The difference is actually playing. What we have right now is a few guys in top leagues, followed by Euro flops that shouldn't get called any more because there's no point in calling a guy who only plays with the reserves or U-xx or in some fourth division twice a month, followed by a few decent MLS guys (too few), followed by a sea of players who can't even start in MLS. We won't go far with only Puli & Wes, backed by guys like Saief, Robinson, Nagbe, Trapp, etc.
We won't go far with only Puli & Wes, backed by guys like Trapp, Nagbe, plus 10 alternate timeline-players who spent their careers in MLS: EH, Kitchen, Canouse, Parks, etc. TL;DR. Going to Europe didn't stunt their growth but rather showed that they don't have the ability/upside to be a true impact player.
That's true but we don't need to single out McBride as the one "every guy in MLS" should look to as a role model to make that point. There's plenty of other success stories related to MLS players, including a more recent one like Miazga, who's path is surely more relevant right now than career choices made twenty years ago.
Playing on a BL team is far better than most MLS guys can ever hope for. So, I assume you don't think anything of WM, Sargent, Pulisic, Brooks, Chandler, Morales, and Adams? I must've missed the meeting when we all decided that the Bundesliga was crap, my bad.
That's a fallacy. That you play in a top league does NOT mean you are a top player. I know it's hard to realize this, after all the average American soccer fan has been indoctrinated by a media that knows almost nothing about soccer that what matters is the name of the club. That's NOT how it works. Guys like Morales, Wood, Williams, Yedlin, Ream, even Miazga and JAB play in top leagues, but no one who knows soccer would call them top players. They'd fit better in the second division, and most of them will be there next season.
In Japan, children have after school clubs. Basically millions of kids can train two hours a day, five times a week through withthe school yeat with a semi-competent coach from grade 7 onward. So yeah, oodles and oodles of time on the ball.
a new - hopefully competent coach - might be able to revive, revitalize or make better use of some players who didn't shine under a previous coach (JK, Arena, Sarachan) - especially someone like Nabge (whom I thinkmusing stats agaisnt is misleading - he plays deep and has been injured - to me he's never really been tried in the position i want him - bradley's role) - i get what you are saying about the KNOWN players like Bradley - but for the rest i hope there is a blank slate. especially if it is berhalter - look what he did with zardes vs. how he looked in LAG....ggg has shown he can revive players' prospects tremendously....
Agreed... they should look to Dempsey, Howard, McBride, Miazga, Pulisic, etc. Role models are personal and each player should find the one(s) that work for him.
based on this preview video for tonight, it looks like we kicked a$$ vs colombia... Last one at home in 2018. Let's make it count.#USAvPER starts at 8pm ET on @espn 2, @UniMas & UDN » https://t.co/2nvDYmDI8r pic.twitter.com/O55Btsjr83— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) October 16, 2018
Let me come at this from a different angle. What the USNT I am watching right now needs are specialist 10s and 6s. Someone who can precisely feed forwards and wings and maybe create for themselves. And someone who can do that crunching Acosta tackle to clean up plays and win balls, but all night. What I am instead seeing in the central midfield is a bunch of what people generously term "two way players," hard working jacks of all trades masters of none. I see Nagbe, Trapp, Acosta, etc. a whole list of players who are similar. We wonder why they can't string passes and possess? Well, they aren't really specialist playmakers designed to play in small spaces on few touches and hit precise creative balls. We wonder why other teams can possess the ball forever? Well, they aren't athletic destroyers who get stuck in if the ball so much as drifts in their neighborhood. Nagbe is not a highly productive attacker or playmaker. Nagbe is not a committed, crushing legbreaker. What exactly is it that he offers to a midfield? How is he going to get you more goals? How is he going to win balls when Peru is stringing them last night? People keep talking about 1-2 TnT and generally pointing at Bradley and Omar, without getting into other members of that supporting cast, and how they contribute to winning or losing. To me the problem last cycle was beyond Bradley our midfield was a bunch of hustle players not gifted at scoring, possessing, or even breaking things up. Mediocre mush. Mediocre mush got mediocre mush results. Maybe there are places for such players on the team, but I think you will see growth in quality and results -- as opposed to hard fought ties -- when we veer more back in the specialist direction, and develop same, and have players gifted at creating or destroying as opposed to mere effort. To me with players around like Jozy, Sargent, Amon, Weah, Green, Wood, etc. this should be a dangerous team. But it would really help to have a specialist 10 tablesetting for them. And then it would help the defense if it was more Acosta-Smash and less me watching Peru pass the ball for a half hour.
England has changed since I lived there a bit but it used to be the bottom rung of the EPL looked like League teams, and League teams did hoofball. So Chelsea would be knocking it about but if Sunderland was up they were playing 442 kickball. Deep dark secret: McBride bounced around some of those type teams when he was there. It's changed and gone more continental but to me the cellar dwellers tend to be not just lower payroll but more domestic, more sheer effort. Similarly, what it takes to play for Dortmund is different than the worst B.1 team. Dortmund has people coming off the bench like Paco Alcacer who come in and score a brace on good teams, or Sancho, who would start anywhere else. Even Pulisic gets rotated in and out due to their busy schedule. I too am a big believer in fit. I think there are reasons like money, prestige, the possibility of high quality training, that draw to top teams. These do not necessarily align with a formation that suits you, a team that wants to use you, and a fan base that wants to support you. Fulham has been generally friendly to Americans. Swansea wanted Bradley out before he started. Adu was going to try to play in Eastern Europe where some areas have problems with black players.
nagbe has his flaws and limitations - not creative enough and not destructive enough, perhaps. but he recently had a game in MLS where he was like 34 of 34 in passing and had similar passing games with the usmnt - and he isnt just backpassing either he actually moves the ball forward under pressure and had tight control of the ball - i'm seeing A LOT of turnovers and tentative play in midifield.... to me, maybe a ggg could help nagbe turn the corner and become the player there are hints of in his game....but even if he couldnt, nagbe is light years ahead of most of his competition from a possession standpoint - 30% possession against peru is horrible - the midfielders need to be better in possession and nagbe is one of the best in the pool at that so he will always be in consideration imo...unless a bunch more champions league midefielders emerge soon....
I want to like Nagbe so bad. I love his touch on the ball and his ability to keep it in traffic. But you can't waste a midfield spot n a guy who doesn't play defense worth a crap and has little to no offensive production. He's a luxury player and against better teams we are an undermanned team that has zero need for a luxury player.
Landon Donovan is certainly an example of an MLS player that was also an excellent MNT player, but his situation wasn't really comparable to most MLS/MNT players. Donovan had legitimate options that most of today's MLS counterparts don't have. Donovan could have been a very good player in a top 4 league had he stuck it out/really wanted to, but he was just more comfortable here. Nothing wrong with that, but different.
If you don't WANT to go to Europe, you can still play in MLS and be a key part of this team If you CAN'T go to Europe because no one wants you, you cannot.
What's a fallacy is thinking that because we know who plays in MLS, those players are at all relevant on the international stage. You may not be a "top player" in the world by virtue of being on a Bundesliga squad, but you are highly likely to be better than another nameless player on a lower-level squad. MLS USMNT flavors are almost always older, mediocre nobodies. At least relative nobodies like Yedlin, JAB, Wood, Morales, and Miazga, are playing in a worldwide pool. MLS nobodies are small fish in the closed-system puddle that is MLS.
Personally I think it's a cul de sac due to age and mediocrity but in the end I am a do it on the field person. Call him up, see if he does 34-of-34 for us. The key thing to me is this needs to be objective and not hopeful. Bradley is not playing like someone who deserves 120 minutes of time or whatever it was. Nothing about these two games earned it. It didn't sell him for some bench closer role. If you still hand it to him based on "name brand" then why do we play these games at all. So part of my fear with Nagbe is, is that objective, or do we just shove out someone actually playing better. So if he does play, how does he look, how does the next guy look, play the ones who look better, cut the stale pecking order crap. I still think what this team needs -- if the players exist -- is find some playmakers and leg breakers rather than a bunch of tweener "two way" types who can't break up opposing possession or possess for themselves. I think one jack of all trades is plenty. I think what we need is more precision, or more outright crushing, or both.
This embodies the whole problem with the Klinsi snob mentality. I think it is debatable if an off boil foreign based player is better than someone else. I think the various locales in between USL and B.1 are up for debate, eg, whether a striker doing well in no defense Holland is any better than one in MLS. I also think a high performing domestic might be better than a B.1 benchwarmer. But to me it's all fake, play them on the same field and see. That's the whole point to friendlies, no????? What makes me cranky is when veterans or foreign based get some sort of name brand favoritism regardless how they play. And you act like it should be for B.1 but let's be real, this same name brand game gets used to favor Bradley and others regardless how they play just the same. I wish we'd toss all the proxies out the window because you don't need a second order test when you can field them together and see how they play at the first order of relevance. The best 4 defenders right now on the Houston Dynamo are supposed to be Machado of Panama, Leonardo, Senderos the Swiss, Lundkvist the Swede. The best 4 in reality are Wenger, Fuenmayor, Garcia, Beasley. It basically killed the season that they believed their own name brand bs way too long. If one is defensive about their player scouting there is every incentive to start the more expensive players. But the quickest way to ensure your own coaching exit is sometimes to play who the GM meant to work.
Nagbe doesn't play defense. Nagbe will be 32 in 2022. Nagbe was terrible at T&T and home to CR. MLS midfielders generally have time and space they do not get in International matches. Watch Nagbe against the Red Bulls, one of the few teams that press the midfielders everywhere, he was awful. To sum up, Nagbe has zero pressing resistance, can't play defense, was terrible in his last two WCQs, and will be 32 in 2022. Every minute he gets is stealing from a better or potentially better younger player.
Donovan spent quite a bit of time in Europe. His best MNT runs were during his first move to Germany and his loan to Everton. He was paid a lot of endorsement money to stay in MLS. But he knew he needed to play with Everton before the 2010 WC to get to a proper level.
That's what I don't get. Must be because I grew up in a different country, with different parameters and culture. You don't watch the player's jersey. You watch how they play on the field, how they adapt to the system your NT uses, and how involved they are in the NT. If they are a bad fit, or are being propped by better players in a good team, or just don't give a damn about the country, you just don't play them. What you say is that a guy just by virtue of where he plays must be an automatic starter. That to me sounds like lunacy, completely missing the point of the game.
The most absurd part is when it's like a player played both here and abroad and then we're trying to parse out that the only good parts must have been abroad. Landon was only good in the B.2 and with Everton. Except B.2 he was annually shuttling back and forth between Germany and SJ ON LOAN TO HERE and Everton was wedged between LA seasons ON LOAN TO THERE. Should sit next to the definitions of "carveout" or "cherrypick" in the dictionary. Dempsey is another example, he had to show something at NER to get signed but we'll pretend it started at Fulham, and then you get the truly spectacular contortionists who think he should have stayed at Spurs despite the fact he was barely playing. Minute he signs a Seattle contract to get his kids back stateside for school years, oh, he sucks now. Doesn't match up with his stats, actually revived his career, and he goes on to be the dominant NT forward for that period. But the systemic disproofs are Adu and Jozy. Adu basically imploded on the plane out, and Jozy whether abroad worked depends which item off his CV you choose, and on a percentage basis, the odds are you're wrong. Until he got hurt his career basically stabilized the minute he turned in his plane ticket to Canada. It's a silly discussion and the 2 month cherry picks kind of show how it's malarkey. Sufficiently malarkey it may just be trolling. Let me wind up people and make an out there argument. It's vaguely debatable in an abstract sense but once people are on NT tape, beyond pointless. For example, the last two games hopefully shoveled dirt over the idea Novakovich is more immediately useful than Sargent. And that is the sort of argument neck deep in "but he plays for _______" snobbery arguing against what your own eyes tell you. For that matter, going abroad from here is often based on someone's eyes telling them they can play while they are here, so the argument even ignores that.
but USA soccer has an inferiority complex so deeply-ingrained - and for so long ti was reliable that player from x league was truly the best option based on league alone - that old habits die hard....and many/most just look at league when ranking players.....
It's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is what I wrote. Your response is to fabricate opinions that I do not have, and then argue against them. You have argued against a strawman. The original argument was about whether or not Green, a marginal player in the 2. Bundesliga, was a finished player or not. The examples of Nguyen and Feilhaber were brought up, because both improved from 23 onwards after time in Vietnam/England respectively. I made the point that both those players got better, and that Green has a chance to get into a top 4 league, which he does, with the caveat that he may never, and may not fit the team regardless. I'm not seeing anything unreasonable there. Also, I am not, nor have I ever claimed, that by players should start based on club level/club resume. But I do recognize the fact that level of play and individual form are two key variables that determine individual player success in the USMNT. So, it's why I would rather call up someone equivalent to Efrain Alvarez, who is tearing up the USL, over someone like Luca De La Torre, who is trying to make the Fulham bench. On the flip side, I'd also take Sargent, who is struggling to make Werder's bench, over Akinola, who is struggling to get on the field for Toronto, but has 3 apps with them.