USMNT: The beef comes home

Michael Bradley’s return to play for Toronto FC has met with several sources citing the impact on the US Mens National Soccer Team. Could Bradley playing in a supposedly inferior league mean the US’ chances of a performing well in Brazil be somehow lessened?

Any answers will be purely speculative until the US kicks off their campaign on June 16 against Ghana. However, this trans-Atlantic shift heralds another interesting landmark in US Soccer – with Clint Dempsey arriving in August 2013, Bradley’s arrival means that most of the elite outfield talent in US men’s soccer now resides locally rather than abroad.

The nation’s three most marketable, game-changing stars – Donovan, Dempsey and Bradley – now play at home.

Only a few of the world’s top 20 teams (Spain, Italy, England, Germany, Greece and the Ukraine) can make such a boast, exemplifying the progress of MLS as a competition and highlighting both latent forces that underlie future success in US Soccer – a wide player base from which nascent stars can emerge, and an increasing fiscal robustness.

When we last explored a fictional game between US teams made up from MLS and abroad, the absolute elements of class played for Tottenham Hotspur, the LA Galaxy and AS Roma. Let’s revisit that concept now, eighteen months later and ask who would win a one-off match between a US team made up solely of MLS talent, or an XI who all play professionally away from home?

MLS XI (4-4-2):  Rimando (Real Salt Lake), Evans (Seattle Sounders), Gonzalez (LA Galaxy), Besler (Sporting KC), Morrow (Toronto FC); Zusi (Sporting KC), Alonso (Seattle Sounders), Bradley (Toronto FC), Dempsey (Seattle Sounders); Donovan (LA Galaxy), Wondolowski (San Jose).

Non-MLS XI (4-4-2): Howard (Everton), Beasley (Tijuana), Cameron (Stoke City), Ream (Bolton Wanderers), Johnson (Hoffenheim); Diskerud (Rosenborg), Jones (Schalke 04), Edu (Stoke City), Johannsson (AZ Alkmaar); Altidore (Sunderland), Gomez (Tijuana).

(c) Author's own collection

In August 2012, our final verdict was that the MLS XI (featuring only four players from this iteration) would trouble their intercontinental brethren, but winning might have been a bridge too far. Now? Nine of the MLS XI are almost certainties to make the World Cup squad, with Justin Morrow and Ossie Alonso dark horses. Could the same be said for the non-MLS squad? Perhaps not.

There’s every chance that the early-2014 MLS team might be able to defeat their visiting compatriots. That such parity home and abroad reflects negatively on US Soccer is a nonsense; US Soccer is patently in as rude a health as it has ever been.

Everton failing to paper over the cracks

It’s time to talk about money.  To be precise, about Everton FC owner Bill Kenright’s lack thereof. 

One of England’s great clubs has begun the slow decline that accompanies a squad’s ageing and find themselves in eleventh position.  They are in no threat of relegation, but the club faces a greater existential crisis than any other club with a similarly storied history.

The Toffees have been on the market – if not officially, certainly on the sly – for much of the past decade.  Kenwright has attempted to fund assaults on the Champions League, but lately manager David Moyes’ spending money has become increasingly scarce.  Over the past two years, impact players have rarely made the sojourn to Goodison Park and Moyes has repeatedly squeezed blood from young, cheap stones like Seamus Coleman and Ross Barkley.

Much has been made of Everton’s fiscal situation, as well it might.  Moyes has been able to propel small, limited – and often injured – squads to outstanding achievement in the past.  He and a small band of loyal overachievers have been able to mask a fraught balance sheet.  He has been the Premiership’s MacGyver manager – able to create ingenious macguffin lineups out of little more than what he finds in his pocket.

As things now stand, more apparently than at any time in the past decade, the Toffees lack bite on the field.  Mikel Arteta has left the building; the ghosting runs of Tim Cahill now fail to deliver goals and Marouane Fellaini is no longer thought of as a potential World-Class prospect.  Their players have all been solid, but the Blues need more – the element of magic exists now more in the computers of their accountants than on the field.  Their top scorer in all competitions this season is left back Leighton Baines.

Great Premiership players have become simply good ones.  Over the past two seasons, the players who’ve tried to fill the practically-vacant striker position include the ageing, hamstrung Louis Saha and the underwhelming trio of Jermaine Beckford, Denis Stracqualursi and Victor Anichebe.  Papering over the offensive cracks in the Everton lineup has become a full-time occupation.

This hardly speaks for Moyes’ management skills and he is still held in incredibly high regard by football people all over the British Isles.  However, the regeneration required for clubs to keep themselves at the top level has eluded the Toffees.  Disconcertingly, there is every chance their best attacking player is the on-loan Landon Donovan and their best player overall his USA teammate Tim Howard. 

Unless this dearth of upper echelon talent is rectified, their run as Premier League overachievers will almost certainly end soon.