There’s a lot of obsession with the midfield here but the midfield was not the real problem. The forward line was terrible. Lewis, Saucedo and the strikers were awful. Of course the midfield could have been better, but it was defensively solid and the wingers, in particular, has a lot of chances and universally squandered them. I’m not saying Williamson wouldn’t have helped. But an upgrade up front was far more needed.
I think the midfield is more obviously easy to upgrade. Wings were obviously a weak point but a much shallower pool to draw from. Missing Ebobisse hurt, but he’s not playing with Portland right now so health issue probably played a role there. Who else was available would have been better than Lewis or Saucedo?
We also can't forget that Llanez may have been targeted for that wing role, and he had to be pulled out due to injury.
The issue with the midfield "upgrades" is that we don't precisely know that they are truly upgrades. If the issue is that all the best attacking talent is in a massive exodus to Europe then let's just say that. Give me Dike and I think the team would have been revolutionized. Aaronson the same. Give me both and I would be talking taking gold in Guadalajara. No midfield improvement really makes the same case so why do we bring it up ad nauseum?
It was absolutely obvious that a group of weaklings (Soto, Ferreira, Lewis, Saucedo, and Mihailovic) would be physically dominated by any half decent defenders, and what a surprise: it did happen. Just brings back memories of that ridiculous 2013 U-20 team.
I guess, in a literal “you can never know anything that hasn’t happened” sense we don’t know. We have 3 seasons worth of detailed event data available to everyone that shows that midfielders that weren’t brought in outperform the ones that were in multiple key measures. Specifically I mean Parks, Williamson, Bassett, and Busio.
When wingers suck, the answer is to play a 3 5 2. The group of fullbacks we had probably had enough talent as a 3 5 2 and the insistence on playing Ferreira would have made sense as a second striker. Very telling that Busio, Clark, Bassett, Sands, Parks all started for their clubs yesterday while Lewis was on the bench.
The world rankings are BS and always have been. Never accurately account for differences between confederations. If you want to look at a more accurate reflection, check out the World ELO rankings, which use the same principles as chess to rank teams. Quality of opponent is taken into better account. We're 29 in those rankings. FIFA ought to adopt the ELO rankings. They make so much more sense in ranking an actual balance of power.
Oh boy, do I have news for you: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevep...-change-international-soccer/?sh=2a360dd16c41
what about cowell, caden clark, fontana, busio, etc as well???? Looking at what ggg is doing with the full USMNT and how closely intertwined this olympic squad has been with GGG...it seems the "braintrust" thinks a midfield without creativity is enough to get the job done....
I included Busio. The rest would be odd fits. Cowell is a striker, and had a chance in camp. Fontana and Clark aren’t really creative players. They’re goal scorers, and that might have been useful, but they don’t really unlock defenses. In fact, to your last point, Clark is a great fit for the GGG system because while he’s not all that good with the ball at his feet he’s a good presser and very smart with his movement. If he can figure out how to attack a defense in transition he’ll have a good shot as a depth USMNT player pretty soon.
As much as Kreis screwed this up and we sucked, Mexico played this tournament at home, in-season, and only beat Honduras on PKs in the final. I'm looking forward to the moment (and its coming soon) when our starting XI is in Champions League/Europa League clubs and we can stop overhyping the Olympics, which barely matter of the grand scheme of men's international soccer. And that means that when we do well in the Olympics or even earn a medal, not pretending like we've achieved a result in a major tournament because that's not what it is.
Tonight was the first game in (at least) the modern era that the #USMNT had four players under 23 score a goal.🇺🇸 Brenden Aaronson (20)🇺🇸 Daryl Dike (21)🇺🇸 Reggie Cannon (22) 🇺🇸 Gio Reyna (18)— Paul Carr (@PaulCarr) June 10, 2021 U-23s not doing so badly
I think the games in this USMNT window indicate why the sheer result of the Olympic qualifying failure really wasn't all that important. it wasn't a reflection of the short- or long-term ceiling of the USMNT. That's different from 2016 when it really seemed to be.
This perspective only makes sense if you're a fantasy GM, and even barely then. It's important to qualify to the Olympics because winning is fun, seeing players compete in the Olympics is fun, and winning is the point of the sport -- not building towards some hypothetical future in which winning happens. If in 2023 Belgium hasn't won anything, no one's going to pat Walloons and Flemish on the head and say, "You had a golden generation." And of course even in the fantasy GM perspective, there are other important factors to judge one's future beyond just the strength and depth of rosters. Namely: the US federation's punting on any substantive preparation for the tournament, and the seeming playing-style mandate that led to suboptimal roster and tactical choices. These are not irrelevant considerations, given we just spent another senior international window watching Jackson Yueill misplace passes. It's pretty clear, looking at the Olympics and the rest of our recent experience, that the ideological disposition of the federation is going to blind it to making smart, practical decisions. It's also reasonably clear that sometimes the strength of the roster will bail out management (USMNT vs. Honduras, Mexico) and sometimes it won't (Olympic qualifying). If that's not important, not sure what is.
I didn't say it was a good result. Of course we want to qualify. Of course there were failures in preparation, etc. But ultimately, it has no bearing whatsoever on the USMNT or the future of the program. None. Zero. Best Olympic-eligible roster situation...........................(or something similar). How many of these guys were actually on the qualifying roster? The keepers (who peak later), backup LB, and a backup #6. And that's without adding even another string of guys like Bryan Reynolds, Paxton Pomykal, Caden Clark, Gianluca Busio, and on and on and on. And just so we're all on the same page, our "C" U23 team at the Olympic qualifiers beat Costa Rica's "A" team. And played tight losses against our other two rivals, Mexico and Honduras. Our two CBs in that event must have been our 8th and 9th string CBs at that level. -----------------Sargent------------- Pulisic-----------------------Reyna ---------Musah--McKennie------- Robinsn-McKenzie-Richards-Dest -----------------Ochoa------------------- Bench: Marcinkowski Cannon Carter-Vickers Vines Yueill de la Torre Aaronson Weah Hoppe Dike
I disagree with this, we can certainly qualify in spite of it, but I don't think characterizing it as having no bearing is accurate. Due to the worldwide advent of "Nation's Leagues", and the end of the Confederations Cup, it is pretty clear that we will have limited opportunities to play even Friendly's against quality teams outside of CONCACAF in the future. Having our youngsters play in the Olympics, as many of them as are available, in competitive games, against non-CONCACAF opposition would be very helpful. Shoot, even the U 20 team from France we beat, would've run three quarters of the teams that played in this past CONCACAF Nations League out of the stadium...
These Olympics are going to be a mess anyway with covid concerns. We just need to move on and see what we can get for the future from a U23/B team at Gold Cup. Our top players are going to be put in a crucible in Europe when crowds return and that's how it should be. If we had approached preparations with a decent coach, the Olympics might have helped someone like Miles Robinson or Busio get a move but European clubs are strapped for cash so they're now looking to MLS as a value market anyway.
Both our Nations League roster and Gold Cup rostesr are seemingly U23 teams at this point. Or predominantly, anyway. Would it have been nice to qualify? Of course. We all wanted to qualify for the Olympics. But we're seemingly sending Caden Clark, Gianluca Busio, Julian Araujo, Luca de la Torre and that crew to the Gold Cup now instead.
It's a question of blooding players against a higher competition level than CONCACAF. Adjusting to the craziness of CONCACAF is important, but we're not the only team with a bunch of young talent, but there's not a bunch of it that's going to be playing at the Gold cup. Maybe I'm misjudging things after a crazy year, but I actually anticipate that a lot of the Ocho CONCACAF teams are weaker than the last hex.
Let's say we did qualify for the Olympics, who would go? Which tournament would take priority; Nations League or Olympics? Because these players would not be playing both tournaments. I would assume if we had qualified the same team that qualified is the one that would have gone to the Olympics. Plus the 3 over age players who did not play in CNL nor would play on GC. The Olympic team was going to stay an MLS squad if they had qualified.
Unquestionably, the higher level of play was at the Nations League. There was never any doubt that our best U23 players (actually U24 now) were going to be at the Nations League. Lets not forget that there's a Copa America (in theory) and Euros this summer. None of the European or South America teams are sending their best Olympics-eligible players to the Olympics. I would actually argue that senior Gold Opponents might be superior to 75% of the U23 teams we'd face at the Olympics. Let's say we were drawn into the group that Honduras is in. They're playing Romania, New Zealand, and South Korea U23s. I don't know why people think playing Romainian U23s is more valuable than facing a Canadian senior team at the Gold Cup. The Olympics seems to be an event that some fans on these boards care about, but the rest of the world really couldn't care less. You will never find a Dutch football fan complaining that their team didn't qualify for the Olympics. Its a non-event. It was taken off of the FIFA calendar, which is what the European club association fought for.
I think the appeal of the Olympics is that the US potentially winning Gold would go far for getting mainstream casual sports fans to care about soccer. Otherwise your point is correct.