With another USA-Mexico showdown coming full steam from Nashville this evening, a lot of intriguing matchups will be on display.
It will also be the first showdown between the two sides, following Jonathan Gonzalez’s international allegiance to El Tri from the Stars and Stripes this past winter.
After representing the U.S. Youth National Teams at the U-17, U-18, and U-20 level, the 19-year-old Gonzalez made the switch to Mexico and has earned two caps with the senior squad. It was a surprising move by Gonzalez, who may have seen a bigger role with the USMNT who are targeting youth ahead of the next World Cup qualifiers.
Gonzalez also plays domestically for Liga MX side Monterrey, and later stated it was the ‘perfect decision’ to join El Tri.
It is unclear whether or not Gonzalez will get playing time in Nashville tonight, but should he get on it will make for some extra fireworks between these two Concacaf rivals. Us at SBI want to know your feelings on Gonzalez’s move to Mexico and if it was a big loss for the USMNT.
Vote in the poll below about your feelings on Jonathan Gonzalez’s switch to Mexico.
[polldaddy poll=10104643]
His choice.
It’s a shame the decision was influenced heavily by Arena, who didn’t trouble himself to call up or even recruit the kid because he was busy going all Real ‘Merican…when you’ve got choices, and one side is showing you love and the other is being reactionary and xenophobic politically and disinterested on the soccer side, hard to fault the kid for going where he felt he was wanted.
Wish we had him. But we don’t. Not gonna hate on the guy for that.
He couldn’t have started in our midfield last night and from watching him in warm ups he looked relieved with being with the reserves. He’s a kid so get off him and let him go. We don’t need anyone like him as we only need real Americans on our MNT.
I’m with clint’s mom. How much has he played much for Mexico or Monterrey, since the switch?
Never cared less. Screw mercenaries. Don’t you guys get enough of this from club soccer? As far as I’m concerned, if I guy even thinks about wearing the green and red, I want nothing to do with him. Give me Americans. Also, the guy is pedestrian.
partly it was the timing, yeah? that portugal game last november (the game gonzalez was snubbed from and he later said that hurt his feelings, yes?) was of course right after the usa’s failure against trinidad on october 10 and bruce arena’s resignation three days later and basically our whole usmnt world was in upheaval, continuing with gulati then resigning on december 5. and all of this was before ernie stewart started working on august 1. i think if just the timing of that portugal game had been different, he maybe would have gotten the call. partly just terrible timing and he fell through the cracks, we lost a good one there no doubt.
Young kid went where he was wanted. Tough to blame him for that. One thing I’ll say for Klinsmann is that Gonzalez would be wearing the RWB had he stuck around. Why he wasn’t at least called into a camp when he was killing it with Monterrey and the USMNT were in desperate need of MF play, I’ll never know.
Agree with all of this
snore
I feel absolutely fine about it and wish him luck. Any player lucky enough to be blessed with dual citizenship should take the opportunity to play with the team where he is going to get the best balance of challenging quality and minutes to play. It’s a tough thing to have to guess about at such a young age.
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I feel a bit sick at how the whole 9/11 thing has been commercialized, marketed, and militarized into a shameless effort to whip up nationalism, with uniformed military on the field as if soldiers had anything remotely to do with sporting events. Part of what I like about soccer is the mix of nationalities and styles, the chance to see good players from countries big and small, in different combinations for club and country. I’m for world peace through soccer, not for US jingoism. I thought Kasey Keller was embarrassing demanding that young players should have to “feel American” and Herculez Gómez was right to be angry at the very idea of pushing any young person to reject any part of his heritage.
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I feel utterly uninterested in clicking on any link to a commercial polling site. Sorry.
He can go to hell and honestly i don’t care
I feel unbothered. Let him do his thing.
He made his decision based on what he felt was best for him. Today he will get a glimpse of his “choice” (GOOD or BAD)
Can’t blame him. He did everything he could to join the US program but because their arrogance and incompetence his only option ended up being a much better program ran by actual professionals. Good for him.
We pretty much agree. Hopefully things will turn w/ US Soccer admin. Guess we’ll see soon enough.
USSF dropped the ball on this one. don’t blame him at all, disappointed but I wouldn’t call him a traitor.
After hearing how his saga played out I was SHOCKED to hear how few scouts we have. In no other sports do we have so few scouts to locate talent. We need an MLB model or something similar….Gonzalez was duped by El Tri,…too bad for him. Hope we beat them 3-0…
Where is the “whatever, don’t care. Can we stop talking about him already?” option. I don’t care that he swapped, but I’m tired of hearing about it. It’s Rossi all over again. He left, let’s get over it and stop talking about him. This obsession with the “one that got away” is tiring. It’s like listening to your friend that got dumped whine and moan incessantly at every opportunity about how “there’ll never be another girl like her.”
Jeez, Chad. You gotta move on! It’s been SIX FREAKING years! What about Susan? She seems nice, and she’s definitely interested in you.
Except we are about to play Mexico for the first time since he switched (and he was called into their camp) and part of the whole point of these games is US evaluating young talent on the field. He would have been young talent on the field to compare to Adams, Mckennie, ect. So this is kindof a relevant time to bring him up again. There should also be a microscope on the actions of the USSF because of there failures and him switching fits into that story. Regardless, I doubt he will be brought up again many more times except if he is involved in future games against the US.
I stopped thinking about him about a day after he made his decision. You are right,. Why worry about what you can’t change? Focus on the players we do have, who to use and how best to use them.
Why do we keep bringing this up? Most of us have moved on. I actually felt kinda bad for the kid when he wasn’t selected for the WC. Although it confirmed to me that the El Tri national program is made up of douches…
While I disagree with his personal decision. What really upsets is how the USSF handled the situation. I think this is much more the case of us letting him slip through. Yet another symptom of poor leadership and arrogance from the top to down the line coaching staffs at various levels of the NATs program.
Can we say it was shitty of him to switch without calling him a traitor? seems a bit much.
And if we can’t….. how do we feel about British born Carter-Vickers? honoring his fathers heritage.
Has he really even shown that well at the club level since defecting? I don’t hear much about him now that his international future has been determined.