This is NFL Draft 101, and reinforces why it is very good for elite players to fall to quality organizations rather than go in the top of the draft to dysfunctional, stupid ones. Usually the players learned this w/time as apparently Jozy did. It's a shame his father was an idiot. Jozy had already won the lottery by becoming a pro athlete, and was already in the process of securing his future, you can purchase insurance for injury if your so worried about losing your career, you should never make a terrible move for a quick buck. Just idiotic. Adu's family screwed him too w/idiotic loan moves and what not. It's a shame when foolish self-interested parties get in the way of rational, intelligent decision making. At least in the end, Jozy got his long profitable career, but he absolutely did not come close to realizing his potential as a club player due to this foolishness, and simply had terrible luck with injuries in terms of his international career (and admittedly just ended up ----ing the bed in his last major moment of consequence as a senior player). For me he's one of those guys like John O'Brien, like Stuart Holden, Renken, Taitague, Steve Snow (always got to throw him in there) where it's just an epic could have been. What he did was still impressive, but I seriously bet if he replayed his career 10 times, you get 2-3-4x as impressive a career 75% of the time. Just bad luck and some bad decisions mixed in.
In 2007 I was buying all the stock of Altidore I could find. He and Adu and Bradley were absolutely spectacular at the U20's that summer, and just turf, bad weather and a goalie injury kept them out of the U20 WC Semifinals. They scalped Brazil AND Cavani and Suarez's Uruguay in that tournament, think about that and then fell to freaking Austria. I lost my ---- that day. Could not believe it. In retrospect its even stupider w/the passage of time, just a freaky astroturf goal in bad weather against a goalie nursing an injury like Turner a few months ago. By 2009, it was hypearama, didn't score at WC '10 but it looked so so so good, and then the next decade went as wrong as it could possibly go, other than club goals in MLS and friendly goals and gold cup goals. It was almost certainly the worst many worlds scenario of his career imaginable from July 2010 to the end. Just ridiculously floor for how good he was and could be.
It happens to a lot of soccer players. Agents run soccer and agents are always going to recommend moving as that's when they make their money. NFL had leverage over agents as it has a monopoly on the sport. There's no single regulatory body for soccer agents.
FIFA does regulate agents. They are trying to institute various good rules/reforms the agents are suing to try and prevent and so are on hold. One big difference with the NFL is way less of the contracts are guaranteed compared to other sports.
📋 Few notes from Americans abroad:🇺🇸 Jedi - 100% duels🇺🇸 McKennie - 94% passing, 4/6 duels🇺🇸 Scally - most chances created🇺🇸 Brenden - most chances created, most dribbles🇺🇸 Koleosho - most chances created🇺🇸 Morris - 94% passing, 4/7 duels 🇺🇸 Fossey - most chances created pic.twitter.com/ee1lZaIM1I— USMNT Nation🫡🇺🇸 (@USMNTvsHaters) September 28, 2024 Ricardo Pepi barely plays 2003 - Of players born in 2003 or later, only Elye Wahi (29), Xavi Simons (28), Jude Bellingham (27) and Jamal Musiala (25) have scored more goals than Ricardo Pepi (22) across the Top 10 European leagues since the start of the 2022-23 season. Express. pic.twitter.com/5z1TgaX4QV— OptaJack⚽️ (@OptaJack) September 28, 2024 Sargent's coach (this is before his two assists) High praise for #USMNT striker Josh Sargent from his club coach Johannes Hoff Thorup. pic.twitter.com/7OwB0HdzAS— Doug McIntyre (@ByDougMcIntyre) September 27, 2024
Balogun 30 - Folarin Balogun is the fifth #USMNT player in the last 40 years to score 30 goals in the top 5 European leagues. Charting. pic.twitter.com/ZpWSOtL7Sz— OptaJack⚽️ (@OptaJack) September 28, 2024 When I see stuff like this, I never understand the nostalgia some hold onto with past iterations of the USMNT.Essentially, this suggests Balogun has had a top 10 club career for an American attacker ever (only 23 too).Yet, I promise you there will be someone that’s like “that… https://t.co/xOtsQM2o4F— USMNTProspects (@ProspectsUsmnt) September 28, 2024 Pepi Peter Bosz on Ricardo Pepi following PSV's 2-0 win over Willem II, where Pepi scored two goals. pic.twitter.com/G1zbJI8UlS— Brian Sciaretta (@BrianSciaretta) September 28, 2024
The USMNT has elite star in Pulisic, but they need more dudes to put their hand up. Flo Balogun is the most promising option. Goals in back to back games, is excellent news. pic.twitter.com/EkDjqI60vY— Maximiliano Bretos (@MaxBretosSports) September 28, 2024
I might be wrong but I think he was already a top 5 USMNT goalscorer in a top 5 league just based on his very first season in France, before he even played for the USMNT.* As a result, I think everyone was already super-hyped about Balogun being potentially our best #9 ever before he had even suited up for us. It was his performance at the club and national team level over the next year or so after that which I think deflated some of that hype. But it's still early enough in his career that the narrative again could change pretty quickly depending on how this season goes. *Unless I'm missing someone, the list would be: 1. Clint Dempsey - 57 goals 2. Roy Wegerle - 55 goals 3. Christian Pulisic - 49 goals 4. Brian McBride - 36 goals 5. Folarin Balogun - 30 goals (21 in his first season) 6. Thomas Dooley - 20 goals Although this also depends on what you consider to be a top 5 league. For instance, England wasn't ranked top 5 going by UEFA coefficients for much or any of Roy Wegerle's time there (and only 13 of his 55 goals came during the Premier League era), while the Netherlands was ranked top 5 for several years during the Eredivisie career of Earnie Stewart (who managed 93 goals in the league during his time there).
Now we should remember this: If you want to put a fire under Puli’s lower back, just told him if you don’t win the game then we will change the coach to Thomas Tuchel. That will do the job.
The top 5 leagues by UEFA coefficient are the top 5 leagues. I guess you could argue there is more of a top 4 and a top 8 but the point stands.... there's not much movement at the top anymore 1 1 – England 90.589 2 2 – Italy 80.231 3 3 – Spain 75.132 4 4 – Germany 72.910 5 5 – France 60.379 6 6 – Netherlands 55.733 7 7 – Portugal 51.816 8 8 – Belgium 45.000 "Top X league" certainly exists as a thing far more so than the nebulous concept of "world class" that people are busy debating elsewhere...
It’s crazy to look back at a guy who’s scored the goals for club and country, won hardware in two countries and still feel like there was a lot more there. I think we all do it though.
No, there is no top 5. Two years ago Netherlands were above France. There are top 4, and far away there are 5-7.
Baller. Both goals from Köln striker Damion Downs 🇺🇸🇩🇪 this morning. First one was an excellent first touch and finish after a ball over the top was played to him. Second one was a nice curling effort from the edge of the box. 4 goals on the season for Downs. https://t.co/Q8x1S17SmC— American Ultras Talk (@ameriultrastalk) September 29, 2024
I think you mean they are trying to regulate agents. There are 208 legal systems to comply with, 180 if you consider the EU as one.
The issue is he missed WC '14, Copa Centenario, and WC '18, to some degree because of how ---- he was in qualifying for WC '18. In addition his European career was hot garbage other than his time in the Netherlands. We've gone back and forth on him over the years in here, but the 1 area we do agree is that he was an immensely talented player, we just disagree about how well he performed as a USMNT player (I heavily weight WC's, Copa Centenario's, Confed Cup, and games in the past against the only teams in concacrap that didn't historically stuck: Mexico and Costa Rica) and to some degree w/club. But there's no question he had immense talent, and personally, I've always felt his international career in games that are valued by me and the fan base (WC's, Confed Cups, Copa America's, the rivalry with Mexico in qualifying and tournaments, away games against Costa Rica that sorta thing) basically was at the absolute floor of what expectations would have been circa 2007 and especially 2009. But he's not the only guy that happened with, mostly due to injury. Happened to O'Brien, to Mathis, to Snow, to Holden, to prospects like Zelalem, Taitague, Renken and has happened to Reyna since '21, hell maybe you can say it happened to Steffen too (I don't know how good he was gonna be, but I know after he collected the piles of injuries he was never a good goalie again). Frustrating to note that that famous '07 U20 team got slammed by injuries with Altidore, had Bradley's career partially compromised by a foot injury what six years later, and Adu flamed out as well.
His club coach said he wanted him to play at the Olympics. https://geissblog.koeln/2024/07/dann-schluckt-man-diese-pille-downs-wichtiger-entscheidungstag/ 'FC coach Gerhard Struber hopes his player will be nominated: "It's something special to be able to take part in the Olympics. We definitely want to give him this chance," said the Austrian on Friday after the 6-0 friendly win against Sportfreunde Siegen.'
When we look back on that Olympic team it will be noted for its exclusions. Downs. Luna. Cowell. Neal. All coach's decisions.
Well I’m not actually sure the extent of what regulation they were doing previously but they are definitely trying now and for the most part the proposed reforms are good ones.
Shrug. That's the just the way it goes. The same happens with every youth roster. Our pool is expanding in depth. Its just one coach's selection of players from a growing pool. Its like people complaining about the exclusion of Pepi in the last Olympic cycle, which was before he'd really broken out. Soto was picked for qualifying ahead of Pepi. He was coming off a good season for Telstar. Damion Downs had how many career first team goals when Mitrovic had to name his roster? Damion played ~170 league minutes last season. Heck, maybe some years from now its Logan Farrington who'll be mentioned as a forward miss on the roster too. At this point, with the number of players this board seems to think should have been at the Olympics, you'd think the roster size was 30 players.....................