USMNT 2020

[Zepol87 9197]

Please don't waste this talent Berhalter. 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

it's getting dusty up in here watching the flow and movement in the rain with no prior understanding

fucking this up may be beyond even beerholder's karmic gravity well

[Trey3216 15378]

1 minute ago, Hagbard Celine said:

it's getting dusty up in here watching the flow and movement in the rain with no prior understanding

fucking this up may be beyond even beerholder's karmic gravity well

Seriously.   What the hell team am I watching here?!?!  We look....European 

[shnsajax 3592]

Just missing that final pass into the box, but damn this has been nice to watch so far. 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

the one-touch close control service-making non-ant-mound triple-touch mls non-arnold-palmer-like trevinist anti-football

sniff sniff

blubber blubber

 

[Trey3216 15378]

Ohhhh Conrad   

[shnsajax 3592]

Dest and McKinney have been great so far. 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

i just figured it out.  this is parallel trumpkin alternative reality side of the simulation.

[ztejas 43549]

What channel is this shindig on? Forgot they were playing today.

[gsoda3 3283]

Just now, ztejas said:

What channel is this shindig on? Forgot they were playing today.

FS1

[ztejas 43549]

29 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

it's getting dusty up in here watching the flow and movement in the rain with no prior understanding

fucking this up may be beyond even beerholder's karmic gravity well

Which is why we need a different manager to put us over the top.

We have to easily have a top 25 roster right now - which we probably never have before.

[Zepol87 9197]

Barcelona boys making moves

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

beerholder will never get there and with this level of talent we should make deep runs in tournaments but the x's and o's to take on world powers are simply beyond his capability.

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

2 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Which is why we need a different manager to put us over the top.

We have to easily have a top 25 roster right now - which we probably never have before.

ha - you posted that while i was writing the same thing

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

dest amazing service

mls striker.....  stick your leg out lleget

[ztejas 43549]

Yeah lleget still playing is... something. 

Is this how we looked in the first half? Dominating possession but not finishing?

[ztejas 43549]

Reyna is something else. His ceiling is in the fucking stratosphere.

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

yip

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

2 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Yeah lleget still playing is... something. 

Is this how we looked in the first half? Dominating possession but not finishing?

yipp yipp

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

cardoso for adams

llanez for konrad

71'

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

weah for reyna

gioachinni for musah

78'

Edited November 12, 2020 by Hagbard Celine

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

extremely entertaining for the first hour, then they ran out of gas.  extremely promising.  first time i've been enthused and 110% since they nuked Juergen.

[ztejas 43549]

32 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

extremely entertaining for the first hour, then they ran out of gas.  extremely promising.  first time i've been enthused and 110% since they nuked Juergen.

Only watched about 25 mins. (The Masters is on)

So much skill on the pitch. Basically zero chemistry but that's to be expected and it will improve almost by default.

[Helobious 9467]

Not a big soccer follower, but I have an honest question... why does our team kind of suck? I’ve been hearing about how soccer is the next big thing and will take over the country for at least the past 15 years... I had doubts about that but figured we’d first see big time national team success, which would then lead to the increase in popularity. Sure enough we didn’t even make the last WC & today I see we tied a country with fewer people than Greater Houston. What gives? Is there at least a lot of future talent in the pipeline?

[Knoxtnhorn 6067]

That was pretty impressive.  

I think we score a couple of goals w/o Lletget in there.  He adds nothing.

Glad Robinson played well after the first 10 mins.  

I don't like Reyna out wide.  I know we've hated the triangle in the past, but he'd be awesome as an attacking mid with two forwards.

Really liking Johnny.  (Seems weird to type that.)

That was some pretty darned good ball movement for 25 mph winds and driving rain.

 

[TheBryMan81 2515]

The Athletic recap

Spoiler

“It was just fun.”

If we are to pull anything out of a 0-0 friendly draw with Wales, that quote from Weston McKennie is what it should be. There will be talk of tactics in this piece, sure (To false 9 or not to false 9?). But after the first U.S. game since February, and an even longer layoff since the full-strength squad has come together with the likes of John Brooks, Tyler Adams and Sergiño Dest, it is this reflection from McKennie, the 22-year-old Juventus midfielder, that perhaps best summarizes how it felt to watch the U.S. play again.

“I think a lot of guys had fun being out there,” he said.

How long it has been since anyone was willing to simply bask in the fun of a U.S. team?

There have been good moments in the Gregg Berhalter era. Decisive wins in the Gold Cup. A 4-1 win over Canada after a deflating loss north of the border. But the energy that is enveloping this current roster is different than anything that has existed around the U.S. team in the past decade.

Part of that is because this U.S. team fulfills so much of the hope that always surrounds discussion of the national team. Message boards and Twitter timelines have long been filled with the ‘next big things,’ the dual nationals who might just commit, the breathless ‘every touch’ videos of players who haven’t yet stepped foot on the field for their first cap. Only now those hopes have come to life. 

The U.S. has young stars at some of the best clubs in the world. Almost all of them are in this camp, save for Christian Pulisic and Josh Sargent due to injury and COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, respectively. The average age of the starting lineup on Thursday was 22 years and 48 days, the fourth youngest starting XI in USMNT history. The rest of the roster contains players with plenty of potential, though few fans have actually seen them play meaningful minutes — players like Uly Llanez and Sebastian Soto, Nico Gioacchini and Johnny Cardoso. The roster even has the added enticement of Yunus Musah, a tri-national who the U.S. is hoping to recruit away from England. This is what the people want. 

Put on the field for 90 minutes, a confident performance emerged which only reinforced so many of those expectations.

The midfield trio of McKennie, Adams and Musah was the highlight. The three covered ground, pressed, combined and pushed the tempo. McKennie and Adams, considered to be the heart of this midfield for the foreseeable future, were probably the two best players on the field. Strong performances from veteran center back Brooks and Barcelona’s Dest complemented the midfield.

The U.S. looked comfortable on the ball. There were moments of truly good soccer, only lacking the final product. It was fun to watch. And, to McKennie’s point, it was fun to be a part of.

“Obviously, it would have been much better if we won the game,” McKennie said. “But like I said, it’s a good stepping stone and I think it was a good start after not being together for over a year.”

It wasn’t perfect. Nor should it have been. All four players who approached the podium for press availability after the game talked about the difficulty of preparing for this friendly with just two training sessions. Considering it was this group’s first time together, and that six players made their senior team debut, the lack of practice time provides some important context to Thursday’s performance — and especially context to where things went wrong.

“The most difficult part of having such limited training is a lot of times you’re going to revert back to your habits of what you do with your club,” Adams said. “And when you’re coming into the national team, and you have a lot of new guys that are learning a lot of new tactics playing for a bunch of different clubs, and you revert back to your habits, you have a bunch of guys that want to play in different ways. Now we have guys that are playing for Barcelona, guys playing for Juventus, myself at Leipzig, and I can continue to go down the list. But that doesn’t bode well when you want to obviously start to build tactics within the national team.”

Adams said the team had one day to work on attacking tactics, one day to work on defensive tactics and the third day was the game.

“So quickly you have to start to figure out the key elements to what’s going to make us really good,” Adams said. “And tonight, I think you saw small glimpses of what we can do really well, some of our pressing moments and where we won the ball up the field to be effective in the offensive final third, but there’s a lot that we can improve on.”

The lack of time together and the tendency to fall back into club habits might also explain the biggest negative of the friendly: the lack of a final product. It was easy to grab on to Sebastian Lletget’s presence as a false nine as a reason for the dearth of production in front of net, but Berhalter and McKennie pointed to failures in movement around that position as the issue.

It is not the first time Berhalter employed a false nine with the U.S. He used Jesús Ferreira in the same role in February, when the U.S. beat Costa Rica, 1-0, in their last competitive game. Ferreira is more of a natural forward than Lletget, and Berhalter acknowledged that “it wasn’t a typical striker performance we’re used to seeing from that profile,” but he praised Lletget for his outing. Playing with a false nine was part of a tactical plan specific to what the U.S. staff saw from Wales and how they believed they could break them down.

Several times, Berhalter noted that the U.S. lacked some width and runs in behind in the attacking third, and it was a problem specifically in that it didn’t take advantage of the spaces Berhalter wanted to exploit by having Lletget drop down to pick up the ball from a deeper position. Put simply: the U.S. just didn’t get enough out of Gio Reyna and Konrad de la Fuente on the wings.

“This was game-plan specific and when we analyzed Wales, what we saw was a very man-oriented midfield, and because of that we thought we can really take advantage of that central space,” Berhalter said. “So if our two attacking midfielders were wider, it will open up that central corridor and it happened a couple times and it looked really nice. So, I just think that’s the way to unbalance the defense. If you don’t have wingers that are running behind you lose that threat … I agree I think it could have been better, but I like the advantage that a striker dropping down gives you.”

McKennie reinforced that idea, saying that so many players looking for the ball to feet ended up compacting the U.S. in the final third and making it more difficult to create good chances. He said he believed having a player like Pulisic on the outside going one-on-one and making runs in behind the lines would have made a difference as well.

“I said it to the guys as well, I tried to be open and direct with everyone, I said, ‘We have a lot of players that have a lot of quality. We have players that feel more comfortable with the ball at their feet instead of making the running behind that exposes the space, opens up gaps.’ When everyone wants to come to the ball, it makes the team even more compacted, leaves less room,” McKennie said. “It’s all fine and dandy to combine and make it look pretty, but at the same time, we have to score goals. … For me, the dynamic movement in getting behind the line was something that we were missing. And that’s something that we’ll obviously look at in the video just to see how many runs we made in behind the line to open up the space and just make that unselfish run.”

Yes, it was a 0-0 draw against Wales. This isn’t meant to be a coronation. But in the end, the result won’t matter. Neither will the fact that Lletget started over some of the “sexier” names on the roster. (As thin as the U.S. is at the forward position, there is a long list of players who were unavailable for this camp who are capable of starting up top when the squad is at full strength, including Sargent, Gyasi Zardes and Jozy Altidore.)

Instead, focus on the process.

The performance against Wales did enough to reinforce a foundational piece of this squad (a McKennie-Adams midfield), and it also gave us a preview of the ways Berhalter is looking to highlight the play of another strength, Pulisic and Reyna on the wings. If the U.S. can find opportunities to get those two players running in behind the back line, exploiting space and going at opponents, the goals and the results will come.

As McKennie said, it was a stepping stone. And it was fun. After waiting so long for reasons to be optimistic again, Thursday felt like a positive start to what is the next era of the U.S. national team.

(Photo: David Davies / PA Images via Getty Images)

 

[shnsajax 3592]

7 hours ago, ztejas said:

Yeah lleget still playing is... something. 

Is this how we looked in the first half? Dominating possession but not finishing?

We did a great impression of Arsenal in the first half and the second we hit the box it al fell apart. That said we played with all kids who really have never played together and got two days of training in. They are going to gel pretty quickly.

[shnsajax 3592]

Honest question, but who is the captain come 2022 for this team as I don't think it is Pulisic. It could be and I am prefectly fine with it but right now I just feel McKennie. I just feel like I am watching the American version of Edgar Davids now and with the fuck around and find out attitude.  

[pacman 7373]

Brooks is my guess.

 

I was fine with the players attempt but felt ole Greg let them down with Lleget

[ztejas 43549]

4 hours ago, Helobious said:

Not a big soccer follower, but I have an honest question... why does our team kind of suck? I’ve been hearing about how soccer is the next big thing and will take over the country for at least the past 15 years... I had doubts about that but figured we’d first see big time national team success, which would then lead to the increase in popularity. Sure enough we didn’t even make the last WC & today I see we tied a country with fewer people than Greater Houston. What gives? Is there at least a lot of future talent in the pipeline?

So, really it's just the past 6 years that have been a dumpster fire. We didn't make it out of the Ro16 in 2010 or 2014 but in 2010 we won our group and in both of those years we were plenty good enough to make the QF - just ended up falling short. Also - in 2009 we made the Confederations cup final which was a pretty big deal.

Since then there has been a big changing of the guard players-wise and our management and "front office" so to speak have consistently put the wrong players in the wrong positions with the wrong coaches while valuing and emphasizing the wrong things.

Basically - we have plenty enough talent to at least be a tier 2 national team (meaning our ceiling would probably be a WC semifinal) - and fortunately, since 2014 our talent pool has done nothing but get better despite our horrific fucking management, but we have just done nothing correctly in that span to produce actual results.

Right now - as Hagbard and I both quipped - we have a roster that may find a pretty decent level of success simply because we are putting out talent on the pitch that we never have before - but we are still being held back by mediocre coaching and organizational decisions.

Whether that will be corrected quickly, very slowly, or not at all remains to be seen but we at least have the talent now to where "underachieving" should produce better results than we have seen in quite some time 

[perfectchaos007 6677]

I just want a team good enough to produce results against enough Caribbean island nations to qualify for the World Cup. After 2018 my expectations for US soccer are rock bottom. Hopefully pulisic is healthy when qualifying comes around because without him the US severely lacks a striker and having a goal scorer is important in soccer. Case and point the 0-0 FT today against Wales

Edited November 13, 2020 by perfectchaos007

[shadow_operative 15932]

12 hours ago, ztejas said:

So, really it's just the past 6 years that have been a dumpster fire. We didn't make it out of the Ro16 in 2010 or 2014 but in 2010 we won our group and in both of those years we were plenty good enough to make the QF - just ended up falling short. Also - in 2009 we made the Confederations cup final which was a pretty big deal.

Since then there has been a big changing of the guard players-wise and our management and "front office" so to speak have consistently put the wrong players in the wrong positions with the wrong coaches while valuing and emphasizing the wrong things.

Basically - we have plenty enough talent to at least be a tier 2 national team (meaning our ceiling would probably be a WC semifinal) - and fortunately, since 2014 our talent pool has done nothing but get better despite our horrific fucking management, but we have just done nothing correctly in that span to produce actual results.

Right now - as Hagbard and I both quipped - we have a roster that may find a pretty decent level of success simply because we are putting out talent on the pitch that we never have before - but we are still being held back by mediocre coaching and organizational decisions.

Whether that will be corrected quickly, very slowly, or not at all remains to be seen but we at least have the talent now to where "underachieving" should produce better results than we have seen in quite some time 

also known as the Shaka Smart Paradigm. 

[Ted Lange 16144]

20 hours ago, shnsajax said:

Honest question, but who is the captain come 2022 for this team as I don't think it is Pulisic. It could be and I am prefectly fine with it but right now I just feel McKennie. I just feel like I am watching the American version of Edgar Davids now and with the fuck around and find out attitude.  

My money is on Tyler Adams.  The guy is exactly what you’d want.  Go listen to a couple of his interviews, he sounds like a 10 year vet.  Really impressive dude. 

[Napoleon 8706]

On 11/12/2020 at 1:58 PM, pacman said:

It is probably no surprise that Konrad and Robinson are not looking the part, so far.

Heavy rain looks like.

 

On 11/12/2020 at 2:21 PM, Trey3216 said:

Ohhhh CKonrad   

 

On 11/12/2020 at 3:13 PM, Hagbard Celine said:

cardoso for adams

llanez for konrad

71'

I don't care who is writing out their checks (wiring money to their bank accounts)...

ULY LLANEZ > > > > > Konrad de la Fuente

Edited November 14, 2020 by Napoleon

[shnsajax 3592]

12 minutes ago, Napoleon said:

 

 

I don't care who is writing out their checks (wiring money to their bank accounts)...

ULY LLANEZ > > > > > Konrad de la Fuente

I'm about ready to put Daryl Dike ahead of them both and Sargent. 

[Napoleon 8706]

1 hour ago, shnsajax said:

I'm about ready to put Daryl Dike ahead of them both and Sargent. 

I will have to look up who that is, but you don’t wait for me. Go ahead and put DD ahead. Hopefully he can at least put a shot on frame when handed a sitter near the front of the goal. 

[Knoxtnhorn 6067]

The thing about Sargent, though, is that he is creative and works well with the team even if/when he's not scoring.  I'll take this over Lletget, Altidore, or Zardes.  I know nothing about Daryl Dike, but I'd also take him over the aforementioned.

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

On 11/12/2020 at 11:54 PM, ztejas said:

So, really it's just the past 6 years that have been a dumpster fire. We didn't make it out of the Ro16 in 2010 or 2014 but in 2010 we won our group and in both of those years we were plenty good enough to make the QF - just ended up falling short. Also - in 2009 we made the Confederations cup final which was a pretty big deal.

Since then there has been a big changing of the guard players-wise and our management and "front office" so to speak have consistently put the wrong players in the wrong positions with the wrong coaches while valuing and emphasizing the wrong things.

Basically - we have plenty enough talent to at least be a tier 2 national team (meaning our ceiling would probably be a WC semifinal) - and fortunately, since 2014 our talent pool has done nothing but get better despite our horrific fucking management, but we have just done nothing correctly in that span to produce actual results.

Right now - as Hagbard and I both quipped - we have a roster that may find a pretty decent level of success simply because we are putting out talent on the pitch that we never have before - but we are still being held back by mediocre coaching and organizational decisions.

Whether that will be corrected quickly, very slowly, or not at all remains to be seen but we at least have the talent now to where "underachieving" should produce better results than we have seen in quite some time 

my apologies in advance, i am going to contradict a number of statements in this post, please take no offense

[ztejas 43549]

8 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

my apologies in advance, i am going to contradict a number of statements in this post, please take no offense

I put a lot out there off the top of my head. Feel free to expound or correct anything or disagree. I think I effectively captured the main issues and was only trying to give Yankee boy a crash course. 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

On 11/12/2020 at 7:30 PM, Helobious said:

Not a big soccer follower, but I have an honest question... why does our team kind of suck? I’ve been hearing about how soccer is the next big thing and will take over the country for at least the past 15 years... I had doubts about that but figured we’d first see big time national team success, which would then lead to the increase in popularity. Sure enough we didn’t even make the last WC & today I see we tied a country with fewer people than Greater Houston. What gives? Is there at least a lot of future talent in the pipeline?

We only suck in the context of american exceptionalism.  For example, our achievements and overall success far exceeds the Russians in the post-Soviet-era.  China and India are invisible and in the bottom 100 in soccer.  Also, if Thermensa thinks winning in our league is hard, winning international football matches is extremely hard, and the successful countries had a 100-year head start developing a soccer culture.  (note: we actually had a soccer culture between the 2 world wars, we played in the first 2 world cups (with 50% non-us players), scored the first hat trick in the first world cup, and came in "4th" place in the first cup (1930).

Then ww2 happened.  The culture did not re-form after the war.  We did play in the 1950 cup and achieve and incredible 1-0 result over England (with the goal scored by a Haitian), but for 20-odd years there was no soccer outside of a few universities until Lamar Hunt attended the 1966 World Cup in England.  There were 3 leagues in 3 years in the late 1960s, culminating in the consolidation to the NASL which created the soccer culture at the grassroots level in the mid-1970s.  I played my first soccer game in the summer of 1974 between 4th and 5th grade in Richardson, the beginning of the cradle of what would become one of a handful of metros (New Jersey, LA, Dallas) that would build the culture that resulted in the 1989 qualification for 1990 Italy, and the breakthrough win over Colombia when we hosted 1994.  This same group crashed and burned at the prior low point for US Soccer, the 2-1 loss to Iran in France in 1998.

All of that is a long way of saying, International Success is the last thing that happens in soccer.  And (assuming you don't fuck up and actually qualify) you only get 3 games once every 4 years.   About the same as only playing 0u once a year.   Now, there is this thing called Copa America in the in-between 2 years, like Europe has the Euros in the in-between 2 years, but that's a major digression and this screed is already getting longcat.

You know how the world is on the metric system, but we're not?

If one considers the international soccer economy as a pyramid, with it's base on the ground, then the way we approach soccer, soccer culture and the soccer economy in the US is precisely inverted and upside down.  This is also a major longcat digression.

Major League Soccer (MLS) aka Soccer United Marketing (SUM) aka the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) aka "The Cabal" had basically ZERO responsibility or attribution for the talent on display in Wales on thursday night.  The league is 25 years old.  The international soccer economy has simply planted The Cabal on it's ass and done an alien face-hugger move to siphon the best talent.  As they should.  Because they know what they're doing, and the people in charge here are amateurs, and have been, as we've told them, from the beginning, in 1995.  But they refuse to actually want to win.  The Nats look like they can win in the next 2 cycles, despite The Cabal, who treat the top ("bottom") of the pyramid as an entertainment product disguised as a soccer exhibition league.

4 years ago next saturday, 21 november 2016, The Cabal fired the best coach we've ever had, former world-class German striker Juergen Klinsmann.  He had suffered 2 losses in a row in quailfying that were precisely the fault of The Cabal and the decisions they had made in the prior 20 years.  Again, another longcat digression.  In 2015 we won 3 games in a row when we hosted the Centennial Copa America, an achievement that rivals anything else in our history.  2 years prior, we were 30 seconds away from winning 2 games in a row at the world cup in Brazil, something we have only managed once before back in the first iteration in 1930.   However, we hit the same wall in 2010 and 2014 in the round of 16, because when push comes to shove, we did not have the talent.

okay, enough longcat.  there is much, much more.

"A rookie in soccer is 18".

-Juergen, 2010

 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

i noticed i made a couple of errors upthread, correcting here:

       konrad lleget reyna

        musah mckennie

               adams

robinson brooks miazga dest

                steffen

 

                barca-b 19     galaxy 28     DORTMUND 17

                        VALENCIA 17   JUVENTUS 22

                                        LEIPZIG 21

FULHAM 23                                                              BARCA 20 

                     WOLFSBURG 27    ANDERLECHT 25

                                           city 25

[Helobious 9467]

1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

We only suck in the context of american exceptionalism.  For example, our achievements and overall success far exceeds the Russians in the post-Soviet-era.  China and India are invisible and in the bottom 100 in soccer.  Also, if Thermensa thinks winning in our league is hard, winning international football matches is extremely hard, and the successful countries had a 100-year head start developing a soccer culture.  (note: we actually had a soccer culture between the 2 world wars, we played in the first 2 world cups (with 50% non-us players), scored the first hat trick in the first world cup, and came in "4th" place in the first cup (1930).

Then ww2 happened.  The culture did not re-form after the war.  We did play in the 1950 cup and achieve and incredible 1-0 result over England (with the goal scored by a Haitian), but for 20-odd years there was no soccer outside of a few universities until Lamar Hunt attended the 1966 World Cup in England.  There were 3 leagues in 3 years in the late 1960s, culminating in the consolidation to the NASL which created the soccer culture at the grassroots level in the mid-1970s.  I played my first soccer game in the summer of 1974 between 4th and 5th grade in Richardson, the beginning of the cradle of what would become one of a handful of metros (New Jersey, LA, Dallas) that would build the culture that resulted in the 1989 qualification for 1990 Italy, and the breakthrough win over Colombia when we hosted 1994.  This same group crashed and burned at the prior low point for US Soccer, the 2-1 loss to Iran in France in 1998.

All of that is a long way of saying, International Success is the last thing that happens in soccer.  And (assuming you don't fuck up and actually qualify) you only get 3 games once every 4 years.   About the same as only playing 0u once a year.   Now, there is this thing called Copa America in the in-between 2 years, like Europe has the Euros in the in-between 2 years, but that's a major digression and this screed is already getting longcat.

You know how the world is on the metric system, but we're not?

If one considers the international soccer economy as a pyramid, with it's base on the ground, then the way we approach soccer, soccer culture and the soccer economy in the US is precisely inverted and upside down.  This is also a major longcat digression.

Major League Soccer (MLS) aka Soccer United Marketing (SUM) aka the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) aka "The Cabal" had basically ZERO responsibility or attribution for the talent on display in Wales on thursday night.  The league is 25 years old.  The international soccer economy has simply planted The Cabal on it's ass and done an alien face-hugger move to siphon the best talent.  As they should.  Because they know what they're doing, and the people in charge here are amateurs, and have been, as we've told them, from the beginning, in 1995.  But they refuse to actually want to win.  The Nats look like they can win in the next 2 cycles, despite The Cabal, who treat the top ("bottom") of the pyramid as an entertainment product disguised as a soccer exhibition league.

4 years ago next saturday, 21 november 2016, The Cabal fired the best coach we've ever had, former world-class German striker Juergen Klinsmann.  He had suffered 2 losses in a row in quailfying that were precisely the fault of The Cabal and the decisions they had made in the prior 20 years.  Again, another longcat digression.  In 2015 we won 3 games in a row when we hosted the Centennial Copa America, an achievement that rivals anything else in our history.  2 years prior, we were 30 seconds away from winning 2 games in a row at the world cup in Brazil, something we have only managed once before back in the first iteration in 1930.   However, we hit the same wall in 2010 and 2014 in the round of 16, because when push comes to shove, we did not have the talent.

okay, enough longcat.  there is much, much more.

"A rookie in soccer is 18".

-Juergen, 2010

 

Wow. Thanks for the info. If I had to pick a national team I root for the most now it’d be El Tri. My family is from there and they’re just more fun to watch. If USMNT turns it around though and starts winning I could see myself starting to follow them /yankeefan.

[Zepol87 9197]

19 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

My money is on Tyler Adams.  The guy is exactly what you’d want.  Go listen to a couple of his interviews, he sounds like a 10 year vet.  Really impressive dude. 

I approve of this. Dude is just a solid player.

Fuck El Tri

[shadow_operative 15932]

Adams or McKennie 

[ztejas 43549]

2 hours ago, Hagbard Celine said:

We only suck in the context of american exceptionalism.  For example, our achievements and overall success far exceeds the Russians in the post-Soviet-era.  China and India are invisible and in the bottom 100 in soccer.  Also, if Thermensa thinks winning in our league is hard, winning international football matches is extremely hard, and the successful countries had a 100-year head start developing a soccer culture.  (note: we actually had a soccer culture between the 2 world wars, we played in the first 2 world cups (with 50% non-us players), scored the first hat trick in the first world cup, and came in "4th" place in the first cup (1930).

Then ww2 happened.  The culture did not re-form after the war.  We did play in the 1950 cup and achieve and incredible 1-0 result over England (with the goal scored by a Haitian), but for 20-odd years there was no soccer outside of a few universities until Lamar Hunt attended the 1966 World Cup in England.  There were 3 leagues in 3 years in the late 1960s, culminating in the consolidation to the NASL which created the soccer culture at the grassroots level in the mid-1970s.  I played my first soccer game in the summer of 1974 between 4th and 5th grade in Richardson, the beginning of the cradle of what would become one of a handful of metros (New Jersey, LA, Dallas) that would build the culture that resulted in the 1989 qualification for 1990 Italy, and the breakthrough win over Colombia when we hosted 1994.  This same group crashed and burned at the prior low point for US Soccer, the 2-1 loss to Iran in France in 1998.

All of that is a long way of saying, International Success is the last thing that happens in soccer.  And (assuming you don't fuck up and actually qualify) you only get 3 games once every 4 years.   About the same as only playing 0u once a year.   Now, there is this thing called Copa America in the in-between 2 years, like Europe has the Euros in the in-between 2 years, but that's a major digression and this screed is already getting longcat.

You know how the world is on the metric system, but we're not?

If one considers the international soccer economy as a pyramid, with it's base on the ground, then the way we approach soccer, soccer culture and the soccer economy in the US is precisely inverted and upside down.  This is also a major longcat digression.

Major League Soccer (MLS) aka Soccer United Marketing (SUM) aka the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) aka "The Cabal" had basically ZERO responsibility or attribution for the talent on display in Wales on thursday night.  The league is 25 years old.  The international soccer economy has simply planted The Cabal on it's ass and done an alien face-hugger move to siphon the best talent.  As they should.  Because they know what they're doing, and the people in charge here are amateurs, and have been, as we've told them, from the beginning, in 1995.  But they refuse to actually want to win.  The Nats look like they can win in the next 2 cycles, despite The Cabal, who treat the top ("bottom") of the pyramid as an entertainment product disguised as a soccer exhibition league.

4 years ago next saturday, 21 november 2016, The Cabal fired the best coach we've ever had, former world-class German striker Juergen Klinsmann.  He had suffered 2 losses in a row in quailfying that were precisely the fault of The Cabal and the decisions they had made in the prior 20 years.  Again, another longcat digression.  In 2015 we won 3 games in a row when we hosted the Centennial Copa America, an achievement that rivals anything else in our history.  2 years prior, we were 30 seconds away from winning 2 games in a row at the world cup in Brazil, something we have only managed once before back in the first iteration in 1930.   However, we hit the same wall in 2010 and 2014 in the round of 16, because when push comes to shove, we did not have the talent.

okay, enough longcat.  there is much, much more.

"A rookie in soccer is 18".

-Juergen, 2010

 

I'm not sure you really contradicted anything I wrote. Maybe the brief period of success between 2014 and 2016 that I omitted simply because I did zero research. 

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

On 11/14/2020 at 2:30 PM, Zepol87 said:

Fuck El Tri

Craftsmanship.

[Hagbard Celine 10938]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:06 PM, shadow_operative said:

Adams or McKennie 

An embarrassment of riches.

Even Mourinho would have a hell of a time getting Adams, McKennie, Pulisic and Reyna on the pitch together.

Goddamn we are on the verge of something spectacular.

[Knoxtnhorn 6067]

Well written @Hagbard Celine.

I grew up in Richardson as well. Heights Hurricanes up in here!

[shnsajax 3592]

On 11/14/2020 at 12:11 AM, Napoleon said:

I will have to look up who that is, but you don’t wait for me. Go ahead and put DD ahead. Hopefully he can at least put a shot on frame when handed a sitter near the front of the goal. 

6'2" 225 lbs forward who puts the ball on goal and can get up. But I am also looking for the American Dirk Kuyt opposite of Pulisic and infront of Reyna.

[Napoleon 8706]

8 hours ago, shnsajax said:

6'2" 225 lbs forward who puts the ball on goal and can get up. But I am also looking for the American Dirk Kuyt opposite of Pulisic and infront of Reyna.

225 lbs would probably make him the heaviest non-keeper in professional soccer. He must not run.