By FRANCO PANIZO
HARRISON, N.J. — Another forgettable performance. Another forgettable game. Another forgettable result.
The U.S. Men’s National Team suffered its latest setback on Tuesday by being on the wrong end of a 1-0 decision to Costa Rica at Red Bull Arena. U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann opted to go with a host of different faces to see what others could offer, but the reserve-filled American side still could not muster up enough quality to avoid picking up a third straight defeat.
As if the loss was not bad enough given that it extended a poor run of form that dates back months, the performance on the field was once again discouraging. The U.S. had very little attacking punch, and was fortunate not to lose by more than one to an organized Costa Rica team that was pushed on by the scarce few thousand fans that attended the international friendly.
There was one major positive with the strong return of veteran goalkeeper Tim Howard, but little else to instill confidence in U.S. fans ahead of a World Cup qualifying campaign that begins next month. In fact, most might be concerned with the direction the Americans are headed in given that they have now lost four straight home games vs. CONCACAF teams for just the second time in their history.
Here are some takeaways from the Americans’ 1-0 loss to Costa Rica:
HOWARD DESERVESÂ NO. 1 SHIRT OUTRIGHT
Jurgen Klinsmann may be planning to rotate Tim Howard and Brad Guzan in the coming months, but right now it is Howard that deserves the starting goalkeeper spot outright.
Howard stepped back in between the pipes on Tuesday for the first time since his epic and historic showing vs. Belgium at last summer’s World Cup, and he looked just as good as he has for most of his U.S. career. Howard was quick off his line to intercept Costa Rican through balls, aggressive and confident, communicative, and, of course, delivered several solid saves – including one on a breakaway in the 91st minute – to keep the Americans in the game.
It might seem to some like an overreaction to say Howard should be the No. 1 again after just one performance, but Howard’s good run of form extends to the Premiership season. The 36-year-old netminder has gotten off to a strong start with Everton, even winning the club’s Player of the Month award in August, and there are no signs that he will slow down any time soon.
While Guzan has not been bad in his time as U.S. starter, he also has not been great. There have not been many games where he has flat out saved the Americans, and the fact that Klinsmann is not deciding on Guzan or Howard is proof that Guzan has not done enough to lock up the starting job. Good move by Klinsmann here, however, as this approach will keep Guzan somewhat happy and ready should the aging Howard not make it to Russia 2018.
RESERVES FAIL TO CAPITALIZE ON CHANCE TO IMPRESS
This game provided a golden chance for reserve players to step up and make their cases, but very few did.
Klinsmann fielded a lineup vs. the Ticos that included only three of the starters – Jozy Altidore, Jermaine Jones, and Geoff Cameron – from Saturday’s CONCACAF Cup loss to Mexico. The other eight players who got the nod and the substitutes that followed all had a chance to really leave a lasting impression, but not many of them stood out.
Danny Williams was among the most disappointing. He has been on a good run of form at the club level with Reading, but failed to really make a positive impact vs. Costa Rica. DeAndre Yedlin and Brek Shea also seemed like players who could strengthen their cases for more minutes, but neither of the speedy wingers showed they have the technical qualities to be deserving of more starts right now.
There were a few players who helped their stock. Bobby Wood was physical, aggressive, and forward-thinking despite not having a ton of service, and Tim Ream again was solid at left back. Howard, as was mentioned before, also impressed in goal.
Still, it is discouraging that so few players seized the opportunity. Yes, Klinsmann may have been looking primarily to provide experience to some of these reserves, but they needed to do more with this chance.
FRUSTRATION EVIDENT FOR ALL TO SEE
Body language in soccer – as former U.S. centerback Jimmy Conrad has pointed out in the past – can be very telling and you needed only to see how some of the players barked at each other on the field to realize how frustrated the Americans are right now.
There were several moments of demonstrative bickering on the field, including a first-half exchange between Jermaine Jones and Brad Evans after the former was issued a yellow card. There was also a moment immediately after Joel Campbell’s 70th-minute goal in which a visibly upset left back Jonathan Spector shouted at Mix Diskerud, who was disinterested in the comments and walked away.
Arguing and demanding more of one another is normal on any team, but players admitted after the match that there is a higher level of frustration right now in the group because of the lack of results. That is not a good thing for the U.S. given that World Cup qualifying begins next month.
There is the chance that the team could come together in the long run because of this spell of adversity, but there is also the possibility that this frustration causes harm. The U.S. has two games left before it wraps up what has been a dour 2015, and at least four points and improved performances will be needed to help limit how much of this feeling lingers into next year.
IT’S TIME TO START USINGÂ ATTACK-MINDED PLAYERS
The U.S. needs to start relying more on attacking players if it wishes to be more proactive. It’s that simple.
The Americans have become far too predictable on the field simply because they lack players with a higher level of vision and dynamism. Yes, the U.S. might have physically-gifted players who possess speed, strength, or both, but that can prove easy to defend as we have seen in the past few matches.
Michael Bradley’s vision has improved tremendously in recent years, but he is still best suited to crash into the box with trailing runs rather than pulling the strings. That is why it is time for Klinsmann to start giving more call-ups and longer looks to Lee Nguyen, Benny Feilhaber, and Sacha Kljestan. Those three MLS-based players might not be ones who do as much of the defensive work as Bradley or Jermaine Jones or Alejandro Bedoya, but their vision, technique, ability to hit passes forward, and overall craftiness on the ball are things that the U.S. lacks right now.
Only Nguyen has been used recently and his minutes have been sporadic at best. If Klinsmann wants the U.S. to become more of a threat to opposing defenses in the near future and long-term, then he’s going to have to sacrifice a bit on the defensive side. Nguyen, Feilhaber, and Kljestan may not be world beaters, but they can add a dimension to the U.S. attack that is sorely needed.
Giving them longer looks in World Cup qualifiers may be seen as risky, but two of the three of them have been through those games before and know what it takes. Besides, the U.S., in all honesty, should have no real issues getting out of a third round group that includes St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guatemala.
Break down of american strikers in MLS whoscored stats
Sapong 9 goals, 3 assists,pass% 70.0 keypass 1.1 aerials won 3.4,WSR 7.11
Wondo 16 goals, 0 assists,pass% 76.5 keypass 0.6 aerials won 1.6 WSR 7.10
Jozy 12 goals, 0 assists,pass% 73.7 keypass 0.9 aerials won 1.2 WSR 6.83
Bruin 11 goals, 3 assists, pass% 69.4 keypass 0.7 aerials won 1.9 WSR 6.79
Agudelo 7 goals, 2 assists,pass% 75.5 keypass 0.6 aerials won 2.0 WSR 6.68
Davies 9 goals, 2 assists,pass% 74.2 keypass 0.5 aerials won 0.4 WSR 6.59
Well, there you, you and whoscored should be the next USNT coaches. When can you start?
If it only were that simple we’d have mathematician soccer coaches all over the world and ,as it stands right now, we don’t
I was just putting it out there to add and perhaps further the discussion. With many recent questions of where the US needs to look to next I just thought it was interesting.
Dax McCarty avg 3.3 tackles 2.6 int, pass% 84.3, key pass 0.9 WSR 7.24
Jermaine Jones avg 2.3 tackles 2.4 int, pass% 73.8 key pass 0.4 WSR 6.92
Kyle Beckerman avg 2.8 tackles 2.0 int pass% 83.2 key pass 0.6 WSR 6.99
just throwing that out there
That’s the kind of post we need to see more of here. Thanks for the info. As I stated above, Dax deserves a call up more than Sacha and this underscores that point.
Impressive. Good post.
Landon is done dude
I feel like everyone’s kind of forgotten that the 3rd round of Concacaf qualifying was not easy in 2012. Drew in Guatemala, lost in Jamaica, needed a Gomez free kick to get a 1-0 win over them here, a EJ stoppage time winner in Antigua. then had to come from behind after an early goal from Guatemala. Then we of coarse we kicked off the forth round going to Honduras and getting beat.
So in other words, we just need a match in the snow and we can turn this around.
You know who could really help the USMNT right now? Who could provide pace, creativity, goal-scoring, and work ethic? Who despite being in his 30’s is looking pretty good in all his TV commercials right now? Who all the players would trust and rally around? Landon Donovan, that’s who.
i agree with adam on this one. for some reason jozy keeps playing the finesse one-touch passes that nearly always land with a dud. you are not daniel iniesta jozy! stop it!
if jozy spent more time turning players, running at them, using his power, he would be a lot more popular with the fan base and likely more successful.
TFC look just as good without Braadley and Altidore as with them, maybe even slightly better
Also Jozy getting red carded from the bench tonight, not great
EXACTLY!!!! Altidore gets a red card from the bench…FROM THE BENCH like wow, Hercules Gomez scores and Sebastian Giovinco after playing for Italy just over 24 hours before the start of the match flies back to be with his team, enters the game in the second half and scores a “goal of the year”….beating 3 players and rifling a shot past Robles…wow
At this rate we’ll miss the World Cup and that’s what it might take to get everyone’s attention. You can bet Mexico won’t save us the way we saved them.
Adam, are you kidding me? Jozy does not have the touch, skill or ball sense to run at anything with the ball.
Go YouTube Jozy’s many excellent goals for AZ. He didn’t wake up one day and forget how to play like that. I agree that Jozy isn’t a zero-sixty type player from a standstill, but he’s most dangerous running onto passes in space, blasting forward and either getting off a shot, linking up with a second runner, or drawing a foul. Using him as a lamppost is a terrible waste of his talent.
I DVD that game last night. When I saw that line up I just found something else to do. If you’re looking for a start, why the hell you start Howard and keep Bill Hamid on the bench? Why continue to give Nguyen garbage minutes? How the hell you play Williams in a #10 role? Why start Jozie? JK, cant you see beyond the tip of your nose? You are a useless excuse for a Coach. Give it up. Do the honorable thing and quit because you’re in over your head. Gentlemen, the talent is there in the MLS but we do not have the Coaching ability. Do you see how attractive El Salvador plays? Most of those guys came through the USA Youth System but were ignore by the USA Youth Teams or/and MLS Teams. Jamaica has become stronger because of MLS. The best players from these Teams ply their trade in the MLS. Its the responsibility of the National Team Coach to find and field the best players. Oh, I forgot JK is unable to evaluate talent. I guess that’s why he left Nguyen on the bench and played Williams in the #10 position. Im sick and tired of being sick and tired of JK.
I’ve grown sick and tired of you saying the same thing all the time. You come across like a 5 year old throwing the same tantrum over and over. Can’t you at least vary your rants a little? Would it be too much to ask for some facts or new information from you? How about some solutions to our problems?
Let’s be realistic. The player pool isn’t going to produce materially better results from the US MLS players that have not been called in. Benny, Sacha and whoever else are fine MLS players, but there isn’t a US version of Giovinco or Robbie Keane, or even a Bradley Wright-Phillps there. We have a smallish range of mediocre talent right now. Maybe Benny offers a touch more going forward than Jones, but he’s also a touch less effective and lacks the same engine. Its immaterial. Maybe ditching two defensive mids would help, but Its just as likely that teams will blow past the mids there and carve up an already questionable backline. JK can and has tinkered looking for a consistent difference maker and its just not there — especially if Bradley is having an off game. Sad to say, but we are still a team that needs to play on the counter and look for set pieces. The best way to do that is to get Jozy to run more at the goal instead of using him as a back to goal holdup player, put a burner next to him, use Yedlin as a fullback doing a modest Dani Alves impersonation, and pray for rain. Or snow. Or at least a game where Bradley hits that one beautiful pass he can pull off every third game or so.
I’ve reached a similar conclusion that the US has to stick to bunker and counter attack. Maybe Wood with Jozy up top and two of the three–Zardes, Yedlin, or FJohnson –on the wings since all have speed.That way you can get 4 into the box quickly when you have the chance to counter. I fear it may be a decade until we have enough skilled players to make a marked improvement.
i agree with you, gary. (just pointing it out because that’s pretty rare.)
it’s one of the reasons i want klinsmann to stay on as technical director even if i don’t want him as manager:
the manager’s job should be to get the best results with the player pool available to him. our pool–for better or worse–is still best in a primarily counter-attacking system, although we are getting the players to give us flexibility at times. klinsmann either has not figured this out (unlikely), or largely refuses to play this way.
however, i would love it if we moved to a more possession-based and–most importantly–more flexible system in the next decade or so. that would fall under the responsibility of the technical director: to reform and guide the ussf development model and identify american players outside our ussf teams who can contribute to that kind of system.
i maintain that klinsmann could perform well in that capacity, especially if he didn’t have to focus on the game-to-game aspect of the senior usmnt as well.
Bobby Wood looked hungry. Lee Nguyen looked hungry. Tim Howard and Tim Ream looked like solid professionals.
Everybody else looked like a flat-out bum. I will trash JK’s performance as much as anybody but let’s remember these are not children — a poor performance by the boss is no excuse at all for a poor effort. Bickering? Tantrums? These guys are professionals?
At this point we might as well save a few bucks and hire Steve Sarkisian to preside over these latchkey adults.
I’ve had a really crappy day, so thanks for the joke about Sarkisian. The key is finding out which bars he hangs out in so we can offer him the job.
agree with just about everything here. only disagreement for me is Kljestan. he has had so many chances spanning two coaches. move on. Benny, Lee, Mix, Corona, Nagba, etc. for me.
i remember Spector yelling at Mix on that goal. him and Williams were ball watching and as a result, there was SO MUCH space for that ball to be cut back. it was shocking. VERY similar to Mexico’s 2nd goal.
i am shocked at Williams’ performance. i thought he would run away with that chance given his club form. but nope, it just didn’t happen. that said, he was solid against Brazil. so no reason to close the door on him. but with guys like Trapp, Kitchen, and Morales all playing similar positions, he needs to be more consistent.
i was also disappointed with Shea. he actually seems to be more consistent at LB…which is surprising.
Shea and Yedlin need the game to develop in front of them, they can then run into the spaces that open up. Neither’s off the ball movement is really good enough to create space for them self. Both have more upside in getting minutes at fullback.
yeah, it certainly seems so.
I have not been impressed with Mix for about a year and a half. He doesn’t seem to be improving at all and what’s even worse than his poor play that you describe was his flippant seeming attitude to his failure. I really think he should be left off the team in the future unless and until he shows marked improvement with NYCFC.
yeah, Gary, it’s hard to argue he deserves to be on this team. his play for NYCFC is not great but the argument was that he always does well with the US. he certainly didn’t against CR though so at some point he needs to step up or be left off.
Just for fun I decided to take a look at the leading goalscorers in MLS because with all of the clamor to get rid of Jozy I figured there must be at least half a dozen Americans scoring more goals than him in MLS. Well, no, there is one – Wondo. The third guy is Will Bruin. I’ve seen enough of him in two caps or whatever to know he’s not the answer. If somebody can’t score goals in MLS, what makes people think they’re all of the sudden going to light it up in international play? Foreigners who’ve played at international level don’t seem to have too much trouble scoring here (Giovinco, Keane, Drogba, etc).
Finally a breath of sanity!
“more call-ups and longer looks to Lee Nguyen, Benny Feilhaber, and Sacha Kljestan”
Really? You rebuild the team with these three old players?
More proof that there’s just nobody waiting in the wings to take over for our aging stars.
Emerson Hyndman will be 22 when these guys are over the soccer hill.
Micheal Bradley is 2 years younger than these “old players”
USMNT doesnt develop players, clubs do. Its clear that skill is need in the midfield, isnt it?
If they can help us through qualifying then we need it. That’s starting to look like it could be a struggle at the moment.
Yes it is. We should have no problem getting into the Hex, but after, if we’re playing like we now are… we easily could finish fifth or sixth. Odds are we do qualify, but right now it isn’t looking too much higher than 50-50.
Are you kidding me 50/50? That is just nonsense. Would you have said this if the US beat Mexico? NO!! The US will be just fine. Under Arena they barely got out of the semi-final group stage and came in third in the Hex group. The US has always won their semi-final group but it has always been tough. Mexico almost didn’t get out of the third round last cycle. They went through on goal differential beating out Jamaica. Then they sucked all the way. The US will blow right through this semifinal and will be fine during the hex cycle. All you guys saying that they have no chance or there is a 50/50 are ridiculous. Thw wolrd Cup is in 2018 not tomorrow. Give me a f’ing break!!!!!!
Aw, C’mon, the sky is falling!
Watching us through the Gold Cup and the one-game thing with Mexico… against which likely hex opponents would you say we have an advantage?
Mexico seems back on track.
Costa Rica is disciplined and hungry, as we saw in 2014. Maybe a fluke, but I’m not betting on that.
Jamaica is taking a page from Costa Rica’s recent success and focusing on defense, which propelled their run to the finals of the Gold Cup (and allowed them to credibly compete in South America before that).
Honduras has slipped off its developmental trajectory last hexagonal and since, so maybe that’s one against whom we would be favored.
Panama is hard to get a handle on but they aren’t pushovers. But even if they are fifth or sixth, that puts around fourth and the playoff? That’s why I said not too much above 50-50.
I agree we have time to fix this. Not sure it will happen under the current coach, but we’ll see.
Nagbe (25), Finlay (25) and Lletget (23) – should be brought in asap
Hyndman (19), Kiesewetter (20) and Gyau (22) – at some point in this cycle
Nguyen (28) – still have interest in
Feilhaber (30) and Kljestan (30) – not too excited about these late career surges from two below average USMNT vets, but sure why not use them while they are hot – certainly not part of the 2018 solution.
Agree on pretty much all these guys. Gyau was on his way to being a regular starter before the injury. Hopefully he gets back there quick.
Does anyone have an injury update on Gyau? Haven’t heard anything since he hurt his knee a year ago. Is he at least playing again?
Didn’t he re-injure his knee?
He tweeted “I’m comin” a couple of weeks ago, for whatever that’s worth.
totally agree on the first three.
the 2nd three…just need Hyndman and Kiesewetter to get into the first team. sounds like Hyndman will have that soon enough while Kiesewetter will hopefully break into Stuttgart’s first team soon. until then they will be out of their depth at the senior level. also agree that Gyau will be welcomed back. BVB II still isn’t going to cut it, but he was making progress with BVB. hopefully he can get back to it. but like you said, these guys are hopefuls for the cycle.
Hyndman, Kiesewetter did not do all that well against the U-23 Hondurans. Nagbe, Finlay and Lietget don’t score as often as Jozy and arguably are not as important to their team’s success as Kljestan and Feilhaber are to their’s.
Lletget and Finlay are wide midfielders, if you take away PKs this the American MLS scoring picture
11. Bruin
10.Wondo
9. Finlay, Sapong, Jozy, Davies
7. Agudelo, Dempsey, Grella, Lletget, Clark
6. Rowe, Zardes, Rolfe
Assist numbers
11 Finlay , 10 Feilhaber, 9 Kljestan 8 Davis, Dempsey Nguyen
Bradley with only 3 assists this season is kind of surprising.
Lletget has cooled off because since Dos Santos and Gerrard joined the team he sees a lot less of the ball. Also, after his early flurry of goals I think teams started to focus on him more since he was basically an unknown quality coming in.
+1
Totally agree
The first round should be easy. Time enough to wait for the January camp and any friendlies after November to test these guys against others in the pool. No need to rush the youngsters.
We have young strikers we can look at too like Bobby Wood or Andrew Wooten. Right now, Anybody is better than Lazy Altidore! Get him off USMNT once and for all.
Copy and paste troll comments… Now who’s being lazy?
As much as I’d love to see somebody scoring goals, Wood and Wooten had exactly the same number last night as Jozy.
When those two guys can score more than 20 goals in a season in a league as competitive as the Eredevisie, then you have a case. Right now they have potential. Sports is littered with players who had potential but nothing to show for it.
Lot’s of focus here on individual players, but the last time I looked, soccer was a team sport. And teams usually beat individuals. Developing teams means doing things like identifying a core group of six or seven who start virtually every game. And play in the same positions so that they can establish the kind of chemistry where players “know” what their team mate will do in a given situation without having to think about it. Developing a team means defining a style/consistent strategy. Enough with a different lineup each game. Enough with playing players in different positions from what they play on their clubs and what they played in the last USNT game. This demands coaching. And, speaking of accountability, I haven’t seen much of any coaching from Klinsi lately. And, while he’s at it, it might be nice if he made decisions that were best for the team and not for his ego (e.g., Donovan, Landon 2015).
yep, this team is bad. Its a managers job to get the players he has to play soccer well. Good ones get the team to play at a higher level collectively than their skills individually. Jurgen Klinsmann is not a good manager.
And it’s the manager’s job to take responsibility.
To me, JK seemed to blame the players for not being able to get over the Mexico loss, to explain their visually apparent frustration and eventual apathy in the Costa Rica game. That’s primarily his job. To prepare our guys to move on to the next challenge and come together and give it their all in hopes of a victory.
Don’t just throw out the poor player motivation as a reason and not admit to some of the blame.
With your argument, in theory, any nation, with the right coach, should be able to compete with the best. It HAS happened, but rarely in international soccer, which features mainly the usual suspects. Clubs manage to build teams around a core, often not needing to buy the best players to do so, but for a number of reasons a national team’s success comes down to personnel.
Why is Wales so good right now? Chris Coleman is probably a solid coach but it is really because Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey and others are exceptional. Belgium is #1 in the world because it has amazing players right now.
There is the question of the core, which is crucial. But I think we have a good core. MLS is good for that. The players this article mentioned would be good core players, without a doubt, and there are more out there. But we probably don’t have any of the three things needed to be the best – a truly great player, a strong leader (ideally a field player), and a fine coach. For example, I think of France’s team in 1998 that had Zidane, Deschamps (defensive mid, perfect position for the “leader”, and had played for the biggest clubs in the world), and Aimé Jacquet, one of the game’s all time great coaches. We are inferior in those three categories right now.
Interesting post. I could agree with that, with the caveat that our ‘good’ core may support a top-20 team but probably wouldn’t support being seeded for a World Cup group, instance, even if we had the three missing elements you identified. So the analogy with France in 1998 may be a good one but needs some qualification.
Sacha klejstan? Been there, tried that. That guy has had enough chances thank you.
Well, I disagree. He’s been tried out wide but he isn’t a wide player. On a previous thread someone pointed out he’s only had two opportunities in a central position. So, basically, SK has had far fewer chances to become the USMNT CAM than Bradley has, even though Bradley looks pretty bad in the position himself, and by putting him there we lose him from a position in which he often looks pretty good.
Not saying SK is the next Reyna, but bottom line is we haven’t had a good (or even consistently serviceable) CAM since Reyna.
This is where a lot of experimentation could have taken place, instead of the “let’s try everyone and their brother out of position and keep monkeying with the back four, so we can confuse all the players.” We squandered that time and those friendlies and still don’t have a CAM.
not true. he has been played as a #8 MULTIPLE times by Bob and JK. it never works. for whatever reason. further, Kljestan isn’t a CAM. he has been, and will always be, a #8.
I hear you. Close to 50 caps. Majority with Bob who played him centrally, I think. Had his moments in lowly January friendlies.
I just never saw him as a guy that could be a key player. Solid few years at Anderlecht. But eventually lost out on PT there.
solid for red bulls right now. 30 years old. Just think his time has passed.
Reyna was not really a CAM by the way. He played deeper – often spreading the ball around from deep lying positions. Correct me if I am wrong on that one.
You’re correct about Reyna. He was a deep-lying playmaker, so much so that he was listed as a CDM on FIFA.
Well we’ll get to see Kljestan take on Bradley tonight.
Being from Southern California, I used to follow Sacha back in his Chivas days and I used to tout him. However, the last time I remember him having a standout game with the Nats was when he was still with Chivas and he scored a wonder strike against Sweden I think it was. He has had numerous chances and has never seemed to improve, if you ask me. If he is what we need to improve, I think we are in big trouble. I think Dax mcCarty is much more deserving of a call up than SK. For those who don’t know, while Dax has been playing defensive mid the last few years, he came up through the youth system and excelled as a playmaker. He has a pretty deft passing touch and can thus play a couple of different positions in the midfield.
Sasha Klesjan and Dax McCarthy are the reason NYRB are on top of the Eastern conference and are not in need of a high profile DP. Klesjan plays CAM and effectively supplies BWP and SAM up top, and they are winning games. Regardless of what anyone thinks they are first team players for one of the best teams currently in MLS, and they are excelling in areas we are in need of on the USMNT…CAM and CM
I get it. Having a good year with the Red Bulls. That is a good TEAM right now. Great story and apparently great coach.
Wondo has led MLS in scoring multiple years. And I think most will agree, he is not an international forward. Nothing against Wondo or any other MLS player. Skillset is successful in MLS, just not internationally. Nothing against MLS. There are countless amount of very good Spain club players that are not good enough for Spain.
Sorry, again, Klejstan had his shot. Just has not been a key international midfielder for whatever reason.
He is not going to do anything more than what we have seen from Mix so far.
Next…….
Who should be next then? How many more times do we have to see Bradley fail at being a 10?
No evidently you don’t….if you did you would know Klesjan is doing way more than Bradley with less talent around him……can you imagine Toronto with no Giovinco??
Michael Bradley 5 goals 6 assists
Sebastin Giovinco 21 goals 15 assist
Where is everyone else on that team? Sorry but we need to try something different in ALL positions
Who else do we have besides Jozy? No one else scores except for Dempsey. All our other strikers are at an MLS level. Wondo, Agudelo, Bruin, Zardes, McInerney should be in Europe to get better
Wood scores, no?
Of that lot, only Agudelo and McInerney are younger than Jozy. Only Wondo, who is getting too old for 2018, scores more than Jozy.
Agreed. So sure, people will bad mouth Jozy, but no one really offers more. We probably all wish one of the younger guys would suddenly make us forget about Jozy, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Even the new darling Morris whose speed is a definite weapon just demonstrated with the U-23s that he still has plenty to do to get up to Jozy’s level.
Wood is young or Wooten maybe both in 2. Bundesliga , but they are not really playing in better leagues or doing better day-to-day than Jozy and it seems dreams that they will really fill the bill are still premature..
Wooten is even older than Jozy! Jozy’s still really young, but because he broke onto the scene earlier people are ready to move on.
Jozy plays old
I thought Jozy IS at the MLS level.
And what about giving Charlie Davies a look? And getting rid of Jozy/lazy Altidore!
And this is why so many people roll their eyes when folks talk about getting rid of Jozy…because these are the types of replacements people come up with.
+1000
Watch Charlie play for the Revs sometime. He may not have the physical tools of Jozy but he still has some speed, can play with his back to goal when needed, and has a soccer IQ significantly above Jozy.
That isn’t to say he’s the answer to our problems up top but if you look at his movement off the ball he’s make some damn nice runs to drag defenders out of position and create space for those around him. In the right system/formation it’s certainly just as worth of a shot as some of the other options people are throwing out there.
I agree. Charlie works his ass off for the Revs and is better than Jozy in almost every way.
On Lee… he plays a lot of defense for the Revs…box to box. So the notion he can’t play defense like Bradley is nuts. I will go further, he plays a ton more defense than Benny. Sacha IDK, havent seen him in a while but I think JK is dont looking at him.
Feilhaber avg 2.6 tackles 1.5 int WSR-7.48
Nguyen avg 1.0 tackles 0.4 int WSR- 6.97
Bradley avg 2.0 tackles 1.4 int WSR- 7.26
Kljestan avg 1.5 tackles 0.7 int WSR – 7.38
WSR= overall whoscored.com rating
Wow Jack….you just found the key to our success. Awesome site man.
Look at the MLS best 11 (based of of stats)….Thanks dude
Hilarious to see so many of the obvious possible solutions, yet Klinsmann is that stubborn to want to use “his guys.” Nguyen was played out wide, but he’s a central attacker. What the heck was the Jones/Williams combo expected to produce on the offensive end?!
Why doesnt Howard just retire? He gave his greatest performance vs belgium. Just retire and focus on Everton. He has a contract until 2018 i believe.
Why? Tim is still great!
my guess is they’re an everton fan? otherwise, i have no idea why you’d want howard to retire from the usmnt.