I shouldn't be surprised that my views are mischarachterized. Before I clarify, I'd like to address another comment. I find statements "a player with thousands of good professional minutes" as infuriating. This is used by a fan of MLS that uses club situations selectively. They whine and complain when someone suggests a top 4/5 league is a better environment and then turn around and discriminate against player in league they view as below MLS. Why isnt the second division in Portugal good professional minutes? I advocate rewarding players with talent. In an ideal world that would be enough, but it is extremely complicated... more so than the useless league comparisons. Besides just which player from which environment is the best today, but how will they progress over the next few years. The reality is that MLS doesnt have a track record of developing players to the international level and have seen many who excel in the league and are out of their depth in CONCACAF. For all the complaints of a bias against MLS players, I'm not aware of any player that would make a difference for the national team. Even those players got a few weeks every Janauary to prove they belong. I'm all for having the January camp for MLS player, and understand why Klinsmann thought it was a waste of time. I'd also be for the March window camp be done in Europe with a similar approach of looking at as many players as possible. I have no problem playing guys from top euro leagues, second tier/leagues, MLS, USL, College, etc if they can compete. I do struggle understanding some how a player like Harkes gets a January camp but a talented player with a resume like Hyndman doesnt. de la Torre only makes sense of this is focused on Olympic eligible players, and even then, not sure it it isnt a waste. The social engineering seems to be working as the majority of our young players have gone to Europe or talk about it as their goal. I think the incentives shown last year and this are from bad to quite detrimental. You think the right incentives are in play that reward Rubin and punish Hyndman? It seems Hyndman's situation could discourage others from trying top leagues or encourage him to come back to MLS or the favored Liga MX. This sure seems like a problem to me, but one you dont mind. why is speculating on an average MLS player better than a highly regarded player in a second team that has trained and debuted at a much higher level? I'd think Parks and Hyndman are much likelier to be in our team in a couple of years than players like Trapp or Delgado, but our current incentives seem to favor the other guys.
I'd like to see the League of Nations go to MLS players. European-based players would be spared the trips. MLS players would get competitive matches outside of the second Gold Cup.
I would like to see MLS ******** off to oblivion. We already proved relying on those players is a disaster.
I wanted to use Williams, Chandler, Johnson, Miazga, and Cameron. Why, because they would be expected to produce the best performances based on their class and form (which means they were among our best players). If someone can't actually tell what performance is the best or how classy a player is then relying on the level of prestige of the institution who has chosen to pay that player must make some sense. The relationship between best player and best club team increases with the % of minutes, when available, that player plays with that club. Just because a player could be (relatively) great doesn't mean they currently are (relative to their competition).
I was talking specifically about how much time Parks has played as a 6. In the second division I've mostly seen him play higher. That's the specific role blog boi was considering him for, based on speculation out of Portugal that he is being groomed for it. Transfermarkt has Parks with 648 minutes as a DM (which could be a holding 8 instead of a screening 6), all in the 2nd division. Talent does not equal best player. Freddy Adu had a better season for Benfica than Parks, at a younger age, but he's not a long-term national team starter because it takes more than on-field talent. The reason why our best young players go to Europe is that doing so is the best thing for their pocketbooks and careers ($$$, training, and prestige) and teams want them and can sign them. Biased national team selection criteria would have no meaningful effect on this. We've just seen 2 friendlies that featured Sargent, Weah, Parks, Moore, and De la Torre so I don't see any existing structural incentives punishing Hyndman. Maybe it was Bournemouth that kept him out of the squad, they don't seem too keen on having him play in general. Of course, I did not pick the current team or those in qualifying. I am a longtime fan of Hyndman. If he had never played and played as well as he did at Rangers then I would only have his youth games and his minutes at Fulham to look at to see what kind of performance I should expect from him. The whole untimely injury thing also did not help. And did I miss something, was Rubin on our WCQ teams? What did the inventives do for him? I suspect that how Hyndman's experience with Bournemouth is actually going is all the signaling others need to make informed decisions. Did Sargent go to the EPL, no he went to a Bundesliga team that seems invested in giving him a shot. I want our players to perform their best, from what I've seen that takes a combination of the best learning environment and an adequate opportunity to play. If Parks' and Hyndman's expected performances in the next couple of years are better than Trapp's (who plays a different role) or Delgado's then they should play over them. For the record on that score I have Hyndman above Delgado on this measure today and project Parks to overtake Marky in the next year. Hyndman won't be, and Parks isn't currently competing for a pure 6 role.