The ultimate first world problem: who do you start….. adams or johnny and why

The ‘94 squad was talented…and they got results.

Remember, those guys played abroad when it was completely unheard of. They were the original trailblazers. Lalas was the first guy in Serie A, etc.

 

Not really.

What I'm implying is that the top 30 USMNT players right now are more talented as a group than the top 30 USMNT players have ever been.

....................but if one of those 30 isn't a forward that can be relied on to score goals, then you have a problem. And, by the way, we've had this problem of scoring goals for two cycles now. We have to hope Pepi or Balogun assumes the mantle and becomes THAT DUDE.

I saw a recent ESPN ranking of the top 50 USMNT players, and Gio Reyna was at 31. We can argue whether that's accurate or not. But I can assure you we haven't had a guy ranked outside the top 30 USMNT players of that quality in previous generations. [He was obviously ranked that low due to form & fitness in '24/25]

 

We have always had guys like that. Joe Gyau comes to mind.

 

I am not sure what exactly you are describing? Berhalter had patterns of play that were SLOW and mechanical, that has nothing to do with Adams.

How did patterns look when Adams was not on the field? Who was better at moving the team forward on their own?

 

And what I am saying is that if you are measuring the overall talent as a group and it has major deficiencies in key parts of soccer, you probably aren't measuring the overall talent of the group correctly.

You play to win the game. You win the game by scoring goals and preventing them. If your team lacks talent that keeps it from scoring or preventing goals, you are lacking talent.

Adding up UCL minutes or however we're measuring talent is one way to say the most talented. But it's not functional talent, at the minimum, if it is not spread out across the positions effectively or if it doesn't translate to wins.

I understand entirely what you mean when you say this, but the reality is that the post I was responding to said that this is the most talented team by a long shot.

And the reality is that it's not. It has huge gaps at key positions, including the most important one on the field. And Tim Howard's talent gap to any keeper we have now is massive and then you multiply it by that positional importance.

Jedi Robinson is our best LB ever. But his gap to whomever you pick in terms of winning and losing is much, much smaller than the gap to Tim Howard.

I mean, you explain this all here. Healthy Gio would not be ranked 31. Unhealthy Gio doesn't play. Certainly, post-devastating injuries, guys like Stu Holden or John O'Brien could have been ranked as low as 31 while not contributing for a year plus.

Availability is a skill, to speak, in the sense that it is not random. At some point, we also need to point out that the players that form the foundation of "most talented team ever" are available for about 50% of games at this point.

 

Over time national team performance converges onto the level of performance a player displays at club level, adjusting for contextual factors.

There is no player who becomes significantly worse at controlling a ball because of the crest on their shirt.

 

There's also the fact that the competition, particularly in CONCACAF, gets better.
We're getting better. Our competition is getting better.

It's a moving target...........................................

If people think man-for-man, the 26 man roster now isn't more talented than in previous generations....................then I don't know what to tell you.

But this is a team sport. You have to function as a team. If these were all-Pro rosters on paper, we'd beat Panama. That's not what we have here.

We've all watched World Cup games in which an uber-talented team like France completely implodes against supposedly weaker opposition. If the chemistry isn't right, the sum can be worse than the parts.

Also its sports. Sometimes one team can totally dominate a game and lose. Man City can completely dominate Southampton in every way you want to describe............and fail to win the game. That's soccer sometimes.

[There's also the fact that people on this board seem to only remember World Cup performances. As if the 02 generation and 14 generation ran thru WCQing with ease. Those of us around at the time know that wasn't the case. Claudio Reyna never won a single trophy in a US uniform.]

 

But some guys do struggle with elements like travel, changing so many time zones so quickly, poor fields and reffing in CONCACAF.

More broadly you can’t always replicate the club environment at the national team level. Different tactical setup, different players around you, same role in the system may not be available, etc.

 

World Cup performance is the ultimate measuring stick. That’s why we remember. Other competitions are memorable as well, such as the Confederations Cup where we eliminated the best team of all time during their greatest run of all time, made a final, and almost beat Brazil in a FIFA final.

As with the NFL, NBA, etc, we measure performance by whether or not someone performs in a way that wins games. Playoffs and knockout rounds are the standard for that, Michael Jordan is great because he won. Tom Brady is great because he won.

Dempsey and Donovan are great because they delivered in those moments.

 

Till

Tim Chandler and John Brooks come to mind. Even when in good club form, playing over here was often a struggle.

 

The heart of the '94 team played together for like a year before the WC. They were almost a club.

Also, they were thin. One guy got hurt, it was curtains. We were worse a man up without Ramos than at even strength with him.

And while I'm on that, we were still the kind of team in 2010 that one guy getting hurt blew up the game plan, even though that guy was not one of the top two or three players on the team (yet; I mean he had promise), it was more that there was just nobody to step up. Josh Sargent was our third choice to start, and was certainly better than what we had on offer to fill in for Davies.

 

If people don't think our pool is as strong as ever, check out this list of top 50 USMNTers today on goal.
From Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie to Ricardo Pepi and Josh Sargent: Top 50 in USMNT 2026 World Cup player pool - ranked | Goal.com US

Number 50 is Diego Kochen, who makes the bench at Barcelona.
Number 46 is Noahkai Banks, who's been in the first team of a Bundesliga club.

We're as deep and talented as ever.

But that doesn't necessarily translate to results. This is a team sport.

As per this argument about Adams versus Johnny......................they have Adams at #3 behind only Pulisic and Antonee. I can subscribe to that. Right now, if only one is starting, you pick Adams by a mile. But who knows what the future will hold? You could also play them together if you felt like it. I wouldn't, but you could.

When you look at this list, you realize that we were missing 4 of the top 10 of our most talented players at the Nations League. You peel off some difference-makers and the gap to nations like Panama erodes. [Antonee, Dest, Pepi, and Balogun.]

The biggest mover in their ranking is Luna, who is all the way up to 11 now. Ahead of Tillman, Reyna, Musah, etc.

 

This is simply Badge FC logic. What team a player plays at is not a representation of quality to the level that people place on it. I mean, really, the weight you place on "making the bench at Barca" doesn't really align to the PT he's gotten with the US, does it? He's a great prospect, but if that were as impressive as you are implying, why hasn't he been handed the starting job? I mean, everyone else is a backup at a worse club or in ... gasp ... MLS!

And the badge FC stuff fails especially comparing to the past. When we absolutely had guys who could have done the same but didn't because of reputation and bias.

Also, I find it funny you selected two dual nationals who very well could pick other countries.

On a very high level, we are probably deeper than ever. But since you can't play fifty guys or plug in our seventeenth midfielder at keeper, no, we're not that much better in any practical way. Who cares if the list looks more impressive if you can't put it on the field?

 

this is why bs is just a bs (no pun intended) echo chamber now.

kochen lost his starting spot at barca b forever ago, and his pt with the nats? 0 minutes.

 

I've been following the USMNT for 35+ years.
We are deeper than ever. Its not even close to be honest.

There's some bizarre nostalgia for the past. A past most of you didn't live thru.

 

Remember when ASN didn't even have Jermaine Jones in our top 20 players? There's always been a strong bias, at least in the media, but also around here, in favor of 'homegrown' Americans like Tyler.

Having said that, and as someone who has been rabidly pro-Johnny since the 2020 pre-world-cup Wales friendly, Tyler Adams is a monster and a healthy Tyler always belongs on the field for us.
Of course, the right answer is start both

 

Well I’ve been following even longer so that I guess that makes me right.
What I don’t understand is how you can say it’s not even close when we currently have keepers that can’t sniff what Keller, Friedel, Hahneman brought to the table, or any center backs that can hold a candle to Pope, Gooch or Bocanegra.
If you were to say we are deeper in midfield and it’s not even close I wouldn’t fight that, but the team is so much more than mids and wings.

 

Deeper or far more talented? Those are different. And I notice the size of the difference keeps shrinking.

I'm not going that far back, though I'm old enough for all of it to apply. But you really haven't addressed any of my points.

For example, how is our keeping better than it was in 2010? Are you going to throw Diego Kochen at me?

 

Well yeah but goalkeeper is just one position, no one is saying the goalkeeper situation is good, the consensus is that it's the worst it's been in the modern era.

 

Not sure how anyone can argue the USMNT player pool doesn't have more talent than ever when aside from all the "Badge FC" Yanks Abroad guys (which does matter as those top five leagues are actually pretty damn high quality) we also have over 300 Americans playing for what is pretty much the consensus 9th best soccer league in the world...

Obviously that has never been the case in the past, how could the USMNT have had more talent when he had far fewer guys in the top leagues and the rest in the (just assuming here) 20th-30th best league in the world. Now we have players who are just pretty good to good in MLS like Tolkin and Sands who are not even close to USMNT regulars but fringe pool guys moving straight to the Bundesliga and playing right away and not looking out of place at all.





As an aside I have to say I was surprised to see the new Canadian Premier League right next to the USL Championship... not too impressive a showing from the latter given it's been around for so much longer.

 

Just to be clear I got the 300 number from @IndividualEleven and added the "over" because San Diego (citation)

 

Kochen makes the bench for who?

 

I don’t think looking at it that way is the best. I think you have to compare the talent against the competition they are facing in their time. If we are “getting better” and CONCACAF is “getting better” and it’s a “moving target” then what good is that improvement? If that means that our region is better relative to UEFA and CONMEBOL and we are closer to their top teams in terms of quality, then that is actual improvement. If nothing has changed, then we haven’t actually improved in any meaningful sense.

I think the amount of actual improvement in “talent” is larger than the actual improvement in ability. Those gains have not been especially well distributed in a way that would materially increase our ability to get results. I also think people are simultaneously overestimating the magnitude and impact of our increase in talent while also overestimating the magnitude of the actual improvement in ability. We’ve gone from a mid-20s level pool to a low-20s/high teens level pool. The space between where we are now and the top 10 is much larger than the space between where we were and where we are.

 

So you are familiar with the meaning of “contextual factors” then.

 

I don't disagree if you are looking in aggregate across a very broad pool. I'm even fine with the idea that the pool is better.

I just don't think it's that much better.

Particularly in terms of functional talent for the USMNT, where it's only the very top of the pool that matters and you need to be able to account for each position.

So again, there's little doubt that we are thinner and weaker at goalkeeper, correct?

How about RB? I love Dest, but how much better is Dest than Steve Cherundolo? Is he better overall - certainly offensively, but including defensive lapses? Now factor in his availability. Despite being a starter in the Bundesliga, are you going to tell me that Joe Scally is as good as Cherundolo?

Maybe I am being overly nostalgic here but our overall RB situation is only better if Dest is available, and then by less than you'd think -- in part because Dest's flashier offense is more difficult to turn into goals than defensive errors are in terms of letting up goals.

There's obviously positions where we are better now, but it's not nearly as cut and dry or as big a gap as people want to make out.