At one point it looked like Brenden Aaronson wasn’t going to get a second chance with Leeds United, but after returning to Elland Road, he’s become one of the more important players in Daniel Farke’s squad.
Aaronson is currently in his second U.S. men’s national team camp since returning to his parent club in England. The former Philadelphia Union homegrown has quickly hit the ground running in West Yorkshire, scoring two goals, earning Leeds’ Player of the Month honor for August, and helping the Lilywhites to a current fifth-place spot in the new EFL Championship season.
After enduring some stressful moments in his first season at Leeds, Aaronson is confident in his abilities to help get Leeds United back into the race for Premier League promotion.
“My decision going back to Leeds was, of course, one that took decisions,” Aaronson said Wednesday at a USMNT press conference. “I had unfinished business at Leeds and so a lot of things pointed me back to Leeds, you know. That was the biggest thing for me. It was like a feeling and wanting to go back and prove myself again.
“Since I’ve come back, I would say the first couple of weeks were pretty difficult mentally because you might see some fans getting upset with you and it’s just difficult,” Aaronson added. “You got to reprove yourself again, but I’m proud of myself. I’ve come back and done really well. I won Player of the Month, which is really good for me. And that was a really great start. And now I just want to keep building and keep scoring and assisting and yeah, just keep getting better.”
Aaronson might only be 23 years old but he is one of the veteran players in the USMNT squad. The New Jersey native has earned 44 caps to date for his country, scoring eight goals and featuring in multiple competitions during Gregg Berhalter’s time as head coach.
Now with a well-known manager like Mauricio Pochettino at the helm, Aaronson could take his game to the next level. Saturday’s home friendly will mark the first of many matches for the USMNT under Pochettino and although camp is only four days in, Aaronson has already noticed plenty of changes throughout the team.
“We’ve already learned a lot,” Aaronson said. “We learned about the style of play that we want to play today at training. One thing that we know for sure that we’ve really rehashed is the intensity of what we want to play at. We want to play at a high intensity. We want to play in the other team’s half. We want to have possession of the ball. He wants a confident team and that’s what we’re going to be.”
Aaronson has always struck me as a player who played at high intensity, so he should fit into Poch’s plans. The last time I saw him play, he was much less likely to get muscled to the ground. I presume he spent more time in the weight room. His biggest strengths are his tirelessness, and his quick feet.
When watching him play, I always get the feeling that he is going all out.
Love the fantastical naïveté line. Describes a large portion of the US Nats only fanbase also. 2nd term coach bad…will the USSF ever learn?
Players more complacent, new ideas limited, assumptions about how good they are so they don’t have to fight or work as hard. All so familiar.
Hoping to get back to the basics. Play hard, earn your spot, assume nothing.
That alone would be a big improvement.
There’s a lot in that last paragraph:
“We want to play at a high intensity. We want to play in the other team’s half. We want to have possession of the ball.”
Ooookaay, very sound tactics. Ground breaking in fact. I’ve never heard anything like it before (eye roll).
I guess this is where a fresh coaching voice can make a difference? Perhaps someone who is better at translating the vision in their head to the players? I mean what makes one coach different from another if they are preaching pretty much same stuff? Why does one coach get better results? Obviously Pochettino is one of the best coaches in the world but his system and playing style (as far as I have been able to understand it and this BA quote backs it up) is not very different from what was attempted over the past six or so years. Is it truly the messaging alone that will get the same players being asked to play a similar way that will produce a sizeable different outcome? Do coaches really matter that much? Time will show me the answer I guess. Before anyone gets triggered…I’m overjoyed US Soccer went out and got Pochettino. This is general question not specific to the USMNT.
Although I’d like it to be, this is not a perfect lab experiment where only the coaches are changing. The soccer maturity level of these players have also certainly changed. Players are older and more experienced than they were when some of these concepts were attempted earlier when they were unable to deliver them. Perhaps this time around they will have developed the capacity to deliver more successfully.
“One thing that we know for sure that we’ve really rehashed is the intensity of what we want to play at. We want to play at a high intensity.”
I don’t want to hear any players talking about turning up the intensity. This needs to be a given. Wearing the USMNT shirt should come with Fankie Hejduk level intensity built in. There is no excuse no matter who the coach is for not bringing maximum intensity to the the USMNT shirt. It has always been a hallmark of the team up until now. This generation, whether due to coaching, ego or lack of respect for what came before, has managed to leave the only true identity this team has ever had behind. I hope a foreign coach with himself having no connection to that history or having it on his staff can capture that again. “We want to play with intensity.” Dude, really? To be fair BA and CP are the only ones I’d say always bring the intensity no matter who the opponent is (Jedi too?).
“He wants a confident team and that’s what we’re going to be.”
This. This is why I feel the team needed a new coach more than any other reason. The team once had a belief in itself that was bordering on fantastical naivete. It was great! Right up until the Netherlands. It’s hasn’t been the same since. To me it seems they not only lost the confidence they could compete with bigger teams but because of that they lost the motivation to play hard at all. THIS is what Pochettino will hopefully bring back to the group. They have a bad a$$ figurehead that should be able to bring things up a few notches – in theory. Fixing the confidence problem will be the basis for being able to answer all the questions I asked above.
MotO,
“I don’t want to hear any players talking about turning up the intensity. This needs to be a given. Wearing the USMNT shirt should come with Fankie Hejduk level intensity built in. There is no excuse no matter who the coach is for not bringing maximum intensity to the the USMNT shirt. It has always been a hallmark of the team up until now.”
Yes and no. Americans like to think that they outwork everyone else and out “intensity “ everyone else and that was/is not always true.
Frankie has long been one of my favorites precisely because he always had a hair on fire intensity level that was unmatched by his team mates. He was kerosene on a fire. He forced his colleagues to match his fire.
“Intensity”, “confidence”, the emotional state of the players, it is something the best managers know how to manipulate. Gregg, bless is heart, was not that skilled with it. Pochettino is.
Is it the coach or the players? It’s both and it’s also the owners (the USSF in our case).
The three units are inseparable in terms of the product. Change any of the units and the product changes.
• The first unit( USSF) hired:
• A manager (the second unit) of no particular accomplishment to mold:
• The players( the third unit):
into a national team.
When he was first hired, Gregg faced a daunting challenge. While undoubtedly talented and highly promising, the majority of the players were not only inexperienced internationals, they were inexperienced professionals, mostly kids really. And he did not have a lot holdover vets, besides Christian and eventually, Ream, to help show the kids how it was done. JK got more out of Bob’s guys and Bob got more out of Bruce’s guys.
Given his mediocrity, his inexperience and the inexperience of his players, Gregg doing a kind of a half ass job and producing a kind of a half assed team was almost miraculous, in spite of himself. He did parts of his job well but it was an incomplete effort and it was clear that it was time for someone else to handle the next phase.
And for that next phase we have to thank Emma Hayes and whoever convinced the USSF to bring her here. What she did made everyone around the world take notice and take the USSF much more seriously. Her personal relationship with Pochettino did not hurt.
So now we have:
1. A USSF that seems to be intent on showing its ambition.
2. The best manager that we could reasonably have hoped to have signed.
3. A player pool that is more savvy, more experienced in all phases with, hopefully, more to come.
Every new situation is different but because Pochettino has an extensive and very well documented track record, it is possible for fans to follow along with him in an attempt to predict what he might do next. This was not possible with Gregg who was opaque compared to Pochettino’s transparency. So far.
This will be different from trying to predict Gregg, but it should be very interesting.
You are the master man-splainer on here. I particularly like the numbered lists and bullet points.
MotO,
Thanks.
Posting on SBI means you often deal with a lot of different topics.
Reading my old posts I found I often could not keep track of what I was writing about. If I can’t figure out what I’m writing about, no one else will be able to either so I try to keep it simple.
Which is a good way to segue into Pochettino. He is not a native English speaker and you can hear him thinking about how to say the next word. I have been in his shoes trying to speak other languages. The beauty of that is that it forces you to listen to him very, very carefully. He is very intelligently inarticulate.
And if you do that it seems like he is trying to keep it simple and is setting up criteria that I don’t remember Gregg setting up:
1. We’re here to work as hard as possible.
2. The coaches are here to help the players figure out what they do best and then help them with that.
3. We’re here to win
He has been downplaying formations, tactics, etc. all that frou-frou that we all love so much in favor of just getting back to basics.
I’m sure Pochettino can coach speak and bullshit with the best of them and maybe he does that later. But his initial approach seems to be the best approach.
He’s setting up Criteria.
Criteria #1: Ability to survive the workouts.
It disarms the bitchers and whiners who scream for a cleanout and cry about their guys not getting a shot. Want to play? Okay first we stress test all the players. Make them suffer. The ones who are left standing, they get to play. It should not take him too many windows to separate the wheat from the chaff. I love Gio and Tyler but if they can’t physically play the way they do when effective, they can’t play.
I remember Pele ( or Cruyff or Di Stefano) saying something like ” I’m still the best forward in the game but at 66 I can’t run anymore. And if you can’t run you can’t play.”
Once the clubs know what kind of “fitness gate” the USMNT has that makes the call up discussion simpler for everyone on all sides.
As you get closer to when it really matters there are always going to be discussions about exceptions. Is 65% of Charlie Davies better than 100 % of Robbie Findley?
However, Pochettino had to set up his criteria, put his rules in place, first thing. Having them in place allows everyone to understand them before you go about breaking them and making exceptions. That is why you hire a coach with a lot of success and gravitas. If Sir Alex , Klopp or Pep make an exception, there must be a good reason but if Gregg does the exact same thing then he must be an idiot.
I never said anything was fair.
For criteria #2 and #3, the USMNT hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Stay tuned.