Gregg Berhalter won’t have the services of star wingers Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah for November’s CONCACAF Nations League matches but will have two younger players eager to prove a point.
Paxten Aaronson and Kevin Paredes were two players included in Berhalter’s 24-player roster on Thursday ahead of the upcoming quarterfinal showdown against Trinidad & Tobago. Both Aaronson and Paredes have MLS backgrounds after previously serving as homegrown players for the Philadelphia Union and DC United respectively.
Paxten, the brother of Union Berlin’s Brenden (who is also on the USMNT roster), is currently in his second season with German Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt. The 20-year-old is fresh off his 10th combined appearance of the season, logging 12 minutes in Frankfurt’s 1-0 road victory over HJK Helsinki in the UEFA Europa Conference League group stage.
Aaronson’s versatility has seen him used in midfield and as a winger for club and country, something that certainly will help him fight for minutes with the USMNT. A USMNT U-20 standout over the past few years, Aaronson has continued to develop in Germany and now could be an option against the Soca Warriors this month.
“When two guys go down, an opportunity opens up for another player,” said Berhalter on Aaronson. “We see [Paxten] as a winger similar to Christian, in the fact that he gets in the penalty box and he’s dangerous in front of goal, and that’s what we focus on with our wingers. We know goals are a premium, and he’s a young player that has shown that he has a knack for scoring goals, and the starting point is arriving in the penalty box, which he does really well.
“He’s got an interesting profile with his quickness and his ability to get out of trouble, we think he’s good at pressing,” Berhalter added. “He’s got a lot of things that show us he’s going to be an excellent player in the future and now’s the time to give him an opportunity.”
Paredes, a USMNT U-20 teammate of Aaronson, is in his second full season with Wolfsburg. The 20-year-old came through DC United’s ranks as a fullback/winger, which has continued to be his role during eight combined appearances this season.
A Virginia native, Paredes recently scored his second-career Bundesliga goal in a 2-2 draw with Werder Bremen and overall has two caps for the USMNT. He helped force an own goal in the Americans’ 4-0 friendly victory over Oman in September and also featured in a 3-1 loss to Germany last October.
With Aaronson potentially being a candidate to feature in Pulisic’s left wing role, Paredes is also knocking on the door of slotting into Tim Weah’s right wing spot this month.
“When I first saw him at D.C., I immediately thought, this is the left back of the future, a guy that can really step into that role,” Berhalter said about Paredes. “We’ve been watching his work in Wolfsburg, impressed with what he was able to do last game as a wingback, and think that he’s versatile. So we like that versatility, especially as we have needs in the winger position. We think he’s a guy that can slot in nicely.
“He played in the Oman game [in September], did a good job,” Berhalter added. “He came in the Germany game [last month] as a winger, did a good job. So he’s just continued to make progress and we’re excited to be working with him.”
The USMNT hosts Trinidad & Tobago on Nov. 16 in Austin, Texas before visiting Port of Spain, Trinidad on Nov. 20.
to me the common thread on these 2 plus zendejas is pressing. people can fanboy-and-stat it all the want. he can’t get the 2 attacking wings he wants. he has effectively retired arriola, morris, and roldan. so we’re gonna call in some guys to hassle TnT pressing. you really need to press TnT? really? just put out technicians and take them apart. i continue to believe the pressing concepts are “punch down.”
he made this same mistake with panama away. (and klinsi made the same mistake with wondo). thing being to win soccer games you need people who can deliver in the final third.
this also gets at my concern where just because GB trips over something functional doesn’t mean he keeps it, especially if he doesn’t have the same personnel around. he has a tendency to revert back to what he was doing before. to me part of the virtue of the 4231 was less of a dumb shape than 433 with the wings high — us starting deeper on defense. and we’re back to picking people to naively chase downfield. great.
I have a problem. I watched all the US U-20’s games and I didn’t think either was impressive. Even making allowances for Paredes’ late arrival, he showed next to nothing. I thought Cowell, Sujllivan, Luna, and McGlynn all looked better in that competition.
Gary, not sure what games you watched but Paxton won the golden boot at the CONCACAF U20 championship and wasn’t released by his club team for the U20 world cup.
I was referring to the World Cup games, not the CONCACAF. I had forgotten that Paxton had not been on the WC team. I think the WC games were more relevant anyway since it was a much higher level of competition.
my problem is more the seeming lack of acknowledgment that germany thumped a lot of this roster last month. we respond like a team that thinks it should lose those games — no panic, no changes — which makes it hard to change those results.
to your point, my general impression of the coach is he’s a poor judge of relative talent who last cycle demoted several of his key senior players (later on) to the U23s at this stage. he then gets credit for bringing in “well duh” type players from ajax or valencia. one of whom was already USA down his resume.
paredes played U20 worlds, i don’t think paxten did. i think paredes could get interesting but they generally struck me as U23 types. i think they should be there.
IV, the US was horrible defending against Germany the whole game including the first half when they play a 4231. The top four were very good against Germany but the back 6 were attrocious. He made three changes to the back three against Ghana, the most important being not playing McKennie as a 6 because he has shown repeatedly that he lacks the discipline to do it. That is 50% of the back six that he changed and he put one of the players in a different position o. Tip of the personell changes. It isn’t true to say he didn’t make any changes. Would those changes have made a difference against Germany? It’s hard to know because the German players are significantly better than Ghana’s. Making that jump becomes subjective. For me, I think Playing Johnny instead of McKennie would have been an improvement; Lund would have done as bad or worse than Dest against Sane but Dest was better than Scalley and MRob probably would have been better than Ream but only slightly.
So Germany “thumped us” we should be panicking, but bringing in two 20 yr olds who play in the Bundesliga is too much. Yes I’m sure your career Championships guy, or career 2Bundesliga guy will push us over the top. Maybe we should drop the top 5 scorer in Eredivisie for checks note the guy that can’t get on the field in the Portuguese 2nd division, or the guy in the German 4th division after being dropped in Sweden and Serbia. Certainly those talents would put us over the top.
JR: tele, you’re saying something happened vs. germany but ignoring my point which is basically give or take jones it’s the same set of people brought right back. and jones wasn’t responsible for that game. JR, dude, 3-1 is “thumped.” i do think formation was part of it but the backline needs a rethink. no college, HS, or select team i was ever around got better by starting the same people again next time.
has lund not pierced the fanboy assumption that the coach has it all sorted and we don’t need any more changes? y’all have hype-player or people in fanboy favorite leagues confused with an actual talent and performance comparison with the NT.
IV
“has lund not pierced the fanboy assumption that the coach has it all sorted and ……. ”
I don’t know who fanboys are but I doubt that anyone believes that Gregg has it all sorted.
Gregg probably already has 18-20 of the 23 -26 players slated for Copa America.
But that’s a long way from saying he has it all sorted. I have no idea what Gregg really thinks but neither do you.
Maybe if he were coaching at the much lower competitive level of “college, HS, or select team” he might have it sorted out but the USMNT are long way from them.
“we don’t need any more changes?”
That’s a stupid way to put it. If Gregg had 11 better players than the 11 A team guys he has now, he’d swap them out in a New York minute. But that ain’t what the situation is.
Whatever Gregg truly wants, being a national team manager, his choices are severely limited. This is not some college, HS or select team in Argentina or France, this is the USMNT. It’s a player pool of uncertain value managed by a remarkably unsuitable manager who works for a Clown car of an organization. Biased too. They can get the best manager available for the USWNT but when it comes to the sad sack USMNT………………
The players Gregg is likely to take to Copa America, the Select A team, are a motley crew and should make the team barely adequate. Our best and most consistent performers cannot be relied on to show up healthy. The ones who do show up fall apart at the first sign of adversity.
The players he may leave behind might make them a bit better but not significantly.
The potential “stars” y’all are beating the drum for, young and old, but who Gregg will probably leave out for any number of reasons , sane or other wise, at best, if they live up to everyone’s hype, might push the USMNT closer to being adequate.
The USMNT has a very promising but our very raw player pool which is severely overrated by the fan base. It has something of a Goldilocks manager not too hot and not too cold. He’s not so bad as to be fired immediately but not so good that you can expect him to get the best out of these kids.
He just sort of is.
But that seems to be good enough for many here.
In the meantime , you and your fanboys , y’all can go right on rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
U20’s can be very deceptive. Players can have great U20 tournaments and then fail to make it with the seniors and vice versa.
It’s very similar to the minor leagues in baseball where I’ve seen guys destroying AAA pitching on a regular basis and then getting called up to the majors and never being heard from again.
In both cases the issue seems to be the quality of the opposition. That can be hard to gauge at the U20 level. And even if it is good quality, it probably won’t be on par with what the player will face if they get promoted to their senior side.
Gary, I wonder also Paredes was at the end of his season the guys you highlighted were all domestic and just getting going. I’m also not sure how much Paredes had ever played with that U20 group prior to showing up halfway thru WC.
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We’ve also seen Cowell isn’t ready for NT against real opponents. He’d be fine for matches like these, but he really struggled to finish or make final pass for San Jose. Pretty much got benched for Hoppe by the end. I’d like to see Luna, McGlynn and Sullivan with U23 but playoffs may hinder that for the Philly guys.