By SBI SOCCER
No matter the result, many were expecting a handful of changes to occur on the U.S. Men’s National Team roster before the team’s next game Tuesday.
Additions were officially made by U.S. Soccer Sunday, and five players will join the team at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J.
The USMNT called in four MLS players, including goalkeeper Bill Hamid, midfielders Mix Diskerud, Brek Shea and Lee Nguyen, as well as SV Sandhausen forward Andrew Wooten.
In total, 21 players will remain with the U.S. as it takes on Costa Rica Tuesday (6:30 p.m., ESPN/UniMas). The friendly will be the team’s final one before the start of CONCACAF qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
All eight players released back to their respective clubs play in MLS. They include midfielders Michael Bradley, Kyle Beckerman and Graham Zusi, goalkeeper Nick Rimando, defenders DaMarcus Beasley and Matt Besler, as well as forwards Clint Dempsey and Chris Wondolowski.
Here is the roster the USMNT will use when they meet Costa Rica:
Goalkeepers: Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Bill Hamid (D.C. United), Tim Howard (Everton)
Defenders: Ventura Alvarado (Club America), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City), Brad Evans (Seattle Sounders FC), Fabian Johnson (Borussia Monchenglandbach), Michael Orozco (Club Tijuana), Tim Ream (Fulham FC), Jonathan Spector (Birmingham City FC)
Midfielders: Alejandro Bedoya (Nantes), Mix Diskerud (New York City FC), Jermaine Jones (New England Revolution), Lee Nguyen (New England Revolution), Brek Shea (Orlando City SC), Danny Williams (Reading FC), DeAndre Yedlin (Sunderland AFC)
Forwards: Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC), Bobby Wood (Union Berlin), Andrew Wooten (FC Sandhausen), Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy)
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What do you think of the additions? Who are you most wanting to see play against Costa Rica?
Share your thoughts below.
Agreed. Jozy Altnoscore needs to go. Why did JK not replace him for Costa Rica game with someone that can actually play forward, like Aron Johansson? Altidore should NEVER be called up to USMNT again!
Has AntiScore got some kind of lifetime guarantee that he starts? He did nothing against Mexico again and played a lot of minutes. He’s usually bad if well rested, I can’t imagine how slow he would be given that he played a lot of minutes on Sat night. Give us a break…play Wood or somebody else
I hate seeing Altidore starting. He never makes runs. Any o dear they pass him the ball on a build up only to kick the ball away like he was a defender. Enough with JA. He is not that good. Time to move on from Dempsey as a starter as well. Wood and Arjo for now.
I had enough of the Josie experiment up top..Bobbue woods scores every time he replaces Josie. If Jurgen can’t see that he doesn’t have the gift or ability to recognize talent.
Do we have a new manager to coach these new call ups? No…color me unimpressed then. We will see the same junk Tuesday; we will see the same bunker soccer next summer in the Copa. We will see the same junk in Russia in 2018. The guy has to go.
I am not looking forward to a game that has Altidore in it. A. didn’t do anything at all that we haven’t seen him do at Sunderland. I think there is a real need for a shake-up. While the Under-23 team lost, they had the kinds of players that I would like to see in the USMNT. They have the skills and the chemistry it takes to become better as time goes by. The current USMNT has individuals up front who do not seem to put extra effort into a game. They think they are already good enough. They believe there does not need to be extra passion. That said, soccer is a players game. The coach can only do so much. But when time after time a team shows up lacking creativity, it becomes necessary to look for people with more heart. This team defended the whole time except for a few break-aways. And that needs to change.
Did you watch the U-23 team play against Honduras though? Route 1 football from beginning to end. Terrible to watch and it produced a terrible result. Maybe that’s down to Herzog but that was one ugly game.
Sebastian Llegett has done more for his Team than Shea. I watched his last game against Montreal and I was not impress. He had a shot that rattled the crossbar but a blind mice does eventually find the cheese. I was hoping for fresh faces but I guess the man remains in charge of selecting this team.
Shea was also playing right back, (a position he had never played before, due to injuries ). So you can really compare that to a midfielder. I think Shea has 3 game winning assists in Orlando’s recent run, that you could argue started with his return. I like Lletget as well and think he should be there, but I think there’s room for both.
I don’t think Shea is being called in to play wing, I think he is there to play back, but I don’t think he has played back well, either.
I do think Lletget and some other fresh blood needs to get their chance. However if JK is still around I expect his usual incrementalism, ie, these players are being called in to sub, and we will see a pretty familiar set of faces with maybe some changes on the bench for the beginning of qualifying. People like Lletget will be either subs or wait til January.
This is fair to a point but basically this whole summer and this Mexico game seem to underline how hidebound JK is getting. You’d think a result like Gold Cup would jolt him out of it but Mexico has surely sent the message. If he keeps his job we will see some changes, it’s just whether he can be rational about it and start bringing in the new blood like Miazga and Lletget that are showing well, or whether he’s going to continue like Late Bradley where he runs out His People with inexplicable choices. I don’t get running out Shea in every position he can try.
Zardes is arguably our most promising young MLS player. He played 2 full seasons and scored 14 goals in his second season before being called into last January’s camp. Lletget has played half a season for the Galaxy. I touted Lletget from the very first, but there is no telling he will be good enough for international soccer. It’s like going from Triple A baseball to the world series, or small college football to the NFL playoffs. Playing reasonably well for half a season in MLS proves next to nothing. The expectations regarding MLS players here is totally out of whack with reality. Only a small % of US MLS players are capable of doing well internationally.
That is what a long camp and a meaningless friendly are for, is show me what you have and whether this is just situational or a flash in the pan. I get that it may be flash in the pan but you want the strongest performers in camp and there you sort out, well, he is or is not that good in that company at that level.
Bears noting on Lletget he played for the U-17s, U-20s, U-23s, he’s a pipeline kid who was signed by West Ham, and IN THEORY at least, he’s one of the ones we expect to turn out eventually. I’d be more skeptical of some player the US Soccer people didn’t identify who magically starts playing MLS well.
Juan A scores all the time for the Revs. He is talented, tall, good ball control and good passer and yet, JK doesn’t like the kid. I dont understand why JK keeps passing him over. IMO, he is better than Altadore
One of the central paradoxes of the JK Era has been it was supposed to usher in free flowing soccer, and we do that in friendlies, but then every time there is a tough tournament, we turn into a bunkering counterpunch machine, like we were under Bradley and others anyway. So the team doesn’t have an identity, has pointed out a lot of attacking players who can play the flowing style, but sidelines them when they play big games in favor of an ageing bunch of physical players like Jones/ Bradley/ Beckerman, who don’t even reflect the sales pitch.
We obviously have not progressed in general, since we’re going roughly as far as Bradley did and getting the same type of results now. Nor have we bought into the attacking passing style he nominally pretends to implement in friendlies, since we don’t use it for real and the players we find to play it disappear when money is on the table.
I don’t know what to expect because it’s a team without consistent identity, with ageing players in its cruncher mode and unproven people in passing mode. Cruncher mode is not getting the same old results because the crunchers got old and the defense weak. So to me either JK needs to implement a consistent style and re-charge the team in keeping with it, or he needs to be canned in service of a coach who plays a style. I honestly don’t mind if it’s counterpunch soccer because that’s worked for us historically. I don’t have to have the aesthetic pretty that the JK people want but don’t actually get. But we need to pick something and stick to it and find people to play it well so that in games like this we have some edge. We were the second best team yesterday.
I feel like a problem for Klinsmann is his 2 messages in some ways conflict. All the players he has playing in Europe often fill the hard working role at there club, and not so much the skill players. Guys like Bedoya, Morales, Chandler, Williams, and even Fabian to some degree. That really what Bradley was, when at Roma. So if he has to get them all on the field because they have this higher European experience then where are the creative “free flowing” players?
We need to commit to a style — with perhaps some tactical adjustments as games proceed — which would lead to a more efficient process of finding and grooming new talent. Problem now is we often groom players playing passing soccer in friendlies only to want to play crunchers when it counts, and meanwhile we’ve done a crap job of churning the cruncher pool to keep that style young (because all the time was spent looking at Mixx or Green or Wood or the like). It’s fine to spend time finding finesse players if that’s what we intend to play money on the table. But if that’s not really our big game style, then we need to handle friendlies in similar fashion and identify callups and train them up like what we really want to do is bunker and counter.
So, who are we? JK sold we would play one way, and he often calls up people like it, but a lot of this cruncher team has been around for years.
I can already tell you it will be different soccer. Why because the older players buy into we can only be an average team and we should know our place in world soccer. We should just be happy to be here B.S. Bump that. These younger guys play more aggresive and arent going to bunker down immediately at the first sign of an attack. We need faster hungry players period. We have them and now its time to play them. It was already time to play them but it would have been considered blasphemous to bench Altidor and Dempsey in favor of younger strikers in such a big game.
Altidore is 25. Not exactly old. Johannssson is a year younger.
The way Jozy plays (and has trouble bending his knees) you can forgive the mistake.
No Bradley, no Dempsey, no Beckerman, (they should have taken Altidore with them. if TFC doesnt need him for their big game against NYRB then that should tell you) ……watch this team play different soccer on Tuesday and give the Klinsmann faithful something to talk about
Costa Rica is not the same team it was a year ago. That being said we will have a 50/50 chance of winning. It’s a meaningless game and coming during the MLS stretch run penalizes players teams and players themselves.
Can we sub-out Klinsmann?
I researched that bottlecaps but unfortunately we can’t sub him. Maybe giving him a red card to leave the pitch but that depends on him drinking lots of red bull so he can fly of the handle and be sent off. That’s the best that can be done for now….damn
Perhaps he’ll need to go to Utah to cover for Herzog for Tuesday night’s match.
You are a fool.
I grant what you say but there’s been a fair amount of choking when it counts and then playing well in meaningless games lately. You look at the big picture and we’ve lost to 3 potential hex sides in a few months in games that have counted.
So he has to make changes whether he keeps his job or not. I think the Old Guard, particularly the midfield, has hit the career wall, and when the mids aren’t running, the defense gets exposed as weak and Jozy can’t create for himself. I told anyone who would listen that Jones/ Beckerman/ Beasley/ Dempsey/ Bradley would all be really too old for Russia, JK tried to ride them for a little while longer, and we blew this whole year’s worth of competitive matches on old players who can’t hack it.
So now we obviously need to figure out younger players on just about every line who can be international class. And to do so during qualifying instead of before it. Which has some risks. I expect us to make it through our cupcake group easy but we definitely need for some of the people Klinsi was dropping or ignoring to step up into roles. That or some of these U-23s and U-20s need to come up big. It’s going to be interesting who emerges but if JK is smart quite a few players will be marginalized because they are going downhill and only going to get worse.
The problem is, JK got pilloried for using rookies at CB, what would’ve been the reaction if he’d done the same in midfield? I think any coach is going to err on the side of experience until it’s clear they can no longer get the job done. Now that it’s clear, there is no excuse for most of these players not to be replaced for youth.
Here’s the roster I hope to see for the November qualifiers:
GK: Howard, Guzan, Hamid
D: Shea, Ream, Brooks, Besler, Cameron, Alvarado, Yedlin, Chandler
M: FJ, Lletget, Williams, Morales, Bradley, Bedoya
F: Zardes, Gyau (a reach, but supposedly is close to returning), Altidore, Johannsson, Wood, Morris
A good mix of youth and veterans, and a definite upgrade in the speed department. JK needs to play Yedlin at right back and let him develop there. I think we should start developing the 4-3-3 in earnest. As much as I love Deuce, the only formation that works with him in it is the 4-4-2. For that reason alone we need to move past him. It doesn’t work if you’re trying to keep possession.
The bottom line is, if the younger guys aren’t good enough to beat Aruba or whoever it is we’re playing right now, they won’t be good enough in two years to do anything at the WC anyway so you might as well throw them in and see what we have.
I think it was clear the Old Guard needed gone during Gold Cup but the problem was that having committed to them for most of the summer, he had no time to “groom” the replacements for a one-off game. That doesn’t excuse it, it really says that his approach to the summer led to this result because as you suggest, you can’t just try a whole new team in a Mexico playoff game.
The work in terms of re-building and committing to the next generation needed to happen earlier in the cycle for this year to go well. He instead erred on betting on this bunch to have some more gas in the tank. They obviously don’t.
We have three more years to fix it, so we shouldn’t panic, but this will now lead to a lot of question marks across the lineup. There is some room for optimism when Yedlin feeds Wood for an unexpected late equalizer before the last blow was delivered. But I am going to be interested whether JK keeps his job and if so, who he starts to turn to now that this bunch has pretty well discredited itself. Lot of people he has marginalized or ignored are going to merit look-see’s and aren’t going to be “his people.”
I personally think JK wanted to do as you are suggesting, but key players either kept getting injured or weren’t in consistent form. I think he saw Gyau as a key potential player. I’m sure he wasn’t planning on Julian Green having basically zero development for a whole year. Brooks and Alvarado are talented but inconsistent. Shea looked pretty promising at LB, but injuries kept him sidelined at key times. I guarantee you he would’ve liked to see Williams or Morales overtake Beckerman, but they didn’t. People are ragging on him for all of the experimentation, but imo all of the experimentation was because he didn’t want to have to field the team we did in the GC and last night. Unfortunately, the guys he wanted weren’t able to do it.
All pretty good points, when you try things you have to be ready for a good number of things not to work.
Chandler never really stepping up and looking like what you’d kind of expect from a Bundesliga player is another one.
Another example although I wasn’t as down on him as pretty much everybody else on the planet.
Yeah I actually think he is ok, I think everyone just expected too much because of the idea he plays in the Bundesliga.
Want Shea and Yedlin at fullback not midfield, both are better when finding space that’s easier to find coming out of the back. Sure you give up something on the defensive end but I think there’s more upside then playing it safe with lets say Ream and Evans.
I’d wait and see how they are actually used (as opposed to listed on a roster), it could very easily be Shea at LB for part of the game with Beasley released….at minimum he could be subbed there.
Agreed! I really want Yedlin and Fabian flip flopped. Yedlin made a great run and ball for Wood’s goal but, overall, I think Fabian belongs further up field and Yedlin is more effective making runs and covering defensively at fullback.
Johnson’s talent just seems to be getting wasted at fullback. He made a couple of slashing runs and I was screaming at MB or whoever to send a ball over the top. We need more of him closer to goal.
Give Ngyuen the offense. Bench Altidore.
Do we really need Altidore and Guzan playing in this game?
Personally, I think Howard makes the save on the last goal, so no, and not because Guzan’s indispensable.
I would release Jozy for similar reasons — because he was where possession went to end — and not because he’s so helpful he should be bubble wrapped. In key games he disappears and some nobody scores for us instead.
I agree with you about Howard saving the last goal. Guzan was too close to the post and leaning the wrong way when the shot was taken. Everybody seems to be giving him a pass on it.
Yep, I thought he was leaning left worrying about his near post and the ball went the other way and he reacted late. I think he is capable of nice saves and Howard is capable of mistakes, but I think Howard remains the only keeper we have capable of the Traditional American Stand-on-his-head Keeping Performance, the sort of thing we needed last night. Just about every goal Guzan is caught off balance or fooled by the pass to be completely out of position (the nearly identical square backs for goals 1 and 2). No man’s land.
I think people give him a pass because the American tradition of goalkeeping leads us to believe anyone we put between sticks will be excellent. Guzan’s distribution was spotty (lots of balls over lines or lost on 50/50) and I didn’t think he did well saving either. And there was also the play he came out of the box, didn’t win the ball, and could have been caught out.
As a goalie, it seems to me, your first priority is to protect the near post because it is a much easier angle for the attacker than the far post. I sincerely doubt Howard makes that save, unless he was out of position closer to the far post and the attacker goes that way anyway. Any real goalies disagree?
My contention was that he was too close to the post for where the ball was shot from AND he was also leaning towards the post. He would’ve easily been able to save it had the shot been near post, which tells me he was in the wrong position. He should’ve been more neutral. My first thought when the shot went in was, “How did Guzan not stop that?” The replays confirmed to me that he should have.
I played keeper for many years. I replayed the goal myself to see if Guzan was out of position and I don’t think he was. Keepers are taught to never get beaten at your near post. The only goalie we have that I think may have saved that shot is Rimando because his reflexes are phenomenal. As far as Guzan vs Howard, I think Guzan edges Howard at this point in time though it’s close.
And I think JK is leaving Howard out to give him the Donovan treatment, not because he’s the poorer choice.
I seem to recall a few times when Howard has been beaten near post because he is leaning toward the far post.
It was a great volley, by a defender, at the end of the game, where everything went right. give the Mexican player some credit. 9 times out of 10 he hits the ball to hard, it bounces wrong and that shot ends up in row z
I played some keeper so I resent the diss.
He is leaning. Like the guy said, he’s not neutral, he’s anticipating. He guessed wrong. He also tends to guess on PKs and often dive the wrong way there too which is why JK considered replacing him. I think Guzan is overrated.
The guy is way over to the side, it’s not like he’s right there and he has to be sitting on the pole.
My point: we know Altidore isn’t impact currently with USNT, and we need new blood in our forward-line, and this would be much needed experience for new players like Wooten or Wood. And, we really don’t use Guzan for this friendly.