The Most Dangerous Level of Competency

It's my line!Don't steal my line,goddamnit!

Sincerely Yours,

Steve Ralston


Hey,that coulda been my line!


Signed ,Taylor Twellman


As to your larger point,people did get benched this cycle,just not all the ones who could have been.

BTW,Howard and Bradley were not two of those people.

 

Bradley was better than Donovan and Dempsey this tournament. You should fix your line.

 

The Ralston Line was defined as the level at which a player could be a star in MLS but unsuccessful on the National Team.

The lesser known line was IIRC the Earnie Stewart Line of International Competence. That seems to be what we're discussing here.

 

He certainly was not, and he certainly wasn't better than Dempsey against Ghana.

I thought Bradley had two good games which were sandwiched by two not so good ones at the beginning and end.

 

Which could be said about both Dempsey and Donovan.

Dempsey was largely invisible against Algeria. Donovan was largely invisible against Ghana.

Bradley played well yesterday but the Ghana defense stifled the US attack so well that there wasn't much space for Bradley to do a lot.

The 3 of them were clearly the best 3 players we had.

 

What?? Dempsey had 9 shots, 3 on goal vs Algeria.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/gamecast/statistics?id=264048&cc=5901&ver=us

 

You know, I was thinking about starting a thread entitled "Good players have bad games" out of sympathy to Ricardo Clark. (I still might). Why? Because I remember Ricardo Clark coming on for Mastroeni at the Gold Cup in Soldier Field -- I was at that game -- and helping turn the game around.

Ricardo Clark was instrumental in GETTING us to the Confederations Cup, and getting us those games that helped us so much.

We owe Ricardo Clark. Big time.

Yet Ricardo Clark has a brain fart in the World Cup. Why?

Because good players have bad games.

And then there's Benny Feilhaber. He stunk up the joint against Turkey. Why?

Because good players have bad games.

And yet he comes on in the Ghana match and lights it up. Why? Because good players can sometimes play really really well.

And think about Jonathan Spector. Spector was starting and getting games in the EPL. DeMerit was in the Championship. Who is better? Is Spector THAT useless that he doesn't get off the bench? If not him, then who? Do we trash him to go find the "next great Eddie Pope?"

Meanwhile, aren't England's players great? Frank Lampard is worth, what, $50 million on the transfer market? Or more? He could go play for Mourinho tomorrow. Yet there were times in this tournament he was invisible.

I think your are right about the Mendoza/Ralston line, but there also players ABOVE that line, and in some instances, WAY above that line who will struggle from time to time. It is the rare player, the very rare player -- like say, Lionel Messi -- who is playing at his potential virtually every single time.

 

I thought it was the jason kreis line.

 

Please understand the game better friend as DeMerit and Spector play DIFFERENT positions defensively. And Steve Churondolo is WAYYYYYYYYYYYY better than Spector.

 

Something I find very interesting. Watch the first Ghana goal, watch MB in the :07-:14 of video after Ricardo C. turns over the ball. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWgi6NO37Y4"]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/ame] Tell me what you see..

Pay special attention to Clarke at point of turnover, where he starts and finishes vs. Bradley

 

I see Clark being flat footed and not responding to the pass fast enough. I see Bradley doing an overlapping run to allow Clark an outlet pass to the left. I see Clark, realizing he reacted late, make a very poor decision to go at Prince and cough up the ball, knowing that Bradley had made an overlapping run to his left.

Clark was slot to react and made a terrible decision in an attempt to compensate.

What do you see?

 

I see Clark turn the ball over, stumble almost fall and still beat MB back by 10 yards. I see MB jog back at a leisurely pace watching the goal unfold in *front* of him. That's why I said watch MB in the video from :07-:14, not just Clark. I see Clarke turn the ball over at midfield with 3, could have been 4 defenders behind him, yet be the second man back.

 

I think he was referring to MB jogging slowly back and even letting a player from Ghana run past him into the box. Not sure if MB is just not a fan of his dad's starting lineup and was thinking "Damn, Rico not again!", was just being lazy or was just tired. Still though, more blame falls on DeMerit and Howard then MB as he wasn't really in a position to stop the goal (now if it had been played to the player who ran past him while he jogged, we'd be having a much different discussion now). Kinda hurts to watch....

 

Why would it be MB's responsibility to chase the ball here ? We had defenders back as well. Its a counter attack. Usually the most dangerous players in a counter are not on the ball but making wide or late runs into the box.

 

Bradley isn't a defensive player. He is not expected to sprint back to cover a play that he isn't likely to be able to prevent outside of fouling the player.

 

Fair enough, I guess. Not sure how blame a player deserves for something that didn't happen.

 

Please understand that I DO know the game -- and I would bet WAY better than you ever will -- and that I DO know they play different positions.

My point is this, and I know this may be WAY too subtle for your mind to get around, but here goes. The OP original post was that we need to get beyond "level of competence." Yet virtually all of our players are at that level.

Spector, for one, has PLAYED in the middle. And on the left. And on the right. Is he, an EPL player, better than Jonathan Bornstein, an MLS player? People around here were calling for Bornstein's head but, lo and behold, he puts in good games.

He's a good player. But good players sometimes have bad games.

Got it? Too hard for you?

Cherundolo was playing better than Spector NOW. But Cherundolo was at one point struggling to get games for his club. He is a good player, having a bad string of games.

Got it? Too hard for you?

Smaller minds like you make the erroneous and unsophisticated assumption that one Player X is WAYYYY better than another Player Y. But because I have a brain, and yours doesn't seem fully developed, I understand that players go through phases and improve and regress from game to game and year to year.

Got it? Too hard for you? Hope not, but somehow I think it might be.

 

When I was a kid, we played 11v11, and that was about it. Today, the instruction is far better, but development is generational, so we are still behind.

I think we are a legit 15-25 ranked team. If we play well, we get out of the group. If not, we don't. We played OK and got out of a relatively easy group. Think about it. Outside of the seeded teams, Slovenia was the weakest or second weakest European side. Algeria was probably the weakest african team, except for SA. ...and we barely got out of the group.

This is not going to change overnight. We have more players in Europe, continuing their professional development. I think what this cycle really did for us was get rid of the arrogance from Europe about "american" players. While other teams may believe they should beat us, treat us as chumps at your peril.

When a team is ranked where we are, we can do well against really good teams, but on our off days we will have trouble with teams you'd think we should beat. Ghana is a case in point. Before the game I thought it was 60/40 for us.

We had plenty of chances, but just couldn't put it away. Findley had a clear shot put it at the keeper. Bradley is wide open and one times it at the keeper. Altidore has a step on the defender but gets caught. A decent first touch from Altidore (different play) and he's 1v1 against the keeper. We could have won this game fairly easily, but we didn't. Why? Because our finishing is not good. duh. That's one of the things that makes top teams great. Take away our poor finishing, and we're fine. These issues are generational. We've got a huge talent pool and as the generational issues are overcome, we will be a perenial powerhouse outside of CONCACAF. Win the world cup? Don't know, but we should be in the quarters every other cycle.

 

So, to be clear, in watching that video from :07-:014, your comfortable with MB's effort to get back and help?

I can't imagine people saying the same were the roles reversed.

 

Unlike most here, I am not looking to crucify Clark. I got nothing against whatsoever. He made a huge blunder. He knew he did and that's why he played so poorly for the next 20 minutes and had to get pulled.

You are looking at a video, with the full benefit of hindsight, and expecting players to run full speed to prevent something that shouldn't have happened. It would be great if all of our players could sprint all game long, but they can't.

 

That is a reasonable take... You can't run full speed on every play and knowing the outcome changes the context of the effort given.

I happen to agree..
That's why the Rico bashing is so out of hand, we know the outcome. If that same turnover occurs and we play better defense after the turnover, it's forgotten.

I'm no Rico fanboy but god I hate how folks have unfairly made him the scapegoat.

 

Here's where I find a core fallacy that Bradley critics continually fall back on. If you're going to argue that Bradley "stopped looking...for alternatives", you're implicitly arguing that there were in fact alternatives. As a prime example, if it was a mistake to depend on Rico Clark because Bob Bradley hadn't identified the better alternative, then there must, as a logical result of the argument, be an actual, clear, better alternative. Which there was, of course, but his shin has been chronically broken in two and he hadn't taken the field for Schalke for a year and a half.

Aside from Jermaine Jones, who would have been this player who was NOT at this deceiving level of competence? It's not like Bradley didn't try other players in the middle - Edu, Torres, Feilhaber, Klestjan, and Beckerman all got run in the middle, and between rawness, injuries, form, fit for the formation, and ability they all had issues that made none of them that clear-cut better alternative. You could fault him for playing Mike Bradley, but I think it's pretty clear that he's earned his spot. So if there's not actually a clear-cut alternative that is better, and if Bradley actually did test out alternatives, then the argument really is just that you disagree with his choices. Saying that you think that Edu or Torres would have been a better choice than Clark is just an opinion, not a fact that is supported by this proposed systemic weakness in our method of player selection.

But opinion is always easier than facing the fact that maybe we're just not as good as we want to be or think we deserve to be. Maybe the problem isn't with the players but with us as fans - the team as a whole is competent enough to make us think that the edge cases where we beat Spain should be the norm, and when we get the results that are the inevitable flip side of that exceeding of expectations we try to find someone to blame.