On USMNT players leaving MLS for Europe

Between Stuart Holden hanging around in England waiting to sign for Bolton, Landon Donovan's loan to Everton, Ricardo Clark going on loan to Eintract Frankfurt, there's been a disturbance in the soccer blogosphere. It goes something along the lines of "MLS is losing its best playerz! Teh CBA is the reason! P4n1x!!eleven!

The buzz has culminated in Dan Loney's post from last evening in which he compares the composition of the USMNT camps from 2002, 2006, and 2010. It's a post I have major problems with, and to me it's Loney's worst work in months. I found myself wondering if Dan farmed out the ghost writing responsibilities to Duane or Kartik.

Dan's major contention is that most regular USMNT players are playing or moving abroad, and therefore the talent level in MLS is becoming weaker. Not only that, the current camp roster is a collection of pathetic jokers, most of whom shouldn't bother hoping for a roster spot.

My first problem is that when Dan talks about the 2002 January camp, he suggests that MLS sent more players to the World Cup roster than it actually did.

Sixteen of the players called up in 2002 made the roster.

Except that two of those players were not based in MLS (Eddie Lewis and Frankie Hejduk), and one of the other players was one of ten alternates (Vanney) who only briefly made it onto the roster when Chris Armas got hurt, and was ultimately replaced by a European based player (Cherundolo) in the end due to injury. Furthermore, when the squad was originally announced, only 12 MLS based players were on it. So unless Dan somehow thinks that Joe Max-Moore wasn't actually playing for Everton in 2002, I have no idea who the 14th MLS player would be.

*At most* 12 MLS players out of that camp would have been on the final World Cup roster. Not 16. The final number was 11.

Regarding the 2006 squad, Dan is correct that 11 MLS-based players from the January camp made the final roster, including Chris Albright replacing the injured Frankie Hejduk. However, by the time the World Cup rolled around, John O'Brian had signed for Chivas USA in a last gasp effort to keep playing. Not only that, five other players on the roster had spent time in MLS and had been in present at the 2002 January camp. In fact, they were all in MLS at the time of that 2002 camp. So at most we're looking at a one or two player decrease, with a total increase of players on the roster with MLS experience.

Then when Dan analyzes the players not called into camp this year, he urges an asterisk placed next to Stuart Holden and Landon Donovan. So, therefore, in 2002, should we not also put an asterisk next to Brian McBride and Landon Donovan? After the Gold Cup McBride immediately was loaned to Everton and obtained a permanent move to Fulham the next winter, and Donovan was still technically a Leverkusen player. And why not asterisk Clint Mathis and Damarcus Beasley, both of whom moved to Europe in the next 18 months?

Now what's undeniable is that the 2009 Confederations Cup roster contained only 5 players based in MLS, and based on the performance in that tournament, all those players became significantly more appealing to clubs abroad. So if there are 5 MLS based players on the final World Cup roster this year, yeah, that's significant. On the other hand, almost the whole Confederations Cup squad has played in MLS at some time.

So is the level of American MLS players really getting weaker, or is it the pool of good US players increasing while continuing to MLS continues to improve? I think it's the latter. I don't think anyone can look at the 2002 MLS season, a league with 2/3s the amount of teams, and say that the level of play was better than it was in 2009. Look at the Cup Finals, for god's sake - even with the 2009 Final played on turf, it was still played at a higher level than was the 2002 edition.

Dan concludes otherwise:

Except, last summer's Gold Cup proved there was a serious and significant gap between our front-line and our understudies.

Now I have major issues with that statement. I know you're pissed about that 5-0 thrashing, but that meltdown was less than 35 minutes of soccer, and it was the result of Bradley getting out-coached (again) and three really bad decisions by players.

So what happened? First, the introduction of Carlos Vela at halftime changed that game, and Bradley had no real response - so long as the game was 0-0, he was going to see what happened. And when the first goal came, it was due to a sort-of questionable penalty, in which a dirty Jay Heaps got out-dirtied by a Mexican player. Still, I blame Heaps, and we'll see why in a moment.

Now Bradley's response was to throw gasoline on the fire by replacing Logan Pause with Santino Quaranta. The move further exposed his defense, which was already struggling under the weight of having to lug around Heath Pearce and Heaps. But before that change got made, someone called "Clarence Goodson" (not an MLS player, incidentally) wasn't paying attention and because of his laziness, Mexico scored again. On this video, at 28 seconds, you can clearly see Goodson standing around with his arms up, not paying attention, AS THE BALL IS DELIVERED OVER HIS HEAD TO VELA. The result is Chad Marshall not being able to pick a man because he can't tell when Goodson is going to mess up again (he does) and Mexico scores. And where's Jay Heaps? Woefully out of position, pushed way too far upfield.

Now with the bad change made, on the third goal we see an again out-of-position Heaps get schooled by Vela. Then on the fourth goal Heath Pearce (not an MLS player at the time) literally watches Castro take the ball from Vela and run past him and his teammates for an uncontested goal. I don't know where Heaps is, but I'm guessing he's the guy laying on the field as Vela gets the ball. The last Mexico goal by Franco was really nice, wasn't it? Not much you can do about that.

Anyway, the thing that struck me was that Chad Marshall looked pretty bad on most of the goals, but in almost every instance he's trying to cope with major mistakes made by those around him. I really can't blame him for not stepping as aggressively as he could have on that last goal in the dying moments of the match when the US was down a player. I'd be pissed too.

For me it takes a lot of ignorance to make a blanket condemnation of the talent of current and future American MLS players based on 35 minutes of play in which Jay Heaps (now retired) played as though he'd never been on a soccer field before in his life, two players from Europe royally messed up on two goals, and Bob Bradley was woefully out-coached. The better conclusion is to ask serious questions about just what the fuck Bob Bradley thought he was doing tactically, and why the shitty performance of Heaps wasn't dealt with until Heaps himself got sent off.

So based on Dan's reasoning, it's not at all conclusive that the level of American players in MLS is actually declining. Sure, there are players moving abroad, in part because they played well in South Africa, and in part because of the collective bargaining negotiations. But when Dan says this:

I happen to be of the opinion that a strong MLS helps the US national team - after all, look how many of those Yanks Abroad (hey, that's a good name for a website) did time in the Major League. That's probably going to continue. But if MLS can't make a go of marketing future and former stars, then whence the next generation?

It makes no sense. Most of the USMNT players have played in MLS; MLS is on strong financial footing; the level of play continues to increase. I understand that MLS will have less USMNT players around to promote itself, but is that really necessary at this point? Even so, I do expect Donovan to return to MLS after the World Cup, and let's be frank, other guys will too. Not only that, the USMNT has *always* relied on European players to form the hard core. With the exception of a couple guys, the ones playing in Europe have almost always been better. And yet this:

Or, Europe will siphon off good American players faster than MLS can produce them, and we'll be back to where we were in the early to mid-90's, where Bora Miltunivoic didn't even want to count games where European-based players didn't play.

Is so laughable, I don't know where to begin.

I think players moving abroad will make it easier for MLS to bring along the next generation. And as the talent pool has increased, what we see now is an inevitable occurrence. I don't think it's a stretch to say MLS is better than it was, and so is the men's national team. If the best players are now perceived as good enough to play abroad, then that's great. At some point MLS will have the financial power to bring back some of those guys. Maybe not this year.

Let me also say that, yeah, in the short term, the best American players playing abroad could hurt MLS. But I don't think it's at all clear at the moment that will be the case. Let's wait and see how the level of play in 2010 is (I think it will be good) and how World Cup goes (we could easily crash out) before we bemoan the loss of our former "stars."

-FS