Who are the top US Youth National Players under the age of 21? This is not necessarily who the best players currently are, but who the best ten or twenty prospects (age, potential, etc) are for the future of US soccer. Which young players will make the most impact on their youth teams, senior national teams, and American soccer in general?
Sure why not, I'll take a stab at it. If you want to include 'potential' (which is always tricky to nail down, since everyone seems to have a different definition), this would be my Top 10 under 21 by age: Mix Diskerud, 20, MF Gale Agbossoumonde, 19, CB Bobby Wood, 18, FW Juan Agudelo, 18, FW Perry Kitchen, 18, CM/CB Amobi Okugo, 18, CM/CB Sebastian Lletget, 18, AM Fabian Huerzeler, 17, AM Luis Gil, 17, AM Emerson Hyndman, 14, CM
a few more Joe Gyau 19 MF Josh Gatt 19 MF Nicholas Gaitan 15 CM Moises Orozco 19 CM Alex Zahavi 19 CM Omar Salgado 17 FW
It's a daunting task to try to predict long-term success for young players. Some of those listed will level off and be decent, though not exceptional, pros. Maybe a few will continue to develop and not only become core USMNT members, but also move on to bigger Euro teams (as full-fledged mature pros). However, the younger you get, the more difficult it is. Emerson Hyndman? It seems that many are stamping him for future success. Give the kid more time to develop physically, see how he comes out of puberty, etc., and then maybe we'll have a better idea. This list is devoid of players in the current U17 pool. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see one or two emerge from this U17 group to become very good players down the road. Who might they be? Stay tuned...
Alejandro Guido was very impressive at the recent Nike Friendlies. I liked what I saw from Mario Rodriguez this year as well as Alfred Koroma last year.
My question is to a lot of you, is this crop of prospects better than their predecessors? It would say a lot for our National team as far as growth is concerned.
Sorry, I meant to write 21 and under...not just under the age of twenty one. So if there are some 1989 born players you want to include, feel free Yes, the youth ranks are getting better....but also, a LOT deeper. The depth of our talent is much better than it used to be. A good cause for excitement for the future, lets just hope a good amount of them pan out
What is with this obsession people have with Emerson Hyndman? I wouldn't even put him in the top 100, much less the top 10.
This. Saw him play at SUM Cup. Obviously has some pretty good ball skills but that's about it. He was absolutely outclassed and a liability all over the field.
I would say someone who has held his own against players 3-4 years older in the academy setup and has already impressed at places like Newcastle and Sporting is someone who would qualify as having 'potential.' I think Hyndman's arc is very high. Same goes for Gaitan. But geez, don't take things so seriously, your posts are always so dour, it's just a soccer message board after all. I think the OP simply wanted to know some talented kids to keep an eye on, not that any would be sure-fire Xavis.
Probably not. If you were to rank FCD players under the age of 21, where would you put him? He wouldn't be in my top 10 right now..........but for the purposes of this thread I'd have to filter out the players that are ineliglble for the US. I REALLY like the left back, Kellyn Acosta, who's at Bradenton right now.
Acosta is pretty good but I will go with Jalen Robinson at DC United. Unfortunately they are both Right Backs, Acosta moved over due to injuries during the last set of games. Also Can't wait to see Kellen Gulley return from injury.
Kellen Gulley's an interesting case. I haven't seen him post injury............... Just for the sake of argument, here are Top Draw Soccer's rankings for Kellen's age group. Remember that TDS is really all about college recruiting, so kids out of that realm (are abroad, have already signed as homegrowns in MLS, etc.) aren't listed. I'm just putting these lists up to help in our discussion of prospects. http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/index.php 1) Mario Rodriguez 2) Alejandro Guido 3) Marc Pelosi 4) Andrew Souders 5) Tarik Salkicic 6) Esteban Rodriguez 7) Andrew Oliver 8) Raul Mendiola 9) Joseph Amon 10) Kendall McIntosh 11) Dillon Serna 12) Ryan Masch 13) Ruben Duran 14) Alessandro Mion 15) Kellen Gulley 16) Nicholas Melo 17) Fernando Pina 18) Michael Ambrose 19) Michael Gamble 20) Jalen Robinson All rankings are subjective of course. Some people on these boards think Jalen Robinson is the best thing since Spray Cheese...........Top Drawer Soccer thinks he's the 20th best player of recruiting class. Some people think Kellen Gulley is great, others don't. Just for further discussion..........here's the top 10 of guys one year older via their rankings. These are the "tweener kids" in terms of the U17's......which of course is an artificial cycle. These are kids who would be going into college in 2011. Coleman and Zavaleta have committed to Indiana. William Trapp I believe is going to Akron. Ted Mullin to Wake Forest, etc. etc. Alex Shinksy is going to Maryland I think.......... 1) Alex Shinsky 2) Sean Davis 3) Nicholas Palodichuk 4) William Trapp 5) Eric Zavaleta 6) Sean Cunningham 7) Ted Mullin 8) Jack Coleman 9) Boyd Okwouno 10) David Caban
Emerson is quality, his ball skills are their, all depends on if he develops physically. If you watch the kid play in his age, he would be far and away the best player.
Also, eight new players---Jordan Allen, Zach Carroll, Christian Duarte, AJ Jeffries, Michael King, Fernando Laverde, Jack McBean and Reed Norton (nine, if you include the returning Koroma) are beginning residency in Bradenton, none of whom are on Top Drawer Soccer's top 20 list. Inasmuch as this is the final push before the qualifying roster is named, one would think that these players were not called in to Bradenton just to add depth to the pool. I feel confident that at least a couple of these players will make the 20-man roster. And if they do, considering their short stay in Florida, there's a good chance they're fast rising prospects who will eventually make some noise down the road. Who might they be? Let's see, but the larger point, as many have made, is that players develop at different rates, and some even who were nowhere on the radar at 15 or 16 suddenly emerge a few years later to the refrain of "Who's he, were did he come from?"
I know. I was just putting the list up there to give us some ideas regarding which prospects we should put on our list. All of those kids are "5 star" prospects at TDS.
We just don't know how good Emerson will be. He's 14. He could be a pro in 5 years, or he could be working at foot locker. OK, I mocked your list..............so here's my list of top 25 prospects currently under the age of 21. (as the OP requested) 1) Juan Agudelo, Red Bull New York 2) Mikkel Diskerud, Stabæk 3) Teal Bunbury, KC Wizards 4) Adrian Ruelas, Santos Laguna 5) Brek Shea, FC Dallas 6) Gale Agbossoumonde, Unattached 7) Sebastien Lletget, West Ham 8) Amobi Okugo, Union 9) Bobby Wood, 1860 Munich 10) Bill Hamid, DCU 11) Joseph Gyau, Hoffenheim 12) Fabian Huerzeler, Bayern Munich 13) Perry Kitchen, DCU 14) Zac MacMath, Union 15) Conor Doyle, Derby 16) Omar Salgado, Vancouver 17) Luis Gil, RSL 18) Jack McInerney, Union 19) Kofi Sarkdodie, Houston 20) Alex Zahavi, Maccabi Haifa 21) Josh Gatt, Molde 22) Alex Molano, Dinamo Zagreb 23) Moises Orozco, Tigres 24) Cody Cropper, Ipswich 25) Greg Garza, Estoril I could keep going...............it's gonna take me forever to get down to an above average 14 year old.
You must be the guy Rongen was talking about that overrates Ruelas... I generally like your list, but it is what it is. Most of us (hell maybe all of outside Bshredder) are making completely uninformed opinions of these players and ranking them at this point is more on popularity then anything else. It's weird how on these boards a player becomes a "sexy" pick (mostly players that nobody has seen play) then all the sudden they are just OK players once people have seen them. I wonder if once the MLS season starts and Agudelo has a few tough games if people are gonna start dropping him down their lists.
So true. Want happens on the field and at what level is what counts. Hopefully the true decision makers are not paying attention to these lists because if that were the case, we would have a team based on "rep" rather than those that can actually play and excel at this level. Time will tell how it all works out.
100%. I will grant you that the rankings themselves are really subjective. Everybody has their own opinion...............but I think these are my top 25 guys. I know somebody above questioned my ranking of Adugelo as #1. But hell, he's actually playing in MLS and now the USMNT. As far as "prospects" go, I'd say a guy who's already been capped by the USMNT is a pretty damn good prospect. I'm gonna rank somebody like him above somebody like Wood who's never played a first team game (although might shortly). Now I did leave out some guys that we can discuss. Charles Renken I would have added, but I haven't seen him with either the US teams or Hoffenheim since his U17's days. I just don't know where he's at post-injury. Michael Hoyos is still eligible for US, and he'd be high on my list. I left him off because he's with the Argentine U20's right now. We'll be sloppy seconds for him if Argentina decides they don't want him. I've never seen Samir Badr at Porto. Some people really like him, some don't. Others would say Carlos Martinez of Cottbus has a lot of tools to be successful, but I haven't seen him since his U17 days. I also left off Will Packwood of Birmingham City, Tristan Bowen of the Galaxy, Soony Saad of Michigan--------apparently signing abroad shortly, U20 regular Dillon Powers, Korey Veeder formerly of Crystal Palace Baltimore, Conor Shanosky of DCU, Parker Walsh of Karlsruhe in Germany, Francisco Navas Cobo of the Dynamo, Jerome Kiesewetter & Anthony Brooks of Hertha Berlin, Ethan White of DCU, Zac Pfeffer of Philadelphia, etc. It's also true that I don't watch NCAA soccer as much as other fans. Some people have been gushing about Kelyn Rowe, but I've only seen him once at UCLA. I've also only seen Sebastien Ibeagha once at Duke................and I know people really like him. Some people might have guys like Tyler Polak, Ryan Finley, Jared Watts, Chad Barson, Sacir Hot, etc. etc. I had a friend recently tell me Sean Cunningham was going to be a future USMNT player. Who knows.................but he just signed with Molde in Norway. I also didn't include any U17's in my top 25. That's because the "failure rate" of Bradenton kids is enormous.........and expected. You'll note a surprisingly small number of kids from our 2009 U17 team listed above. Two years ago people were saying Earl Edwards was going to be the next big US goalkeeping star. As far as I know he's now a backup at UCLA. Stefan Jerome has fallen off the face of the Earth (in other words he signed with Traffic). I really start paying attention to kids when they've "graduated" to that next stage in their career of starting to play in the pro game as U20's. You start weeding out the hype from the talent at that stage. The truth is these lists are sure to go wrong. If you had Jose Mourinho write a list of the world's top U21 players..............he would make a bunch of mistakes too.
I tend to agree with you about using the U20 platform as the starting point for projecting future talent. Even there it's not foolproof, but when compared to say, the U17 age group, they're much further along in physical and other development. IIRC, SAF at Man U was once asked if he could project Man U academy players as future 1st teamers. He said that the only one he was reasonably sure of was Ryan Giggs. That's it, that's the only one out of hundreds he could be certain about. I know that there will be players that are currently in the U15, U16, U17 age groups that will go on and become very good pros. We just have less ability to pinpoint exactly who they might be than perhaps those in the U20 group, and even there it's not that easy. I have my own "favorites" from among the U17 pool who I think have a chance to be very good, but at this point it's not much more than wild speculation.