The coming boom in multi-eligible player recruitment

I'm not an expert on the rules, but I feel like Haiti has a good shot at nabbing players already cap-tied to Haiti!

 

Revelação da Raposa, Alejandro é convocado para a seleção Sub-20 do México. 🦊🇲🇽

Saiba mais: https://t.co/nEUe7T8rsu#CriasDaToca #UmTimeDeTodos pic.twitter.com/DoplMpNFZK

— Cruzeiro 🦊 (@Cruzeiro) November 4, 2020

Hat tip to Tom Marshall.

 

By the way, I haven't seen a new Mexico U20 roster -- maybe I've missed it? Munoz was called up pretty recently, so this doesn't necessarily seem like a "SNUBS!!!" situation.

https://miseleccion.mx/noticias/3209/Convocatoria%20de%20la%20SNM%20Sub-20

Somewhat hard to believe he'd jump straight to the USMNT pool, though I imagine U.S. Soccer wants to be active counter-recruiting at all levels. And does anyone remember if there was some noise about Munoz a few months back? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

 

Interesting -- I think I saw something like that too, in the post I posted right above the post you just responded to.

 

They've also apparently called up a Mexican-Argentine playing in Argentina. It looks like he's Mexican-born with at least one parent from Argentina; not sure where he was primarily raised.

🇲🇽🇺🇦 ¡Martínez Dupuy de Selección!

Nuestro delantero fue citado a la Selección Sub 20 de México.

¡Felicitaciones Luca! 👏🏽https://t.co/D86rhplgkT pic.twitter.com/z7RhAc7K5a

— Rosario Central (@RosarioCentral) October 31, 2020

 

Just for the heck of it I'll point out that Guatemala's MNT has called up USL Charleston's Nico Rittmeyer, whose college bio says he spent some time with the U.S. U19s. (That's years ago -- he's a '93.)

https://www.uslchampionship.com/news_article/show/1130479

https://cofcsports.com/sports/mens-soccer/roster/nico-rittmeyer/2546

 

Munoz, Alvarez and Holguin (and maybe others?) were on the Mexico U20 callup list announced today. (Also a Dutch-Mexican at Heerenveen.)

https://miseleccion.mx/noticias/3258/La%20SNM%20Sub-20%20inici%C3%B3%20concentraci%C3%B3n

 

UEFA cancelled its tournament that would've determined qualifiers for the 2021 FIFA U20s, instead using ranking data to name England, France, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands as its participants.

https://www.uefa.com/under19/news/025e-0fac6fe40557-8da71e4a1ab1-1000--2020-under-19-euro-cancelled/

I mention this because, setting aside the possibility that the 2021 tournament doesn't even happen, regional qualifiers are cap-tying opportunities for multi-eligible players. When these tournaments don't happen, guys stay "in play" a bit longer.

It's a dynamic worth watching; you can already see from those five countries that some guys the U.S. cares about could be affected. Using one obvious example, it would seem neither Italy nor England can provisionally lock up Musah this way.

 

And, rather obviously but anyway, this applies across other age groups as well. No doubt everything about the theoretical 2021 FIFA U17s (Peru, dates currently TBD) is also up in the air. We've discussed the U23s at length, too, of course.

 

H/T to Paul Gardner for also spotting Chile-based Benjamin Galdames, who I'd overlooked, on this list. He's the Mexican-born son of a former Chilean MNTer who was playing in Mexico at the time. His brother, who was born in Chile, has appeared for Chile's MNT and is based in Argentina.

Clearly, we are not messing around on the recruiting front, but neither is Mexico.

 

The near-term (one hopes) factor pushing against this narrative is ... the coronavirus, which has obviously wrecked the soccer calendar among many other things. For the purposes of this thread, it means fewer opportunities to recruit, call up, and cap-tie players.

What's the current damage? I didn't go all the way down the rabbit hole into pre-qualification tournament competitions, tournaments, but even without those it's dramatic:

• At U20/19 level, AFC and CONCACAF have yet to reschedule their qualifiers. Everyone else has, for early 2021, ahead of a theoretical Finals starting in May, with the exception of UEFA, which as noted has already just awarded its 5 U20 slots and moved on without a tournament.
• At U17/16 level, pretty much same deal -- no dates for AFC or CONCACAF yet. Everyone else is tentatively on for spring/summer qualifying tournaments ahead of an October Finals.
• Everyone but CONCACAF managed to get their Olympic qualifiers in; of course, that tournament was rescheduled to July. (CONCACAF's U23s have not been rescheduled.) There's also a UEFA U21 tournament scheduled for March that is not Olympic-related.

There are so many moving parts here that any or even all parts of this calendar could change -- January is really close; the first tournament up is OFC's U19s, their U20 qualifier, set for that month. CONMEBOL's U20s are in February. AFC has already rescheduled its U16s twice and UEFA's U19s had also been moved two times before they bagged 'em.

In case you want to see this all in one place:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HeuFi1EuWVbnF_z2h6ejxKd-bBC5r9zOUlA3ZaHYEe0/edit?usp=sharing

 

Don't believe he could become provisionally cap-tied to Ecuador before the CONMEBOL U17s currently scheduled for March (Ecuador is the host). UEFA's are in May though the qualifying round has not been rescheduled from last year. Our U17 qualifiers have also not been scheduled.

 

As has been noted, Gioacchini is American-born, but:

Perhaps he will get an opportunity for Caen in French Ligue 2. Born to a mother of Jamaican descent and father of Italian descent, Gioacchini had an opportunity to play for Paris FC and Caen moving to France as a teenager after growing up in Maryland.​

https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2020/11/gioacchini-i-had-a-week-that-ill-never-ever-forget

It's been reported that he already has an Italian passport; not sure about Jamaica.

One assumes he is not on Italy's radar at present, but the Jamaica angle is at least theoretically interesting as 2022 qualifying approaches and ahead of a presumably expanded field of CONCACAF teams for 2026.

Of course, there's time and opportunity for him to make himself indispensable to the U.S., too. And he's young.

 

There's a reason I said "theoretically interesting." My point was that as a 20-year-old in the French second division, he isn't currently at a level where you might consider him a lock for a 30-man provisional roster for 2022.

Of course he could take big steps forward and become a lock, or smaller steps forward and be in the conversation. Or he could get bypassed by other players or anything else. (He wasn't even the only second-division player born in late July of 2000 with three theoretical international options to score twice against Panama last night!)

If he doesn't think he's a lock, does he consider other options? And would a perhaps-safe spot with Jamaica be more attractive to him than competing for a spot with the U.S. if that happens?

I have no idea, of course. But it still seems worth noting. Jamaica may be a longshot for 2022, but you could certainly see their pool looking more attractive to multi-eligible players ahead of 2026, when he'll be right around the theoretical prime of his career.

Ideally, he keeps progressing and stakes a strong claim to a U.S. spot. He's off to a good start!

 

While we're at it, I can think of at least two other '00 attackers, both provisionally cap-tied to the U.S., who are theoretically eligible for two other countries. What a time to be alive.

 

I mean, you either find this interesting or you don't. You do you.

The premise of this thread, however, isn't simply that some guys are eligible for more than one country, which, duh. It's that for reasons including in particular the move to a 48-team World Cup field in 2026, it's probably reasonable to expect more players of note to contemplate switches than we might have seen before, not just with regard to the U.S. and CONCACAF, but worldwide.

Since this thread started, there have also been reforms to the switching rules that may turn out to have a meaningful effect.

And then there's the coronavirus, which has surely affected movement as well, perhaps in a few different ways, and will surely continue to do so. If you're a youth player at a "big" nation whose YNT competition gets cancelled, might you be more inclined to take a MNT callup from a country a level or two down? I don't know, but I could see it happening.

 

Given how proactively the U.S. seems to be recruiting players these days, I thought it might make sense to try to catalog the guys who, as far as we know, are of some degree of reputation that might make them of interest in the near term, are not currently connected to the program (or recently were more strongly connected to another program), and aren't super-young.

Here's a list that cuts off at 2004, using that YOB as shorthand for guys who will be no younger than 18 in 2022.

Who's missing? What's incorrect? (For example, I wasn't sure off the top of my head about some guys' reported connections to/interest in or from the U.S., or whether either Tillman is provisionally tied to Germany.) See sheet for more:

Alves Sergio
Austin Brandon
Ayari Hassan
Balogun Folarin
Froling Nils
Holguin Hector
Malone Maurice
McEntee Oisin
Mighten Alex
Munoz Santiago
Okoh Bryan
Pieirie Kik
Rios Rocco
Sandler Philippe
Sanogo Malick
Sonora Alan
Tillman Malik
Tillman Timothy
​

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DfGSI_Z8IpbNKdk-Iw7L8vcHNoPwDH_SrVIFCS24pYc/edit?usp=sharing