Also had an assist in the game yesterday................................. Those who give should also receive!
Ream got a 7.2 from fotmob, best among the 5 most defensive players. Right about smack average for the team. He's averaging a mediocre 6.86 this season.
He’s lost a step and I’ve seen him just shut off on key plays this season. I think FC CLT would do well to move on from him and Westwood in the offseason. Ream is essential to initiating Charlotte’s offense, but he’s a liability on defense.
I remember reading that there was a big boost in social media contacts from South Africa after Mbokazi signed here. Makhanya making the team is residue from that.
According to Transfermarkt, Tim Ream just became the 3rd oldest player to ever appear for the USMNT. #2 is Marcus Hahnemann (who has Ream beat by a little over a month). And #1 is Gordon Bradley, who gave himself a single cap in 1973 while he was coaching the team (and I think was technically ineligible to appear for us). Fun bit of trivia is that Bruce Arena also got his only USMNT cap in that same game.
I feel like the 1973 USMNT would've allowed almost anyone to suit up. Like, bring a case of beer and they'd probably let you play.
I feel like a tragedy is oncoming, Poch has the power to avoid it, yet we’re going to see in this tournament a full-on Agoos-like meltdown
Ream is likely to be an asset against Paraguay and Australia and a liability thereafter. It is up to the coach to understand this and adjust accordingly. I would like to see how the defense looks without Ream against Germany.
R32 and even R16 couid be OK depending on who we play (knock on wood, if we get that far). And rest vs Turkey might be a good idea if we win the first two and are thru already.
I think it is almost certain that Ream starts against Paraguay. And I think it is likely that he will be rested against Turkey. For the Aussie match, it will be a tactical decision. My guess is that you want a younger, more physical defender for that.
The central defenders are vaguely like our forwards where they may be rotated based on how the opponent plays. A big difference is we all think the forwards are decent and the defenders meh except for Richards. So is Ream better when the other team has most of possession and there is not much worry about defending in space? None of our defenders are mistake free (even Richards) but maybe Ream is more mistake free in that circumstance while if we play a high line he's a liability? Or is Poch thinking he needs his passing against bunkers and thinks it's worth the speed tradeoff? I don't envy him having to decide that as he will get a ton of criticism if they play poorly but that could happen with any of the choices.
Ream is a convenient target for the haters. But the bottom line is that Poch, a former world-class defender, trusts him and has made him the captain. And very few nat players have his level of experience (the Prem and World Cup). His age is certainly an issue, so he has to be watched carefully.
He's been Poch's clear go between in terms of players and coaches, but his play as a professional has been quite clearly in sharp decline since '24, and possibly '23, he had a perfectly timed peak run between '21 and '22, and since then has fallen off significantly to the point where he's been caught out looking comically inept in MLS for a full year now. We are absolutely playing with fire starting him and it seems clear to me the only reason he's getting minutes is leadership (maybe the passing) and the fact that none of the other CB's in that great big pile of mediocrities and worse (Trusty, Robinson, McKenzie, Zim, Blackmon, CCV pre-injury etc) has seized his job in Poch's eyes, this is both an indictment of them, and also of Poch, whose placed Ream's passing, and leadership above base level competence and athleticism at this point. We're just praying veteran wiles, sheer luck, and a team's lazy scouting will see us through with him in the lineup. It's insane, period. He should be made a coach and removed from the field. Other teams have done it, I believe one as recently as the past WC.
Trusty and McKenzie can't really be called mediocrities unless you are using some standard well beyond USMNT
Agreed, I think my point more accurately would be that neither Trusty nor McKenzie reached close to the tier Richards is at, or in my view anyway, other classic strong CB's we've had like Boca, Gooch, and the immortal Pope. Richards made himself an auto starter, McKenzie has never quite gotten there, Trusty is kind of what he is, solid enough, but something we'd hope we'd have better options then, and that, in my view anyway, is the problem with CB development with the Miazga to the present generation (1995's through 2006's or thereabouts), none of them other than Richards reached a ceiling, and so we've had this giant pile of options after Richards that have been hard to differentiate, often 8-10 deep, nobody has asserted themselves enough to replace Ream permanently. So we keep churning guys from that glut of solid to below average to above average options, never satisfied w/any of them. If McKenzie didn't make those brain lock errors, if Robinson hadn't had that catastrophic injury four years ago, maybe its different, but those things happened and so we're stuck w/this pile.
Its been a problem position in terms of elite talent development for a decade now. Even the guys we thought were elite prospects hit road blocks. I totally agree with you regarding Miles' trajectory if he hadn't gotten hurt. EPB has had a bunch of problems. That edema thing set him way back. Our challenges really highlight how badly we want Noahkai Banks to commit and develop. We can look at the CBs on the last couple Olympic cycles. 2024 Olympics: Two overage players (Zimmerman/Miles) and Maxi Dietz (who's more of a midfielder in club soccer). A really weak CB cycle after Richards, who wasn't available. 2020 Olympic qualifying: Henry Kessler, Justen Glad, and Mauricio Pineda. [Miles Robinson not released by Atlanta.] Who were our defenders on the 2023 U20 World Cup team? Antonio Carrrera, Justin Che (RB/CB), Markus Ferkranus (who submitted a one-time switch to Australia), Brandon Craig.............and Josh Wynder. Josh Wynder's lack of first team opportunities at Benfica was a disappointment this season for sure. Maybe he's something, but we don't really know. Benfica went unbeaten with the guys they were using, so it wasn't like there was an impetus for a change. ....................take a gander at the CBs we just called up to our U21 pre-Olympic camps in March and June. Nolan Norris (FCD), Thomas Williams (Nashville), Noah Cobb (Colorado), Brandon Craig (Montreal), etc. Its more of the same. I know CB can be a late developing position, but its just been a problem. We have really young and exciting prospects all over the field, but CB? Meh. Desperately need to convince Banks to commit.
Jalen Neal was the one who I thought was really going to make it from the 2003 era and beyond, it looked incredibly promising three years ago, and its been a litany of injury issues since . I don't see elite mega anything amongst our very top prospects these days either, the best of our prospects seem to be Wingers, Wing Forwards, Midfielders and Fullbacks (and goalies lately too, to some extent) but CB's? I think I can think of maybe one really upside guy since Neal tops, and he'd still be behind the vast bulk of guys we've got from the interesting ''06-'09 classes.
Maybe our standards raised? We've got a guy at Palace and a guy in France. There's a guy at Celtic. The layout doesn't look that much different than the 2014 team: MLS, a young Brooks at Hertha, Stoke City for Cameron. The club badges in 2010 are a bit better but not stunningly so. I'm not sure how much this is a specific problem in development and how much this is simply whatever the hell happened with the Lost Generation interacting with the lengthy development times for CBs. I'm not entirely convinced our past CBs were as solid as we think. I think we gave them a lot more help than we're giving our current CBs. We've never sent numbers like this forward. I do think there's a mid-2000s gap of some sort, but who knows who will develop in their mid-20s?
Yeah.................but if we want to get to where we want to go, CBs at the 15th best team in the Prem, 9th best team in France, SPL, and MLS aren't going to cut it. You know? I love Chris Richards. [Of course I do as an FCD guy.] At the same time, look at the CBs that teams like Spain and France AREN'T taking to the World Cup for one reason or another. Dean Huijsen of Real Madrid. Pau Cubarsi, Eric Garcia, Ameryic Laporte, etc. The llist goes on and on. I know I'm stating the obvious. The USMNT isn't Spain. I know, I'm a genius. [In the past, USMNT coaches really developed USMNT CB partnerships really well. Gooch/Bocanegra under Bradley, for instance. Ever since the 2014 cycle we've been chopping and changing. You can't develop into a partnership better than the summer of its parts if you keep changing it up.