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US Men's National Team (9 Viewers)

NewlyRetired said:
encaitar said:
This is game 4 for Poch…. Against a decent side…. I’m excited to see where we are by game 15.
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It’s fabulous but something is really strange here. The first three games we looked so meh.

This is like 11 on 9 right now.
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And it’s the first time we’re trying this inverted fullback thing…. Which is obviously working. And it will work even better with Dest IMO. Must’ve been something we were working on in training, but weren’t ready for until tonight.
 
Really love the incisive passing up the seems. Completely different than anything we've done in years but the wingers on the edge are just able to cut inside or out and it's killing them.

I've also got a completely different opinion of McKenzie than I did a month ago. Not sure if he just was left to rot or if he's improved that much but he's been fantastic.
 
Fun to watch, but not sure if it translates to results against better squads. So many defensive lapses that a better team would have punished us for. Not sure if that is the players of the style of play.
 
prefontaine said:
Really love the incisive passing up the seems. Completely different than anything we've done in years but the wingers on the edge are just able to cut inside or out and it's killing them.

I've also got a completely different opinion of McKenzie than I did a month ago. Not sure if he just was left to rot or if he's improved that much but he's been fantastic.
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Great accuracy and quick ball movement.
 
BassNBrew said:
prefontaine said:
Really love the incisive passing up the seems. Completely different than anything we've done in years but the wingers on the edge are just able to cut inside or out and it's killing them.

I've also got a completely different opinion of McKenzie than I did a month ago. Not sure if he just was left to rot or if he's improved that much but he's been fantastic.
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Great accuracy and quick ball movement.
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what's a little funny is I don't think we've really been that accurate. The tactics allow the forward players to receive the ball on an angled run. It's really opened them up but we've been a little sloppy or this might be 5-0 at this point.
 
prefontaine said:
Really love the incisive passing up the seems. Completely different than anything we've done in years but the wingers on the edge are just able to cut inside or out and it's killing them.

I've also got a completely different opinion of McKenzie than I did a month ago. Not sure if he just was left to rot or if he's improved that much but he's been fantastic.
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I think I've been the lone McKenzie fan here. He just showed so much early on, IMO.

I think a few really bad mistakes and/or loss of confidence did him in with the USMNT for a while, but I'm glad he's showing what he can do.
 
Ok... Just watched it.

Those 1st 10 minutes... I had no idea what was going on, who was playing where, up was down, down was fat, holy hell. That may have been the best 10 minutes of soccer ive ever seen from the US. Ever. The movement on and off the ball... Insane. The speed with which they were moving the ball, and swapping positions off the run.. incredible.

The next 15 minutes... Maybe in the top 5 I've seen from them. Same stuff. Breathtaking.

But they looked gassed after 25... Still playing well, but the zip had come off the ball and movement. Even Jedi was doubled over at some point... And it's incredible how much field he covered- and in the middle of the park too!

Pepi still frustrated me with his less than great winning and holding, but he worked his *** off and opened up a ton of space for teammates. I loved how they always had somebody filling that space too... Not left empty like under GGG. And can't fault him too much when he's scoring again.

Cripes. It was all so so good.

The complacency in the 2nd half was frustrating. Too many lazy passes and lazy receptions getting to the ball second... Their game deserved a shutout blowout, not giving up 2. But wow... More of this please.
 
El Floppo said:
CletiusMaximus said:
Also, I learned tonight that concacaf has a team named Saint Martin and a totally separate national team named Sint Maarten. Both played and won tonight in the Nations League B.
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Wait... The Dutch side and the French side have their own teams?!
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Correct. It looks like Saint Martin are in danger of relegation to League C while Sint Maartin are safe due to Aruba's ineptitude. Imagine the French shame if that came to pass ...

2024–25 CONCACAF Nations League B - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Tessman isn't perfect, but I loved how quickly and decisively he was moving the ball around. And defended well. Also appreciated how well Busio does the same and how quickly he reads the pass and closes the defender.

Scally continued to get stuck in like I mentioned earlier.. love it. And also love that he made an overlap into the attacking third after the 90th minute up 2 goals. He ran his *** off.

Oh! Weah! What a difference having somebody else who can break a team down besides CP...that opened things up for pretty much everybody else, especially with how much ground he covered and how well he played.

The defense was really only undone by some sloppiness in front of them. That said, Antonio makes a big difference in that lineup. As well as the US played.. and they played fantastically... This was still against a Jamaica side not at full strength.
 
====

Lennard Maloney has decided not to extend his contract with FC Heidenheim and a transfer in the winter is becoming increasingly likely. Maloney has received concrete offers from both the Premier League and the Bundesliga
 
Loved the result, but put me down in the less than impressed category. Xg last night USA 2.07, Jamaica 1.41. First game was USA .97, Jamaica 1.04. If Blake doesn't play like horse crap and we don't get that own goal, there's a good chance this game was a draw or loss. Maybe the defense plays with more focus if the game is close, but damn they give up some great chances. Xg needs to be +1 vs minnows at home if we are going to compete against better teams.

We've got to find a way to get Pulisic more involved. Personally I didn't think he had a great game last night. Felt like he was getting so few touches that he was trying to do too much with the touches he did get. I guess one could argue that since he wasn't playing his best they were looking for other avenues. Seemed to me that when the ball was in the middle and we had options to the right and the left (where Pulisic generally was) that 75% of the time the ball went right. I'm seeing ratings for Pulisic in the 9 of 10 area so maybe my expectations are to high.

All that said, much more fun team to watch under Poch. Look forward to having Dest back, but not sure where you put him and make the defense any better. Also want to see if Gio is in the plans. He might make a great sub that keeps the intensity up later in games. Of course maybe Tyler Adams solves all the issues.
 
Poch liked what he saw from Tessman

================

"Tess today was fantastic. If you say to me, I need to put a note, from 0 to 10, it's 9, 8, 9. He played a fantastic game. He's a very good talent, hope that he can play more in Lyon."#USMNT's Mauricio Pochettino on Tanner Tessmann's play vs Jamaica in St.Louis
 
21,080 in attendance last night, down over 1300 from the 22,420 St. Louis averaged for home club games this year. I just don't get this team's lack of traction.


Does USMNT have an attendance issue? The answer isn’t simple​

Pablo Maurer
Oct 22, 2024
162
When U.S. Soccer chose to host U.S. men’s national team friendlies in Kansas City, Kansas and Cincinnati, Ohio during the September international window, it seemed like a safe enough bet.
Kansas City sits in America’s soccer heartland and is home to Sporting Kansas City, among MLS’ most consistently supported sides, and the NWSL’s Kansas City Current, who have become an instant smash with fans of the women’s game with the return of professional women’s soccer to the area.
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Cincinnati, too, has its own history and love affair with soccer. FC Cincinnati, its MLS club, is among the league’s most competitive sides and the club has resonated with locals, who turn out in droves for matches.
The USMNT wouldn’t exactly be facing any elite opponents — last month’s matches were against Canada and New Zealand — and nobody was expecting a pair of sellouts. But the wide swaths of empty seats visible on the broadcasts of both matches caught some off guard. The crowd in Kansas City barely broke five figures. The 15,000 or so U.S. faithful in Cincy was about 7,500 short of the average for an MLS match in the city.


In the moments after both matches, fans took to social media with their theories as to why nobody was turning out: in the days leading up to Mauricio Pochettino’s appointment as the side’s new manager, nobody wanted to watch a B team being led by an interim manager, some said. Others pointed to the USMNTs dreadful performance at this summer’s Copa America, or blamed ticket prices, scheduling congestion and competition with other sports — college, high school and NFL football, for example.
Others were less kind: fans hadn’t turned out, they said, because the USMNT isn’t doing much to be compelling these days, and is sometimes downright bad.
Just a month later, a near-sellout crowd turned out in Austin, Texas to watch the USMNT take on Panama. And just like that, the attendance heartburn got shelved — for now.
U.S. fans cram into the Q2 stadium for Pochettino’s first game in charge (Logan Riely/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
Yet the reality of the USMNT’s intermittent struggles to resonate with fans is much more complicated and won’t be solved on any social media platform or message board.
Examining home attendance data over the last 30 years makes things clearer in some regards and more complicated in others. The data paints a picture of a federation that continues to raise ticket prices, often choosing to play matches in smaller venues and in front of fewer fans who pay a much larger sum to get in. It disproves common tropes, like the assumption that attendance might be higher in a World Cup year or is largely based on strength and profile of opponent.
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The raw data also paints a bleaker picture of the USMNT’s long-term popularity. Despite the talk of a “golden generation” and despite having multiple players playing regularly for some of the biggest clubs in global soccer, the U.S. isn’t drawing significantly more fans nowadays than it has in the last three decades. In recent years, the team has often drawn fewer total fans than it has in the past, all of whom are paying more money than ever to see a sometimes-lackluster product.
At U.S. Soccer, executives frequently speak about growing the game and exposing the widest possible audience to their teams. And though attendance is on an upswing as the U.S. prepares to co-host the World Cup in 2026, crowds like the ones seen in Kansas City and Cincinnati are still all too common.

​

​

 

Record profits, but at what cost?​

By almost all accounts, it has been a good year at the gate for the USMNT.
Despite their struggles at Copa America and those low-key friendlies in October, the USMNT are drawing an average of 39,459 fans to their matches this year, a number padded not only by Copa America but by large crowds to see them in friendlies against Colombia in the D.C. suburbs and Brazil in Orlando.
Some of those crowds have been made up largely of fans in attendance to support the visiting side, but that will always remain the reality in a country like the U.S. where nearly every foreign nation, particularly those from Latin America, is represented by a large immigrant population.

Colombia fans make their presence felt at Commanders Field in Landover, Maryland in June (Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
“In terms of attendance, we’re very bullish on where we sit today when we think of the balance of 2024,” U.S. Soccer chief commercial officer David Wright tells The Athletic. “I think we have a ton of optimism.
“We have a brand new coach who comes from an incredible background. We have a dynamic player pool that play both domestically in MLS and for some of the largest clubs around the world. And the level of sophistication amongst our fans is incredibly high. It has evolved tremendously. (They have a deep) appreciation for the sport and a high level of sophistication, which is also really important. It’s a great thing for the sport.”
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It’s Wright’s job, within U.S. Soccer at least, to sell the game of soccer: to fans, who have had a sometimes tenuous relationship with the men’s team (while simultaneously falling in love with the women’s side) and to sponsors and donors, who’ve helped transform the federation from a small, volunteer-run organization into a giant, money-making entity over the last four decades.
He has his own answers to questions regarding the USMNT’s struggles (and successes) in terms of attendance.
From a purely financial standpoint, the federation is doing well these days. U.S. Soccer recently did a media blitz, offering up executives to tout record profits and donations, even as it laid off dozens of staff as the federation itself prepared to leave its long-time home in Chicago for a new facility in Atlanta. Its financial reality is surely a net positive for the game in this country — even if, undoubtedly, the federation has its problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5831618/2024/10/09/us-soccer-staff-cuts/
GO DEEPER
U.S. Soccer lays off up to 30 staff - despite surging revenue
Still, record profits do very little for fans who have been faced with rising ticket prices over the years. By U.S. Soccer’s own account, they’ve grown their revenue base by being calculated in terms of how they price tickets, the scale of the venues they host matches in and the way they sell the tickets themselves.
U.S. Soccer examined the 1998-2018 World Cup cycles and presented their findings at a meeting in 2017, painting a stark picture of this price increase. In that 1998 cycle, a ticket to a home qualifier had an average cost of $19.81. That price went up about $10 in the three cycles that followed, another $20 in the 2014 cycle and over $30 between 2014 and 2018.
In that final cycle, U.S. fans paid an average of $97.06 to watch the USMNT miss out on their first World Cup in a quarter-century.

A frustrated Christian Pulisic reacts to defeat by Trinidad and the USMNT’s failure to reach the 2018 World Cup (Ashley Allen/Getty Images)
All the while, profits skyrocketed while average attendance fell.
As smaller, soccer-specific venues continued to pop up across the U.S., the federation more frequently chose to host matches there, raising prices in the process. That 489 percent price increase over three decades grossly outpaced inflation and priced many fans out permanently. It also made the federation plenty of money: they made some $7 million off the 2002 cycle from an average of 31,158 fans per match.
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Three decades later, they made nearly three times as much money off the 2018 cycle, despite playing in front of 70,000 fewer fans and averaging nearly 10,000 fewer fans per match.
“When we think about how we price our events, first of all, we’re a private (non-profit 501C3), so we have to run a business that’s sustainable,” said Wright. “It’s expensive to stage a senior national team match regardless of the market, but obviously the larger the venue, the more expensive the hard costs are. In a stadium that has turf, for example, there are incremental expenses related to laying down a grass field.
“It’s about finding that balance. It’s all about providing as much access as we can and optimizing that fan engagement part while also managing the business in a fiscally responsible way.”
Revenue and ticket prices by World Cups

Fans of the men’s and women’s national teams understand the federation’s need to be financially sustainable. Many, though, are understandably concerned that pricing many fans out of seeing matches in person will ultimately do more harm than good to the game’s popularity in the U.S. Dynamic pricing, at this point, is the industry standard, making matches even more cost-prohibitive at times if demand increases.
“We lean on a lot of data and insights,” Wright said. “We work very closely with the host venue, our great partners at Ticketmaster, we lean heavily on fan insights and we have a lot of great historical information. And there’s also supply and demand — I think our fans do a really good job of securing their tickets early. In a high-demand market, obviously, those prices can increase over time just based on dynamic pricing.
“We’ve done a very good job of finding that balance. At the end of the day, we are 100 percent focused on growing the game and we know that someone’s experience at a U.S. national team game, or an MLS game, or an NWSL game, is critically important to the fan journey. We play an important role in that.”
 

The official team of Central Standard Time​

Since the 2018 World Cup, the USMNT has played more matches in the Midwest, 28, than they’ve played on the coasts combined. They’ve also made a habit of playing in a few markets — Orlando, Austin, Kansas City and Cincinnati — with much more frequency than they play elsewhere.
This is a newer trend, but it didn’t happen overnight.
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In many ways, U.S. Soccer chooses these cities because it favors the venues and training facilities available in them. But there are many, many other factors. Some of them don’t matter to fans in places like New York and Seattle, where the MNT rarely plays.
“We often talk about the many pieces to the events puzzle, and it is a puzzle,” said Wright. “There’s opponent availability. We are laser-focused on finding opponents and always want to play the best. How you navigate that international calendar is an argument in and of itself.
“Factor number two is the availability of the venue. You mentioned New York, but a) it’s expensive and b) if you think about the other folks that play in a New York venue, finding dates that coincide with an international calendar, those don’t often align — really honing in on markets that are the right markets for the opponent, and are available based on all the other events and then, quite frankly, markets that economically make sense based on the opponent and the venue.”

The USMNT and New Zealand teams line up in Cincinnati (Joe Robbins/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
The federation deals with geographic considerations, of course, in terms of the distance that players — its own and those of the opponent — will travel for a match. In windows where the club plays multiple matches, the federation will cluster those matches in cities that are easily accessible to each other (Cincinnati and Kansas City, for example), attempting to keep travel times to 2.5 hours or less, according to Wright.
And opponents, particularly high-profile ones, sometimes get a say. When the USMNT played a sold-out match against Germany in Hartford, Connecticut a year ago, it did so in part because of demands from their counterparts at the German federation.
“They were very adamant that they wanted to be on the East Coast,” said Wright. “Now, you layer that over all the other considerations that I already mentioned, and Hartford was the only market that was available. It ended up working out beautifully because we sold out Hartford. It happened to be grass, we hadn’t played there in a while and it ended up being an incredible outcome, but you can very quickly see that it’s not easy.”
From a business and exposure perspective, there is another crucial component to venue selection, from the federation’s perspective: what will work for its broadcast partners.
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“Time zones matter when we think about broadcasts,” Wright said. “How do we optimize our national viewers? Having a kickoff time in the right time zone so that it’s primetime is really important.
“Weather — an example, probably, would be that we tend to not play in Florida during certain times of the year, during storm or rain season. Taking a close look at weather patterns, and from a temperature perspective as well. And then, lastly, working with the markets and the other events. When we work in a market that has an NWSL or MLS team, they too have their own calendar and schedule, so making sure that we are complementary in that market, not competitive.
“When you take all those factors and you start to use them as filters, you see that it’s more than: ‘I want to go play here.’ It’s so much more complicated than that. I give our team a ton of credit for navigating through this web of factors to ultimately produce 20 to 25 matches between the men’s and women’s teams.”

U.S. fans at the game against Germany in East Hartford (Doug Zimmerman/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

The rest​

There are other common misconceptions in terms of attendance.
Average USMNT attendance does not go up, typically, in a World Cup year, when interest in the team is typically at its highest.
There’s also the idea that hiring a high-profile coach like Pochettino will drive interest. That certainly feels true on social media and in coverage of the team, but it remains to be seen whether there will be any effect at the gate. Looking back at every full-time coaching change the USMNT made between 1994 and 2024, there has never been any measurable effect on attendance.
None of those coaches, of course, had the international notoriety and pedigree that Pochettino does, something that’s probably increasingly important to a fanbase that grows more interested in the international game by the day.

Pochettino watches his new team succumb in Guadalajara (John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
In the end, Wright feels unconcerned with bumps in the road like those poorly attended matches in Cincinnati and Kansas City. In the near term, as a home World Cup approaches, increased interest in the U.S. may be enough to sustain attendance through 2026. The effects of other variables, like rapidly increasing ticket prices and a narrowing list of cities that get matches, might take longer to reveal themselves.
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“We tend to look at things holistically throughout the calendar year,” Wright said. “There are ebbs and flows. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to it. As an organization, we’ve become incredibly sophisticated in terms of how we select markets, how we price each match and ultimately how we market the game.
“It’s all about providing as much access as we can and optimizing fan engagement while also managing the business in a fiscally responsible way.”
 
BassNBrew said:
21,080 in attendance last night, down over 1300 from the 22,420 St. Louis averaged for home club games this year. I just don't get this team's lack of traction.

​

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City Park capacity is 22,400. That "average" is because it sells out every game. Selling ~95% of tickets on a Monday night during the school year on a day where it rained all day long and during the game in November is not evidence of some glaring attendance issue for the USMNT.

Hell, I'm a big fan and opted not to go last night. And it's not as if tickets were expensive either.
 
gianmarco said:
BassNBrew said:
21,080 in attendance last night, down over 1300 from the 22,420 St. Louis averaged for home club games this year. I just don't get this team's lack of traction.

​

Click to expand...
City Park capacity is 22,400. That "average" is because it sells out every game. Selling ~95% of tickets on a Monday night during the school year on a day where it rained all day long and during the game in November is not evidence of some glaring attendance issue for the USMNT.

Hell, I'm a big fan and opted not to go last night. And it's not as if tickets were expensive either.
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Fair points. Let me argue the opposite.

One could argue a USMNT game should dwarf a regular season MLS game. STL could easily have a higher average with more capacity as you mention.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, I'm just surprised at the club over country mentality. The attendance gap wasn't as big last night as at other venues, but I could argue that STL is making a big push to reclaim the title of top soccer town in the US. It's certainly in the conversation. How many times do kids get to see Pulisic and Weah in person? Do they even care?

Does the 22,400 for STL count sales and not actual attendance?

How did ticket prices compare to regular season ticket prices?
 
When I was living in KC I know tickets to the USMNT games were pretty expensive - if I remember a minimum ticket was in the $40-50 range.

Now, I know for all you millionaires on here that's not a lot, but for a family of 5 like me, that's $200 - $250 to get in the door. Add drinks and something to eat at $20 a person and we are at another $100.

So basically a $350 night. Yeah, we don't have to eat or drink anything, but try telling a 12 year old kid he doesn't get to eat or drink anything for 2.5 hours.

Lower income families cannot afford to go. Just like any other professional sport in this country. It's just stupid out there trying to attend anything anymore.
 
ChiefD said:
When I was living in KC I know tickets to the USMNT games were pretty expensive - if I remember a minimum ticket was in the $40-50 range.

Now, I know for all you millionaires on here that's not a lot, but for a family of 5 like me, that's $200 - $250 to get in the door. Add drinks and something to eat at $20 a person and we are at another $100.

So basically a $350 night. Yeah, we don't have to eat or drink anything, but try telling a 12 year old kid he doesn't get to eat or drink anything for 2.5 hours.

Lower income families cannot afford to go. Just like any other professional sport in this country. It's just stupid out there trying to attend anything anymore.
Click to expand...
As smaller, soccer-specific venues continued to pop up across the U.S., the federation more frequently chose to host matches there, raising prices in the process. That 489 percent price increase over three decades grossly outpaced inflation and priced many fans out permanently.
Click to expand...
 
Jedi is the freaking man, ya'll. He just does so much that leads to so many of these opportunities and so much possession. So many 50/50 balls he beats everyone to. So many times he steps up at exactly the right time to win possession back or make sure we keep it after an errant pass. So many times it looks like we're headed backwards and he just "feels" where the opening is behind him and turns it back upfield so we're on the attack again. So many dangerous balls/runs forward that set us up in an advantageous position where a few more good passes lead to a great opportunity.

Even that first goal. Everyone focused on the McKennie pass. But look at how good that freaking switch from Jedi to McKennie was to set that up. Just perfectly weighted, spinning upfield beautifully so Weston could run right into it and quickly hit the ball up to Pulisic without having to worry about controlling the ball, or getting his momentum going, etc.

And the dude must have some kind of bionic lungs because he's always able to get back somehow despite putting on so much pressure.
 
FreeBaGeL said:
Jedi is the freaking man, ya'll. He just does so much that leads to so many of these opportunities and so much possession. So many 50/50 balls he beats everyone to. So many times he steps up at exactly the right time to win possession back or make sure we keep it after an errant pass. So many times it looks like we're headed backwards and he just "feels" where the opening is behind him and turns it back upfield so we're on the attack again. So many dangerous balls/runs forward that set us up in an advantageous position where a few more good passes lead to a great opportunity.

Even that first goal. Everyone focused on the McKennie pass. But look at how good that freaking switch from Jedi to McKennie was to set that up. Just perfectly weighted, spinning upfield beautifully so Weston could run right into it and quickly hit the ball up to Pulisic without having to worry about controlling the ball, or getting his momentum going, etc.

And the dude must have some kind of bionic lungs because he's always able to get back somehow despite putting on so much pressure.
Click to expand...
He is pretty much the exact prototype development we want but struggle to replicate no matter how often we try.

He was raw, athletic, but was lacking in many areas as a professional player. But almost every year between 21 and where he is now at 27, he got better and better and better. He is what some one like Brek Shea (and many others) should have been.

I could make an argument that he has one of the steepest, if not the steepest, development curves in USMNT history.
 
zoobird said:
NewlyRetired said:

I could make an argument that he has one of the steepest, if not the steepest, development curves in USMNT history.
Click to expand...
Other than Tim Ream, post-age 33

Maybe Fulham has really good player development for defenders
Click to expand...

I think Ream more fell through the cracks, than he did develop slowly. I don't think his type of skill set was appreciated back then as it is today.

I still remember Thierry Henry, who knew very little of the US program at the time, had his very first practice with NY Red Bulls, whom Ream was on at the time as a young player out of college.

Henry was so impressed with Ream that he asked him after practice how long he had been on the US National team. Henry was shocked to hear not only had he never been capped, that he had never even been called in once to any US youth team either.

After that MLS season, Ream received his first USMNT callup.
 
So far my favorite part of Poch in the early going is not being hard stuck to one philosophy. Listen to his answer about Jedi (subtitles are on so you can read the translation). He is going to have a field day once he sees what Dest can do offensively

x.com

x.com x.com
 
NewlyRetired said:
FreeBaGeL said:
Jedi is the freaking man, ya'll. He just does so much that leads to so many of these opportunities and so much possession. So many 50/50 balls he beats everyone to. So many times he steps up at exactly the right time to win possession back or make sure we keep it after an errant pass. So many times it looks like we're headed backwards and he just "feels" where the opening is behind him and turns it back upfield so we're on the attack again. So many dangerous balls/runs forward that set us up in an advantageous position where a few more good passes lead to a great opportunity.

Even that first goal. Everyone focused on the McKennie pass. But look at how good that freaking switch from Jedi to McKennie was to set that up. Just perfectly weighted, spinning upfield beautifully so Weston could run right into it and quickly hit the ball up to Pulisic without having to worry about controlling the ball, or getting his momentum going, etc.

And the dude must have some kind of bionic lungs because he's always able to get back somehow despite putting on so much pressure.
Click to expand...
He is pretty much the exact prototype development we want but struggle to replicate no matter how often we try.

He was raw, athletic, but was lacking in many areas as a professional player. But almost every year between 21 and where he is now at 27, he got better and better and better. He is what some one like Brek Shea (and many others) should have been.

I could make an argument that he has one of the steepest, if not the steepest, development curves in USMNT history.
Click to expand...

Yes I remember here in this very thread we all used to talk about him as basically Deandre Yedlin on the opposite side. Fast and with a great motor, but limited soccer skill. Just run up the flank, deliver a poor cross, run back on D. Over and over.

We used to joke about how if he could ever develop real soccer skill he would be unbelievable, but there was basically no chance of that happening. But here we are! Pretty awesome.
 
Yeah, absolutely loved how they used Jedi last night.

Poch realized you can leave him in the middle of the field on offense as basically a post-turnover presser in waiting (putting weah out on his wing as the offensive attacker)...and he STILL has enough motor and pure speed to play that role and haul *** back to his LB spot once needed.

Does that work against better teams? I'm skeptical. But it was pretty awesome last night
 
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