Good afternoon, fellow posters. Due to the painful double-whammy of having both the US and Bolivia do worse than expected I took a break from commenting on soccer. It helped that I was also on a vacation in the delightful western North Carolina mountains. Regarding the state of the YNTs and how that helps the MNT I still remain convinced that we are much better than before and that our development does regularly churn out players of higher quality than before. However it's undeniable that we are stalled a bit in players taking the next step. Except for Chris Richards and Turner, the starters are the same as what we knew just before qualifying and we still have a question mark at the 9. I think that the issue is that high potential players are by definition a small sample size and these things happen. Regarding the state of the MNT I think that the base is good but that the current NT scene is highly dependent on the quality of the final pass. Brazil sucks without Neymar and nobody else is in their squad is close to that. Spain is great again with a miraculous Yamal and the rest of the team also provides options. Likewise Colombia is undefeated with a resurgent James. I think that Reyna has the potential to reach those highs but he is not there yet and we have few other options. If there is one issue in our development it is developing those type of guys. Otherwise, we could tighten up a bit more in our mental consistency particularly in defense.
Funny I would say we no longer have a question mark at the #9, it's Balogun who scored in the first two games and was one of the best players until he was subbed off in the third game. The question marks are behind him (Sargent, Pepi, Wright at both striker or winger)...
Eh..............I get it. But his goals in Copa were against Bolivia and Panama. I still am not convinced by any of our forwards against the "good" national teams. Balogun was benched in France. Pepi was on the bench in Holland. Wright and Sargent play in the Championship. Vazquez in Liga MX. If we expect to compete at the highest levels of the sport, that ain't good enough. The final four teams in the Euros have forwards. And they usually have multiple elite forwards. [Not a coincidence that they have 4 of the top 6 domestic leagues in the UEFA coefficients.] A nation that is thin in that area, like say Germany, suffers when the games really matter against the other elite teams. It really looks like we have a very strong pool of attacking midfielder and winger types throughout our youth pools. And we saw the result of that with this Olympic team. The quality in that pool that didn't make a youth roster might be the highest in our history. But it was Duncan McGuire and total question marks at the #9. Even Duncan McGuire's ceiling might be Championship. We'll see. Maybe we get lucky and some foreign-born player like Damion Downs really develops. It might be a big year for him. Anyway, if developing elite #9s was easy, everyone would do it.
Have another look at the Uruguay match. It provides a convincing picture of Balogun's ability to ask hard questions of a very good defense.
Asking questions is different than scoring goals. Balogun has scored zero goals against a top 40 team in the FIFA rankings. He's Jesus Ferreira with a better publicist. [That's meant as a joke folks. Please don't go overboard overanalyzing that. Its a joke.]
Balogun's "bad" season at Monaco wasn't that bad. Per minute, he was pretty decent statistically. He didn't score as many goals as we'd want, but for a bad season it shows his floor is pretty high.
Headshot from Jesse Marsch to those US Soccer executives that run the federation. 🎯 💀 #USMNT pic.twitter.com/GAD8P77q56— herculez gomez (@herculezg) July 13, 2024 Canada head coach Jesse Marsch when asked about the USMNT opening 😳 pic.twitter.com/zoAcI1suDE— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) July 13, 2024 Well their kids did better than ours in the battle of non-USMNT coaches...
Why wasn't the USMNT starting an 18 year old CB from the Fulham academy against Uruguay at Copa America
Has a coach employed at any level by US Soccer ever made a public statement like "It is unacceptable that a player like X is not discovered until he is Y years old" or is that kind of talk verboten? Wish someone with this sort of thinking was in charge of USSF. Too often do we hear that the talent is there but goes unnoticed. Too often is the status quo kept when wholesale changes are needed. https://t.co/nXXpBtJSPc— Kranks (@dis_possessed) July 16, 2024 "It is unacceptable that a player like Moise Bombito is not discovered until he is 23 years old: I've coached some of the best CBs in the world... and his talent level is in that category"#CanMNT head coach Jesse Marsch on talent scouting in Canada 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/cEPiRYxYNc— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) July 16, 2024 🗣️ "I'm not leaving this job. I have no interest in the US job. Unless there's a big shift in the organization [US Soccer] I don't think that I'll ever have interest."Emphatic from Jesse Marsch. Music to Canadian ears, painful for USMNT fans. 😳pic.twitter.com/fb2abFRtDG— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) July 13, 2024
I think that’s right and I think the biggest adjustment was playing for a team that’s better and has the majority of the ball in most games. Whereas with Reims he had a lot more opportunities to counter attack (something I think he did to good effect this summer).
Not really. But why would a coach like Berhalter say that? We cast a big, wide net with our youth teams. Do we really have any of the players with USMNT-ceilings go "unnoticed" at the youth levels? If anything, we're always watching USYNT rosters to see players we haven't heard of before that they've unearthed from some European academy. [Picking a different player isn't the same thing as going "unnoticed." That's just coach's selection.] Canada has had some real challenges with their youth teams. Our Canadian friends who post on these threads always talk about the talent identification and scouting problems they have. These posters don't seem to have much faith that the selected rosters at the youth levels are actually the most talented kids. Just the most visible at the biggest academies. Not to mention the lack of camps and preparation to really challenge the players. Marsch is a talker. He'll say what's on his mind. Which is great in some ways but is a quick way to make enemies. Jesse is a Klinsmann-level talker.
That's the Klinsmann playbook. Fans love that kind of rhetoric, but like Jurgen, I doubt Jesse bothered to ask anyone why. Or dug into why. But using words like "unacceptable" make him sound tough. Of course, it often also alienates the people you need help from in order to accomplish anything. This was Jurgen's problem -- he'd rather spout off about whatever came into his head than actually try to get anything done. Let's say Bombito was any good at 16 -- and there is a gap. Do you think the people who work in that gap, whether at Montreal or Quebec youth leagues are more or less likely to listen to Jesse's ideas after hearing this? I suspect less. But he got to act tough in a press conference, so that's good, I guess. When you've been in the job less than two months and you are calling people out publicly, even indirectly, you really haven't thought it through. Or you are just more worried about personal PR. I think it's clear with Jesse that he simply does not think before he speaks and struggles to control his emotions.
Marsch is getting close to Wynalda level spouting off. Worked so well for Wynalda I can see why others would copy that.
Bosnian-American from the Midwest, 2010 Adin Fikic... can we try not to lose this one FC Cincinnati continues to build a really compelling academy program. They officially signed a top 2010 in Adin Fikic (AM/CF, 🇺🇸🇧🇦) from XF Crossfire. pic.twitter.com/Jjb7W6GvSh— Marcus Chairez (@chai_asc) July 19, 2024
So we learned we're much better than New Zealand (a country of 5 million which... do they have one pro soccer team in the whole country?) and Guinea (a country of 13 million that is possibly most famous for being mistaken for various other countries), and not nearly as good as France and Morocco... good data points. This is why it's so important for us to qualify for the Olympics!We get to see what we're good at and what we're not as our young players get to play in big games under a ton of pressure against top teams.It's all a net positive (as long as we learn and grow from it)!— Jimmy Conrad (@JimmyConrad) August 2, 2024 Getting crapped on by a guy who doesn't have a job... Hard to erase 6 years of “methodology” in a couple of months. It will take a different type of coach at the senior level … one with a very strong mentality as a start.Hoping for a fresh start, asap! 🇺🇸— Tab Ramos (@RamosTab) August 2, 2024 Tab said “Yo it’s still f- Berhalter” pic.twitter.com/mYlUM72m4k— Daniel (@DanielSmith1022) August 2, 2024
The thing is it’s hard to really judge these things at the youth level unless your going best on best which we aren’t really having happen. Hopefully we get some good guest teams to turn up at the Gold Cup next summer. As for Tab Ramos he’s sure full of a lot of criticism for a guy whose own coaching career has gone fairly poorly.
Anyone have any idea how many of Morocco's top U23s weren't involved in this tournament? They were impressive.
I think this is coaching... We're not some soccer superpower where we can go deep in tournaments despite making crappy coaching decisions at every step of the process from talent evaluation to dual nat recruiting to player selection to roster construction to lineups formations tactics substitutions etc. There is a trend in this US program right now and it is that we have not been able to beat better teams in tournament games. It hasn't happened since our U20s beat France at the U20 World Cup in 2019. We have to find a way to start punching above our weight every now and then There is a trend in this 🇺🇸 program right now and it is that we have not been able to beat better teams in tournament games. It hasn't happened since our U20s beat France at the U20 World Cup in 2019.We have to find a way to start punching above our weight every now and then— Marcus Chairez (@chai_asc) August 2, 2024 Yeah that's why I pointed out that Tab can't get a coaching job... dude is joining the former USMNTers with an axe to grind crew (although Wynalda is still the GOAT).
Since this stuff gets buried in other threads, posting it here... MLS: USA % minutes by year, by age group MLS: USA total minutes by year, by age group American big five minutes by league American big five minutes by age group
Well he may be bitter but at least he's not delusional... 100% not me. This is a big job. My failure in Houston is enough to not be considered. And thats the way it should be. Reasons dont matter, just results for this job.— Tab Ramos (@RamosTab) August 2, 2024
I wanted to write something that goes a little deeper. Here it is: https://substack.com/home/post/p-147599169
Nice article! Thanks for writing it. We're in an interesting place where as the current group ages, as long as development continues somewhat well, we're going to move up from where we are to perhaps the Austria sort of level. Which is a step up, towards the upper levels of the second tier. And honestly, domestic production every year like 2002 or 2000 doesn't seem insanely far off. We're clearly not getting there at the top end, which I think is the biggest issue, but it's doesn't seem insane that the 2010+ birth years could get there. I'm not sure they will. I'd personally like to see pro academies extend to younger ages and start more demographic outreach programs.