Cade Cowell’s impressive start to the Liga MX Apertura season has earned him a major honor from the league.
Cowell was named Player of the Month for July, Liga MX announced Monday. The former San Jose Earthquakes homegrown attacker helped Chivas de Guadalajara to a 2-1-1 record in league play, scoring three goals and adding one assist.
After an 80-minute shift in a goal-less draw with Toluca, Cowell scored one goal and added one assist in a 4-2 loss to Club Tijuana.
He would follow that up with goals in each of the next two matches, a 2-0 win over Queretaro and a 2-0 victory over Mazatlan.
The 20-year-old Cowell has logged 340 minutes over those four appearances, being one of the more productive players in Liga MX over that span.
Cowell and Chivas will resume Liga MX play on Saturday against Tigres UNAL.
Best player of the month…..in Liga MX no less, is mad impressive. He has a few areas of his game he still needs to improve on (like pass/shooting accuracy) to be “next level” but this kid is definitely dynamic…… Mauricio Pochettino I hope you’re watching!!!
Good to see him getting some plaudits and love in Mexico.
Well dine so far. Keep the good work going.
He’s a poor man’s Gareth Bale … fast, strong and direct. If he could ever get his first touchdown and work up one or two blow moves consistently would be out of Mexico and playing in Europe, faster than you can say “betchabygollywow”!
He is being used well by his coach. Doing everything possible to get him out wide with space. No qualms about long ball from the def half to where Cade is. Passing and vision still not great. Not sure how much it will ever improve, but when he has space he scares people. We haven‘t had a player that scares people in a while TBH.
As you pointed out, they are getting him the ball out in space where he has a chance to run at people. Cade is big, strong and fast and has learned to be as direct as possible.
The USMNT has people who could be as scary but they don’t get the ball in space where they can run at people. Put CP, Pepe, Flo, Timo, Wright, Gio, or Sargent in Cade’s shoes and they would be just as scary.
Hopefully, the new guy, if they ever sign him, will make that all better.
Hmmm…. Don’t agree with this. The only player that has scared defenses in the past 7 or so years has been Pulisic.
Not one of those players has Cowells physical nature and directness. And he has done things in tight spaces against Liga MX opponents.
I di agree he still has elements of his game that needs to be refined. But he is only 20. We shall see how he looks at 22 years old and beyond.
2tone,
“The only player that has scared defenses in the past 7 or so years has been Pulisic.”
That’s because the USMNT isn’t good at putting the other guys besides CP, into the same kind of situations that Chivas puts Cade into. And Cade gets to face Liga MX defenders.
Cade is doing well in Mexico and it is good that he went. But don’t get fooled into thinking that he’s better than the guys I listed. And yes he has room to grow but so do the guys I listed. Now Pochettino, if he gets signed, may bring him in. And he’ll know how to make good use of him. And Cade has one thing going for him, he seems to be healthier and more durable than a lot of the regulars. 80% of life is showing up and I could see Cade being healthy when the others have all kinds of ailments..
If it sounds like I don’t think much of Cade as a soccer player, I don’t. The only positives I ever hear about him even now is how big, strong and fast he is, not what a great player he is. There’s a difference.
However, it took a lot of guts to move to Chivas and he has a chance to learn and improve. He gets a lot of credit for that.
Vacq-
Is Cowell better than those guys, no. They’re all more polished than Cade and more complete players. At the moment.
Cowell is by a bunch the best pure athlete in our pool. Physically, he’s a freak and absolutely no one matches up with him. Put him in the Prem or La Liga…and still, physically, no one would match up with him. There are only a handful of guys with his physical attributes in world soccer at any one time. He’s a rare duck.
Still, athleticism is great, but without the polish, he’s not getting to a Top-5 league either. But I do think he’s in the right place to gain polish, in a very technical and tactically sophisticated league…and I do think he needs to stay where he’s at for at least another year and a half or so to just sort of soak that standard in if he’s ever going to reach his ceiling.
Vacqui,
Puli, Weah, Wright, and Sargent, out wide, would be just as scary as Cade.
Gio, maybe, but he is more suited to a centralized position / role.
Pepi and Flo…not so much.
quozzel,
I get the love for the underdog. Cade, used properly, could be very dangerous for the USMNT. And he will probably get better over time. But we have better players NOW for that role. I don’t care if Wright is measurably, athletically inferior to Cade. He’s a scorer against tougher opposition and is on on fire NOW.
Cade is just another chapter in this endless American fantasy about how
” if you could take LeBron and give him Messi’s skills” America would take over the world.
As if both LeBron and Leo were not a one off.
There are many examples of American athletes who, without a lot of “soccer skills” have some success in soccer; Zardes, Paul, Aaron Long, DeAndre, Demerit, Cade, etc. Wonderful athletes, they deserve credit for being able to maximize what God gave them.
But don’t think for a minute that this is a desirable thing or that an entire team of these kind of players will take you very far.
Of course the beauty of soccer is that even limited players can succeed to a very high degree.
Every time I see a guy like Cade I think of my favorite incompetent:
Pippo Inzaghi
“From The Totally Football Show.com, home of Golazzo, a podcast about the history of Italian football, presented by James Richardson.
There’s a story in Carlo Ancelotti’s book ‘Quiet Leadership’ from Adriano Galliani, the former AC Milan chief executive. ‘I attended the last training session…Pippo Inzaghi, our centre forward, was completely out of sync – he was barely able to trap the ball. We had another strong centre forward, Alberto Gilardino…As I was standing at Ancelotti’s side on the field watching Inzaghi miss every single ball, I said to him: “Why don’t we let Gilardino play? He looks to be in much better shape than Inzaghi.” Carlo simply said: “Inzaghi is a strange animal. Maybe tomorrow will be his night.”‘
That training session was before the 2007 Champions League final. Inzaghi scored twice to beat Liverpool and exorcise the horrors of 2005. Ancelotti had some logic for his decision, based on Super Pippo’s remarkable record in European competition, but mainly it was just a vibe. ‘He said to me afterwards, “After thirty years I’ve developed an eye for this and I’ve learned to trust it,”’ wrote Galliani. “Gilardino is in better form, but Pippo is Pippo,” Ancelotti himself would later say.
Pippo was indeed Pippo. The man who used to illicit laughter in training from his teammates at his lack of technique and basic skill, but who ended his career with two Champions Leagues, three Serie A titles with two different clubs and 288 career goals, 70 of which came in European competitions – only Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Raul have more.
Here was a player who defied logic, one frequently described as being the best terrible footballer of all time. Because objectively speaking, he wasn’t good at the things that most footballers were supposed to be good at. “Even today I can’t explain how he managed to score so many goals,” said his peer Vincenzo Montella a few years ago. “He couldn’t dribble, he couldn’t shoot from outside the box. He had half the talent of players who had half the success.”
You don’t have to search for long to find plenty of other similar quotes. “At Milan we’d do a rondo every day but Inzaghi didn’t participate because he knew he’d be in the middle running after the ball,” said Jaap Stam. Paolo Maldini said his colleagues would “roll around laughing” at his efforts in training.
“Look,” said Johan Cruyff, “actually he can’t play football at all. He’s just always in the right position.”
vacq-
I wouldn’t really call him an underdog so much as a wild card, and I agreed in the prior post that he’s not ready yet though I suspect the new staff may want a closer look at him.
On a 23-man roster I wouldn’t bring him, but right now on a 26-man World Cup roster I think he’s got a real chance. He’s exactly the kind of player you bring on late when you’re chasing a goal.
I’m genuinely curious to see what his progression looks like in the next year or so, though. He’s just 20 and I am glad to see him plying his trade abroad – even if only South of the border – and getting out of his comfort zone in MLS.
He certainly has the speed. Maybe it’s time to give him a call up for a friendly. If he was still in MLS he would be a perfect player for the January camp.