Asunto: National Team

People vote for that Brazilian guy, because he send PM's and begs for the vote.

Thanks for the love... Just hope to compete with other countries and win.

I never got a PM...

Oh yeah! I totally did get a message from him. Forgot about that. I didn't get one for the second-round vote, just for the preferential vote, piece maybe a month ago.

Hopefully people will actually think about who they pick this round and make the right choice.

I didnt get message from him neither.

I voted for the FC. Legionaries manager even though i have respect for Runnyonion. Reason is that he wrote prety much everything i feel about our national team

"mix of youth and veteran experience" : We guys playing lower level leagues are often left behind for any chance of anything. Dont think it will chance much but there are chnaces to see new faces in the national team.


"Twenty-sixth overall in the world is not good enough"
I totally agree. Teams on Lvl1 should have plenty of top players and sacrificing some (to play harder settings) would not hurt that much the team.

our position in the rank is a shame.

Legionaries is not ready, plain simple. He didn't prove himself yet in this game. Plus you have to be at least little bit active on the forum. For guys with low experience, is good to start as a assistant and get familiar with things.

So lets see what experienced manager has done

From season 6 to season 7 more than 50% less points
From season 6 to season 8 50% less points

We're behind teams like Saudi Arabia and China!!!
Teams with, by the way, lesser team strength than USA.

China is 12th!!!!

I am up for a manager that is willing to sacrifice players stamina to get us to at least top 16!!

In short .. what i am trying to say is that i really don't care if manager has experience or nor. Nothing prevents the manager to have experienced manager assisting.

All I really care is someone to come up with a plan and execute it.

If for instance I have applied for the position, my goal would be placing us top 16.

Sacrifices would be made as we'd not have many Very Low games. I'd talk to USA managers around to see players they could sacrifice for this to happen.

Being a manager is not just how much experience one has in the game, but there are other aspects as well.

Energies for the national team and club team are separate values. I guess experience does matter.

then I don't see much reason not to play at least low in the friendlies.

Experience in general or in NT?

If NT only, then another plan is to get all of those very high quality young players and build our national team to be great in 3 seasons or so.

Although i have not scouted I dont think Matt Hernandez, for example, is one of those.

WE have a bunch of players similar age and similar OR. So in the future, we will have no current youngsters taking advantage of NT experience.

Mixing older with youngster and playing low/normal our friendlies would result in wins and not much energy lost among the older who would play WC and others championships.

And youngsters would benefit in the future.

I agree that there needs to be a movement in that direction because the future of the team is as important as this year's tourney. However, it's going to be tough, especially without the U-20 and U-18 team. In hockey, this is great because the younger players will still get the experience and higher training. In addition, those teams act as filters for the players that will eventually make the senior team. I'm not sure why this is not the case in soccer. Therefore, for a manager to undertake a youth movement is a little ballsy because everyone wants to win and look good. Building the team up with younger players means the team will suck for 2-3 season.

not necessary all young. the roster is big. There are lots of friendly that people play with Very Low intensity. Mixing up with youngsters and increase the level of intensity would likely get a win and also experience to the youngsters.

We can get 6-8 top youngsters in the roster and mix with seniors (we rotate them so they don't lose energy too much).

For NTs, competitive matches are weighted more heavily than friendlies in the rankings. If I recall correctly, the ratio is approximately 5:1.

Looking at season 6, the USA NT won 2 friendly matches (although we did have 6 draws as well). The overwhelming driver of our rating that year was our success in competitive matches. Qualifying for the World Cup gave us more opportunities to increase our ranking as well.

In short, I'm of the opinion that competitive matches should be the focus of the NT. That includes having the core group of players with max or near max chemistry before the qualification matches.

As for using youngsters in friendlies and expecting wins, I don't think that winning matches while playing on low/normal with multiple youngsters putting up low ratings is necessary realistic. It's definitely important to develop our youngsters for future seasons, but the benefits of playing them on the team are limited to experience gained and NT chemistry gained (they still receive the training bonus if they are called up and do not play). Also, NT Chemistry is reduced by 30% each season so its difficult to build up chemistry for the core group of players (those we expect to play in competitive tournaments) and prospects.

I would like to see some high EQ American players with enough current OR on teams with adequate facilities added to the NT. Mainly, players that at some point will have the highest Effective OR for their position of all possible candidates for the NT. Sometimes those players are difficult to find and that's why its important to upload players you have scouted to the NT database.

Matt Hernandez is not a "very high quality" youngster. I have him as a 77.3 EQ player. With that said, he gained over 140 OR last season and has a high OR for his age (and he's still 6/6). I'm assuming he was added to the NT due to scarcity at the side defender position.

Just to mention, it is obvious i don't know the differences that exists in the NT, so anyways, the discussion is a good way to learn and have better understanding.

Obryantj, i mentioned Matt just because if plan would be to develop youngsters for future it had to be really top or else it would not work.

Example this season: There are 8 friendlies before the WC qualification. Are you saying that the top players would definitely have to play all 8 to gain the 30 chemistry back?

You have, for example Rastislav Starosta who is 17yo, 710 OR and 88 EQ (just picked one for sake of comparison)

All USA starter players are 1000 OR playing VL matches.

11 starters = 11,000 OR

So now we play 7 starters and 4 youngsters = 9,800 OR
That is: 12% less OR. Moving to Low instead of VL would make most of this difference, i believe. If not, we plan to play 3 youngsters mixed only.

So i don't think it is a non realistic possibility.

Even if you are saying chemistry is had to get back to 100% before championship matches, we can still call those top youngsters cause you already mentioned they gain training experience