Richie Ledezma’s season has been filled with frustration due to several injuries at PSV, but the American ended his competitive schedule on a major high note in Sunday’s Eredivisie finale.
Ledezma scored his first senior goal for PSV in a 2-1 road win over PEC Zwolle, giving the attacking midfielder major confidence heading into the 2022-23 campaign. The 21-year-old was reduced to only five league appearances due to a serious knee injury suffered in 2020, mainly featuring for Jong PSV in the Eerste Divisie.
Ledezma came off of the bench in the 69th minute of Sunday’s season finale and needed only four minutes to propel PSV in front at MACPARK Stadium. Jordan Teze played a through ball upfield for Ledezma to race onto, before the substitute drilled a low shot into the bottom-left corner.
It was Ledezma’s eighth-career goal in the Netherlands and his second between PSV and Jong PSV this season. Ledezma finished the match with a match-high two drawn fouls, while he also won five of his seven duels and made one interception.
Ledezma, who has earned one cap for the USMNT, now enters his offseason ahead of this summer’s Dutch Super Cup against PSV in late-July.
Mexico’s aggressive recruiting is designed to take players away from the USMNT not put players into the Mexico NT. They make the switch, then play a meaningless friendly and are then cast aside.
I hope I’m wrong but that’s what it been looking like.
I don’t think that’s true. I think they are just set with their core group as Gregg largely is at this point too. There is a significant drop off in talent from Mexico’s aging first team and their second team. Araujo will definitely get his shot after Qatar. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ochoa goes to Liga Mx and then the NT. Efra has been an international star at youth levels he just hasn’t made the adjustment to adult game. We’ve been waiting for him to flip the switch and if he does he will be playing for El Tri. Mendez, Ledezma, Cowell would all be able to play for El Tri once they cycle out their vets.
You got 3 birth years in your post. You & Quozzel touched on info, I’ve been looking at; so I gotta add lil’ more JR! (For more context).
McKenzie, Servania, Pomykal were ‘99 born.
‘99- outsider- Lennard Maloney (CB/Dortmund)
‘00- James Sands is a MLS champ, and versatile enough to play CB & Dmid on loan (Rangers).
Jaylin Lindsey starting RB for Charlotte.
(FYI- Each birth year always has a wave of outsiders (fringe youth players, Dual-Nats, college, or late-bloomers).
‘00 -outsiders- BA, Dike, Nico G, Amaya, Andres Perea, Tomas Romero
Aboubacar Keita is the biggest disappointment of the ‘00 birth year, imo. He started every match next to Richards in the ‘19 U20 WC and isn’t getting any minutes, since he got traded to the Rapids.
Llanez, Araujo, Konrad were ‘01 born.
‘01- Taylor Booth will be in the Eredivisie (Utrecht) next season. Hopefully, he plays more than what we seeing from Indiana Vassilev (Aston Villa/Inter-Mia).
‘01 -Cole Bassett on loan (Feyenoord-misspelled).
Tessman (Venezia) a lil playing time in Serie A.
Bryan Reynolds on loan from Roma (tbd).
‘01- outsiders- Hoppe, Balogun, Gallegos, (4 defensive mid’s) Cardoso, Otasowie, Flach, Aidan Morris
This post was about players born btween ‘99-‘01. Players born from ‘02-‘03 are the last 2 years of the millennials (‘82-‘03) and I’ll save those names for another time. The talent influx of players born from ‘98-‘03, is taking similar shape as the players born from ‘78-‘83, but exponentially more, in both quantity & quality. This to me signals the beginning of the end of players getting 100 caps for the US. And cuts down players appearing in multiple WCs. There’s going to be too much talent for only 23 or 26 spots. Saying this is exciting times for US soccer/futbol fans is an understatement.
PS- Ledezma is a baller!! Salute to him having a healthy pro career! As well as the USMNT!
FWIW, I believe Otasowie is just modeling now not a soccer player anymore. As far as I can tell never played this season for Brugge and had stopped training with the club. Maybe something changed but that was the latest in April.
Definitely the most disappointing player from ‘01 birth year, imo.
It’s really hard to half way be a pro athlete if your not committed you might as well do something else.
2019 U20s misses (so far)
Soto: another disappointing loan this season 15 app 1g
Gloster: finally playing regularly for NYCFC 8 app so far 1g.
All 3 GKs, Scott at Crew2, Ochoa with Mexico and CJ dos Santos with Miami2.
Araujo: joined Mexico
Good Pros (not NT quality at this time)
Cerillo and Servania: regulars for FCD
Chris Durkin: wasn’t sure where to put him had a couple good years in Belgium back at DCU
On the fringe
Pomykal: back as an 8, not great g or a numbers but looks to muddy the waters at the 8 position.
Ledezma: had broken thru with PSV then injury will see if they use or loan next season
Mendez: full season in Portugal, that would have been lock NT starter 20 years ago
Llanez: injuries and a bad loan set him back. Has been good in all 3 NT appearances. See where ha lands next.
McKenzie: up and down with Genk manager change hurt, still 2000+ mins in Belgium is pretty good, plus very entertaining on Orange Slices
Konrad: great start at Marseille, then fizzled, injuries and manager publicly criticizing his professionalism.
Stars:
Weah, Dest, Richards regulars in top leagues playing in Euro competitions.
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Certainly some guys have been disappointing but on a whole this group has done well for itself. Perhaps we should have seen our current strikers issues coming with this group having Soto and Rennicks with Weah filling in. Of course Ferreira’s paperwork didn’t come thru in time, Akinola got hurt, and Sargent wasn’t released. With these guys still being just 22 and under plenty of time for a few more to strike it big.
His touches on the ball were mostly very good. Not perfect but really good. Hope not one we lose to Mexico’s aggressive recruiting.
We’re getting a boatload of guys across Europe. It’s AMAZING, frankly, just how many young guys we have who are quality that you look at and go: “hey, maybe that guy is somebody who’ll be helping us soon.”
The problem is, for whatever reason, we still haven’t found a money striker…and Canada – which has much less than us most other places – has two of them. We get ourselves a legit, true-blue guy like Clint Dempsey or Brian McBride who can knock them in again, and we’ll be wildly more dangerous. I honestly have no idea why we haven’t got that guy right now…it honestly comes across as pure dumb bad luck, a statistical blip that will hopefully fix itself as the law of averages comes into play.
Quozzel, We are currently seeing a surge of emergent US talent. It started with Pulisic during the 2018 cycle and added Adams, McKennie, Musah, Reyna, Dest, etc…this cycle. While it’s true we don’t currently have a clinical finisher at the striker position we do have 2 very talented players who could develop into being proficient finishers….Pepi & Sargent. Both may have struggled this year finishing plays, but both showed flashes of the talent (movement, creativity, positioning, etc…) that could develop into that lethal finisher we want.
You have to remember that the vast majority of our team is essentially Olympic age or younger. As this group matures and build chemistry together they’re just going to become better and better. We’ll also be able to augment the team with other talents without putting too much pressure on them. If we can add Tillman, Gomez, Sanogo, Clark, Che, etc… in 2023 this generation should be extremely formidable by 2026.
Funny people are st discounting Feirera. Who has 9 goals this MLS season thus far. Pepi is young and has a lot of time to develop. Sargent honestly would be better served joing St Louis SC in MLS next season. Haji Wright is finally coming good.
What’s interesting Quozzel, is starting with the ‘98 birth year, we have 5 consecutive years of 5+ YNT players, not only play professionally, but make the US senior team. I actually, Mr. magoo’d my way into this info, (in comparison with WC winning countries), no country is developing this much talent going into 1st division leagues at the rate, US currently is. Gonna add more to JR’s thread for the ‘99-‘01 birth years to elaborate!
I purely looked at just the guys on the U20 WC roster that beat France. I didn’t include guys like Rennicks or Keita that weren’t highly thought of at the time.
Keita tore his ACL that’s why he hasn’t played for Rapids. McKenzie had his appendix out shortly before the WC so Keita was a surprise starter. He showed he can be a good pro at the Crew but was prone to mental lapses.