I don't think everyone in program agree with this. Olympics are about exposure for our youth players who have not made it to big clubs, imo. I think which clubs our youth gets to try out for, get scouted for, and develop on has huge long term benefits. Any chance the youth can get exposure to big clubs- its a big opportunity. I would not say any team "scouts" the Olympics. But I do think the youth get excellent exposure and can then get scouts attentions to come to their clubs for a look.
Christian Ramirez has a GWG in 2 caps. there are big names -- mind you, failures -- who didn't make that fast an impression. Trapp was captain of the 2013 U20 team. he didn't "jump queue." he got his chance then. he got his chance in 2017. he got his chance the past 2 years. that's perseveration about someone who was supposed to be high queue, not jumping queue. the problem there is he has returned to his place in line despite failure. this is like one of this 2019 crop who turns out to suck still getting senior chances in 2025. the very fact he gets treated like a noob at age 26 says something. of how when he came in at their age he made no impression and went away. I don't consider Llanez jumping queue. he was a regular player on the U20 worlds team who was spoken of highly. those are precisely the players i want elevated first. the best U20s. reyna. to me jumping queue is more like aaronson who disappeared from the YNTs after U17 and wasn't even on U20. even though he's 19. that says the set of U20 eyes down there deemed him not one of our 18-23 best prospects of his age. and yet he is well into the top 10 of his cohort to get a MNT look. maybe he makes GB's heart flutter. or maybe we are handing U23 and MNT appearances to someone based on just being available. my basic thing here is you can finesse the rules if you get results. if your experiments leave little impression, please, please just start calling the consensus candidates in order of prestige. you don't have the cachet to be eccentric. klinsi would find people being weird, calling college kids and age groupers. this coach doesn't have that eye. i get january camp has some unusual limits. and my argument acknowledges the reasoning for calling the U23s he wants. i just question, after some thought, whether calling in the more accessible U23s is really best for the senior team. it is better preparation for regional u23 qualifying but i question the value of that booby prize. especially if we spend a year dumping a bunch of energy and stealth-U23 senior callups, on players who shouldn't be next in line. there are very few ways to fritter away a good talent crop. this is one of them. ignore them for the senior team, and then skip them for U23s by focusing solely on availability and qualification as opposed to experience and talent.
What youth? Justin Glad? This is all overblown. I get wanting to watch a good team in the Olympics try and win. But the players we will probably send have thousands of minutes of MLS time that can be scouted. The players people keep dreaming and reporters keep asking the coaches about ("is Pulisic going to be relased for qualifying Gregg?") certainly don't need a showcase. The U20 World Cup is the premier showcase for what you are talking about. The U23 Olympics is not even interesting to UEFA teams or countries. Maybe in 2000 we had college kids nobody has seen, but it is 2020 and Mark McKenzie has thousands of minutes that can be reviewed on Y-Scout anytime the sporting director at Freiburg wants to. In 2024, maybe we send a stacked team since we will not have to qualify for the world cup in 2026.
I would say that anyone that is playing in Olympic qualifying is likely not on a top team and could use additional exposure. I think their millions of potential kids to be scouted and getting exposure at something broadcast like the olympics is great exposure. AFter that exposure- they would be actually scouted.
the point of US soccer is not pro showcase. the point of youth development is not getting players jobs. it's feeding the senior team. this argument parallels euro snobbery in the premise that what helps us is getting players euro jobs who can then come back here. i also think the secondary aspect of my argument gets missed. if we focused our calls on the prestige U23s, they still wouldn't be able to do qualifying. but we would at least be placing our longer term training focus on the higher prestige prospects. many of whom are currently falling between the cracks, few or no NT chances (because veterans and favorites), few or no U23 looks (because practicality). that is dumb. nonetheless, the "available" u23s would then get the camp and games of the U23 tournament. they aren't ignored. they get used. they just don't hog all the sunlight from better players. if you go too practical then the second rate available U23s get all the practice and friendly attention before the U20 studs can get their looks.
These are symbiotic. Youth development occurs mostly at their club teams. The better clubs they can get on - helps their development. I am super excited about the growth of the MLS academies but have no illusion that Atlanta's youth program isn't quite up to Ajax standards yet.
I was just basically agreeing. But my take is that January Camp has no real benefit, was a hindrance in 2019, and will be even more irrelevant going forward than it is now. Whoever they call into January camp is really meaningless. Better U23 players from MLS than O23. Calling Aaronson and Gasper in November was much more, "jumping the queue" and a problem than in January. Holmes and A. Robinson should have had those spots in a competitive senior camp. You are right, Aaronson was cut from the U20 team, not even the last cut, and now has been in two camps with a cap before all the midfielders from that team. That is part MLS calendar and part poor talent identification by Ramos or Gregg. Kayo being in camp twice is bizarre and is probably do to some personal relationship between someone at USSF and some outside entity.
i would make a distinction. I think we should make efforts to "rehabilitate" players with demonstrated NT chops but bad club situations. green, horvath, wood. those are proven contributors and we give them practices and game time and try and help them out. that redounds directly to our benefit, and they are not jumping queue so much as projects to restore to success. but we shouldn't be in the aaronson or kang or cervi business, or the "showcase for random players" business. helping a known quantity back to his feet is one thing. being a shop window for players who wouldn't be this spot in queue is garbage. i mean, bluntly, being out of work like kang where MLS let you go and you didn't even set USL afire, is not the shop window we should have open. like cervi before him. the shop window should be "scored on mexico twice for us and we need him back humming." and when kang makes the team and then plays 0 minutes, someone else(s) had their ox gored. you give "showcase" calls and someone else doesn't get called.
to me any international is useful feedback. it just needs to be properly placed in perspective, and accountable to performance. i am not tossing baby with bath water because it's imperfect. People complained less before when it was kept in perspective and only the best continued on to March. I think the real complaint now is the carryover to march and beyond. that's not january's fault. see below. i would agree the original rationale of getting USMNT in camp before MLS started is gone. but until the team is completely expeditionary ie abroad players, it has its use. you get weeks with players outside an international date. i have even suggested we should have a parallel camp in the summers for euro prospects to balance it out. like they do at age group level. you want more feedback, not less. if the complaint is coaches get fooled, that's a coaching critique. kind of like my dynamo should still sell players even if there is a risk our dumb GM picks worse replacements. the idea is sound. if the execution is poor you change the show runner. you don't quit using that idea.
I agree that guys like Horvath and Wood should be called to help them. Kayo is a different kind of case. He wasn't cut by MLS. He is a victim of the FIFA non-EU youth rule and the fact that MLS will not let you play if you don't sign for 5 years with the club you were born next to. But why Kayo and not others in a similar circumstance or all of them. There was also a U20 camp, not sure why the USMNT camp was where he went. It is all a little murky and was possibly a trade for Llanez being released.
two things are being conflated here. one, U18 youth development, which under FIFA rules will be largely domestic. and which more than anything, IMO,, shapes our chances at international success and cracking pro programs abroad. two, signing as a professional. i think in limited situations you go to an age group pyramid and get actually coached. but in more situations and the older you sign, you are being brought in to play, not to teach. at that moment, you are ready, or not ready. you don't get coddled. you get judged. they don't coach up struggling adult players at age groups. they loan them out or sell them. this distinction is evident in whether you are "dressing," "in the age group system," or simply end up "loaned." i might buy someone at U19 Barca is being developed still. i do not buy someone signed at City and loaned to Fortuna or signed at Spurs and sent to Luton is being developed. at that point you are an adult hired to perform and sink or swim. the pretense of the snob is the two are the same. but Spurs is not coaching CCV up at Luton. Luton is probably barely doing so. they practice. they play games. you might carve some space out to work on your game, but you are there to already be performing, and if loaned, the hint is, not performing well enough. the amount of players i see who elevate their games multiple notches within the adult process is low. that tends to be more an exercise in the peter principle. now if you are saying that the ones lucky enough to be brought in to the tail end of Dortmund or Barca get taught, fine, but that's a smaller set of people. who are already seen as talented or they don't get that chance. at some point we're going to get past present-tense adult resume polishing and move on to trying to make actually better U18s. if we get more elite players it will be that work succeeded, not that everyone signed as high as they could and magic happened.
The point of US Soccer is, quite literally, to promote pro and amateur soccer in the United States. The national teams as a key means to that end. But the mission of US Soccer is much larger than the national team. And playing in the Olympics can serve as a means to that end as well. I'm not overly optimistic that the country goes into a soccer driven euphoria if we get a medal ... but I'd bet that it gets US Soccer literally millions of dollars worth of airtime.
exactly. i think this is a very american thing- theres no other country that considers a u23 tournament a chance to scout youth. overlooked players, late bloomers maybe- but "youth" is 13-17. obviously 20, 21 is still young but we just dont see age/potential the way the rest of the world does. i blame college soccer (<60% joking)
That clip is the essence of what is wrong with "the system." We are sacrificing sooooo much, just to create that. We're sacrificing any other way to generate an attack. We're exposing ourselves to counters all match long - when we "unbalance the defense" we're unbalancing our formation and leaving the back exposed. We're playing super slowly/deliberately. We're making the keeper play on the ground out of the back every.single.f#cking.time. We're playing with a DM that doesn't defend, all so that once? twice? per match, the DM can play a loonnnnng switching ball to an open winger, that gives the opponent plenty of time to recover. That's it? We're contorting our entire approach to generate the occasional long switch? With all that contorting, you'd think the result would be occasionally putting guys through on goal or something. But, no. We're contorting our whole game to get a wing player one v. one on the wing once or twice a game. I mean, FFS. I'm pretty d@mn sure that if we too a more orthodox approach to the tactics we could get a wing player 1v1 more than once or twice per game WITHOUT sacrificing everything else to get it. Hell, I bet if we played a good ol' defend/counter we could get our wingers 1v1 SEVERAL times per game. Jay's Brother reminds me of the dads you see coaching AYSO who've never played the game. They'll come up with some "great idea" because they're "smarter than everyone else" and commit the whole structure of the team to executing that one thing, not realizing what they're losing by doing so.
Slow long switching ball. Any idiot actually can send slow long switching ball. Young Bradley wasn't Pirlo or Beckham, but his balls had speed, and now, exactly like Steffen or Johnson pretend that they know how to pass, whoever gets that ball at midfield pretend than they know how to switch, what is especially cute when it's a switch to the left where LB pretends that he can deal with that pass.
Well said. You can boil the problem with the whole "system" down to this: We're playing super slowly/deliberately.
Except for the Canada home game, the team under Gregg has played the safest pass. Either that is what he wants or the players have picked up that the way to stay in the lineup is to complete any pass. If it is just to complete a pass successfully, why not take a few touches to make sure the pass is on, stare at the recipient to make sure they are ready for it, and hit it where no defender is, usually sideways or backwards. The prior sentence sums up Zimmerman and Aaronson in this game and Yueill for a good portion. Even on the long switches, it is safer to float the ball. The recipient is usually wide open, it is not attempted if it is not, and a floated ball has a better margin of error than a driven ball. If you miss with a driven ball, the recipient probably can't adjust to get it. Players that have looked good to fans are the ones that are more aggressive and willing to hit decisive balls quickly. Lletget in some of his better moments, Holmes in his few moments. But it took a long time for Lletget to get in the lineup and Holmes has not been in at all. In this game, Lletget mostly went for safe also. I can't think of a decisive forward pass from him in the entire game.
the flaw in the logic is that -- as some snobs used to argue -- a blinkered pursuit of success at each level might encourage cynical play rather than development. there are some youth clubs that explicitly present themselves as focused on teaching you to "play right" as opposed to just chasing wins. or so goes the argument at least. i mean, isn't this the whole stated reason for "system" now? now, i would say this over-states the "burden of organized play," which i think is its own value. but people acting like "we need to evolve how we play" should be following their biases on through. if the NT is emphasizing system over results why is Olympic qualification a big deal. pursuit of wins might also distort selection at age group levels. a kid who will grow tall, or has speed already but needs technique (or vice versa), but isn't well rounded, might be a worthy project. a worthy project might not help you win as soon. but they might have huge upside down the road. are we going with the more polished ones to win or are we betting on upside on ones with special qualities. surely we all know the tiny kid who gets his growth spurt right around college and becomes a different player. the goal of development is not the fastest out of the blocks per se, but may include playing a long game and trying to make soccer players of exceptional athletes and players with good hands. and then in this specific situation, you have release rules that make it easier to secure domestic players and age groupers than normal euro players further in their career. but the normal euro players not able to be released might be the most interesting prospects of all. they are good enough to be out of age group ball and out of country. but that very prestige hinders access unless they are fast tracked to the senior team itself. a further hole in your theory would be that "developing both" might be truest to your sense of mission. you're kind of acting like we are tasked with grassroots but then defining out the foreign based player. personally i think a broader process where the good players get U23 international dates and then the accessible ones qualify. now, that won't help you win, but we're back to what is the priority, winning? identification of the best? training of the best? broad training? those are all national values. but they are competing priorities with trade offs. and i'm saying a focus on accessibility at U23 might be a goofy detour.
our big rivalry game would be like 3-5k. one thing being neglected in this discussion is it's a camp cupcake game and we are in a down ebb on quality, enthusiasm, and executive effort. the response to last fall's struggles was Trust in GB. passion needs to generate from someplace, hiring/firing, results, promoting new and exciting players, etc. if you think about it like a pro club, we missed the playoffs and are still moneyballing the roster under an iffy coach. where are you thinking the passion will come from?