Couldn't the same thing be said about Guzan?

I'm already looking forward to seeing the next Christian Pulisic rise up and help this team. The fact that Pulisic is only 18 means there is a good chance he will be playing with the next Pulisic, whoever that is.

Over the past 18 months I've seen Guzan make more splendid saves for the USMNT than Howard. Is there someone better than Guzan? If so, put him on the pitch.

Does this mean you could devise a better non-MLS team better than last night?

Well my point from day one has been that it should be unacceptable for our young talent to turn down moves from Europe to stay in MLS. It is absolutely ruining our talent pool while at the same time narrowing the gap between the 3rd world CONCACAF and us.

So while there are still guys I'd rather have than what we played last night. Guys like Lichaj, FJ, Cameron at CDM, Wood, Chandler, etc... then the guys who are hurt but Brooks, Yedlin, etc... But the main point is that we shouldn't be drawing from a largely MLS talent pool to the point where 9 of our 11 players are MLS guys. Accosta for example should be moving to Europe

I don't think there is a huge difference in our GK right now. It's not perfect, but it definitely is one of our top 3 positions.

Imgur

Guzan is definitely a better keeper than Howard at this point in his career...we may lose some of those quick/accurate throwouts that Timmy provided, but I've been watching Guzan in MLS since he plays for my team Atlanta United. IMO, he is actually a good, quality goalkeeper; very solid. The problem is our defensive line(particularly our lack of depth) and how poor our midfield plays inside our own half.

Complaining about Guzan is like asking for a better band-aid when you have a broken arm.

And when will the next "pulisic" come? Because the last "pulisic" was Landon Donovan and he retired before the current one even started playing 1st team football.

IMO Landon Donovan was not the last Pulisic. We never had a Pulisic until now. Back when Donovan first came up weren't the odds of us having a Pulisic type of player much worse?

If we don't see the next Pulisic until the current one retires then we're not going to have much more success than we had the last 20 years, and we might even accomplish less. That would be really disappointing.

Edit: Also FWIW I think you're overlooking Dempsey but I wouldn't call him the last Pulisic either.

Many truths in this post.

but guys even if we had 4 or 5 player of Pulisic's quality on our team...its not necessarily a recipe for success and certainly is no guarantee of improvement.

i think we focus too much on the top-end talent of team(s) and not enough on the things that actually end up making or breaking a TEAM over the long term.

IMO where the USMNT consistently falls short is in the meat and potatoes of the team; ie. overall competitiveness, true depth(ie. having enough players in each position where making cuts for the final roster is a TOUGH process), players that provide you tactical flexibility for specific matchups, and a stable coaching staff/organization.

look at Germany. what makes them great is not having 3 or 4 transcendent individual talents a la Christian Pulisic...but rather that they legitimately have 35-40+ players who are good enough to start for their national team in the biggest games. IMO when you have this many quality players, it starts to become a recursive process; the old biblical expression about Iron Sharpening Iron comes to mind.

i think its easy to say we dont have X or Y, but let me point to teams like Argentina who have plenty of once-in-a-generation talent...and can't do anything with it either. Talent only matters so much!

yep. just WC runner-ups. oh wait...

the rest of you post has a lot of merit imo.

Argentina wins a lot more games in the World Cup than we do. We struggle just to win a game. They will win 3 or 4 games and be disappointed with that. We won 2 games in 2002 and that was a success for us.

I don't disagree with some other points that were made. But I want to point out that some of those things would be improved if we just had better players. If we had 5 Pulisics we would have better players, especially if any of them replaced one of the weaker players in the lineup (like Bradley).

Is Mexico the best team in the hex right now?

Clearly


Were they the best team in the hex 4 years ago?

No



Ps. Usa#1 is a dumpster fire. Good lord.

What makes Germany (or Spain, or Italy) great is that every single player on their roster, plus quite a few that don't make it, are better than Christian Pulisic.

This is actually false

Donovan was the last "pulisic" in that he was a hyped up young player playing overseas who had a lot of potential and, as a young player, was one of our better ones.

I don't really follow the USYNT but are there any players with real potential coming up? Pulisic was always highly rated in the youth teams when he was coming up but are there any other's following him?

pulisic is probably on a completely different level than anything the usa ever has had.

i wish john o brien would have been healthy to see what his limit was

Every guy in Germany 18 man squad is better than everyone other than P then?

this is a very ridiculous statement

Pulisic isn't even the best player in concacaf

Lozano and corona are better

Can he be ? Sure

Will he? Don't think so

Howard would have been good enough in the past to make a squad like Germany. But yeah, as of now we don't have any guys better than any of their roster outside Pulisic

Not even gonna deign to quote the post claiming 2 random older Mexico players that play for Europa league teams are better than Pulisic who is regularly fisting Bayern up the ass. If Pulisic went for a transfer, it wouldn't even be close to 10m Euros

This is not incorrect
But this is correct

Cameron Carter Vickers was deemed to be a big defensive talent but he stalled out a bit last year. Still only 19 or 20 and has potential on the international level hopefully