photo by Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports
By FRANCO PANIZO
A decision has been made, and both John Brook ands DeAndre Yedlin will be staying with the U.S. Men’s National Team next month.
U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann revealed on Monday that he intends to keep Brooks and Yedlin with his team for the CONCACAF Cup showdown with Mexico on Oct. 10. The two youngsters are both eligible to play for the U.S. Under-23 team that will be trying to qualify the Olympics around the same time, but Klinsmann has decided that it is best for the them .
The same cannot yet be said for Stanford forward Jordan Morris.
“Definitely, John Brooks and DeAndre Yedlin will be with the senior team,” Klinsmann told reporters at his pre-game press conference. “We haven’t made a decision first on Jordan if he joins us towards the Mexico game or he goes with the Olympic team.”
Morris, 20, also recently said that no decision has been made as to which team he would join, but hinted that he would likely go to Olympic qualifying when asked if Klinsmann had talked to him about his role for October.
“I haven’t really talked to him too much about that, and I think that there’s no real game plan right now, but in talking with him really the first focus right now is to qualify for the Olympics,” Morris told SBI last month. “Hopefully I get to take part in those qualifiers and I think that’s the focus for now.”
This season, Morris had started in every Stanford game until being called up by Klinsmann this past weekend to replace the recovering Clint Dempsey. Morris has netted once in those matches, and continues to impress the U.S. coaching staff and scouts.
“Jordan is just getting better every game right now he’s playing with Stanford,” said Klinsmann. “I had people out there, actually, watching his games. The late call in came based on Clint not being 100 percent yet. I kind of had him on alert that if Clint doesn’t feel 100 percent.
“I also intended there to have Jordan with us for a couple of days, just to regroup with us, to be back in the group a month prior to a very crucial moment. He was obviously thrilled, he misses one college game, but they won it anyway, so it’s all good.”
Klinsmann’s U.S. side will play Mexico for a spot in the 2017 Confederations Cup at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, next month. The U-23s, meanwhile, take part in an Olympic qualifying tournament held in several cities from Oct. 1-13.
*** IMPROMPTU CAPTION CONTEST ***
“…You put your left foot in and you shake-it-all-about!
You do the Hokey Pokey…”
A little team bonding twister night
Left foot yellow, right foot blue, let’s spin for right hand, right had gree.
I learned how to pass from Gooch.
Pretty typical generally players from any country that have played in the World Cup do not play in the Olympic Qualifiers. Generally, because they are involved with higher club teams and with full national teams. I’m going to go out on a limb and say CR, Mex, and Hond. probably won’t have any players from their WC Rosters on their U-23s. I would doubt there will be many players that saw time in the GC this Summer playing in qualifying.
Since all teams are allowed 3 over 23 years of age players most teams make the best of it and do call up 3 of their older more experienced senior squad members. I believe Mexico and Honduras will but as for JK after losing this year’s Gold Cup and having to worry about the Oct. 10th playoff maybe he won’t have this option available for the U-23 since he has to win the playoff no matter what to make up for his Gold Cup fiasco.
You can call the over age players for the Olympics but not the qualifiers.
As Jack said overage players are only allowed in the Olympics and then its usually not stars as they are preparing or starting their league seasons by the time the Olympics come around, usually some decent keepers, some center backs and older aging strikers. As I recall Argentina wasn’t even sure if they were going to get Messi for Bejing even though he was U-23.
Daniel, it would be good to know the rules before posting about them.
Morris should absolutely be with the U-23s. makes absolutely sense for Brooks to come to the US/Mexico game. Yedlin simply gets in because he is fast.
The U23s fullback pool is thin at best.
Really the team looks like Trapp, O’neil and the U20s. The team could be a little too young and could really use more experience. Missing another Olympics would be pretty embarrassing.
Won’t happen this time because i believe a third spot was added to Concacaf this time so now 3 teams get to go to the olympics instead of 2, So no matter how bad our U-23 team plays they just have to not be the worst. Way to go Fifa let’s make concacaf even less competitive.
The 3rd place CONCACAF team has to win a play-off against Colombia (2nd place CONMEBOL) to qualify. Not exactly an easy game
No matter how bad they play? The full USMNT did just finish 4th in the GC. This is not a gimme.
Brooks would shine in that Olympic qualifier, not so much against Mexico
We don’t need Brooks for Mexico, nor should we use him. There are better options already. The U-23s could use him though.
stop making sense. this is the USMNT under Klinsmann we are talking about. we need lots of different center backs
Highest winning percentage of any USMNT coach, all time.
Nuff said.
Actually that stat may be overrating the job JK has done for the simple fact that the player pool is deeper and more talented than what previous managers had to work with which lends itself to more consistent victories and over top nations at that! JK is the only coach in recent memory to not get a US team to the GC final and furthermore 2 previous coaches(Arena, BB) have gotten the senior team to at least the last 16 of a WC or beyond so in my opinion that record doesnt hold too much water.
Team is deeper in mediocre talent. We have fewer stars on this team than we had 4 -6 years ago.
really bro?
“JK is the only coach in recent memory to not get a US team to the GC final and furthermore 2 previous coaches(Arena, BB) have gotten the senior team to at least the last 16 of a WC or beyond so in my opinion that record doesnt hold too much water.”
ummmmmmm JK won the 2013 GC…..
ummmmmmm JK made it to the last 16 in 2014…. which was last year….. which shows your “recent memory” isn’t to be trusted…
“the player pool is deeper and more talented than what previous managers had to work with”
pretty sure JK has had a direct hand in deepening this player pool with the dual nationals he has brought in…thus wouldn’t this count towards his rating rather than against it?…
Look! The sky is green,
apples taste like oranges.
Education’s prime…
Same results as the last manager (or worse) with at least as good a player pool if not better. Oh and four times BB’s salary. 2013 win in the B team gold cup doesn’t count for much.
It is true that JK made the Gold Cup Final in 2013, but that does not disprove what Ronniet stated about JK being the only U.S. coach in “recent memory” to be eliminated prior to the final. More to the point; JK must own the fact that he coached the USMNT to their worst performance ever in the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
I guess reading isn’t fundamental smh…..I never said JK didn’t get the team to the last 16 of a WC i was making the point hay he has yet to do anything in a meaning tournament that no other coach hasn’t done. BB made a 16 appearance and Arena made the final 8. Yeah JK has transitioned some dual nationals to the program but if the duals only Jermaine Jones and Fabian Johnson have consistently produced and come to think of it BB brought JJ in. Again, JK has won some high profile friendlies but lets not act like he’s making noise with his rosters when it matters
Whoa…hang on, guys. BB making the final 16 in South Africa versus JK making the final 16 in Brazil are two entirely different animals…JK should be immortalized for simply making it out of that group last year…a truly phenomenal accomplishment. Beating Algeria and drawing against England and Slovenia is nothing to pride yourself on…the USA was expected to make the final 16 five years ago…the USA did so much better in Brazil…almost came back and tied that match with Belgium…c’mon now…Give Jurgen credit where credit is do…
Worst gold cup performance in 15 years. Nuff said.
The picture of Brooks passing the ball says it all. I’d be amazed if he was still standing afterwards.
perhaps the fact that he’s using his left foot is what makes it look odd to you but being that he’s a lefty his legs look normal; it’s his chicken wing arms that unintentionally look odd.
LoL Never mind the body of work, let’s evaluate a players passing/distribution ability on a fraction of a second in time.
Not particularly surprising news about Yedlin and Brooks. But it seemed apparent from the England friendlythat the U-23s need someone with the cutting edge of Morris. If Altidore, Dempsey, Johansson, and Wood are in form on the club level, let’s see if they can get it done against Mexico.