If you want an England thread, it might get locked here, but it would be fine in STST.

I broke out FM2007 yesterday for the first time in a long time. I had a game with Aston Villa where I ended up coaching USA as well. The game was in 2018. I had a news item pop up where Bob Bradley (coaching Chivas USA) was very happy with the play of Ricardo Clark.

(Some things never change.)

It looks like I completely mis-remembered. I thought Jones was currently 32 for some reason. He's only 28, which would put him at 32 for the next world cup. So he'll definitely be in the mix.

<----- lol

That is one sweet avatar

dos a cero imo

when i get time after work this weekend i'm going to see if i can accumulate a list of top 50 by position so we can get a tracking post.

Go to Diebitter's forum.

Awesome, you should do that. Also, I know we've said it a million times, but if anyone doesn't read soccerbyives.net you really should. Every weekend he does a blog entry where he lists essentially every American player that plays abroad and how they did that weekend.

Example: "Steve Cherundolo started and played 90 minutes in a 2-1 win for Hannover against blah blha blah."

"Freddy adu, dressed but did not play for blah blah blah."

"Jozy Altidore came on a substitute and scored a goal in the 73rd miute for blah blah blah."

Great, easy way to keep track of how everyone's doing.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL @ this ever happening.

once it did .

its already been said, but capping them against poland wouldn't do anything to prevent them from going to another nation, they need to be capped in a WCQ or something of the sort. As to the main point, I do fully agree as both of them look to have some talent that the US has been lacking at key positions

does he have EU eligibility? If not then he could be the next Kenny Cooper where they train with the team, but can't get a work permit and not be able to play in the prem


IMO the MLS needs to put an end to expansion after vancouver and portland. If more cities are added, it has to be with a look to having promotion/relegation and to setting that up. While those cities would be great MLS additions, we need to see what the expansion has done with the talent in the country to begin with. The MLS' level of play needs to increase across teh board before more expansion should be considered because these additional cities should be beneficial to the national team, but if it just means that low level guys are now getting a job playing in the MLS, it won't mean all that much for the national team

He scored two goals actually! But yeah, I see your point. Bet he'll score more next year though.

I know how the FIFA rules work, but I disagree with the bolded. I think reaching out to youngsters early and capping them with the full national team would increase the chances that they would choose the USA over another nation.

It shows them we value tehm as players, are serious about committing to young players etc. etc.

From what I understand, Subotic wanted to play for the USA until he felt unwanted and hard done by by Rongen (who was then the USA U20 coach or something IIRC, I could have some of the details wrong but the gist is right), so he fled for Serbia.

If we start calling guys in for friendlies when they're really young, and really make an effort to show them that they will have every chance to be important members of the team going forward, I think that would go a long way towards ensuring they stay with us.

Hopefully, Rossi will prove a cautionary tale. Hopefully this kid who wants to play for Argentina will realize that his best chance of actually playing in World Cups and stuff will be with us.

Do you think either Rossi or Subotic are thrilled with their decisions in the light of how things went?

Why does there have to be relegation/promotion? Seems like a very bad idea to push when you are trying to gather investment.

This is the sort of thing that is completely awesome for the person who sees it first hand but unfortunately doesnt translate well as a story.

I used to get a kick out of Lenny Pidgeley demanding more playing time for Chelsea when I had Akinfeev and Cech

I think the idea of relegation/promotion is awesome and I would love if we had it here. I think it would be great for the game.

The problem of course, is as you said, no one would ever want to risk all that money with the danger of relegation looming, so we would never get it off the ground.

I mean, it certainly has problems (look at the disaster in the English FA right now), but it's A++ for excitement and viewing interest.

Yup, I only see a relegation system really working if you are building a league from the bottom up. We're trying to build a league from the top down, so the people on top are obviously going to set the game up so they win no matter what. Standard.

I'd like MLS to cap the number of teams to 20, then someone from MLS needs to sit down and talk with USL/whatever its being called now and start helping/telling them to add more teams. Maybe at some point relegation/promotion will happen, but lets get to 20 MLS teams first and then expand the lower leagues before we seriously start talking about promotion/relegation in US soccer.

stak, I agree with you regarding young players and playing them in friendlies. Giving them a chance here and there also gives the coaches and chance to see what they have ldo. We can't just give guys a try at competitive tourney's and we obviously need some new players. When else would they get a shot? I loved that during the season BB was giving the Euro based players a break and only playing US/MLS/Mexican guys. Lets keep doing that! Maybe just call up the U-20 game team for some games against the CONCACAF minnows Senior Teams.

I don't think that in the case of Rossi it was ever a question as to who he was going to play for. Subotic certainly is a more cautionary tale, but lets not forget that for every Giuseppi Rossi there is an Espen Baarsden who never became anything in the end. There are always two sides to a coin

I was more thinking of the straight locking a player into the US system type thing. I don't disagree at all that overatures should be sent out yesterday, in fact, I fully agree. I don't want a guy like Najar to even come close to thinking about playing for Honduras if he knows that he could play for the US. Even if he doesn't become much, the risk/reward factor is severely weight in our favor on that


Well, the key to getting promotion/relegation to work in the US comes down to branding, and to make damn sure that ESPN and Fox are on board with it so that the games get shown. IMO it would be nothing but a positive as it would add something to play for for all of the players involved. It would also present soccer as something different to the population, and again, it comes down to marketing it right so that it does work(having the MLS name attached to it is a necessary).

IMO, the US and Canada can handle 38-40 clubs, but it'd be silly to have them all in the top division. People can get behind it if it isn't deemed a fully inferior product and that these 38 or 40 clubs are the top clubs in North America. There are cities that have had A league/USL1 teams that have supported their teams well and if presented with the real possibility of playing in the MLS, one would see greater support.

On top of that, many who watch football a good amount at this time are familiar with Promotion/Relegation and accept it. Obviously you need to grow it past its current level, but as you noted, it brings added excitement to the game and for fans. The key to doing it is doing it in a reasonable period of time. Its not something that can be put purely into place for next season, but we can look to the Japanese league to see how it can work in a nation where they have done a top-down type thing

I certainly hope you're right Kdawg. I would love to see a promotion/relegation system put in place...I think it'd be awesome for the league and the game in the USA in general.

I obviously have my doubts about how we could get to that point, but I really hope we get there some day.

it can't be done overnight that's teh thing. There would need to be a 10 year plan in getting it going and getting the proper marketing behind it

First thing's first, there would have to be a profitable stand-alone soccer league.

MLS owners make their money through their ownership stakes in SUM (which only MLS owners can buy in to, iirc) not from their actual MLS teams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_United_Marketing

When the USA gets the World Cup again, these people are going to make like a brazilian dollars.

Ives had a pretty sweet little piece on Fox Sports yesterday about the future of the national team.

http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/w...World-Cup-2014

Cliffs (just names mentioned, not his thoughts):

Goalies: Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Bill Hamid (might be a better 2018 prospect than 2014 prospect)

Defenders: Bornstein, Spector, Gooch, Omar Gonzalez, Tim Ream, Ike Opara, Kevin Alston, Gale Agbossoumonde, Eric Lichaj, Chad Marshall and Heath Pearce

Midfielders: Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley, Maurice Edu, Benny Feilhaber, Stuart Holden, Jose Francisco Torres, Sacha Kljestan, Alejandro Bedoya, Mikkel Diskerud, Jared Jeffrey and Sebastian Lletget

Forwards: Jozy Altidore, Robbie Findley, Charlie Davies, Chris Pontius, Marcus Tracy, Mike Grella, Yura Movsisyan

Movsisyan is the most interesting one in my opinion. I liked him a lot in MLS and had no idea that he was working on getting US citizenship. Only 22 and seems to be coming on very nicely at Randers where he had 7 goals in 15 appearances this year.

Also, he says he's doing a projected 2014 lineup either today or tomorrow on SBI and I'm super pumped for it.

that lineup looks so much better than our current, for 2014. just on paper and potential basis.