Scuffed, Vol. 30: Christian Pulisic is a winger, and he can’t carry the U.S. men’s national team
The four players pictured above should form the core of the men’s national team for the next decade, and I think it’s important to note here that Christian Pulisic will be part of that — a piece of a future successful USMNT. His anointing as the savior of American soccer is understandable, but it does him no favors to pretend he’s an American Messi.
He’s an explosive attacker who could develop into one of the world’s better players, but he’s not there yet, and asking him to carry the national team, as Bruce Arena did in World Cup qualifiers, was foolish and unfair. Let’s start with his position on the field. His sudden acceleration and close control in the attacking third can destabilize opposing defenses, especially when he has space to operate (see the 4–0 win over Panama). But he’s not a playmaker. He’s not a transcendent passer. He’s too often dispossessed in traffic. He isn’t strong enough to handle a beating in the middle. He doesn’t scan the field looking for the killer ball from 30 yards out.
No, he pins his ears back, roasts defenders and looks to shoot or cross. He’s a winger. And he should be played on the wing for the U.S. There is no shame in that. Cristiano Ronaldo was a winger. Ronaldinho was a winger. Arjen Robben is a winger. That’s what Pulisic is, and the national team lineup shouldn’t be designed with him at the center (figuratively or literally).
I think that point stands on its own, but it becomes especially useful when we consider the other three teenagers, none as well-known as Pulisic, who will most likely be key American soccer players for the next two World Cup cycles.
Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and Jonathan González are all central midfielders by training. McKennie, 19, starts occasionally as a box-to-box midfielder for Schalke, which by season’s end should be in the top four in the Bundesliga and qualified for next year’s Champion’s League. Adams, 18, is the most consistent performer for New York Red Bulls, and is playing right wingback now but considers himself a central midfielder. González, 18, is the deep-lying defensive midfielder for Liga MX-leading Monterrey — alert, quick and decisive.
With that in mind, I would like the USMNT (starting with the friendly in Portugal) to line up in a 4–3–3 that features these three, who, if it weren’t for Pulisic’s long shadow, would be lauded more loudly as some of the most promising American teenagers of all time.
The 4–3–3 is the formation used by the youth national teams, so Adams is accustomed to it. It’s also the lineup used by Monterrey, so González is accustomed to it. The formation is characterized by a rock solid central midfield that springs into attack with speed (hat tip to Daryl Grove of the Total Soccer Show for this idea).
I’ve circled the four players mentioned above because they’re the ones I think we should build around:
The rest of the squad could go different ways. Wouldn’t mind seeing Christian Ramirez over Bobby Wood at striker, assuming they both get the call-up. If Geoff Cameron’s up for it, then I’d go with him and Matt Miazga at center back, and bring Justen Glad and maybe Cameron Carter-Vickers (more on them later) in off the bench. There are no good left back options, as has been the case since George Washington crossed the Potomac. I saw Adams destroy Brandon Vincent in the playoffs a few days ago. Danny Acosta for Real Salt Lake doesn’t seem ready to face Portugal. Heck, put Kellyn Acosta to work back there.
Caretaker men’s national team coach Dave Sarachan will announce the roster on Monday. Here’s a roster projection I mostly agree with from SBI.
The point I’m making is that in McKennie, Adams, González and Pulisic, we have the core of a good future, and we should line up against Portugal with each of them in mind. The three midfielders have the steel and quality to build a platform on which Pulisic can thrive. In fact, each of them could end up surpassing Pulisic as a footballer in the next few years.
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Still no reason to believe González won’t play for the U.S. Men’s National Team, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Dennis Te Kloese, director of the Mexican national teams, said he’s trying to get the precocious midfielder involved, but has so far been rebuffed, Tom Marshall reports. Here is the relevant part of the story:
“Our duty is to keep trying,” Te Kloese, El Tri’s technical director, said. “He’s a player with a bright future. In the end it is a personal and family decision in which he has the ultimate say.”
Sources have told ESPN FC that González, who was born in Santa Rosa, California, has no plans to change allegiances. But Te Kloese said Mexico will not give up on a player they like.
“We know Jonathan and we’ve honestly tried to invite and involve him,” said Te Kloese, who took over as national teams director from Santiago Banos in August. “His desire has always been to play for the United States.”
Encouraging, but not definitive.
It’ll be two years until the U.S. plays a game that can cap-tie González (that is, an official FIFA competition that permanently ties him to the USMNT). And he is a key player for the best club in Mexico, his father is from Guanajuato, and Mexico still has six months to try to lure him away before the World Cup in Russia.
Meanwhile, González just keeps winning. Last weekend against Club America, in a huge match, he went the full 90 and helped shut down the giants from Mexico City in a 2–0 win between the two top clubs in Liga MX. Monterrey went 5 points clear in the table. Watch this video for a few nice moments from González in the match. He is small but controls his team’s defensive half in an understated, persistent way. He presses relentlessly using his quickness and intelligence, always sprints back when there’s danger, finds the right position and anticipates the opponent’s passes.
When González does find himself on the ball, he’s technical enough to get out of trouble and surprisingly strong. He usually plays quickly and simply. He created the second goal in this match by intercepting a pass at midfield and playing a pass to Dorlan Pabon, who drew a penalty. He’s no playmaker, but he does dirty work and he’s efficient. For a fuller sense of his effort and reliability, watch this video of all his touches against Pachuca in mid-October. Some of that stuff would have been useful against Trinidad.
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McKennie came on for the final 15 minutes for Schalke against Wolfsburg last weekend in a 1–1 draw (John Brooks, by the way, made a full return from injury for the match). Watch this video to see all of McKennie’s touches. Nothing earth-shattering, but you can see he and González would make an intriguing partnership. McKennie looks to play the diagonal ball, and he’s athletic, good in the air, and can be a clever passer. He’ll be up against Freiburg this weekend and has a shot at a start, since Leon Goretzka is out with an injury.
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Adams heads to Toronto on Sunday for a do-or-die match in the MLS playoffs. Red Bulls need to win by a score of 2–1 or better to advance after dropping the first leg at home on Monday. Might be better for his USMNT chances if they lose, which they’re expected to do. Despite his team’s limitations, Adams bounces all over the field and his technical ability seems to be sharpening. Watch this video of all his touches against Atlanta in the final days of the regular season for a sense of what he’s capable of. A lot of burst and an ability to play a good final ball. I’d like to see him pushing forward behind Pulisic.
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Finally got a chance to watch Cameron Carter-Vickers, 19, and have a better sense of where he stands. The American center back is on loan from Tottenham, where he wasn’t getting playing time, at Sheffield United, a newly-promoted Championship club that has surprised everyone by playing its way to contender status. CCV became an automatic starter in mid-September, and he went 90 in a match against Leeds last week, which ended in a huge 2–1 away win for Sheffield.
He is not an elegant center back. He was clumsy early, as you can see if you watch this video, and it was his headed clearance that fell kindly to the scorer for Leeds’ only goal. But it would be harsh to blame him too much for the goal (he won the header, after all), and he grew into the match. His interventions got more precise. He wore down Leeds’ №9, Pierre-Michel Lasogga without earning a yellow card. His physicality and edge really are assets. Also, he showed composure and held his ground on a couple of dangerous 1v1s.
Bottom line, he’s still a teenager, but he’s getting exactly the right experience: Starting big matches for a top-of-the-table Championship side that’s winning with grit and solid defending. And, if you’re not convinced he’s a solid prospect, it’s worth comparing him to other center backs in U.S. history when they were 19. Geoff Cameron was playing for the West Virginia Mountaineers and still had three years of college left before he joined the Houston Dynamo. Give or take a few months, the same was true of Matt Besler, Carlos Bocanegra, Omar González, Alexi Lalas and Marcelo Balboa when they were 19. Eddie Pope was 23 when he played his first professional match.
The only comparison is John Brooks, who started getting 2. Bundesliga starts for Hertha Berlin when he was exactly the same age as CCV is now. So, big picture, CCV starting for the top team in the Championship at 19 puts him way ahead of almost everyone else in American history at center back. He just needs to keep getting better.
His future competition at center back, Justen Glad, gave an interesting interview (short highlight reel at link) to Andrew Wiebe. The Real Salt Lake center back seems like he’s got his head on straight, and wants to go to Europe. Go East young man!
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“What’s wrong with American soccer and can it be fixed?”
Part 2: Major League Soccer’s transfer rules
Not having promotion-relegation isn’t the only way Major League Soccer fails to live up to this nation’s commitment to free markets and free competition.
MLS also imposes byzantine market constraints on the transfer of players out of the league. We want young American talent to move freely from MLS to Europe, but more importantly we want MLS clubs to be unencumbered participants in the world soccer talent market, to benefit from selling players to Europe so they will be motivated to develop young talent for sale. That would, theoretically, result in more talented American footballers and ultimately a deeper, better men’s national team.
Right now, the MLS sets up obstacles to outgoing transfers. The first and most obvious is that the league office takes a one-third cut of every transfer fee paid to an MLS club for an outgoing player. The cut is one-fourth if the player was signed to a “homegrown” contract (a complexity we won’t delve into here), but in any case, a significant portion of the transfer fee doesn’t go to the club at all, and that’s unique to America’s domestic soccer league. Take the largest outgoing transfer in MLS history — Jozy Altidore to Villareal from New York Red Bulls in 2008. Altidore cost Villareal $8 million, but only $6 million went to Red Bulls. Most outgoing MLS transfers are under $5 million, and when the outgoing player is presumably quite valuable to the selling MLS club, this is a not-insignificant impediment to transfers.
The second obstacle is that big transfer fees can’t be plowed back into the roster freely. Even if a club sells a player for $25 million to Europe (Atlanta faces something like this scenario with Miguel Almiron), and ends up with the roughly $16 million that’s left after the MLS takes its cut, that money can’t go to pay for a handful of $3 million or $4 million players, which would be ideal. Instead, MLS caps the amount that can be used to acquire new players at $650,000, unless the money is used to sign one of three “designated players,” in which case there is no limit. There may be reasons for that policy, but it also has the effect of dis-incentivizing teams from selling players abroad.
Will any of this ever change? I don’t have the reportorial bandwidth to answer that question with any substance right now. It’s worth noting that U.S. Soccer Federation Sunil Gulati, should he decide to run for reelection early next year, has a lot of potential challengers, including one of his lieutenants, Carlos Cordeiro. New leadership could pressure MLS to change its rules. Eric Wynalda seems the most likely to push for major change.
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Bad news for Bobby Wood. A few days after Hamburg manager Marcus Gisdol said the American striker had the club’s backing as he tries to regain form, he seemingly reversed course: “In the end, the performance principle also applies to (Bobby)….He’s descended into a negative spiral from which he has to free himself. He has the potential to be a good forward, but he is not in any sort of form right now. He might give it his all, but things are not going well for him somehow.” Wood has one goal in Bundesliga play this season, and no assists, and Hamburg has a scintillating 17-year-old German striker breathing down his neck. That kid, Jann-Fiete Arp, came on for Wood in the 56th minute over the weekend and scored just 17 minutes later. That could have something to do with the shift in Gisdol’s rhetoric. Look for Wood to start on the bench this weekend against Stuttgart.
Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley keep getting booed by MLS fans every time they touch the ball, and Altidore called it “classless” after Toronto defeated New York Red Bulls 2–1 on Monday. I don’t feel bad for Altidore and Bradley after they robbed their nation of a spot in the World Cup with a listless performance in Trinidad. It turned out Jozy suffered some abuse for not covering his heart during the national anthem, which is silly and inappropriate, since he’s a Jehovah’s Witness and abstains from covering his heart for religious reasons. But getting booed mercilessly throughout the playoffs is a small price for he and Bradley to pay, it’s great drama, and it shows that soccer culture in the U.S. is progressing. If people are still chanting “F — you Jozy” every time he touches the ball in July of next year, I might extend some pity.
In happier news, MLS playoffs TV viewership is up 80 percent so far compared to a year ago.
Soldiering on,
Scuffed
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