In the same spirit as breaking out Revs discussion from the MLS thread, I thought it would be worthwhile to create a dedicated space for some topics that have heretofore been dumped mostly into the USMNT thread, as well as a few other places.
I have to say, I'm feeling bullish about the US national team's player pool, even if it's not all that great right now, once you get past the new "Holy Trinity" of Pulisic, Adams, and McKennie. A big reason is that because the "Lost Generation" of players born from 1990-1994 is in its prime years now (despite being largely a non-entity), there's nowhere to go but up. We have a lot of young talent coming up and very little key talent is slated to age out of the player pool by 2022 or even 2026.
The Youth National Teams
The US has a lot of youth teams: U23, U20, U19, U18, U17, U16, and U15. These teams have different functions. The U23 team attempts to qualify for the Olympics every four years. The U20 and U17 teams are the highest-profile squads, who operate in two year cycles that culminate in the U20 and U17 World Cups, held in odd years.
The U16 and U15 teams are mostly for talent ID. The U18 is for players one year too old for the U17 team, but who will form the core of the next U20 cycle. The U19 is to keep players on the younger side of a U20 cohort involved in case one of them breaks out and is ready to move up to the full U20 team. All four of these squads just have camps and play in friendly tournaments; there's no official tournament for any of them.
The U23s (1997s and younger)
The Olympic soccer field is small, so there are fewer qualifying slots. The U23s last qualified in 2008, having failed in 2012 and 2016. As in the past two cycles, the USSF has dawdled in hiring a coach and the first U23 camp occurred over the recently concluded international break under the leadership of the recently-announced Jason Kreis.
Putting together a U23 squad is tough because so many relevant players are well into their first-team careers, making player availability a constant challenge. The dates of CONCACAF qualifiers are still unknown, but regardless Kreis will need to build a very large depth chart given that many players won't be released. The other tricky thing is integrating the best U20s into the team after the U20 World Cup this summer.
It'll never happen, but a full-strength U23 team would be pretty awesome: Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Sargent, Weah, Carter-Vickers, Cannon, Mihailovic, a bunch of the guys heavily involved with the U20s, and so on.
The U20s (1999s and younger)
Over the years, I've learned to respect the correlation between U20 results and the quality of a particular age cohort. The 91s/92s failed to qualify in 2011, the 93s/94s looked bad in 2013, and that corresponds to the "Lost Generation" demographics. U20 fortunes improved in 2015 and 2017 when both squads reached the quarterfinals of the U20 WC. In 2017, they even did so without the services of Pulisic and McKennie. The 2017 team was also the first US team ever to win the CONCACAF U20 championship.
The current U20 cycle is strong. The team repeated as CONCACAF champions, handling Mexico bizarrely effortlessly in the final. I really think this has the chance to be our best U20 team ever, though we'll see what happens in Poland in a couple of months.
The U17s (2002s, and a few 2003s)
The U17s have some highly touted prospects like George Bello, Joe Scally, Gio Reyna, and Gianluca Busio, but there are some questions yet to be answered about the breadth and depth of talent here. I don't think this is necessarily a weak group, but 2002 doesn't seem to be as awesome as the 2000 birth year is poised to be. The U17s face qualifying in May. I expect them to qualify, but my hopes for the U17 WC in late 2019 aren't as high as my hopes for the U20 WC.
One thing to keep in mind is that developmentally, there's a much bigger gap between 16 and 17 year olds than between 19 and 20 year olds. As a result, there are a lot of younger 2000s along with the 1999s on the U20s, and even some top 2001s. On the other hand, only a handful of younger odd-birth-year players make it on the U17s. So sometimes U17 results are better or worse than the true quality of the two-year cohort depending on whether the younger birth year is particularly strong or weak.
The "Europe Route" and the "MLS Route": An Arms Race
There's been a rising interest in young American players among Euro clubs. Because the USSF doesn't do solidarity payments or transfer compensation and because the US system is producing somewhat better raw materials, American youngsters are attractive: often of decent quality and entirely free. This is particularly true in Germany, which lacks the bureaucratic red tape that makes moves to England, France, Spain, or Italy more challenging.
As a result, quite a few top prospects have left MLS academies for the greener pastures of the Bundesliga. In part this is because of the natural allure of the higher prestige and level of play in Germany. In part it is because MLS clubs have historically struggled to provide an ideal developmental pathway for players. In MLS, there was a big gap between the U19 Development Academy league and the first team, managers have been overly reluctant to give youth opportunities relative to the standard of play (MLS teams have good players but it ain't breaking into Man City), and clubs have historically been uninterested in even reasonable transfer offers.
Many MLS clubs were slowly moving in the right direction, but a rash of defections of top prospects to Europe seems to have been a catalyst for an acceleration. Many MLS clubs now have reserve teams that play in the USL Championship (2nd tier) or USL League One (third tier). After talking the talk, more clubs are walking the walk about giving opportunities to young players and creating a real pathway from U19 to the reserve team to MLS. Even Don Garber is openly talking about being a selling league, a concept that was anathema to the owners not too many years ago. Vancouver's sale of Alphonso Davies to Bayern for eight figures really opened a lot of eyes, I think.
I'm a firm believer that having a strong domestic developmental system is a necessity. It's not at all realistic or ideal to entirely outsource development to another country. My hope was that the outflow of prospects to Europe for free would be the right sort of kick in the ass for certain clubs and I think it's working. But...we have a long ways to go before we can declare victory.
I have to say, I'm feeling bullish about the US national team's player pool, even if it's not all that great right now, once you get past the new "Holy Trinity" of Pulisic, Adams, and McKennie. A big reason is that because the "Lost Generation" of players born from 1990-1994 is in its prime years now (despite being largely a non-entity), there's nowhere to go but up. We have a lot of young talent coming up and very little key talent is slated to age out of the player pool by 2022 or even 2026.
The Youth National Teams
The US has a lot of youth teams: U23, U20, U19, U18, U17, U16, and U15. These teams have different functions. The U23 team attempts to qualify for the Olympics every four years. The U20 and U17 teams are the highest-profile squads, who operate in two year cycles that culminate in the U20 and U17 World Cups, held in odd years.
The U16 and U15 teams are mostly for talent ID. The U18 is for players one year too old for the U17 team, but who will form the core of the next U20 cycle. The U19 is to keep players on the younger side of a U20 cohort involved in case one of them breaks out and is ready to move up to the full U20 team. All four of these squads just have camps and play in friendly tournaments; there's no official tournament for any of them.
The U23s (1997s and younger)
The Olympic soccer field is small, so there are fewer qualifying slots. The U23s last qualified in 2008, having failed in 2012 and 2016. As in the past two cycles, the USSF has dawdled in hiring a coach and the first U23 camp occurred over the recently concluded international break under the leadership of the recently-announced Jason Kreis.
Putting together a U23 squad is tough because so many relevant players are well into their first-team careers, making player availability a constant challenge. The dates of CONCACAF qualifiers are still unknown, but regardless Kreis will need to build a very large depth chart given that many players won't be released. The other tricky thing is integrating the best U20s into the team after the U20 World Cup this summer.
It'll never happen, but a full-strength U23 team would be pretty awesome: Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Sargent, Weah, Carter-Vickers, Cannon, Mihailovic, a bunch of the guys heavily involved with the U20s, and so on.
The U20s (1999s and younger)
Over the years, I've learned to respect the correlation between U20 results and the quality of a particular age cohort. The 91s/92s failed to qualify in 2011, the 93s/94s looked bad in 2013, and that corresponds to the "Lost Generation" demographics. U20 fortunes improved in 2015 and 2017 when both squads reached the quarterfinals of the U20 WC. In 2017, they even did so without the services of Pulisic and McKennie. The 2017 team was also the first US team ever to win the CONCACAF U20 championship.
The current U20 cycle is strong. The team repeated as CONCACAF champions, handling Mexico bizarrely effortlessly in the final. I really think this has the chance to be our best U20 team ever, though we'll see what happens in Poland in a couple of months.
The U17s (2002s, and a few 2003s)
The U17s have some highly touted prospects like George Bello, Joe Scally, Gio Reyna, and Gianluca Busio, but there are some questions yet to be answered about the breadth and depth of talent here. I don't think this is necessarily a weak group, but 2002 doesn't seem to be as awesome as the 2000 birth year is poised to be. The U17s face qualifying in May. I expect them to qualify, but my hopes for the U17 WC in late 2019 aren't as high as my hopes for the U20 WC.
One thing to keep in mind is that developmentally, there's a much bigger gap between 16 and 17 year olds than between 19 and 20 year olds. As a result, there are a lot of younger 2000s along with the 1999s on the U20s, and even some top 2001s. On the other hand, only a handful of younger odd-birth-year players make it on the U17s. So sometimes U17 results are better or worse than the true quality of the two-year cohort depending on whether the younger birth year is particularly strong or weak.
The "Europe Route" and the "MLS Route": An Arms Race
There's been a rising interest in young American players among Euro clubs. Because the USSF doesn't do solidarity payments or transfer compensation and because the US system is producing somewhat better raw materials, American youngsters are attractive: often of decent quality and entirely free. This is particularly true in Germany, which lacks the bureaucratic red tape that makes moves to England, France, Spain, or Italy more challenging.
As a result, quite a few top prospects have left MLS academies for the greener pastures of the Bundesliga. In part this is because of the natural allure of the higher prestige and level of play in Germany. In part it is because MLS clubs have historically struggled to provide an ideal developmental pathway for players. In MLS, there was a big gap between the U19 Development Academy league and the first team, managers have been overly reluctant to give youth opportunities relative to the standard of play (MLS teams have good players but it ain't breaking into Man City), and clubs have historically been uninterested in even reasonable transfer offers.
Many MLS clubs were slowly moving in the right direction, but a rash of defections of top prospects to Europe seems to have been a catalyst for an acceleration. Many MLS clubs now have reserve teams that play in the USL Championship (2nd tier) or USL League One (third tier). After talking the talk, more clubs are walking the walk about giving opportunities to young players and creating a real pathway from U19 to the reserve team to MLS. Even Don Garber is openly talking about being a selling league, a concept that was anathema to the owners not too many years ago. Vancouver's sale of Alphonso Davies to Bayern for eight figures really opened a lot of eyes, I think.
I'm a firm believer that having a strong domestic developmental system is a necessity. It's not at all realistic or ideal to entirely outsource development to another country. My hope was that the outflow of prospects to Europe for free would be the right sort of kick in the ass for certain clubs and I think it's working. But...we have a long ways to go before we can declare victory.
