Pre-match: USA vs Bolivia May 28th, 2018

Do we know when the roster will be released?

This Sunday or next weekend?

 

Cuando Sarachan agache el dedo.

 

^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_idioms_of_improbability

"Spanish – cuando las vacas vuelen ("when cows fly") or cuando los chanchos vuelen ("when pigs fly"). .... Other variations slightly fallen into disuse include cuando las ranas crien pelo ("when frogs grow hair") and cuando San Juan agache el dedo ("when Saint John bends his finger"). The latter is a reference to the common depiction of St. John with one or two extended fingers.

 

So Pulisic is probaby not showing up for these friendlies?

EDIT: Upon further reading, I don't think Pulisic is going to be there.

Anyway, as long as guys like Parks, Mckennie, and Adams are in it should be fine. No Bradley. I hope to see more of Sargent and the big Serb as well.

Heck, call Carleton in and let him play the Pulisic role for 20 minutes.

 

comoesa,,, Maybe I am wrong but I bet CP plays a half in Penn.

 

I'm very behind that.

This needs to be another roster chock full of young talent, both domestic and international. Though, I think it'll be more international than domestic, because MLS still has games going on, right?

 

It seems like we are now normalizing calling up players who don't play for their club teams. Some of these players are not even just guys who are unluckily out of the side at the moment. Some of these players don't play, at all, for their club team. We've started calling in players with 0 first team games, 2-3 first team games.

Is this a good precedent? I don't think it is. Weah has not earned a NT call up, neither has Sargent, neither has Carleton, neither has Durkin, etc. Adams has. Amon probably still hasn't, although thats closer. Players need to earn NT call ups. We can feel like they are NT-level players, but how can we be sure they'll ever earn their spot? Potential is just that until they show it. Let them show it, and then they can be called in. It makes a mockery of earning NT call ups to be calling in these players.

 

this is a pet peeve of yours. What I would say in opposition is that we will not have a better time than now to go thru the pool with a fine tooth comb.

Let's take Durkin as an example. I don't have him on my roster but let's suppose he is called up. I think Sarachan could say that he is playing with DC which isn't a very good team and he wants to see him play with some good players and tell him it is a reward for having showed so well with U17's and because we consider him a top player at dmid position which is a position that is wide open.

AS far as Sargent is concerned, we could say that Jozy is our most complete 9 but he is rehabbing from foot surgery and in his absence we feel that Sargent, who did Yeoman's duty showing up not only for u17's but U20's as well in the same year should get a feeling for nat team duty, especially in view of the award he received playing the youth tourney for Bremen recently where I believe he received golden boot or something like that.

I don't think calling in players who have performed for youth teams in an exemplary manner is making mockery of USMNT call ups just because they happened to have a birthday that was 3 weeks too late to play in BL, e.g.(Sargent).

don't know if you ever saw the movie Caine Mutiny but you should. Enjoy your strawberries.

 

We didn't make the World Cup. Who cares about some sort of false sense of standards that don't amount to anything?

 

The teams that did qualify don't call up what amounts to youth footballers or very fringe first team youngsters.

Who does it help to call in these players? It doesn't help them. Look at what happened with Green.

 

Disagree, we don’t have many good players, and we need to do everything possible to find players that could be good in the future. Even if that means calling in youth/fringe first team players.

 

And how many of those players were not first team regulars at their clubs?

 

The dilemma is that things are not equal. If all potential players were playing for clubs at the same general level then this would be true. Certainly, this would be the case for England or Germany. Starts for Dortmund are different than starts for San Jose. That is why Pulisic was in a WCQ with just one professional start. There was hundreds of players with hundreds of starts professionally that were not on the field that day; was it the wrong move to sub in Pulisic that day?

Another wrinkle for the USA is that we are not competitive with the best teams in the world. We will rarely get a dual-national German-American, French-American or English-American if they can make the roster for Germany or England. The one chance we would have to get that player would be to get them early.

So, while you are correct in theory, it breaks down on a case by case basis. It is what makes putting the USMNT together a more complicated job that most.

 

Why are we comparing the USNT to teams that qualified? We didn't. We stink.

Who do you want to call in? Our old Lions, who failed to qualify? The group that was just behind the Lions, who are middling/average MLS players that won't help much in 5 years? Who else is left? Give us your roster, man!

 

I'm comparing us to teams who play at a level we need to be playing at. We need to be playing at the World Cup. Not playing there is a disgrace to the program, and to the fans. The successful teams don't call in players who aren't established within their club teams. But clearly USSF doesn't agree with me. Lets say you are going to call in prospects, how do you go about doing so? Call in the USSF favorites? Call in the ones who need further promotion? Call in strictly the best ones? Call them in based on positional need? How does this work? It seems a strange process, regardless of which way. Thats before there's a discussion about whether they actually benefit from these call-ins. I don't think they do. See: Julian Green.

Who else is left? I would say that we have 23 competent first team footballers between the ages of 19-25 or so. If we have so little talent to call in, I'm sure then that there won't be any complaining from the fans about any players older than 20 or 21 not getting called up for this roster.

 

You didn't name your squad, or anybody. What 19-25 year old would you rather have than Sargent, who multiple BL teams went hard after and by all accounts is performing well with them, who also performed well in two youth int'l competitions?

 

I don't see the point naming "my squad" with 18 days before the game. I'll do so before the squad is announced. I think there's still spots to be earned.

 

McKennie is fresh off his debut season. Same with Adams. Thats more what you are looking at for those German players.

 

I think you're big issue here follows along these lines -

1. We missed the WC using our experienced Lions.
2. We were told (maybe you agreed, I have no idea), that these Lions were the best we had, and nobody was good enough to unseat them.
3. These Lions stunk.
4. These Lions stunk, but there were no young-ish, better players starting for club teams that could unseat them the last year or two during qualifying.
5. You want to bring more established young players onto the team.
6. If they were good, they would have been played during qualifying and we wouldn't have missed the WC.
7. Thus, we don't want the Lions, and thus, obviously, don't want these other players who were deemed "not good enough" by coaches and fans.
8. That leaves us with youth who were not ready during qualifying.

Now maybe you think numerous players should have been starting in place of Jozy, MB, Guzan/Howard, Gonzalez over the last 24 months. And if that's the case, then you have a fair point and should want to see more players.

I think most of the rest probably fall into the "1-8" line of thinking from above.

 

Exactly. I know it's not what you mean, but it's certainly what you should mean.

We have no competitive games upcoming. No tournament to prepare for. So call up the most-talented group of youngsters possible. See if they're ready. If they are, maybe you call them up again later, even if Barco or some MLS lifer is taking their minutes.

If they're under 23 and talented, consider a callup for at least a camp appearance. There's a dead zone of players in our pool. Most of the crop of 24-28-year-olds are either NT mainstays (you don't need to call up Yedlin now, for example) or not good enough.