Spain Women and thoughts on ECNL

Winning masks the underlying problems, most of which stem from the youth development system (paytoplay club soccer). In my years, the Alex Morgan jersey was ubiquitous, the success of the USWNT driving demand for girls club soccer. Now, it will be interesting to watch the customers of this youth system deal with the new reality. I am betting there are no changes to the system coming, the clubs and docs are too powerful. They’ve become a cartel, interested in driving up the costs. The club cartel can only adapt to invent new leagues, new scams. Even as the product will remain the same, declining in the face of global competition, the club cartel will not adapt to save itself.
 

Coming to the NWSL. As I've mentioned, if the NWSL gets the TV contract I believe they can get, we will see an influx of Euro's joining the NWSL.
 
What’s to explain? AT should have been on the field, and she wasn’t.

who would have been more effective AT or TR? Both fast, AT with a little more acceleration, TR with more strength and power. I would not have moved SM since she is our best forward. Do you think AT could have made a difference given her inexperience?
 
Alyssa Thompson is freakish fast with explosive acceleration. .She has to be hitting the 30m sprint time <4 seconds. She has good dribbling ability and is not afraid to take on any player 1v1 with a very high success rate. What I think the US will continue to do is pick players that are big, fast and strong in key areas of the field but that also have decent technical ability. Why not have the best of both worlds. Forwards don’t have to be big maybe strong enough. In fact being too big as a forward may work against you and diminish your mobility and agility. Average height is best for forwards. With the pool of selection of players US soccer has I wouldn’t be choosing non athletic players that have great technical skills. While they may shine in lower leve games, they won’t make it at the higher levels. If I were US soccer I’d be looking fast, strong athletic technical players that are coachable
and that have the ability to understand and apply tactics. There is a minimum threshold needed for speed, stamina and strength required to play at the highest level. You just gotta make sure that these athletes have good technique and a brain to play the game.let’s be honest athleticism matters but it better come with technique and a brain. We don’t need track stars. Just fast enough and strong enough. US soccer seems to be only looking at track stars.
Make sure to throw in ganas brother and you got yourself a very good futbol player. Best? WTF cares. In futbol, you got the best of the best (very few) and then you just got the rest. I'm not going to speculate on AT and why coach didn't give her a start or first off, the bench to drum up a goal. AT has that ability to find a loose ball or fast break finish and take it in for the score. I would have had her start the 2nd half against Vietnam to build confidence and see what she could do. My personal opinion does not matter though. I'm old school however, and If I were coach and I called up a teen prodigy or like you say Luis, "Freakish fast" athlete like AT, then she is either starting or first off and I tell her that before camp starts. I did not watch any of the games, just highlights.
 

Coming to the NWSL. As I've mentioned, if the NWSL gets the TV contract I believe they can get, we will see an influx of Euro's joining the NWSL.
Esther Gonzalez is a surplus Real Madrid player, Real Madrid did not want to renew her contract. Now, if the NWSL brings Paralluelo or Carmona, that would be different. In any case, Gonzalez will improve Gotham.
 
We will never know, and I think that's a bummer.



I definitely think she should have gotten more minutes and some time for Sanchez too. If there was a forward I would have pulled out it would have been Morgan. And I would have definitely keep MR on the bench and had given her 0 minutes As far as AT being effective it’s tough to say since this is the biggest stage and it was her first round about. You have to remember that lots of these European teams know how to handle speedy forwards, so speed alone may not have helped her if she just took off with the ball like she normally does. Speed worked well with Japan because they used it out of transitional phases where they created a tactical advantage. If the US would have created good counter attacks then any of our forwards are fast enough to be exploit the situation. But given that the opponents defense is set and that this US team did not have the right tactics in their arsenal to use a positional play tactic to create an opportunistic superiority speed is equalized and will not work. For me AT is an amazing talent but at this stage of her career I don’t think she could have do anymore than TR would have done. Recall the game when AT started over TR and when TR came in she proved to everyone why she should start scoring the 2 goals to win the game. AT is the future and we will see a lot more of her for sure. She does have a few things that I think she needs improvement on like she does not know how to protect the ball when the contact comes and I still think she relies too much on speed and not enough on feints and getting defenses off balance like One Keya Gamero did. If she learns to play more like that then she will be even more effective..
 
I definitely think she should have gotten more minutes and some time for Sanchez too. If there was a forward I would have pulled out it would have been Morgan. And I would have definitely keep MR on the bench and had given her 0 minutes As far as AT being effective it’s tough to say since this is the biggest stage and it was her first round about. You have to remember that lots of these European teams know how to handle speedy forwards, so speed alone may not have helped her if she just took off with the ball like she normally does. Speed worked well with Japan because they used it out of transitional phases where they created a tactical advantage. If the US would have created good counter attacks then any of our forwards are fast enough to be exploit the situation. But given that the opponents defense is set and that this US team did not have the right tactics in their arsenal to use a positional play tactic to create an opportunistic superiority speed is equalized and will not work. For me AT is an amazing talent but at this stage of her career I don’t think she could have do anymore than TR would have done. Recall the game when AT started over TR and when TR came in she proved to everyone why she should start scoring the 2 goals to win the game. AT is the future and we will see a lot more of her for sure. She does have a few things that I think she needs improvement on like she does not know how to protect the ball when the contact comes and I still think she relies too much on speed and not enough on feints and getting defenses off balance like One Keya Gamero did. If she learns to play more like that then she will be even more effective..
Maybe sit MR and AM and go with TR, SM and AT? I would have liked to see that.
 
No wonder Barca signed her. We need more players like that playing simple, smart and fast. That one little feint she did setup that whole sequence of passes as the defense was scrambling

View attachment 17877
She stayed local, played under good coaches, never chased a trophy!

Didn’t rely on a League to make her better, her family took that upon themselves and she trained her ass off to get where she wanted to be.
 
I imagine there will be a lot of pressure on the new U17 USWYNT coach to produce better results in the U17 WWC next year. Luckily she knows that age group well, having coached them during their U15 cycle during 2021-22 (including international games and U15 concacaf).
 
who would have been more effective AT or TR? Both fast, AT with a little more acceleration, TR with more strength and power. I would not have moved SM since she is our best forward. Do you think AT could have made a difference given her inexperience?
Why AT v TR? Not sure who SM is but assuming it’s AM, I disagree. AT, SS, TR of LW would have been an interesting front line!
 
Alyssa Thompson is freakish fast with explosive acceleration. .She has to be hitting the 30m sprint time <4 seconds. She has good dribbling ability and is not afraid to take on any player 1v1 with a very high success rate. What I think the US will continue to do is pick players that are big, fast and strong in key areas of the field but that also have decent technical ability. Why not have the best of both worlds. Forwards don’t have to be big maybe strong enough. In fact being too big as a forward may work against you and diminish your mobility and agility. Average height is best for forwards. With the pool of selection of players US soccer has I wouldn’t be choosing non athletic players that have great technical skills. While they may shine in lower leve games, they won’t make it at the higher levels. If I were US soccer I’d be looking fast, strong athletic technical players that are coachable
and that have the ability to understand and apply tactics. There is a minimum threshold needed for speed, stamina and strength required to play at the highest level. You just gotta make sure that these athletes have good technique and a brain to play the game.let’s be honest athleticism matters but it better come with technique and a brain. We don’t need track stars. Just fast enough and strong enough. US soccer seems to be only looking at track stars.
AT has all of those and yes, I believe she could and would have made an impact or at least done more than Rapinoe or AM did. LW and AT should have seen more time!!!
 
who would have been more effective AT or TR? Both fast, AT with a little more acceleration, TR with more strength and power. I would not have moved SM since she is our best forward. Do you think AT could have made a difference given her inexperience?
Rodman, but you get three.

Maybe Smith, Rodman, Hatch. Thompson in at 65' to see whether the defense has enough legs left to run with her.
 
Why AT v TR? Not sure who SM is but assuming it’s AM, I disagree. AT, SS, TR of LW would have been an interesting front line!
My mistake. SM=typo. The real letters were suppossed to be SS. I wanted to see TR, SS, and AT up top to wreak havoc and score lot's of goals. We looked tired with what we had up top. The speed of TR, AT and SS would have been fun to watch and ability to score is huge. We had issues finishing our PKs and missed some shots. Besides that, we could have won the Cup with some luck and not so many injuries. Mid field was rough and like Luis said, they didn't get the looks like they would have. AS would have been nice to see get some looks
 
She stayed local, played under good coaches, never chased a trophy!

Didn’t rely on a League to make her better, her family took that upon themselves and she trained her ass off to get where she wanted to be.

I don’t know enough about her youth story. What club did she play for? What league ? Curious. If this is a knock on me for taking my DD out of ECNL to go play MLS then my response is that I don’t live in SD so she can learn the type of soccer that I think all youth should be training. As far as trophies, sure that was the past and I learned my lesson. Not too concerned about winning but I originally left Ole not so much to chase trophies but to be in a team that was going to get invited to all the major tournaments and to play vs the best of the best. I think there is value making it to finals and playing in big games. Will definitely make you strong minded player. The one thing I give credit to Blues is that they know how to work the kids mentality and make them tough. So she got that from there. She got the initial possession from ole and the futsal reinforced it. She’s a 3 time national futsal champion. Now why MLS next. First and foremost I need to have her in a fast pace environment where the speed of play will challenge her to make the right decisions quicker under pressure to keep improving her technique under more pressure and with less time and space to adjust her directional touch. She’s not just playing on the sides. She’s playing in the midfield and also as a false 9. A few years of that, when she comes back to the girls game they will be playing in slow motion from her perspective because of that experience. Playing in the midfield vs the best boys in the country is not an easy task much harder than playing the laterals. It requires tremendous technique under pressure and an innate ability to think before you act. Priceless development for a future #10
 
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I don’t know enough about her youth story. What club did she play for? What league ? Curious. If this is a knock on me for taking my DD out of ECNL to go play MLS then my response is that I don’t live in SD so she can learn the type of soccer that I think all youth should be training. As far as trophies, sure that was the past and I learned my lesson. Not too concerned about winning but I originally left Ole not so much to chase trophies but to be in a team that was going to get invited to all the major tournaments and to play vs the best of the best. I think there is value making it to finals and playing in big games. Will definitely make you strong minded player. The one thing I give credit to Blues is that they know how to work the kids mentality and make them tough. So she got that from there. She got the initial possession from ole and the futsal reinforced it. She’s a 3 time national futsal champion. Now why MLS next. First and foremost I need to have her in a fast pace environment where the speed of play will challenge her to make the right decisions quicker under pressure to keep improving her technique under more pressure and with less time and space to adjust her directional touch. She’s not just playing on the sides. She’s playing in the midfield and also as a false 9. A few years of that, when she comes back to the girls game they will be playing in slow motion from her perspective because of that experience. Playing in the midfield vs the best boys in the country is not an easy task much harder than playing the laterals. It requires tremendous technique under pressure and an innate ability to think before you act. Priceless development for a future #10
I know Red Bulls was trying to get girls on their MLS Next teams. It was one of the selling points for how they got the placement. Is that it? (feel free not to say if you prefer not to).

IIRC, your daughter is about the age the boys begin to take off, first in their height and then in their bulk. I think you've correctly assessed what she'll get out of it. She'll come out a beast especially playing in the middle. The downside is that, particularly among the Mexican teams in that league, play gets very physical. The other downside is you'll notice the academy players are all routinely 1-2 years more advanced in physical development than the average boy EA or even MLS Next player. She'll also come out tough as nails, but it will be difficult for her to keep up more than a year or two physically, depending on how much physical work and supplements you are willing to go. That leaves you with a problem when that's done because I agree with you: going back into the girl's game after that will seem like child's play. Think it's Europe for you or bust (hope you have a good immigration lawyer lined up already and are putting those pieces in place because that can take quite a bit of time if you don't hold dual citizenship....if not, you'll want to get looking already).
 
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