Try to keep things civil, if you possibly can. If you want to argue over language, please take it to biglinguistics.com. Mathis' goal got us into the second round. He scored a crucial goal. My argument, though, does not rely on that in the least, but on the fact (heehee) that he played far better than anyone else. Such a player is most valuable. That in retrospect the goal against Korea was so crucial is just icing on the cake. Korea was a semi-finalist. They were far more difficult than Portugal and Mexico. Just ask Italy and Spain. As for your, who would replace so and so to determine the MVP. It's a legitimate argument, but I reject that line of thinking. I will not judge a player based on the quality of his replacment. By that measure, perhaps Berhalter is better than Ronaldo. A player that gets a goal or assist nearly every 90 or so minutes is extremely valuable, far, far, far more than a player that does so typically every 180 minutes. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between Mathis and McBride. The difference has been going on for years and it happened during this World Cup as well. Mathis improved our chances for success far more than McBride.
The definition of MVP is an issue of constant argument. If my view differes from everyone else here, it is only because many soccer fans rarely think about these things seriously. The best player does the most to improve his team's chance of winning. This subject comes up, for example, every MVP vote in baseball. Do you give it to the guy that actually made the difference (based on tons of factors outside his control) or to the player who played the best, giving his team the best chance at success. I choose the latter. Given how critical Mathis' goal against Korea was, a case for Mathis can be made either way. I can't argue with this.
Re: Mcbride O'Brien should be properly credited with the game winning goal against Portugal. I find the entire concept silly, but I do feel that if we're going to rip off baseball terms (GWRBI), we might want to apply them properly. I've seen hockey stats misuse this so I would hope that soccer fans would not make the same mistake. A game winning score is when you put the team ahead and never relinquish the lead. Again, I could care less about this stuff, but OTOH, I'm not about to add more importance to scoring a goal when up by two because Jeff Agoos forgets which team he plays for. Giving McBride his fair due. If you told me in advance that a certain striker would get two goals/assists in 372 minutes, I would say that is average. That is ok. Not bad. Not great, nothing to write home about, but a decent enough performance. Just don't let it be Mathis. I fail to see why my opinion should change now. Let me put it another way. If Mathis did exactly what McBride did, I can promise you I would be greatly disappointed in him.
I agree with you about Keller, andf he would have stopped the Germany goal. Mexico really effed up to not taker advantage of Freidels boneheaded plays against them, and at least one of the goals against poland was Freidel's fault Who could have played Sanneh's role? well, the way Frankie played, he might have been able to. Then who would have played on the left? three man backline would have done it. The fact is NO ONE could have taken Donovan, JOB's or CR's (though we did win without him, and could've used more of him against SoKo) so who among them was MVP?
Re: Re: Mcbride will you just please admit that if someone told you that said strkier was McBride, you would have called the nuthouse to come and pick up said person? Stop acting like it was just normal for McBride. Plus it is not an 'average' performance to score two HUE goals in the World Cup lqst: I give McBride an assist for JOB's goal
Re: Re: Who was U.S. MVP in the World Cup You're putting so much weight on one goal. In fact, you're putting so much weight on THE FINISH of one goal. Was JOB's adept vision and beautiful pass not just as much a part of that goal? I thought the pass was actually better than the admittedly fine finish. Without the pass, Mathis would have been making another one of his aimless runs into the box. Plus JOB buried the first goal. Plus he made the beautiful pass out of the back to spring the second goal against Mexico. Plus he made a boatload of defensive stops in every game. Hey it's not disappearing for the whole game and then showing up for one play. But I guess it's acceptable. Why do you discredit the effort of every other player on that sultry, earsplitting pitch in Daegu, single out the guy that made half of one play and say he alone is responsible for the draw? If you're going to say the best player on the roster is automatically the MVP of a tournament, then what's the point of having the discussion? The same player would be the MVP for the next X number of years, even when he didn't play well. You've just eliminated 95 percent of the sports conversations on the planet. And if you're going to play with definitions, then this is muy new definition for MVP -- the player who partied his way out of potential stardom and a lucrative European contract with a major German power. Oh wait, you're right. The MVP was Mathis.
I had a long piece arguing about the stats, but I'm going to pass on the bait as much as it pains me. I voted for JOB because I thought he was the steadiest, most consistant player and he created a lot of dangerous opportunities while limiting the opportunities of the opponents. I understand the votes for Friedel, Sanneh, Pope, and LD.
Re: Re: Re: Who was U.S. MVP in the World Cup That's pretty funny. After all the discussion, I could have almost voted for JOB. I think he just doesn't stand out as much because he's not a real imposing presence. He's just one of those guys who's always there, doing the little things. That makes me wonder what he'd be like in MLS???
I'll respond one last time to this waste of time and then respond to your Korean fantasy with a different reply. 1) Fact - Knowledge or information based on real occurrences: an account based on fact; a blur of fact and fancy. 2) Conjecture - Inference or judgment based on inconclusive or incomplete evidence; guesswork. Okay, now that we know what words mean let's figure out how to use them. You say that you are "100% correct" that Mathis is our MVP and that it is a "fact". I will help put this into real English for you. I am 100% of the opinion that Mathis played the most valuable role for us in Korea. It is my inference and judgement based upon the information that I will consider while throwing out all the information that disagrees with me. And my response to that is: Good. If your MVP is someone not even good enough to be a regular starter on the squad and who never touched the field in a game we won but is someone whose playing time equates to losses and ties for us then yes you are right. If your MVP is the person who is so out of flow with our team that our offense can only manage 1 goal per game with him there (Korea, Poland) while we can play better opposition and score 2.5 goals per game without this MVP (Portugal, Mexico) then yes you are right. If your MVP is the player who made 1 significant play during the entire cup while we have others that make many more contributions like JOB (playing a part in goals in every game we did not lose), Friedel (shutting out El Tri, holding Korea to 1 goal despite a PK), etc. Then fine. I too live in a make believe world where DeRosario was the MVP of MLS last year because he scored the most important goal. Except. The World Cup MVP didn't score the most important goal of ours did he? Of course not. If your MVP is the most valuable player because he wasn't versatile or in shape enough to win a starting place and thus allowed us to run more productive teams out there that carry us to the quarterfinals then perhaps you are right. Or maybe we could just say BA was our MVP. By your conjectures I see no way we can't argue that Berhalter is actually our MVP. After all our team played best with him in there. We took the game to Germany and thumped Mexico 2-0. Clearly Berhalter is the best. Oh btw you are wrong. A player that gets a goal or assist every 90 minutes is not more valuable than a player that gets a goal every 180 minutes always. Why? How can you gauge the performance of Eddie Pope, Tony Sanneh, or Pablo Mastroeni on goals/assists alone. You can't. So there is more to soccer than scoring? Yep. Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe this is why many other players are better MVP candidates than Mathis. Why else? We played roughly 450 minutes at the World Cup. So Mathis contributed 1 goal and 1 assist in 450 minutes. That is his entire contributoin. This is not the "Who is the MVP when they are on the field" Award. It is who was the MVP of our 450 minutes. Sorry, McBride had a bigger impact over our run by far. So did another 6-8 guys than Mathis. Now that is a fact. Why is it a fact? Because a person who plays in all 3 of our important games (Portugal, Korea, Mexico) is going to have contributed more value to our success than someone who played in one. He contributed, yes. He's a good player, yes. He was only there in 1 of our 3 important matches and he only added 1 goal and 1 assist over the course of 5 games. Dwayne DeRosario anybody?
Korea Korea was a joke. Korea only tied the US because of the completely partial refs. (see freekick that led to their goal, PK) Korea only beat Portugal by accident. 9 man Portugal was the better team and was very unlucky not to have at least drawn. Korea beat Italy. Yeah if you can consider a phantom red and having what would have been the game winning goal not count because the forward was erroneously called offside a win. Korea beat Spain. Not really. Everybody in the world knows that Spain won that game. The reffing was so terrible that they called a ball that was a good 18 inches in bounds out of bounds to negate Spain's golden goal. Korea played Germany good. No, actually Germany had tougher games against the US and Paraguay. Korea made the semifinals on the refs and homecrowd alone. They were not even as good as Japan. If you want to argue that Korea/Poland are a tougher set of teams than Portugal/Mexico feel free. Its true that Portugal got shocked early vs the US and had 2 players cost them the game against Korea by getting stupid cards. But they were still better with 9 men than Korea was with 11, but in this strange game dominance doesn't always turn into results. The Portugal game was huge for us. First, they may have been the toughest team we faced. Second, I'm not sure we thought we could win. To me it almost eliminates Reyna, Mathis, and anybody else who didn't play in it from being MVP because to me it was our most important game out of the 5. It set the tone for an upbeat world cup and they truly may have been the most difficult opposition. But that isn't a fact. Its an opinion.
Sanneh save our a$$es more than once and his final performance against Germany was unbelievable. It was great to see him move up to forward and nearly tie the game.
Re: Korea Of all the different possible thread subjects that you came up with: Freidel shut out El Tri - some could argue that it was Mexico who saved Freidel with all his gaffes Italy's phantom red - I remember, 10 minutes before that SECOND yellow (not red), seeing Totti grab his face when a Korean slapped his(Totti's) chest in a struggle for the ball - simulation well deserving of a red, but not called. Mathis playing himself out of shape - though he did play almost two whole 90 minute games in an oven Portugal unlucky to not tie - As we know, every team can thank luck in one or another for advancing or not advancing. Wasn't Portugal's unluckiness our good luck? The only one I really want to comment on is this one: As much of a critic of Bruce Arena I have been about SOME of his strategies, if there is one thing that I am certain of it is that our players went into every game KNOWING they not only could win, but would win.
I like Frankie and was very impressed with his performance, but I don't think he was near the level of Sanneh during the WC. You're suggesting that if we dropped Sanneh, Frankie may have significantly stepped up his game beyond Sanneh's level to compensate for the reduction from 4 to 3 backs (remembering that Agoos would've been one of the other 2 backs)? Thinking this through confirms my vote for Sanneh as MVP.
I think Brian McBride is the MVP. I don't wanna repeat what anyone else said so I will leave it at that.
I don't have the time to address all the errors in this Bigsoccer version of War and Peace so I will comment on only the most blatant ones. "If your MVP is the person who is so out of flow with our team that our offense can only manage 1 goal per game with him there " One player is unlikely to have so much of an effect on the other 95%* of the players. Korea did not allow many goals. Our scoring one was actually impressive. We had a goal disallowed against Poland, rather unjustly I would argue. You are making a classic, unforgiveable causation/correlation error here. " So Mathis contributed 1 goal and 1 assist in 450 minutes. He was only there in 1 of our 3 important matches and he only added 1 goal and 1 assist over the course of 5 games. Dwayne DeRosario anybody?" This is the chief problem with your analysis and others, especially as regards McBride. When Mathis was not playing, we did not go with 10 men. Mathis cost us 204 man-minutes and gave us 2 G&As. Playing an entire game and not producing is very harmful to the team. Mathis didn't cause the level of harm that others such as McBride caused. You can not simply add up the number of highlight moments to make an MVP determination. "If your MVP is someone not even good enough to be a regular starter on the squad" And Agoos was. 'Nuff said! Oh, by the way, it is a fact that Mathis is our MVP. *21/22, the other team also affects how many goals are scored.
Re: Korea Given how unreliable and faulty your opinions are, it is comforting that this distinction is high on your thoughts. Aside from Germany, Korea was by far our most difficult opponent. The fact (heehee) that they needed a massive home field advantage, suspicious calls from refs, and so forth is irrelevant to the purpose of this discussion. The issue isn't which team would normally be most difficult to beat in a hypothetical world cup at a hypothetical location. The issue is which team would be the toughest under the circumstances.
The thing is, Flan, Mathis didn't allow 7 goals. But, truth be told, had we lost to Korea 15-1, I would still claim Mathis as our MVP based on his completely superior play. Mathis produces on a World Class level, like a Beckham or Rivaldo. He increases our chances of winning so dramatically that no one else comes close and did so in this World Cup. Yet we must always remember that there are 21 others on the field. That little fact (yes, Eliezar, a real fact) is what confuses people so greatly. No matter how good a player is, the results will be determined primarily by factors out of his control. Mathis gave us World Class play during this World Cup, as he usually does.
Re: Re: Re: Mcbride I can't admit any such thing because it's not true. His performance was not surprising at all. It is typical McBride. McBride has played 3483 minutes with the Nats and averages .583 goals and assists per 90 minutes (and .439 goals per 90 minutes). I fail to see what is suprising that he managed .483 during this World Cup. Do you like the way he played against Korea, Poland, and Germany? Or should that not count? The only thing that I find surprising is that people's opinions about McBride can swing from one extreme to the other all the while he's a solid average footballer. In soccer, most goals are "huge" Usually the goal that puts a team up by three isn't considered so huge. He is deeply in Agoos' debt, it appears. Scoring two goals wasn't what made his performance average, but not scoring or assisting all the other minutes which made his overall performance average. Look, I like McBride. I'm happy for him. You and others are wrong to think I am criticizing him. I know we have better strikers, but it's not like he is a bad player. Maybe if I felt he was a horrible player I would have been surprised with his mediocre World Cup performance. He had some good games and had some crap games. Overall average. I think several guys would have done better, but so what?
Portugal - really amazing win ---> big contributors: McBride, JOB, Donovan, Sanneh, DMB, Hejduk ---> MOM: McBride Korea - amazing draw ---> big contributors: Mathis, JOB, Friedel, DMB, Donovan, Agoos, Hejduk, Sanneh ---> MOM: Friedel Poland - disappointing loss ---> big contributors: Donovan, JOB, Hejduk, DMB, Reyna ---> MOM: Donovan Mexico - really amazing win ---> big contributors: McBride, JOB, Reyna, Donovan, Mastroeni, Jones, Sanneh ---> MOM: Donovan, Reyna Germany - disappointing loss ---> big contributors: Sanneh, Donovan, Reyna ---> MOM: Reyna, Donovan Clearly, Donovan was the most consistent and important contributor in this past World Cup. If Reyna had not been hurt the 1st two matches, you could probably make a similar claim for him. Sanneh, JOB, McBride, DMB, and Hejduk also had a great World Cup.
Donovan missed many easy goals in this World Cup and got ZERO assists, which is horrible for a M/F that played 434 minutes. I'd be curious to know when the last time, say, Giggs, Beckham, or Mathis went 434 minutes without an assist. It rarely happens. Of course, Donovan was screwed by having a goal disallowed and arguably deserves credit for the goal against Portugal. I'm a big believer in Donovan, though I expect him to do much better in WC06.
if you look at the WC as a whole, yes McBride's numbers were normal. But if you are going to tell me that you thought beforehand he would play like he did against Portugal, then score a goal in the first 10 minutes against Mexico in a knockout game (I know he tired later on, not his fault, His Royal Highness Da Bruce's doing), I'm going to say, with all due respect, you're full of crap.
Originally posted by BenReilly Donovan missed many easy goals in this World Cup Debatable. He did not score on every attempt, but I wouldn't say most of his chances were easy. and got ZERO assists, which is horrible for a M/F that played 434 minutes. He created a lot of chances, though they may have not led to direct assists. Of course, Donovan was screwed by having a goal disallowed and arguably deserves credit for the goal against Portugal. Did you forget his other goal against Poland and his goal against Mexico that sealed it? What about that he was a constant threat?
Mathis was a non-factor in most of the games. He was key in the Korea match. His clinical finish was clearly the best US strike at the World Cup. But due to fitness and lack of playing time he was largely invisible. I don't think he had an outstanding World Cup. To call him MVP is puzzling to me.