To me this thread is the other shoe to Karl Keller's thread on fairness. Oftentimes, posters here write that we must have more friendlies so that we can evaluate players better. And by "more friendlies" posters often mean many more friendlies. Is this a realistic goal? Is this even a goal that Arena should pursue? What should the US Nats' calendar look like ideally? First it must be said that all of us soccer nutjobs here would love to see the Nats practically every week. I think that some posters calling for more games are doing so because they want to see their favorite players succeeding internationally. Of course that isn't realistic. Right? There are a couple of constraints in scheduling Nats games. They include: - Limited callups of the Europe-based players. As most of us know clubs there can refuse to release players sometimes. Also since the Euro club schedule is so long our Nats coach needs to take into account that his Euro players may need to just rest in their off season rather than play Nats friendlies. An amendment to this is that euro national teams are not often available for scheduling much. - The summer MLS schedule also limits times for MLS-based players during the summer! MLS players have the converse problem that Euro players have- MLS has such a long off season that MLS players tend to lose their game fitness as the winter goes on and on. I think it's no suprise that Cobi tends to do well in winter games since he keeps himself so fit. I think that we don't necessarily get a true reading of MLS players in the winter because of this fitness issue. So what then should an ideal yearly Nats schedule look like? Here's my guess: January-February-March Winter camp starts in January and lasts for three-four weeks before a first friendly. Eventually there should be three-four friendlies scheduled before MLS season opens. Most of the players in camp will be MLS guys with Euro players coming in when available, mainly if their league has a winter break. Not all players will be in camp all the time and the purpose of this camp is for the coaches to get an idea of how good the players are when playing against their peers as opposed to lesser players that they often face in club play. I think winter camp can be an important evaluation time. Unfortunately we fans don't see what's going on during camp and are often puzzled about the long-term results and this is where Arena gets slammed the most. I'd love to see Steve Ralston or Chris Klein head to head against DMB several days in a row for instance. It might be telling... MLS season This time is limited to major competitions or the US Cup if no competition exists that we can get into. Fall Ideally there are a couple of friendlies scheduled for fall. The problem is finding suitable competition. Going to Europe and playing a country that doesn't have a qualifier scheduled on a certain date is probably the most likely avenue that we haven't used much yet.
I think that we should take this from a four year standpoint in terms of a schedule, because the schedule is going to vary a lot year from year. My ideal situation would be 1. World Cup Ends 2. MLS season ends 3. Maybe one november friendly, all hot MLS players and limited cap call ups. It doesn't even matter if we play another country's A side. 4. Winter camp, as you mentioned, January, Feb, March - As many games as possible (maybe 4-6 over the two month period). All MLS up and comers and some of the old guard to see how it all meshes. 5. MLS starts 6. European season ends 7. 1 Friendly after euro season ends, a couple of weeks later. Bring in some euro players that you are going to use for the coming summer's tournies to see everyone's progress. 8. Confed Cup - Bring the A team, for those who can make it 9. Gold Cup - Bring the MLS A team for those who can make it 10. Euro season begins 11. MLS season ends I think we should average maybe 10 games - 15 games including cup matches etc. for the 1st year off. This includes Gold Cup and Confed Cup play for us this year. 2nd year off maybe 8 games before qualifying starts and the Gold Cup. 3rd year off maybe 5 games sprinkled in with qualifying and the Gold Cup 4th year - Gold Cup - MLS squad, tough European Friendlies - your mix of MLS and Europe, Nike Road to ______, and World Cup. In other words, I really loved what USSF did this year with regards to our scheduling.
The USA has played in 19 matches this year: 5 Gold Cup 3 against Latin Teams - Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador 3 trips to Europe - Italy, Germany, Ireland 3 on the Road to Korea - Uruguay, Jamaica, Holland 5 World Cup and one or two more this year. IMHO, that's too many for our limited player pool. We should only be playing 4-5 friendlies per year most years with only 1-2 in World Cup Qualifying years. For example in 2003, we should have: 5 Gold Cup matches 4 Confed Cup matches 4 friendlies or 13 matches, which is about one a month on average. That's a managable sum. Sachin
We should conform it to europe's schedule more or less, with MLS doing its best to schedule around it.
The most interesting thing to me about friendlies (and really all USA non WC/CopaAm,hopefully) is to see how our players, especially MLS, perform against better competition. I question the usefulness of games like the one against El Salvador. It's not just the number of matches, but the quality of them. When we played Ireland, Germany, and Holland, we learned a great deal, didn't we? I'm not sure we learn all that much playing El Salvador. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to that game and something is always better than nothing!
This game is a money maker for the Soccerfeds. It's a meaningless friendly. Even if 2/3 of the house is supporting __________ (fill in blank with El Salvador, Mexico, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, or whomever) their fans are getting soaked at top dollar to support US Soccer.