I don't think you can even put Charlie Davies in the same toxic category the previous generation guys are in. He's more someone who is both not very knowledgeable about soccer and too lazy to put in the work / research, so really the occasional loud take is all he can provide. Even those who loved Davies, who would ever have expected to see him as a soccer analyst? He should be some Frankie Hejduk type hyping up crowds at Revs games.
Definitely especially as our A team coach decided to incorporate a lot of them in the past year ahead of this tournament and to prepare the futur. The likes of Azzouzi, Richardson, El Khannous Ben Seghir and Ezzalzouli would have waited a couple of years longuer with a different coach.
The FIFA should definitely impose an international date for this tournament to force the clubs to release players if they want this tournament to be taken seriously.
We played like crap; they deserve some level of harshness not because they lost -- you have the more talented team -- but because they didn't come to play. That said, a pure U23 teams could have conceptually had two senior A team strikers, the midfield could have been all A team players, with half of them A team starters, both A team backup fullbacks even before overage players. I don't know enough about your team, but if we had pulled someone like Pulisic (our Hakimi, or closest) plus overage centerbacks, we'd have been playing a slightly rotated senior team, basically with maybe one or two positions actually being guys who probably don't make the Top 23. Just miles ahead.
I think your right back would have clearly needed an experienced player next to him to direct him and coach him in the pitch.
Somewhat related to getting players released, it sounds like Walker left his club team, that depends on him big time and are struggling mightily, to go play with a B team that always had an extremely low chance of medaling. I’ve kind of been feeling that way, and based on the tenor of this thread, it seems I was correct.
Well it's not like Nashville are going to win any silverware either... they looked absolutely horrific in Leagues Cup the other day, and that was at home vs Mazatlan... when does BJ Callaghan take over? Edit: Wait that was Callaghan's first game? It's one game but not a great early sign for the Gregg coaching tree
The biggest thing that will help is it takes place earlier in the summer (July 14-30) so less overlap with European preseasons (this Olympics was July 26-August 11). If we don’t participate in the Copa America that will also make huge difference in terms of releases (though I hope we do participate). But best case we could be looking at a team that’s something like the below (not including dual nationals like Buck, Barajas, McFarlane, or Esmir who may or may not play with us). 1. Kochen 2. Beavers 3. Miller 4. Dest 5. Baker Whiting 6. Banks 7. Wynder 8. Akinmboni 9. Terry 10. Adams 11. Sullivan 12. Cremaschi 13. Tsakiris 14. Fletcher 15. Berchimas 16. Pulisic 17. Figueroa 18. Hall
I’m hoping that’s not his attitude toward the folks that pay him, but yeah, that was BJ’s first game….and Walker’s been gone for a while now.
That's just more over-the-top elitism/cynicism. They're in their early 20's. We shouldn't have seen the best of them yet. And still, guys like Pepi have already contributed a lot to the senior team. May have not qualified w/out him. Scally has contributed to owning the region, which we didn't used to do. That's bringing up the level, in spite of being early in the development. I take it then you're acknowledging you're 1 of these people who always does this, where if there's a collective failure, which there wasn't even that much of 1 overall this time (& when many of our best in the age group weren't available); that means next to nobody will contribute to the seniors eventually & it's some huge indictment of where the program's going.
I think you are moving his bar and not noticing you are moving your own bar. Or something. I certainly used to think the US had a puncher's chance against almost anyone save maybe the top couple of sides. I don't think the US has even that chance nowadays. so it's not about winning a bunch of games against better teams -- if you did that, then they weren't a better team. It's about having a chance to pull the upset. Do you honestly think that the US has a better chance today to beat #4 France, e.g., or #8 Holland in a game that matters than they would have had 10, 15 or 20 years ago? I sure don't. And as for expectations for this group of players, they were not (at least for me) to win a medal. But they were to look like they could compete and belong. So the disappointment today isn't in losing to a better team, it's in losing SO VERY BADLY. I'm not sure it makes sense to pick and chose when we decide to learn something about the program. Yes this was not the best hypothetically possible U23 team. So what? It was still a team of pros, many of whom have either already gotten long looks from the full team or been talked about as future contributors --and they were WAY behind the other side technically, tactically and athletically. That says something. If they'd lost 2-1 in a reasonably competitive game, then it might be too much to say the program is stalled, but that's not what happened. The US got run-ruled. And sure, bad results can happen, as you've noted Brazil lost 7-1 in the 14 semis. But it probably stretches it to analogize the US to Brazil in how to contextualize a loss, and the US has other indicators that progress is not advancing.
Trying to change minds, instead of trying to win, is part of the problem. We NEVER adapt to the opponent. That works if you have talent as good as anyone in the world. Since we aren’t Argentina, France, or Spain, it’s a bad strategy.
I think I am a little more moderated than that but have to push back on extremism the other direction. Certainly individuals can survive a collective failure. I think Zimmerman was great this tournament and said so. I think Tessman showed he has a lot potential in the right set up. But they guys you pointed out and those two just confirm that the direction of the program is basically flat -- stability. So the program is only going to hell as compared to what we hope for and what the USSF likes to proclaim. Players like Scally and Pepi (and Tessman and Zimmerman) are fine enough and I enjoy watching them. But the idea that they are advancing the program sounds off to me. Yes, they are contributing to the full team, but that's more support for my side than yours. They are not better than the FBs and strikers, CBs and 8s that have come before them.
Yes, we need to get it thru more player's thick skulls (& some fans too), that it's not about being in the very best teams or comps, rather being impactful for the best team/league you can. Then when they join our team we won't put drivers in positions of passengers.
The whole pay to play debate is such a red herring. It's college prep for middle class parents. We have pay to play academies for every college sport. Parents pay $thousands for their kids to play at private golf clubs and they pay to have their kids learn piano or study math. If someone is willing to pay for something someone is going to make money from it. It happens to be an alternative pathway and we should be grateful for whoever it produces. But it's not going to go away. What is USSF supposed to do, ban it? All USSF can do is create opportunities to play, to coach and to train, and work with the pros to create some sort of pathway. I think they're doing it, slowly, but they do a crappy job of promoting themselves. Anyway, pay to play isn't the problem. It will add always be there. It doesn't block anything, it doesn't stop progress and companies like IMG aren't going to stop charging for it.
Saddest part here is the 4-0 was deserved. I don't see it with Tolkin. And Miles was poor the entire tournament. I expected more from him. On the other hand, Mihailovic didn't disappoint, I never expected anything from him.
I guess it depends what you’re looking at. I don’t use ELO, I use my eyes, and the standards (among our young players) have risen - and continue to rise - results (sometimes) notwithstanding.
In the last 20 years how many times did we beat a team like France or the Netherlands in a competitive match? I think the only time was Spain in 2009. Putting aside that we don’t get alot of those competitive opportunities what’s happened over the last 20 years is we’ve definitely raised the floor, but we still aren’t close talent wise to those sorts of teams. It’s a very hard jump to make and not one you’ve really seen anyone make in the last 20 years. Belgium did for a bit but they seem to be coming back to earth. The cycle to watch however is 2030. That’s the team to watch based on current trends.
I think with pay to play it’d be great if it can be reduced. But it’s also the case that it’s not in the power of USSF to do so and they don’t have close to the resources they need to be able to do so.
There was a great WSJ article about US table tennis player Lily Zhang https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics...j1xmku3fc1nkaxn&reflink=article_copyURL_share But to her parents, table tennis was an opportunity to enhance her college applications. “If she played at a high level, it would help her get into a good school,” says Liu, her mother. At age 16, she competed at the 2012 London Games. Though she lost her first match, her parents declared it a resounding victory. “They’re like, OK, you got the Olympics, you got that on your college apps and now you can focus on studies,’ ” Zhang says. She mostly quit table tennis after that. Then, as a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, she felt something was missing. She wanted to take a gap year and train for the next Summer Games. Her mother disapproved. “You already went to the London Olympics,” Liu said at the time. “That is enough.”
No offense meant here, but this is an evaluation of your relative perception of things. There may be some truth to it, but the number of upsets we've actually pulled over time is actually far less than actually happened. Because people tend to count ties in those old days, or wins against B teams. We still play plenty of good teams close -- we just don't beat them. But aside from like 3-4 wins over thirty years, we never have. More importantly, why is this team relevant to this discussion? The composition of this team is in no way analogous to the track record of senior team play. If you want to have this discussion about the senior team, fine. This result is irrelevant to that discussion. The only current overlap to the senior team roster were centerbacks that actually played pretty well in general. It's not even a good approximation of this generation of players, or even really pool depth. And this is my point about Brazil. The team lost 3-0 to France, but played them pretty well. They soundly beat NZ and Guinea. Then they laid a stinker against Morocco. A poor performance against a better team helped along by a couple of pens. Is this team systematically terrible? No. It's a B U23 team who had one out of four bad performance and it fell against a better team, so bam. They weren't terrible all Olympics. They weren't great. But you're taking one game and trying to apply it to 30 years. So what? If you're trying to make the argument that this loss is indicative of a certain level of lack of progress or talent level in the pool as a whole, then the placement of these players within that pool is damn relevant. I'm not picking and choosing whether to learn something about the program. I'm putting things in context. If I'm running a baseball team with a bunch of good young players, and I have a bunch of prospects in high A, but my AAA team sucks in large part because I've promoted all of my good young players, then I don't go around thinking that the AAA team sucking means anything. But this is more than that; I don't go around thinking my mediocre AAA team losing 10-0 to one of the better teams in the league is indicative of a long term problem. Many? Zimmerman and Miles have been key contributors. Busio has 13 caps, but he was hurt. Djordje has 11, but they were mostly in 2019 or with B teams. Who else? Paredes has 3 caps. Tessman 2. Tolkin 4. Almost all of these in January camps or with B teams. Despite us having B team Gold Cups in 2021 and 2023, there are only 4 guys on the team with over 5 caps, and one was hurt for this game. Virtually no one on this team has gotten a long look. I'm sure that helps their performance today. And while we weren't athletically there with France, we weren't run-ruled. Sometimes you have a bad day. I've seen multiple people posit that we can't say we've progressed because teams don't get embarrassed like this. Every team gets embarrassed like this at times. This team is nowhere near the Brazilian senior team, and they get embarrassed. It's accurate to say our pool and program are not where people want it to be. I just think people need to acknowledge that half of that equation is their own expectations. I happen to be frustrated, too, with the senior team right now. But I don't think this loss, especially versus, say, the France loss, means anything all that relevant to the senior team.
They were missing Chadi Riad (CB, 21, Crystal Palace), Ismael Saibari (CM and AM, 23, PSV), El Hilali (RB, 20, Espanyol), El Aynaoui (CM, 23, Lens), and Salah (RW, forward, 22, Rennes).
Morocco From Sami in the Scuffed Discord: pic.twitter.com/RoXhkTzI6N— Bob Morocco (@bob_morocco) August 2, 2024 I'm assuming this is where the "pay to play" discourse is coming from Morning Footy's own @Nicocantor1 with a strong statement after the U.S. bow out of the Men's Soccer Olympics 4-0 to Morocco in the quarterfinals 👀 pic.twitter.com/XkyZl1RPr0— Golazo America (@GolazoAmerica) August 2, 2024