Yep...it's pretty amazing how he just iced out a perennial Bundesliga CB. Yes he's slow, yes hes a bit on the older side but just utterly iced and the dance Jay has tried to do wiggle back in only to be marginalized is tough to watch when Aaron Long is an important pool player.
Honestly, is it really amazing? Brooks has a reputation as a difficult player who has had poor relationships with club managers as well as Berhalter. Nobody knows the story behind the scenes, but we're always given nonsense explanations in press conferences because it appears to be the sort of thing that won't be publicly aired at a press conference.
It's possible that Berhalter's exclusion of Brooks is the result of a fit of pique that harms the team, but it's also possible that icing out Brooks was a sensible decision that had more benefits than drawbacks. How can we really know? This is hardly the first time in the history of club or international soccer that such a thing has occurred.
Also, Aaron Long hasn't been more than a depth piece since 2019. I know this sounds crazy given how people obsess about him, but it's true! He started the Nations League group stage games in late 2019, then started some friendlies in late 2020 / early 2021 in the COVID era when we were doing the split-squad MLS-based teams and Europe-based teams to limit travel.
Then he blew his Achilles in spring 2021. Since then, he got sub minutes in two WCQ, started the Nations League games against Grenada and El Salvador when we left some Euro-based guys home, and started two out of five games at a B-team Gold Cup. At the World Cup, he was the unused fourth CB, while Richards and Robinson out hurt, so that put him 6th on the depth chart at best during that moment in time.
Aaron Long — he's not that good and he hasn't looked useful for the USMNT for quite some time! But if not for injuries and scheduling lots of stuff where we trotted out a B-squad, I think he'd have played his last NT game a while ago. I think there's a good chance he's played his last game for the US. And I also think his inclusion in stuff over the last however many months hasn't actually mattered very much even though he's a boring/annoying call up.
