He played in CL as a 20 and 21 year old for one of the worst teams in the CL in a decade in '22-'23 Rangers, he didn't produce for them, nor did anyone else. They scored 2 goals in the group stage and finished with a GD of -20. Malik played less than half of the available minutes as a 20 year old with a brand new team (even after he was one of two key players getting them into CL in the first place (goal and an assist in critical, low scoring qualifiers that sent them through including THE ASSIST). IN '23-'24 he finally started getting on the board a bit, but again, I'm not gonna argue he was some mega weapons when he scored zero goals in 8 matches, and as Gogo mentioned, his assists were PK related assists in 2 of 3 instances, but he did earn a high market share of the production, PSV was not a great team in CL in '23-'24, unlike a decade ago, they barely scraped through with the knockouts, and ended their campaign with 8 goals scored in 8 matches, not exactly an offensive juggernaut, making Malik's 3 assists, nearly half of the assists on the goals they scored, more than nothing, but not something worth shouting about either. I'm more than willing to concede to the argument that the work he's done has largely been in middling leagues with middling teams and worse, so there's that, but as Clint has mentioned, we'd be screaming bloody murder about those 30 goal contributions in just about any other context. The problem with Malik has been equal parts: 1. Who has he done this against? 2. A good chunk of the board being underwhelmed by his blah and worse caps/minutes in the shirt. He just hasn't done anything with the national team yet, so either you're: 1. Betting against him, as a ton of the board did after his first caps with the team in the spring/summer of '22. And sticking to your guns. 2. Wondering what the hell is going on w/him and/or why we can't get anything out of him.
I think I sort of go in circles with the Malik thing because the conversation naturally heads to extremes. I think he should be called in. I think he has a ton of potential. I absolutely think he can and will play better for the US than he has. I just think that some folks are overweighting goal production for a team that scored 108 goals last year. AC Milan had 76 in league play last year, for example, and are a very good team. If Malik's 9g/10a last year from league were something closer to 6g/7a ... that feels more like a normalized performance. My point is, I don't think he sucks at all. When he struggled early with the US, I was one of the few people who still was a proponent when others were taking a three minute sequences and projecting. But now we're kind of seeing the other side. There's very clear reasons why Malik isn't scoring like he does with PSV with the US and a lot of it is coach agnostic. I do think he fits a lot of what Poch wants to do offensively better than where he was often playing with Berhalter, but I also think people are in for a surprise if they expect him to be a world beater without some clear improvement. What does Malik do well? Well, he's good at close in play. He has a generally soft touch from close in, both receiving and passing. He's better centrally -- and here's where he really has something in common with Roldan -- he's far, far, far better facing forward than back. He does poorly with pressure on his back, and his preference is to immediately pass it off rather than turn. This always kind of surprises me, because he has the size and skill to be really good at turns, but he tends to avoid them most times. He's been trained to play as a team, and so he doesn't hold the ball. That's a lot of it, I think. I actually like that -- we have too many guys who dribble too much -- but when I say Malik is a complementary player, that's what I mean. He's not a 10 in the sense that he's going to dictate the game. He will create because he had good passing vision and he's a very strong one touch passer. He will also crash forward if you leave space in front of him (but rarely recognize that if he's turned the wrong way). But he's not a one on one creator. He's a creator in a two or three man game. Which is great, but let's just realize that you need other guys to play well that way as well. At PSV, that's the whole freaking team. That's simply how the Dutch play. For the US, we have those guys ... but only when everyone is really healthy and there. When he played with a frontline of him, Balogun and Paredes, it was terrible, and in large part because those three just simply do not have enough consistency to string together plays. He'll look better with Reyna and Pulisic (and maybe Sargent), and with more reps, because (a) everyone will and (b) that's what you need to play his kind of game. A lot of skill players. His size, speed and strength means he should actually be really good at off ball movement and getting in on goal. And Berhalter tried to get him a lot of those off ball runs to goal. They mostly fizzled because of execution, but I think also because Malik's big offensive weakness is off ball movement. He floats and he tends to sit back. Watch his PSV highlights and see how often this actually works in his favor because the attackers send the ball back to the top of the box where he's receiving it facing goal, unpressured. He does well with it ... but that's not a situation we get a ton. Maybe more with Poch, but that's where PSV being so good creates so many of those. It also creates a situation where he can do that because no one is worried about the counter. If Malik would develop a stronger defensive effort and a better off ball game, I think he'd become a monster. Maybe Poch can help. But he doesn't have to to get big numbers at PSV. And if he goes to a club or national team that doesn't play that sort of Dutch/team ball way, or requires from one on one play or more running, etc., I think you see some of that production drop. And I still will think he's a good player. It's just not as simple as "translating his from from club." Because you can't bring the context from club to the national team. We don't usually play teams as disadvantaged talent wise as Sittard, we don't spend enough time together to play as precision a passing game as PSV does, and we have exactly one Dutch player on our team and maybe 3-4 in total who could pass for one in skill and style. So, yeah. You can place him in the middle, but a 1-2 with Luke deJong against Sittard after a year of practicing together plays differently than the same with Haji Wright after four hours of practice against even a Panama, who the officials allow to knock you on your ass. Poch will help him, both because he's a great coach and because his play style is more similar to what Malik does well. But there's other stuff that a coach can't do.
This. We see this time and time again. "Man United-Real madrid sells out the Big House!!! The US is ready for Pro-Rel!!!" When Elche-Bournemouth sells out ANY venue in the US we can talk..... Man United-Chelsea pulls record ratings on NBC!!!! Cool.... how are the ratings for Wolves-Ipswich??? Americans have an appetite for the VERY top Euro Club teams. There's also a HUGE fanbase for the TOP LigaMX clubs too. MLS is in a good/weird place. On the one hand, it's growing at an increasingly rapid pace year over year in many aspects (quality of play, interest, attendance, player salaries, etc.). On the other hand it's still struggling for National relevance. How does the league take the local popularity of it's teams and translate that out to greater interest across the entire US and Canada? That's the most difficult part of the puzzle to solve. IMO, they need to ride the Apple TV gravy train and build that out. I just don't see any leagues outside of the NBA and NFL getting huge TV broadcast deals. Think about it. If you don't live in a MLB and/or NHL market, you're not seeing a whole lot of content nationally. MLB barely has a national TV presence at this point. In the US, it's the NFL year round now. The NBA has seriously thought about shifting their season start to December and Christmas week in the past few years because of the NFL's dominance. Just as an aside.... look at some of the scores across Europe just from last week. Bayern won their UCL and BL games by a combined score of 14-2! Nice beat St Etienne 8-0 in Ligue 1!!! Barcelona has won their past 3 La Liga games by a combined score of 16-2!! I honestly don't think that the majority of American Soccer fans look beyond the top teams. When you take a step back and look across European Club Football..... outside the of the EPL, it's not all that competitive.
Isn't everyone actually saying this about Malik right here? Maybe someone I'm not seeing thinks he sucks, but this argument is merely a question of degree. Doesn't he? He has like 50 goal contributions in 75 matches for the US or something. Didn't he just do this? No, he doesn't do it every game, and guess what, he won't for Milan, either. If you think Pulisic has played poorly for the USMNT recently, and less than his club play, it's probably because you watch club play highlights and expect him to do that every single second of national team play. Puli had a bad run midway through the last cycle where he was playing hero ball, which coincided with some struggles at club. But he was brilliant in Qatar and has been super productive for us over the last couple of years ... I think maybe you have expectations way out of whack. He has 9g and 4a since Qatar. This isn't a video game.
Teams he scored produced against in Eredivisie and league of standing at time of match: Sparta: 8th (Goal) Twente: 4th (Assist) AZ: 4th (2 Assists) Feyenoord: 2nd (Goal) Twente: 4th (Assist) AZ: 2nd (2 Assists) Heerenveen: 10th (2 Goals and an Assist) So: 55% of his production was against top 10 sides, 40% of his goal contributions were against top 8 in the standings teams, and 35% against top 4 sides. In terms of bottom of the barrel crap sides, much like with Rangers, some days he feasted on crap teams, some days he didn't (at Rangers he was as successful against middle of the road teams as he was against the absolute dregs of that league: he was consistently inconsistent), 25% of his goals and assists (5) came against teams 16th or worse in league (Waalijk, Volendam, Excelsior, Vitesse). I can hear that and agree that the relative quality in league, is pretty meh, but considering at years conclusion he'd produced goals or assists against how many different clubs in European Competition: Twente, Az, Feyenoord, Sevilla, Lens, and Dortmund? And that it accounted for I believe more than 35% of his total goal contributions? Well, for me, that's not a case of a guy feasting against crap, it looks more or less like he did w/Rangers, just better, where in Rangers, most of his production was against the mid table sides and the 3rd and 4th place sides in the league, with PSV in his first year, it looked like: 35% against the elite 40% against middle of the pack sides 25% against the crap Which to me is totally fine. He's clearly a key piece for them, and when he's producing they are much much better than when he slips into that inconsistent bit of consistently inconsistent (though I think he was more consistently inconsistent in '22 and '23 then he is now). We won't know for sure what he is for a while, but to me, it definitely feels like the last piece is more about effort, and motor consistency, the silky skill and technique is there, but every day, showing up to play in that LT/Ray Lewis way? Not seeing that, especially in the shirt, not sure how to get him motivated that way, but even there its worth noting, his time w/the USMNT has been short, just 2 years plus, less than 500 minutes ever (the equivalent to what, 8 starts essentially, but I believe in terms of career starts he has like 2 or 3 maybe?), and his time w/the US has been split between the good US period (mid '22 to mid '23) during which the team was playing well but he played all of 107 total minutes) and the period after (mid '23 to mid '24) of which he played fall '23-fall '24, and a touch over 350 minutes, during which the vast bulk of the entire USMNT has been total ---, not just Tillman, but largely everyone. So for now, it's just a lot of "I'm not sure why it's not clicking, but there looks like a ton of evidence it's reps together, familiarity, system, 3 coaches in 12 months, players issues with consistency and/or motivation and or role, consistency in terms of minutes etc,". It could just end up he never hits. Who knows, but its hard to watch him, for me anyway, and think: "we've really utilized this guys talent." It's not like we're lining up against top 15 teams in Europe: dude has played against the Uzbeks, Oman, Trinidad, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Saudia Arabia, Jamaica etc....this is not Clash of the Titans stuff....so figuring him out can only help us.
There's also some weird variation of what Jermaine Jones is talking about in this clip. Jermaine Jones (German-American) responds to Landon Donovan’s comments... | TikTok There's a weird lack of appreciation for what Malik Tillman has done in his career. And its really only been a couple of seasons since he's been fully healthy after his ACL tear. Meanwhile the board gushes about Diego Luna (and US-born players of his ilk) and demands he get an opportunity. Its just one of those things. People will say "yeah, but what has he done for the USMNT".............until he does. I do agree with you. There's a category of USMNT "fan" that makes an early decision on a player for some reason. Then then they ignore all positive performances of a player and really exaggerate the poor performances. They want to be proven right about their early prognostication. We see it all the time. There are certain posters who do that with McKennie and Reyna. Why? I don't know. How many games does McKennie have to play well in for friggin' Juventus before somebody realizes he's a good player? It doesn't take a genius. JUST LET IT GO!
Thanks for taking the time to write this. I'd need to watch him more to see if I agreed w/your interpretation (life has cut down on my mins of soccer watching), but I still like having the opportunity to read your take on things w/his game. Would be nice to see what would he could do with Balo/Sarg/Pepi all healthy, and Pulisic, Weah, Reyna, McKennie, Dest healthy too.
From what I am seeing Malik has primarily played as a wide forward in their 4-3-3 or as a CM in their 4-3-3. IMO he is long term more suited to be a CM in a 4-3-3. It suits his temperment and playing style and keeps him more involved in the action both in attack and on defense.
I wonder if he’s another guy who’s really best suited to be a SS. I know those are rare these days but we have a couple in the pool in him and Jesus.
Weah doesn't really fit here -- he spent the first 14 years of his life in the US, whereas I think the type of dual-nat jond has in mind would have spent the majority of their youth abroad. But otherwise yeah I actually do find it interesting that we currently have more dual-nats of that sort in our roster than we did during the Klinsmann era but there hasn't really been any of the same backlash to that. (There's been so little that I think people have to really stretch to find some unstated subtext in the criticism of Tillman's play to turn him into an exception, whereas there were constant vocal complaints about the earlier recruiting efforts.) By my count, the 2014 roster had 7 players that were primarily raised and developed outside of the USA: Brooks, Johannsson, Diskerud, Jones, Green, Chandler, and Johnson. The current standard 23 man roster has 8 by my count: Dest, Carter-Vickers, Jedi, Lund, Cardoso, Musah, Tillman, and Balogun. My best guess for why there hasn't been the same backlash is that most of the current crop emerged at a young age in the context of a broader youth revolution coming off our biggest failure of the modern era. They weren't really pushing out any successful, established veterans, or at least not any veterans that any significant portion of the fanbase really cared to see stick around after Couva. And there wasn't really any concern about how well they fit into that group, because most of them were part of that group from the start. That's a very different context from when the 2014 crop emerged.
I think that is the answer to why he is not a SS, malik does not have the ego-centric temperament required to be a striker.
JJ took a lot of crap from fans and "players and others in and around US Soccer" They questioned whether he "cared"!
Better than most Americans but the year in Scotland won't have helped. Edited: just confirmed all PSV team meetings are conducted in English except for German hybrid coaching expressions like "gegenpressing". Dutch is only used among the Dutch players.
You're admitting your bias & have said before it comes from an emotional perspective. Imagine that - fans of a team are negative about players like Cardoso & Tillman who've played poorly for them, positive about others like Antonee, or Musah (up until recently), & FabJo back in the day. This is how any actual fan of a team logically behaves. It's inherent to being a fan. Never seen you come to the defense of Jordan Morris, who gets more flack than anyone relative to nat'l team play. He's actually been good for us, surrounding the catastrophic injuries. BTW, literally every country would ideally want to develop their own players, even the ones that don't. That's the rational perspective, unlike yours. But at the end of the day, the rules are similar for every country, & your most reliable players are who they are. All you can ask is THAT'S who gets respect. But I don't think a sub-sect of the base you're in operates that way & then ironically project outward.
I’m looking forward to having a manager that will command all the different dimensions of respect. And I am hoping he will be geared toward game plans that make the most of the skill sets in front of him, not lineups that make the most of his game plan.
"why do American soccer fans hate Jermaine Jones?" http://americansoccernow.com/articles/why-do-american-soccer-fans-hate-jermaine-jones
I haven't made a judgment about Tillman or Reyna. I haven't seen enough of Tillman and while I can see Reyna is talented, I'm not yet convinced he's that guy. I was in Vegas for the Mexico NL SF and he was outstanding. I heard an interesting comment from Notts County's color commentator on Saturday re our team captain who is coming back from injury but struggling to make an impact. There are some players that can come on for 20 minutes, give you ten out of ten and really make a difference. But if you start them they may give you 4 or 6 out of 10 for the other 70 minutes. There are other players that give you 8 out of 10 for 90 minutes. They struggle to make an impact as a sub but you don't really want to start a game without them. Tillman might be the latter but 4 starts over 2 years under 3 managers playing different roles probably isn't going to give us a fair picture of what he can contribute.
Nice strawman. No one is gushing or demanding. I'm the only person who has posted about Luna in like the last month. I've said that he "warrants a look." Particularly in the last set of meaningless friendlies. Before the friendlies, I said a front line of: -----------------------Sarge Cowell-----------------------------------Wright -----------------Luna would be close to as effective as what we put out there (even though Puli is on fire) and we'd learn more. That's not gushing or demanding.
Who ever hated Jermaine Jones. He was my favorite from those old teams. I wish we had a guy like that today.
Probably if you are a Serbian, the coach would know you in very early age so here is the trust from the coach. Then a Bosnian would just switch. But as an AMeriMexi, you can wait a little longer.
That is so so so so weird. I do not recall anyone ever hating Jones, I guess I have a gauzy memory of his time, but my memory is he was a warrior that left every drop of blood on the field, a guy, who if he'd been healthy, would have helped lead us to the Quarterfinals and maybe further in WC '10, instead of a heartbreaking Extra Time defeat. He was a monster stud, yeah, he was occasionally set a little too often to boil in terms of temperament, but it was an edge we needed. Honestly, it feels like it says something about the 2013 readership of ASN because I definitely do not recall some hate movement towards Jones back then at all. Very odd.