The Center Back Situation Post Copa: Where do we go from here? Who Stays who goes?

Bump.

Just putting this up top because every thread seems to be hijacked with talk of the CB pool. We got a thread right here!

 

Oh man, I don’t know…

I sort of feel we are doomed in 2026 if our fullbacks are booting the ball out of desperation. I hope we don’t have to revert back to those days…

 

Something has to give. If Dest comes back fine from the ACL I'd consider moving him to left back and having Scally stay at home to help cover the central defenders on the right. Sorta like how it was done at Milan with Theo being the only fullback that regularly joined the attack.

As far as the central defenders, I'd pick the two that best own the box. I think that's probably Zimmerman and Robinson right now.

We can advance the ball from the back through Dest. No need for fancy feet in central defense.

 

Main pool: Brooks, Richards, Robinson, McKenzie, Trusty, CCV, Zimmerman
Up and comers: Murphy, Hidalgo, Padelford, Zawadski
Phenoms: Neal, Akinmboni, Wyndor, Cobb

 

I don't see how you take ARob off the field. If Scally is displacing anyone it's Dest IMO.

 

I think Scally is the better defender and Jedi doesn't combine well enough on the left with the mids and forwards because his passing is pretty awful. Dest is just a better player. Period. Jedi would make a great sub for Dest when defending a lead or Scally (flipping Dest to the right) when we're chasing a goal.

 

Zimmerman had a statement Olympics.

 

Don’t sleep on Banks.

 

I like Banks a lot. I would also add Pierre to the list of young guns. On a related note... the "up and comers" listed just seem like replacement players at best.

 

Yeah Pierre and Murray deserve to be on the list too. There’s some good prospects in the U20 group as a whole.

 

Jedi has arguably been our 2nd best player for both club and country over the last year or so. You absolutely can't take him off the field.

Dest is a better overall player than Scally yes, but I could see platooning them at RB based on the opponent. I'd go Dest against peer or weaker opposition for sure but I think you have to seriously consider Scally against stronger opposition, particularly if they have a dangerous left sided attacker.

 

He needs to move back to CB first.

 

I still don’t trust Scally as a lockdown option. Seen too many troubling club minutes. Assuming he does become dependable enough we’d likely have to abandon trying to build under any real pressure. Scally-Richards-Not Ream-Jedi aren’t playing through a good press. While we’re at it we can dispense with the pretense that we have good players and just play against the ball against most non-minnows.

 

Who are the young central midfielders who could be candidates to drop deeper over the next few years? I thought Tessman was a good candidate for this a couple of years ago, but that time might be gone. The Sounders had plans of converting Atencio to CB at one time... and my love affair with Sands as a CB is just about as dead.

As far as positional changes for current players, I wonder if Jedi could be a good left center back in a back three.

People discount a back three by saying that it puts a lesser player on for a better player (maybe not if Weah is a wing back and Pulisic is the second striker running off Sargent/Balogun/Pepi), but the point about this system is that it completely changes how every player on the field plays. It very well might be true that playing with a back three allows the rest of the team to play more aggressively and intuitively. Who knows what type of creativity and pressing havoc two forwards might be able to create if they are playing off of each other....

My biggest gripe with Berhalter is that he never really tried a 3 back system. I think it could have potentially freed up the team to play with more potency.

 

Yep. We're getting kinda desperate so I spent some time on the Yanks on foreign NT and Dual Nats threads. The current ones and the older ones to see if maybe there's some in there or some possible one-time switches.

Not fruitful though

Seems the "hope we can get him to switch" guys were Bryan Okoh who's still only 21 but playing in the Austrian second division, and Phillipe Sandler who's now 27 and just "a guy" for Nec Nijmegen

 

With a back three some of the tweeter CB/RB/LB's can be a LCB or RCB. Ream was one of those until late in his career where his experience and losing some pace dictated be only a CB. Scally might be quite good as a RCB and I believe he played there for U17's or U20's. Richards plays much better in a three back set seemingly. For me it comes down not to who gets taken out and if that makes the better or worse on paper but which formation and strategy plus the players available play better than they are now. I like having the 4-3-3 all up and down the age groups but think there should be at least one other system that gets heavy rotation.

 

MRob also plays in a three-back set with his club now, so might be more effective in that system, especially with NT training camps being as short as they are.

 

Max Dietz plays in a three back system at Furth. Don't sleep on him.

 

I wasn’t super impressed at the Olympics.

 

When part of the time he was playing the 6?

 

Didn’t look impressive during any of it. Seems like it was a mistake not to take Neal.

 

Its Chris Richards and wide open after that.

Everyone is under evaluation.