Agree, Tuechel played Pulisic a lot when he was about the same age. The advantage he has on Green is he is more mature physically. Faster and stronger.
I only saw the first half. HIs teammates were not particularly cooperative and he gets frustrated which can be a good sign or bad sign. I'd like to see him playing against a good team like Brazil next to a 9 like Sargent and with some mids who can get him the ball like Trapp and Delgado and McKennie. Those 4 can all find people and Weah is good at finding the propitious spot to be.
Mentally too. I know Weah likes to talk about how hands-off his dad has been with his soccer career and that may be true in the strictest sense, but he still grew up watching how his dad handled himself and learning from that example. George Weah was a model professional and leader and according to everything I've ever read about him is one of the best guys you'll ever meet, so Tim was set up for success from day one.
That's true. PSG should have something like 50-60 competitive games this year, so that's a lot of minutes to go around. The risk of staying there is that he gets buried on the depth chart and gets little playing time at all, but if he keeps playing the way he has this preseason he'll avoid that fate and even then he gets the advantage of training alongside guys like Neymar, Mbappe, and Cavani every day. On the other hand, a loan would presumably give him an opportunity to start every week if his play warrants it. So there are advantages to both, but if there's one coach in all of Europe I trust to handle his development properly it's Tuchel.
Indeed, we recently had a manager who, re-signed before a World Cup, decided to play for the FOLLOWING World Cup, and the whole thing wound up in flames. Our best chance, both in terms of hosting and in terms of the strengths of our player pool, is very likely 2026, but so much will happen before then, and it makes no sense whatsoever to simply waste four years preparing a specific set of players when anything could happen to any of them. I'll back the idea that strategically it makes sense to re-start, go mostly young as Sarachan has done up to now, and build, but there's no "cut-off" age in my mind. As has always been the case, there are players you might not need at the WC (much less 2 World Cups) that you still have need of to get you through this Gold Cup, or WCQ stage, or whatever.
This isn't baseball; you don't punt cycles and just concentrate on prospects because of some target in the future.
Never consider a WC a throwaway and the younger teams seem to do best in the WC as it is. 2026 could be the best we've seen but the new 'core' will be between 22 and 25 in 2022 and I think we could be surprised how good they might be. Of course Altidore and a few others will be in the picture for 22.
Cant say enough good things about Weah's play against Atletico. Got a quality assist. He is going to be a good one, no doubt in my mind. Don't know if you noticed but they spread him out wider against Atletico so he wasn't hemmed in by two cb's and he was more effectively active. If we play him like Mbappe in the Brazil game, who do we use for a 9 who can pass him the ball (pls dont say Wood) and who can play the Griezman/DeBruyne role, assuming Pulisic and Wes will be at their clubs in run up to CL season? I'm thinking Sargent or Jozy + Adams or Roldan or Zardes or Carleton? We could play Trapp + Delgado in back to get the ball moving out of the back and play some defensive fullbacks since this is Brazil, after all. This mite work -----------Sargent ----------Roldan----Weah --Adams--Trapp--Delgado
Just depends what other wingers and forwards emerge over the next couple of years. Hell, I think folks are putting the cart before the horse by annointing many of these young players. What has Weah ACTUALLY done? He's made three senior professional appearances with no goals and we're arguing about whether he'll start up top or on the wing at the World Cup? I realize we're doing even worse with Sargent, who's never played a professional game. That's mostly because we don't know who else to list there....................... As fans this is what we do. US fans are always looking into the far distant future. It's what we've done since I started following the sport in earnest in the late 80s. Sometimes I think that we look so far into the future that we forget to enjoy the present. [Obviously the present in the summer of 2018 wasn't so much fun.] We have a Gold Cup to win in 2019. I know folks have purged it from their memories, but we are actually the defending Gold Cup Champions. Whoever the new coach is going to be, they're going to want to win it. The goal for the next calendar year should be giving all of our young players enough opportunities to WIN a roster spot for that event. To them we'll add "in their prime" veterans like Yedlin in order to win that event. If Weah has the 2018/2019 club season that we all hope he has, then he should definitely be part of that group. But that's ASSUMING it'll happen. We'll see.
It does depend on who emerges to some extent, even Weah himself. But unless there is a huge imbalance, I wouldn't consider him a winger. I don't think its a 50/50 thing. I think he's a striker, not a winger.
You’ve been saying this for awhile, and I agreed with you from what I saw in the last U-17 cycle, but I think he’s developed a lot more trickery on the wings in the last year or so. His best position is still striker I think, but I think he’s much more dangerous on the wing than he used to be.
I agree and I also think that the separation between striker and winger is artificial. We need somebody more physical in the middle so the second forward, like Weah, say, would naturally find better space out wider. Having somebody like Morris playing with Weah would also work if he is still the same player because they could alternate in the middle. We could play an aggressive wb behind Weah to take up the extreme width and play Weah more centrally, etc. etc. I'd guess Tuchel uses him as a sub at PSG and gives him different assignments.
Regardless of which he's better at, the fact that he can play both is unquestionably a good thing. Best case scenario, Sargent quickly becomes good enough to leave our next coach no choice but to deploy Weah on the wing.
I was listening to the scuffed podcast and he was talking to the Werder podcast guy and they were talking about how Florian Kohfeldt (butchered spelling) used a fluid formation etc etc but specifically he was discussing the forward winger hybrid role that Ajo and others werder forwards played (probably Jo Eggestien this year). From what I saw of Werder last year, that scheme seems an ideal postitonal fit for Weah.
George Weah is arguably the greatest African player in history, and there have been quite a number of great African players, so that's saying a lot. Nevertheless, Tim has made his own way. He had some advantages,sure, but he's making the best of it.
Seeing how hard it has been for the sons of other greats it seems more of a burden than a help. He has shrugged of that burden and progressed nicely.
yeah I was reading that sargent might not even play with the first team at werder but with the u23's cuz he isnt as far along as werder had thought......imo its way too early to start anointing some of these players.... This mite work -----------Sargent ----------Roldan----Weah --Adams--Trapp--Delgado ???? no pulisic? no mckennie??? huh? carleton has showed a lot more profesionally than sargent and carleton barely plays...weird times indeed. in 5 years no telling who will be in the mix so lets just make a good team now and let the chips fall.....