg, etc. What actual evidence is thare than these guys currently in our U20s are better than domestic options? Not much. These aren't 16 year old prospects. They're 19-20.
Only a year ago funny enough 11 Yanks a year or 2 ago said Rodrigo Neri would be a lock for the 2026 world cup when he was with Atelti's u 19 squad. Jonathan Gomez i think is the biggest one as many wanted to guarantee him a spot on Qatar. Also not long ago many online e were saying Tony Leone and Justin Che were must gets
There's also the fact that we tend to focus A LOT on dual-nationals on this board. When we're in competition with another federation for a player, that player often gets overvalued. Jonathan Gomez is exhibit A. Tony Leone and Justin Che. Also dual-nationals. Rodrigo Neri, of course, also a dual-national. We do have some of these young dual-nationals become USMNTers. Of course we do. Most of them disappear from the face of the Earth, though. Anybody else notice that the hullabaloo about Amir Richardson has died down? He's good. He's fine. He's not Tyler Adams or Johnny Cardoso. He just isn't. And that's one of the dual-nationals that's "made it." He's doing well. Since I've been a fan, maybe 35 years at this point............we can count dual-nationals lost that would have made a tangible difference to the program on one hand. If we replaced Johnny Cardoso in our pool with Amir Richardson, are we going farther at a World Cup? No.
Oh I get it for sure it is funny though how people panic. Amir Richardson even got more hype because of the Olympics where the Morroco midfield over ran us with some saying he was better than Tessmann when Tanner was clearly gassed from playing every minute and had no hl with Djordje snd McGlynn
Julian Green has 4 goals in 15 USMNT appearances, 746 minutes as an attacking midfielder. Why exactly would he be on that list?
Many of those names have 0 caps. The majority have less than 5. Why would you have a player with a better strike rate (4G in 15 matches) than Gio Reyna, Josh Sargent, or Sebastian Lletget at the top of such a list. I would add Chris Durkin to the list. Another 0 cap hyped youngster.
I was surprised to be reminded that Green has15 caps. I put my initial list together based on memory, not research, so I may also have underestimated the number of caps that other players on it got. I suppose, now that I’m forced to think it through a bit, my list implicitly captures (my memories of) a disproportionality between the degree of hype for a player and the extent of that player’s production for the USMNT. In the lead up to and for at least a few years after the 2014 World Cup, there was a lot of talk about Green becoming a huge contributor to the USMNT, based mostly on an exciting (but scuffed) goal against Belgium and his time on Bayern’s books. That hype probably wasn’t as massive as the hype around Cavan Sullivan will become the instant he actually moves to Europe, but it was pretty intense. And pretty overdone. Green did have (has had?) a more meaningful USMNT career than a lot of capped players, but he never got close the levels of performance or production that a lot of folks predicted. I mean, Alex Zendejas has 11 appearances and even a goal for the USMNT. Green’s 15 caps and 4 goals is better but not vastly better. Like Green, Zendejas has done more with and for the USMNT than a lot of capped players, but he’s not on anybody’s list of major contributors. But he’s not on my list at the top of this thread because he didn’t get anywhere the same degree of hype as Green, though IIRC correctly he did get some hype, especially in connection with his one-time switch to the US.
Scuffed? Kid made a curving diagonal run from wide left, took the ball over his right shoulder and volleyed it into the back of the net. Wondo wishes he had scuffed his shot like that!