The current state of our youth national teams

I believe Alvarez got into an altercation with a teammate and didn’t like how it was handled by the coaching staff. I don’t think there was ever questions about how he fit in with the US program. I think the main reason he’s playing for Mexico is because apparently his father is a big Mexico fan and is pushing him to play for Mexico.

 

Was that Richie Williams?

 

I believe it was van den Bergh.

 

I would add that I feel much more comfortable about American dual nats that go to Europe at that age that spent most of their life in America vs ones that choose to go to Mexico.

At the end of the day a lot of it hinges on family, connection to the country, and opportunity. At this point in the rivalry the USA and Mexico are able to offer similar strength programs. Mexico has dominated it recently, but during the Donovan/Dempsey years we had the upper hand head to head. The one benefit that we will always have for dual nationals is that our country was founded on immigrants and to this day is the most diverse country in the world of its size relative to country of origin of our population. The majority of the country need only go back two to three generations to find some ancestor that immigrated from somewhere else.

Either way I support players making their choices. Rossi? He never wavered on Italy. I respect that. Efrain? He's left it somewhat up in the air, but has been respectable in the way in which he hasn't played any guessing games. Right now he is playing for Mexican youth teams, but has said that is for right now.

 

I do not envy any youth players who will have to play for the joke that is Berhalter in the future. The USMNT is in deep, deep trouble at the senior level.

 

There's no reason to overreact to such a game. We beat Mexico a year ago with a less talented group of players and a worse coach.

I'd argue the opposite of what you are saying. Mexico is in deep, deep trouble at the senior level. We are getting better, but it's going to take a few years. How could someone not expect 2022 to be a transition cycle after you miss the World Cup? There needs to be a new group of players brought in, but it's going to be young players just starting out. They are going to need years to develop into seasoned NT players.

 

Mexico is in deep, deep trouble at the senior level? Where do you get that from?

 

Honestly, the best take I've seen about last night. It's one game and our future is bright. Our senior team will take some bumps and bruises, but i thought it was encouraging to see players like McKennie(21), Pulisic(20), Sargent(19), Dest(18), and Cannon(21) play and develop.

 

Yup. THe over-reaction to that game against Mexico was astonishing.
We're going thru a transition, incorporating a lot of younger players, and are right now clearly behind our closest rival. We didn't need last night to tell us that.

I'm not a Berhalter fan. I'm no fan of the USSF brass. I'm no fan of many of the USMNT veterans. But hell, this group (without some of the younger, developing players) just showed they were superior to everybody in CONCACAF other than Mexico at the Gold Cup. So it all seems "par for the course" to me. With that group last night we could have beaten Panama. But what's the point? Right now we want to challenge these players...…………….…….

What I am a fan of is the talent coming thru in our younger age groups. The future is looking bright. There's this train of thought amongst USMNT fans that the younger kids are looking at the state of the USMNT and are contemplating defection (Dest, Soto, Mendez, and the dual nats). The opposite might be true. They might just see opportunity! If I'm Sebastian Soto I'm thinking that if I work really hard and dedicate myself to the discipline, there are opportunities at forward NOW.

 

honestly we aren’t doing that good a job of integrating younger players. to me that means playing kids based on ceiling rather than necessarily current level. right now it seems like more talented young players getting first team minutes still need to ‘beat out’ older guys that have never really done anything for the national team

 

Right...…………….but a USMNT coach isn't going to completely turn over the squad to all the young guys in one go. Its a transition. Dest and Pomykal and Sargent and McKennie and those guys in this camp. At the next one we might add a couple more. Maybe Weah and Adams return. Maybe a guy like Mason Toye or Brandon Servania or Justen Glad is given a cup of coffee with the team. [I just pulled those names out of my butt. Nobody over-react to those names.]

We could have played that group last night against Guatemala and won 4-0. But that wasn't the point. We want to test these players. If they fail, then we learn something. We have to let players fail. Even 24-25 year olds. Even USMNT coaches.

 

Their whole team is in their mid/late 20's. They only have two YNT-eligible players playing in Europe. Look at the amount of players they are trying to poach from the USA. They know they are in deep, deep trouble, IMO.

 

Not as long as Berhalter is our manager.

 

This is how you get a team that doesn't qualify for the World Cup. It wasn't as if the 2018 cycle didn't already have young players like Pulisic, McKennie and Adams, but we were behind in building a core group of players that could get results in important games.

Klinsmann took six years using this strategy where he called in his favorite pet projects that hadn't earned NT call ups, and produced nearly no viable NT players. Jordan Morris might've been the only one that turned into a helpful player. Players such as Alvarado, Zardes, Green, Kiessewetter, Stanko are among his pet projects that he tried to pick, but didn't amount to helpful NT players.

You can't start calling in players because you think they are talented. I'd argue we still do too much of this. What has Sargent done to earn a USMNT call up? I'd argue little. What has Pomykal done to earn a USMNT call up? I'd argue little. If they have a good season (like Miles Robinson), call them in. We don't need to see players such as Zimmerman and Gonzalez. Give Robinson their minutes in these games, but if you start calling in players such as Reyna or Pepi because you think they are talented or decide that you want to recruit a dual-national like Maurice Malone by cap-tying him to the senior NT, that is exactly how we won't qualify once again.

What we need is a team of core players in their prime, players like (Long, Brooks, Yedlin, Steffen) to be surrounded by young players who have earned a spot on the USMNT. It could skew slightly younger due to the lack of good mid 20's players, but once you start making it a prospect showcase that could yield any large number of results and will distract from building the best team to get results for the senior NT at that time, you start bringing into play losses to middle of the road CONCACAF teams like T&T.

 

I don't think their trouble has much to do with us. They've gotten the same result at the World Cup the last seven tournaments. We weren't the team beating them in these games (except for one). They are a Round of 16 team. No better, no worse. 2-3 times in a row, it might be a fluke. Seven times in a row, thats their level. They are 9-16 in the world, but no better, and little indication its changing. If anything, I'd argue it could change in the opposite direction. Where are their young stars? They seem to think their young stars are going to be players they can poach from the US program.

 

Yeah I think it's only Lainez and Teun Wilke in Europe from the entire El Tri youth system. Wilke looks to be a bench player with Heereveen's U19s, so not someone very valued. Looking only at Mexican-Americans from the USYNT setup, ignoring the rest of the US pool, you have Llanez, Mendez, Ledezma, Soto, Johan Gomez. Among '00s and later, the US has been sending more Mexico-eligibles to Europe than Mexico has been sending Mexicans to Europe. Araujo, Ochoa, Pepi also have had and still likely have European interest.

Some of these Mexico youth prospect accounts on social media are posting half the time about USYNT players. The US youth system, at the moment, is more promising across the board. I got a chuckle at the Mexican fans on Twitter the other day talking about the US U17s defeated a Mexico team that didn't have Efrain Alvarez. They were unwittingly giving away that the key player (in their mind) for their only current successful youth team is a US product. Mexico U17 are the only youth team of theirs that hasn't had horrible moments lately.

 

It is a constant disappointment that our federation consistently fails leverage the Latino community in youth development and beyond. It is no accident that we defeat France and get put out by Ecuador. Our teams at every level struggle with the South American style of play. From turning down Copa America to firing Hugo Perez to a series of transgressions documented by Mike Woitalla, our fed continues to wear blinders.

Latinos shunned by U.S. Soccer Youth Task Force

Snip

Nearly one year later, we learn that the Task Force setup has grown to nearly 60 people: the 10 members, 50 members on the six working groups, eight staff support members, and U.S. Soccer’s Chief Stakeholders Officer Brian Remedi.

Besides Cordeiro, not one Latino -- no man of Latin American origin or descent -- is among these 59 people.


https://www.socceramerica.com/publi...aign=22210&hashid=80oeftV_TKIUmXxWu109QLxRYoA

 

That’s clearly moronic.

I defend USSF a decent amount, but their interaction with the American Latino community ain’t one of them.

 

France and Ecuador is a total incident. Hugo Perez firing is a mistake. Who do they think Ramos is? Icelander?

 

This whole Hugo Perez thing is soooooooooooooo overplayed at this point. Anybody else notice that Hugo Perez didn't succeed at his jobs before or after his time with the USSF? That he was very quickly dismissed from multiple jobs in El Salvador? Are they anti-latino in El Salvador? The Hugo Perez appreciation society that we have is based on very little actual performance and achievement.

Don't get me wrong folks. I want us to to a better job. But I've been listening to folks whine about this latino thing for 30 years. Mike Woitalla is part of this crowd that no matter how much progress we make, writes columns about how anti-latino the US soccer establishment is. Meanwhile I look at our youth national teams, MLS academies players and staff, etc. and I see latino influence everywhere. Do people not watch FC Dallas? If you look for bias hard enough, you'll find it everywhere with everything. Who is Tab Ramos? Is he not latino because he's Uruguayan? He's one of the most powerful people at the USSF in terms of actual performance and strategy. US youth task force? Tab Ramos is the youth technical director. He oversees the development academy, directs the youth national teams, and coaches the U20s. For Pete's sake! The frickin' head of our federation is latino. Colombian. I guess he's not latino enough since he's only 50% Colombian?

Jeeesh. This topic is so overplayed to me. I understand why people write these columns every year. They love the feeling of being outraged. But they should actually balance that column with the enormous strides we've made over the last decade. The idea we don't have enough latinos on an impotent "youth task force" means squadoosh. Latinos are represented in the community of folks actually doing the work. Who is Luchi Gonzalez? Chopped liver?

 

I don't necessarily want to dig into the whole thing here because I don't have a strong opinion, but Hugo was a assistant coach for 2 different NT managers and the third guy just brought in all his own assistants. El Salvador went through a lot of managerial shuffle. In 4 years they had 3 different managers and actually since 2012 they have had 9 different managers for at least 1 game. That is not a well-run federation

 

It seems like the litany of excuses that we make for Hugo Perez not being able to hold down a job in this sport are endless........................

If people want inclusion from people actually doing the work and accomplishing things.................I'd rather have Matt Pilkington on the Task Force than Hugo Perez. Or Luchi Gonzalez. Or hell, Brian Kleiban needs something to do. Put him on the task force. Or somebody from RSL. These are the clubs churning out Soto, Mendez, Llanez, Alvarez, Ledesma, Pepi, Servania, Cerrillo, etc. etc. etc. Not talking about it..................actually doing it.

 

I'm not positive, but I think the Task Force is geared more toward grass roots or lower level issues. These are the areas where there is a huge disconnect with latino populations, and it does seem a bit crazy that there is virtually no latin representation out of 60 members.

 

Do we have a task force geared towards the African American community? to me is seems we should as I can't recall a single African American MLS head coach. While the make up of our youth teams is significantly African American and latino, we should focus more efforts on this underserved community as well. I don't think any of the DA coaches at FCD are African American but they do a very good job of outreach to the Hispanic/latino community. ( only stating FCD as that is the club I know).

 

Maybe this digs deeper than I thought, but all I'm saying is that the El Salvador assistant position is volatile no matter who is there. That's it. No indication of hugo or anything.