Nov, 14, 2002: "I don't think we (the U.S.) are going to produce great players in MLS," said Roy Wegerle. March 4, 2003 Bryce Wegerle plays as a guest for the San Jose Earthquakes. Wonder what happened with that deal with Udinese.
Does he measure how great a player is against himself. I think that the USA has some of the best young soccer players in the world. They may not be as good as some of the other players around the world but i travel to America from England 4 or 5 times a year just to watch soccer there. I find it a lot more exciting. As for Wegerle himself he might have been good but he was never great.
It would be nice to read his entire comments, but I think he's been proven wrong w/ any number of MLSers who've gone on to National Team duty.
Apparently he was too busy golfing to follow the WC carefully, since he also claims in this article that more than 60% of the players on our 2002 WC team were Europe-based. I think the contrast between the results achieved by Sampson, who embraced the idea that playing outside the U.S. was always better and dumped as many U.S.-based players as he could before going to France, and those achieved by Arena, who says it's less important where you play and more important that you play regularly, speak for themselves.
Not that I really give a *************** about Roy's opinion or his math skills but for what it's worth the only two field players who didn't get any time in K/J were Cherundolo and Regis, both European based players. Throwing out the GKs, the 10 US based field players averaged more minutes per player than the 10 foreign based players (thanks in part to the aforementioned goose eggs). If you look at players with 180 minutes or more of WC playing time, 7 of the 14 were US based. Only 3 of 7 for 360 minutes or more. Stats taken from the official FIFA World Cup.com web site (http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/en/t/t/st/usa.html). Player Min FRIEDEL Brad_ _450 O BRIEN John_ _450 SANNEH Tony_ _450 POPE Eddie_ _439 DONOVAN Landon_ _434 MC BRIDE Brian_ _372 REYNA Claudio_ _360 HEJDUK Frankie_ _334 MASTROENI Pablo__ 258 BEASLEY DaMarcus_219 AGOOS Jeff_ _215 MATHIS Clint_ _204 LEWIS Eddie_ _196 BERHALTER Gregg_ _180 STEWART Earnie_ _155 JONES Cobi_ _106 WOLFF Josh_ 67 MOORE Joe-Max_ 49 LLAMOSA Carlos_ 12 CHERUNDOLO Steve 0 KELLER Kasey_ 0 MEOLA Tony_ 0 REGIS David_ 0 The important thing is that MLS is developing players who can compete on an international level and will continue to do so. 2002 was a big improvement over 1998. Let's hope the trend continues. Whether they should stay in MLS or go abroad if another question/thread altogether.
IIRC of those "Euro" field players, its arguable that Lewis, Hedjuk, Moore and Sanneh abilities were more formed while in MLS than their time in Europe mainly just added to there experience benchwarming and fattening their bank accounts. In Donovans case though you could argue the opposite is true (except the bank account part). O'Brien, Stewart, Berhalter and Reyna are clearly the only players that I think you can clearly say are euro truly based, with the others all having some MLS experience. My guess is that deep down Sampson couldnt pull the trigger on some MLS players because of their supposed inferiority. Arena was more hesitant I think he would be if he had to do it over again. Actually he does, and I think he will worry about playing MLS players less. The US will have Euro based players in key spots for the forseeable future, but I think its more a function of money calling talent than MLS's ability(or inablity) to produce talent.