Impressive for a 16-17 year old kid? Sure, he's clearly better than most his age by way of playing professional soccer. Last season he was on the second worst team in the league so in context, of course he's going to shine. Credit to him for having 3 goals in 12 appearances, call it a good start for a forward if you want. But put him in context of peers who came into MLS at the same age (I feel like you keep ignoring this point in every single post) - the reality is Fagundez is no more impressive in context of the hype than Freddy Adu, Eddie Gavin, Bobby Convey, McInerney, Altidore etc. All those guys were all hyped beyond belief by their respective fan bases and the American soccer community at large. Have they gone on to solid careers? Sure. I expect Fagundez to do the same; he just hasn't done anything yet to separate himself from those hyped young guys. He's just our hyped young guy. So it's only fair and you know I'm not moving the goal posts, here's a few quantitative accomplishments this season that would make me less skeptical. Play nearly every day consistently - be it starter or sub. Make it impossible for Heaps to keep him out of the lineup. Be more active in front of the net - if not score, start clanging shots off the post on a regular basis. A young forward can't be afraid to shoot (he's got 4 shots all season, too few for me). Rack up 3+ assists this season (goose egg so far). Score 5 goals this season (20% of the way to this goal). Start collecting memorable moments. MOTMs, goals of the week, or some other 3rd party recognition of impact on the game. Score important goals down the stretch. Put the league on notice. Look, I'm not expecting Fagundez to blow off the doors of this league statistically from day one. All I'm saying is I've seen it before and I'll see it again. Make sense?
Exactly, compare him to his peers. Fagundez is actually outperforming all of those guys you listed. All of those players, while extremely hyped, didn't breakout and have impressive statistical seasons until they were 18. Fagundez is actually outperforming all of those players when they were 16-17.
Close. I'll concede he's outperformed Gaven and McInerney based on g/a in their first 12 appearances but not Convey, Freddy Adu and Altidore. I remember Convey's rookie year at age 16. He was dangerous from the get go and started impacting games right away in the form of assists. Freddy Adu had 5 goals and 3 assists at age 14. Last I checked, that's younger than 16. Altidore had 3 goals in his first 7 appearances. How is Fagundez outperforming him again?
Apparently you don't remember Bobby Convey's rookie season that well. He wasn't that impressive. Zero goals and 2 assists in 18 starts, 22 total appearances, 1614 minutes. Freddy Adu Age 14: Scored 5 goals and had 3 assists in 30 GAMES. Age 15: Scored 4 goals in 25 GAMES It's not even worth continuing for Freddy because his statistics just continue to get worse and worse as he gets older. He should have never even been playing in the first place. He got minutes because it was great publicity for the league, he didn't earn them like Fagundez has. Compare his goals or assists per 90 minutes against Fagundez and it's not even close. Jozy Altidore scored 3 goals in his first 329 minutes, it took Diego 471, so I guess you've got me there. But then again, if Diego Fagundez turns out to be the player is Jozy Altidore is, then I guess the Revs have struck gold. Altidore has easily been the most successful of all of the hyped teenage studs and I think Diego would be lucky to have a career as successful as Jozy's has been at the age of 22 (cue the Villareal, Xerex, Hull City comments).
Jozy Altidore had 6 goals, 3 assists in 1136 minutes before his 18th birthday on 6/11/2007. Fagundez has played 473 league minutes so far, including last season and turns 18 next February. If he can match or exceed Jozy's production in his next 663 or fewer minutes I'll give him credit. That's just .41 g/90.
I don't care if Freddy began to suck past a certain age, the point is you were making the argument that Fagundez was outperforming guys his age which is a load of bull. Our window is Freddy's stats before his 18th birthday since you pointed to Diego's age as an inhibiting factor to performance. My point is, Freddy had 9 goals and 3 assists in MLS before age 16, let alone after that when they're on the same ground. Fagundez was still in the academy system when Freddy was making men twice his age look stupid. You can't use age / performance as an argument here, sorry. I hope Diego has a similar career as Jozy's had by age 22. If he does, I'll be the first to admit the hype was justified.
Is Diego Fagundez not the better 16-17 year old MLS player? His stats definitely seem to prove that's the case. Compare Freddy vs. Fagundez at age 16-17, Freddy really struggled, it was really the beginning of a long downward spiral in his career path. I don't care what he did when he was 14, just like I don't care what Clint Dempsey was doing when he was 18, the more current the statistics get, the more important and telling they are.
How about Santino Quaranta? Can't believe I forgot about him. In 2001, at age 16 he scored 5 goals and an assist in his first 16 games. That's who I was thinking of when I said Convey. My bad. Mike Magee had 7 goals for the MetroBullsSugarDrinks in 2003, playing regularly. Granted he was a little bit older.
Yeah, it's a damn shame Quaranta had all of the injury problems and subsequent drug issues. He really showed a lot of promise early on in his career. At the time he was easily the most successful of all the young players we had seen in this league. My only point in this argument is that Diego Fagundez has performed extremely well for a player of his age and is deserving of the hype. His statistics over the past two seasons are comparable to pretty much any 16-17 year old we've ever seen in this league, other than Altidore. All of the players we've listed have also gone onto have pretty solid professional careers, albeit some better than others. It's also worth noting that there are no Nik Besagnos on the list, although we did fail to mention Danny Szetela who was a real bust.
Hmm, interesting that Jozy slowed down considerably after scoring his first three goals. He scored his first three in only 326 minutes, but his next three took him 807. I wonder if he struggled once he started seeing more starts and less appearances off the bench. Diego has definitely faired much better coming off the bench thus far in his career than he has in the few starts that he's received.
The difference is Freddy was still in middle school before MLS. Dempsey was in college so I didn't bring him in, even though he had an impressive 7 goals in 24 appearances his rookie year at 21 and looked right at home in the league from the very beginning. I cited Freddy's MLS statistics, not reserve or lower. We'll see. I hope he knocks off a few points I listed on the other page and Heaps plays him regularly. I would agree with that. It was a little odd to see so many games this season where Fagundez was an unused sub. That was a bit of a red flag to me because all those other guys we talked about racked up major starter or sub minutes every game. Jozy was in as a sub consistently for NY and it really helped in his development to see the field regularly. Fagundez had rotted on the bench the majority of the season. This begs the question: why in God's name would Heaps not play a kid with A+ talent who is the most marketable rev since Twellman every game, as a sub? Either it's on Fagundez (attitude, effort, perhaps undisclosed injury) or on Heaps.