Tag: Chris Richards

Several USMNT players see stocks drop after dire September

Too many USMNT arrows are pointing down rather than up

The U.S. men’s national team came into September’s international window hoping to find clarity and belief, but after two dispiriting performances, they certainly didn’t get the answers they wanted.

If anything, more players saw their stock drop, and in many cases there’s no recourse beyond hoping they go back to their clubs and tear it up. Gregg Berhalter has plenty to chew on over the next several weeks, but he was probably hoping to have more “good problems” than what he’s looking at right now.

Who hurt their chances of playing a major role at the World Cup? And who seems more important today than they did a few weeks ago? Let’s check the markets and see where the individuals are trending.

Stock down: Aaron Long

We have to start with the fact that the USMNT, against two very different systems, struggled with progressing the ball from their back line into the midfield. There were multiple causes for that problem, but the one that stood out more than the rest was that the center backs were both inaccurate with their passes, and very predictable with their intentions.

Walker Zimmerman wasn’t at his best, but for Long, the possession side of things was a major source of concern. Injuries to Chris Richards and Cameron Carter-Vickers didn’t help, and Berhalter ended up subbing Long off in both games to get a look at Mark McKenzie.

The fact that Long started both games seems to indicate that Berhalter holds him in esteem, but it’s not like he lacks for competition. With Richards vying for time in the Bundesliga and all of McKenzie, Carter-Vickers, and Palmer-Brown all getting regular minutes at European clubs, Long’s form with the New York Red Bulls will need to be much sharper than what we saw in this window to ensure his place on the plane to Qatar.

Stock up: Matt Turner

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about whether Berhalter simply prefers Steffen to the extent that the starting goalkeeper job is a settled issue. That seems unlikely, but either way, Turner was the best USMNT player in this window, and there’s not much more someone can do than that.

The worry for Turner coming into this camp was that he’d played just one competitive match since moving to Arsenal this summer. Those fears of lost sharpness or confidence ended up being unfounded, as Turner was precise, fundamentally sharp, and kept Japan from walking away with a bigger margin of victory. He had less to do in the second friendly, but still responded well when called upon.

Based on recent play with the USMNT, it’s Turner that should have the edge to start against Wales on November 21. If Steffen is going to win that job, he’s going to have to impress with Middlesbrough in very short order.

(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Stock down: Gio Reyna

Reyna’s place in the USMNT squad isn’t in question, and when healthy, he’s obviously one of the best players in the entire pool. Berhalter is frankly lucky to have Reyna and Tim Weah possibly vying for one spot (we hear you, play-Weah-centrally advocates, but it really doesn’t seem like Berhalter is interested).

But despite some initial success with Borussia Dortmund’s cautious approach to his season, Reyna was once again having to come out of the game due to what Berhalter said post-game was some muscle tightness.

Dortmund boss Edin Terzić has since announced that Reyna’s recovery time is less than two weeks, which is the good news. The bad news is that on a team with several other key players who aren’t exactly the most durable, it’s now worth wondering whether the USMNT can lean on Reyna as a starter in a World Cup match. At the very least, they need to enter each game with a very specific plan on how they’ll adapt if he pulls up.

Stock up: Joe Scally

It’s not that Scally was a revelation against Saudi Arabia. Rather, the fact that he managed to get high and wide in the attack on a regular basis meant that he had to be accounted for, which had a positive ripple effect for the USMNT going forward.

The USMNT doesn’t function well without a fullback taking care of this task, and with Antonee Robinson missing out due to injury, no other fullback in camp was able to reliably get to the right places at the right time. Berhalter gave this responsibility to Sam Vines against Japan, and then to DeAndre Yedlin on the other side against Saudi Arabia, before Scally’s movement allowed for some more familiar patterns of play to take hold.

It wasn’t a good camp for the USMNT fullback pool in general, so Scally — who has had something of a difficult time getting call-ups, despite being a reliable starter at Borussia Mönchengladbach — is benefitting from simply not doing too badly while others disappointed. But then, that’s kind of the story of this entire international window, and being a player who didn’t run into some kind of problem means Scally’s odds of being on the final 26-man roster should be better today than they were two weeks ago.

Stock down: Ricardo Pepi

Progress isn’t linear, and anyone hoping that Pepi finally breaking his long goal drought meant that he’d come roaring into this USMNT camp was disappointed by how he struggled to really get enough touches to be a factor against Saudi Arabia.

(AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Some of that was simply the entire team struggling to break into the attacking third with consistency, and there’s only so much Pepi can do to fix that. He’s not a channel-running No. 9, and he’s not going to drop off the front line as a false nine either. If the team can’t get out of their own end, he’s not going to be involved.

But the real reason Pepi’s stock fell a bit is that Jesús Ferreira came in, and the USMNT attack instantly started finding angles it hadn’t been seeing earlier. Ferreira has taken some flack for jumping too early for a header against Japan, and he didn’t bury any looks against Saudi Arabia, but the entire attack was more lively once he came on. Not to get too into the weeds on modern soccer thinking, but an attack that is creating chances is believed to be better for winning games than a team that can’t get out of second gear going forward.

With Ferreira seeming to be the best fit for the players around him, Jordan Pefok being the hot hand as a finisher, and both Pepi and Josh Sargent skewing towards being best as pressing forwards, it feels like Berhalter has to sort through some tough questions. There’s a really good case to be made for there only being one spot for Pepi and Sargent, given that they’re the two most similar players in this group.

For Pepi, the best cure would be to light it up over the next few weeks at Groningen. If his profile becomes pressing/target man who is also scoring regularly, the questions here are not nearly as pointed. It’s just that, like we said, progress isn’t linear, and one goal in nearly a year could be a blip rather than the start of things to come.

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Three thoughts after a listless USMNT falls 2-0 to Japan

Japan chewed an alarmingly flat USMNT up on Friday

The U.S. men’s national team’s final friendly window started off with a stumble, as a woefully flat performance ended with a 2-0 loss to Japan.

The USMNT and Japan are roughly at the same level on paper, and losing 2-0 to a peer is not in and of itself a reason to rend your new, unloved USMNT jersey. The way we got there, though? It was truly rough stuff for anyone with hopes of seeing a USMNT run deep in to the World Cup.

Mentality minnows

The biggest reason for alarm for the USMNT was what Gregg Berhalter described as a lack of “personality.” There are some badly outdated stereotypes that hold that Japan is a technical team with no little cutting edge, but the fact is that Hajime Moriyasu’s side chewed the USMNT up and spat them out. They were the more physical team, the more driven team, the more urgent team. In all the ways you can define aggression in soccer, Japan had the advantage over the USMNT.

That tepid vibe, more than players having a bad day passing and moving, is the big worry from this game. We’re less than 60 days from the World Cup, and several U.S. starters in this one are trying to establish that they should be moved up a level in the team’s hierarchy. Starters should be pushing to become stars, the first few guys off the bench should be trying to become starters, and so on.

A lack of intensity should flat-out not be a problem right now.

Berhalter tried to shake something loose, making four halftime subs and changing systems, but it only stirred the USMNT to a certain degree, and only for about half an hour. Kaoru Mitoma got Japan’s second in the closing minutes, and it wasn’t some lone chance on the counter, either. They were back to bossing the game, primarily through sheer effort.

Will this version of the USMNT show up against Wales? Probably not. They seem good at getting up for the truly big occasions (see: several consecutive matches against Mexico). And England, being so full of elite players, will probably also see a fully motivated USMNT.

It’s that Iran match, though, that people should have qualms about. Iran’s not Japan, they don’t play the same way, but they are the opponent in the group that the USMNT is most likely to overlook. Friday’s loss was a worrisome reminder that this is a team with no room for looking past anyone.

Handing it over

Japan’s press gave the USMNT fits. Some of this was simply a good team executing their plan cohesively and at a high level. Japan knew what it wanted to make the USMNT do — pin them in their own half and make center backs Aaron Long and Walker Zimmerman solve the problem in possession — and did so at an impressive level.

There are two things that should alarm USMNT fans that have nothing to do with how fluently Japan played. First, the obvious: the USMNT was simply abysmal with the ball. Maybe that’s a one-game problem that disappears against Saudi Arabia next week, or maybe the absences of Chris Richards and Cameron Carter-Vickers are a bigger deal than it initially seemed. No matter how you slice it, the number of telegraphed passes, or passes delivered with a laggardly pace, was a major disappointment.

Secondly, as much as Japan did what they set out to do at a really good level, we’re not talking about a complicated plan. Japan pressed out of a very straightforward 4-4-2 shape, something that every USMNT player has seen on a regular basis in recent years. If anything, you’ve been hearing the phrase “nine-ten press” more often over the past two years or so, with teams that on paper play 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 often opting to drop their wingers and move a central midfielder up when they’re out of possession.

And yet, the USMNT on Friday looked bewildered at times, unable to find good angles or make the right movements to open that shape up. Japan used their structure well, but they also weren’t really challenged. The USMNT midfield, who squandered an ostensible three-on-two numerical advantage by being out-fought for 90 minutes, wasn’t opening passing lanes with their movement. If the right run came, it arrived too late and at too slow a speed, and Japan could cut the passing lane off without anything else opening up.

Without Christian Pulisic (who per U.S. Soccer picked up some kind of minor injury in training) and Tim Weah, the front three featured two players that want to go narrow and a No. 9 that pretty notoriously checks back into the midfield. That gave the USMNT no vertical options, allowing Japan to push their line of contention higher. There was no easy outlet, and the USMNT didn’t play well enough to work through things the hard way either.

Now, we haven’t seen the USMNT struggle to this degree very often this year, and missing both Pulisic and Weah made a big difference. Zimmerman and Long have both established that they’re better passers than we saw in this game. Maybe getting the mentality side right fixes all of this, but if it doesn’t, it could undermine the plans of advancing from Group B, much less winning a knockout round game.

Turner time

The USMNT’s best player on the day, by far, was Matt Turner. The goals from Japan were well-taken and not his fault, and he wasn’t the one misplacing simple passes out of the back either.

Historically, the USMNT enters any given World Cup with goalkeeping as a strength, but it’s not entirely clear who Berhalter’s top three are, and who the starter is. There are concerns with every candidate: Zack Steffen has a knee issue and may or may not be first-choice at Middlesbrough. Ethan Horvath has had consistency problems. Sean Johnson’s ceiling might not be as high as the rest of the contenders.

For Turner, the issue has been a more straightforward question of whether he was going to play enough to stay sharp. Turner got a once-in-a-lifetime offer from Arsenal that he had to take, but the concern was that he might be vying for a World Cup spot without being able to show what he can do in games.

Against Japan at least, that issue didn’t appear to be a problem. Turner may have only one appearance since moving to London, but he looked like a full-time starter, showing no signs of rust or a lack of confidence. If not for three particularly good Turner stops, the scoreline would have been worse.

There may be questions at some other vital positions with this team right now, but at the moment Turner seems to be a very strong bet to be the No. 1 when the USMNT takes the field against Wales on November 21.

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USMNT defender Chris Richards joins Crystal Palace from Bayern Munich

The defender becomes the fourth USMNT player to move to the Premier League this summer

U.S. national team defender Chris Richards has completed a transfer to Crystal Palace from Bayern Munich.

The 22-year-old has signed a five-year contract at Palace, becoming the fourth USMNT player to move to the Premier League this summer after Matt Turner, Tyler Adams and Brenden Aaronson.

“I grew up watching the Premier League and grew up of course watching [Wilfried] Zaha, so it’ll be cool to spend some time on the field with them [the Palace players] and be a part of this historic club. I’m really excited for it,” Richards told Palace’s official website.

“The kind of project I’ve seen [attracted me]. It’s a lot of young players but also young players who have a lot of fight. Palace is a club that seems like they’re always fighting.”

Richards originally joined Bayern from FC Dallas in 2018 after a successful trial. He made 10 total appearances for Bayern’s senior team but established himself as a regular at Hoffenheim over two separate loans during the past two seasons.

There was plenty of reported interest in Richards this summer as it became clear Bayern was open to a sale. Several Premier League teams and Hoffenheim were reported to be in the mix, but Patrick Vieira’s Palace has won the race for Richards.

Richards has been capped eight times by the USMNT and appears to be in the mix for a starting role at the 2022 World Cup.

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USMNT won’t play in Olympics, but they could still feature a strong U-23 squad this summer

Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Sergiño Dest headline the USMNT’s strong core of U-23 players.

After losing 2-1 to Honduras on Sunday, U.S. Soccer’s under-23 men’s team failed to qualify for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan (the women’s team qualified last year).

Unlike the women’s game, the men’s Olympic tournament is an under-23 competition (technically under-24 this time after the Olympics were postponed one year due COVID-19). Because the men’s competition is considered a youth tournament, FIFA does not require clubs to release their players for international duty (for qualifying or the tournament).

For that reason, many of the best U-23 players in the world don’t participate in the Olympics and many countries don’t take soccer seriously at the tournament. It’s not anything close to the World Cup.

Americans love the Olympics, though, and we gather together every four years to watch sports we otherwise don’t care about. Evan casual American sports fans would have tuned in if the USA’s U-23 soccer team reached the semifinal or final at the Olympics — it’s another chance to win gold!

The USMNT won’t get a chance to grow its popularity during the Olympics this summer after they failed to qualify, but they could still build a strong U-23 roster for the Concacaf Nations League in June or the Gold Cup in July.

U.S. Soccer won’t be limited to 18-player rosters this summer, but I capped it at that just to demonstrate the Olympic-eligible core the USMNT has (teams can also bring three overage players to the Olympics). This squad won’t play in Tokyo, but they represent a promising future for the national team.