What are you talking about? Who is obsessing over Jonathan Gonzalez in the year 2022? Did you just wake up from a multi-year coma? Or is five people posting comments on the internet now "obsessing"?
There is a difference with duals. There are the ones that are on the fence and the ones that we never had a chance because of their preference. Subotic had issues with our youth teammates. In an interview he was asked why he did not want to play for the USA, he said he didn't like teammates that spoke a different language in the locker-room. Sounds racist to me. Rossi's family grew up following the Italian league and since a very young age he wanted to play for the Italian national team. He got his wish but destiny got in the way in the form of severe injuries. He even scored against us in the confederation games of 2009 (I think). Gonzales was on the fence and we missed the opportunity to secure him. Would his career being different if he stuck with us? we would never know.
Rossi is really the one guy who I still have some regrets about. Sure he grew up wanting to play for Italy, but our recruitment process back then wasn't what it is now. Arena's public stance was basically that he wasn't going to go around begging players like that to play for the US if they had expressed no real interest otherwise, whereas we are much more proactive about that these days. And we've convinced players (like Pepi) who grew up supporting other national teams that had expressed strong interest in them to commit to our program this cycle. And he could have really helped us circa 2010-11, when he was in the midst of 4 consecutive seasons of double digit goalscoring for a Champions League La Liga side, while we were so desperate for a second forward that we made Robbie Findley a fixture in our starting lineup. Subotic, I agree, wasn't a big miss. It became clear later on that the guy just didn't really care about international football.
As a refugee, the Subotic one was complicated. He happened to be living in Bradenton as his sister was playing in the famed Bollettieri tennis academy there. A U17 assistant Keith Fulk, happened to see him training (BY HIMSELF!) in the park. Sort of a miracle. He wasn't playing with a club team. They invited him to play with the U17s, and he eventually won a spot. But he has since admitted that he used the US U17 program to go back to where he really wanted to be. That was Germany. And he applied for a one-time switch to Germany, which was declined by FIFA. There was never really a connection to the US other than an opportunity. Rossi represented Italy from the U16 to the senior level. There was never any ambigiuty there. There was never any flip-flopping like we see from other dual-nationals. Rossi picked Italy early and stuck with them. Fine. After he turned us down for the training camp prior to the 06WC, Bruce Arena was quoted as saying “We’re not chasing around 18-year-old players that can’t get games for their club team and tell me they want to play for Italy.” And he wasn't wrong. Quietly...............he tested positive for a banned substance in 2018. Banned for a year. The end of his career has been pretty sad. Suspensions and injuries. But anyway, Jonathan Gonzalez is 23. Its at least possible that he gets back on track. There's just no sign of it yet. Sometimes young players don't develop and you have a hard time explaining why. Happens all the time. Gonzalez was good in 2017-2018. His playing time declined in every subsequent year at Monterrey until he was finally loaned out. He didn't do much at Necaxa or Queretaro. Now he's at Minnesota.
We DID push hard for Subotic. We just didn't get him. My memory (which could be faulty) is that we stayed in touch and made consistent inquiries with Rossi but not so publicly, and he was resolute about only being interested in Italy. So I would classify that as pushed hard as well.
We definitely pushed with Rossi and tried to get him into camp in the lead up to the 2006 World Cup. He was always very locked into to Italy though and unfortunately for him (partly due to injury) he never ended up going to the World Cup for them. I don't know if I've ever seen him express any regret, but his agent has said he thinks that in hindsight he should have picked the US https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-rossi-italy-usa-international-football-agent
JoGon made a few bad decisions over his career. He thought LMX would develop him better than MLS and he was wrong. He thought that he deserved call ups that Adams was getting and he was wrong. JoGon and Adams are the same age. For context, in the year before JoGon switched Adams was called up a cycle early for the 2017 U-20 WC and to the first post-Cuova friendly against Portugal. In retrospect, JoGon was competing in a very talented youth group. It seems like he never realized this and felt slighted.
For the present moment at least Sergino Dest does not appear to be the starting right back at Barcelona. Slonina appears to be a better prospect than Ochoa, but it's not crazy that Ochoa matures a bit and re-establishes himself as top prospect. I think if Rossi and Subotic had played for the United States in the 2010 World Cup, that would have made a massive difference in the round of 16 game against Ghana. And win that game you were looking at a quarterfinal game against Uruguay that would have been winnable. We also had a number of injuries to players like Davies or Jones who definitely would have been difference makers. Of course neither Rossi and Subotic had any interest playing for so you can't really worry about, but they definitely would have been valuable players who would have made a difference.
Jonathan Gonzalez without a team in Liga MX. Don't know if he will end up in another team in Mexico or try to find something in MLS.