Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #433: The U17s and the talent pipeline with Hartman & Chairez

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Matt Hartman and Marcus Chairez join Belz to talk through the U17s' chances at the upcoming U17 World Cup in Indonesia, what the relative weakness of the 2006 birth year means for the talent pool, and who did themselves favors with their play in the Czech Republic a few weeks ago. (Patron-only edition is 45 minutes longer and includes detailed discussion of 6 specific prospects, and some encouraging news about the 2007 through 2009 birth years.)Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! You get exclusive podcast episodes on average twice a week, plus access to the Discord and live call-in shows, by signing up here for as little as $2 a month: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the SCuff podcast, where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, it's time to dive in on the prospects and the state of the talent pipeline. In general, joining me are Matt Hartman and Marcus Jerez. You all know who they are, both guests we've had a few times. Marcus, how are you? With Bells, glad to be here. Glad to be with you too. Thank you for your time.

Matt, how are you? Doing well, Bell. It's always a pleasure. Let's look straight ahead to the U-17 World Cup, the USA Favors. is Burkina Faso and South Korea and France in its group. One of the more difficult groups in the tournament, though probably not the most difficult group. I mean, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong on that.

But first match is 7 a.m. Eastern Time on November 12th, a Sunday in Jakarta against South Korea. I guess we'll start with this. Is there any reason to be optimistic about this team? There's some reasons to be optimistic. I think that there are some individual players who it's going to, to be exciting to watch play at the tournament. I think any chance we have to like test ourselves

against like the best that other countries have to offer. I mean, this is really the first time we really get to see that outside of Concaf right, outside of like these weird little tournaments that sometimes happen. I always find it exciting. I always find it fun. If you're one of those like this is a useless exercise unless we walk away with a trophy people, you're probably not going to be a tournament you want to tune into. From my perspective, but it's U-17s, anything could happen.

I'm just not terribly optimistic myself. Yeah. Marcus. I first just loved the way East Coasters say tournament, so. I like it. I've always enjoyed that, too. Always, always. Yeah, same sentiment.

I think there's individual players. I'm excited to see compete against really high-level competition. I think there's just some clear deficiencies in this class and we're obviously going to get into that. You can't, we're not at the point where we're going to be deep, you know, at every position class by class. Some classes are going to have some strengths and very clear weaknesses and this one definitely has some clear weaknesses

that I think you're going to make it tough for them to do too much damage. But I'm so excited. I'm still excited to see some players compete and we'll get into that. Just for a little context, those of you following closely will know this, but this group just played in the Voklav Jezic tournament in the Czech Republic, the Vaklav Jekhzik tournament in the Czech Republic. And they barely beat Ukraine, right?

It was kind of a last second or a couple of late goals, got us a three-two win there. And then we lost to Switzerland, and then we lost to the Czech Republic, pretty handily in both cases, right? So, I don't know, did you guys, do you guys have any, like, new takeaways from that tournament? Yeah, I'd say, I think, like, the main takeaway from me is that the team that we brought just wasn't very good. I don't think we played all that badly given the talent efficiency that the team faced against Ukraine, the Swiss, and Czech Republic.

The Ukraine game was close in the run of play, probably deserved a draw. I thought the Swiss game was a little more ugly. We did have some good stretches in the run of play, but the story of the game was a bigger, more athletic, harder working team that we struggled to cause any real problems for in their final third. They forced us into some errors that ended up being the real difference. And the Czech Republic outplayed us, and it didn't feel like we really had the fight to try to make things difficult for them.

last game of the tournament, it was pretty disappointing, I think, for the players, given the scores to that point. I found it pretty reminiscent of watching the youth national teams in the early to mid-2010 cycles where there was a good mix of, where there was a mix of good prospects

with guys that just didn't feel like they belong at the level. I think the hope going into the tournament for me was that we'd establish a good base of players that we could add onto with like five to eight guys, from outside the roster that might be able to get us over the top at the World Cup. And I think what we learned is that there isn't really very much depth in this age group that we can rely on. And I think that that has kind of played itself out in the progression of this age group throughout the U-17 cycle. That there just aren't that many players that are ready for prime time yet.

If you look at the 2006s in their U-17 season in MLS, we have 100,000. eight minutes played from Mataya Camboni, who got both of those in like the first, in like two appearances in the first four games of the season because DC United's centerback core was like decimated. And then Caden Glover has a 13 minute cameo. You compare that to like our last U17 cycle where the U17 cycle for the 2003s. And we, by this point in the MLS season, we had 500 minutes for each of Ricardo Pepey, Kate Towell, and Kevin Perrez, 300 minutes plus from Caden Clark, and cameos from a bunch of players, including Danny Leva,

Chris Garcia, Dante Sealy, Brian Gutierrez, Moses Nyman, and a couple more players even then. So, yeah, there have been some warning signs, and I don't think the tournament had, was made me more optimistic than I was going in. Give us some hope. Give us some hope here. Marcus

Yeah, I mean, I guess I generally play the role of a slightly more optimist. I think what I did appreciate from the tournament while I agree with everything Hartman said, the team did show some resiliency that I appreciated, especially in that first game, coming back and getting two late goals to win that game. And we're going to talk about the player who scored those two goals.

Nipa, Bertramas, who was the young player there. And then I thought I took away from the Switzerland match a little bit more positivity. I think there were two really, really bad individual errors that led to those first two goals by Switzerland. And that happened in like the first 15 minutes. And I think the team could have completely imploded. But I thought the next 40 to 50 minutes they controlled the run of play. So I was just happy to see that fight and resiliency in the group. And I thought they did have some good chances in the middle of that match. And then I think just kind of ran out of gas.

And I think that those two kind of attempts to crawl back, one successful, one not, kind of took all the steam out of that third match. So I think there was some good maybe intangible mentality things to take away from those first two games that they didn't give up and they fought back and they made those first two, those first two games, interesting games. But yeah, I think there were just some clear deficiencies going into this tournament with the roster.

I think broadly, I think this age group lacks athleticism and physicality kind of across the board. I think it's why you see them behind, even where some of the top 05s or 04s have been in their progression. there's a real lack of nine depth. So Carol Figaroa was not there, a guy who scored a ton of goals in the Conca Calf tournament. He's been injured and we're unsure the severity of that injury and if he'll be back before the World Cup or in enough time.

Kind of the same thing that becoming a little bit of a concern because he came into the Conca Calf tournament a little banged up and was on a minute's restriction. And there just hasn't been a lot of options behind him. And Gonzalo hasn't really brought in a ton of nines to try out. They didn't really have a true nine in this tournament, which is kind of becoming a consistent theme in the kind of youth national team landscape. I think in the Concagaff tournament, they lacked explosive wingers. I thought they brought a few different players that helped the team in this tournament. but there are, you know, some positives we can take away if we want to get into that.

Akamboni, was he on this roster or no? He wasn't. And I think both Hartman and I have kind of did some digging. And the consensus there is I think he's just not rated as highly as some of the others by the manager, Gonzalo. And I think generally I am more critical of Cigaris as a youth national team coach than most of the others. I think there's some context to this age group that's important to call out. I think both roster selection and cap ties for some other players to other countries are really impacting kind of our, you know, what we're thinking about this group. I think of my top 20 U.S. eligible 2006 players, I think five or six might be on that U-17 World Cup roster, that final roster.

And that's because five top players have already been captied to other countries. Barajas for Mexico is one. Alejandro Granados, who's played with Spain's U-17s, was our. are Stefanovich who plays for Canada as a centerback. Cole Campbell, who plays at Dortmund, is already captied to Iceland. So there's guys that would be top 20 players that are either captied, and then just for whatever reason not getting rated by Gonzalo. I think Accomboni is the one that stands out the most,

or one of the ones that stands out the most. The other I think is worth discussing is a kid named Christopher Olney. He plays for the Philadelphia Union. He's a late 2006, born in December, which is always a good sign in terms of how he's competing with kids that are a lot older than him. He has 13 goal contributions in MLS Next Pro, far more than anybody in this age group. He can play kind of as a 10, a wide midfielder in their 4-4-2 diamond or can play on the wing. isn't getting a sniff in terms of invites, which from what I've been told, all U.S. soccer has told him is he needs to take defenders on one v. one more.

And so there's just some kind of head scratching decisions as well that I think might be diluting our perspective on this group. And so I want people to kind of understand and have that context. Okay. Yeah, the acumboni thing is to me, like, a head scratcher. It's one of the more like questionable decisions. I just think it comes down to Segaris like just sticking with his guys over the course of this cycle where he just kind of hasn't been in camps and you have Stu Hawkins and Tyler Hall just like being ever presence

and kind of just like limiting the call-ups that the rest of the the 06 centerback contingent can get even if like at least one of those quushed-ups, one of those questions. One of those call-ups, I would call, like, pretty questionable at this point with where Tyler Hall is. If I'm going to play, like, devil's advocate to what, uh, what Marcus just went through in terms of, like, the decision-making with the rest of the roster, I mean, I think that there's a lot of good stuff in there. And, like, at this point, we may as well, like, bring in some of those guys that are on the outside, like, CJ only, for example. But I don't know that guys like Oleg Escobar and Barahas and only like they're very arguably better than David

Vasquez and Cruz Medina and Romero and Rudy Sill the guys that were in this camp and I don't feel strongly that it's an improvement like I don't know that they solve like the explosive playmaker issue that we seem to have in this group guys that are in other national team setups right now like Cole Campbell and Granados who's with Spain they'd certainly mix things up, at least in terms of their skill set, but they have, like, pretty strong links to the countries that they're playing for. It's not like a, it's not even like a U.S. Mexico situation where the guy, kid may have split time. Like, they're both, you know, like, both of their parents are from, I think Campbell has an American parent, but he spent a lot of

time in Iceland. And I don't think it's a situation where, like, U.S. soccer should be going out of their way for, like, pre-U-17 World Cup to get those guys on board just because we don't just because they would be improvements because our domestic class isn't necessarily great to me it's like it's a single blue chip class this 06 class with uh deigo cotchen the barcelona goalkeeper being that guy and like another five or six guys that we could count that we can count on to play above replacement level and then i i get real scared after that yeah i guess my my point with that is more of we may have a disappointing U-17 World Cup, but it doesn't mean that we won't get value out of

this class down the road. And I think we've learned that time and time again when we're in this moment. And then, you know, four or five years later, maybe a guy like Granados becomes something, you know, but isn't going to obviously be a senior national team player for Spain. but you know you're not thinking about him right now because he does have ties to Spain so I think I guess what I'm just trying to caution is you know I'm not ready to throw my hands up in the air and say this class isn't going to give us anything it's just contextually there's some challenges going into this World Cup that that may make it difficult right Marcus you were I don't know if

excited is the right word but you thought noahia banks did well in this tournament right or at least in a couple of the matches. Can you tell us more about him? Yeah. He's a centerback. Yeah, he's a centerback. He's a German-American. He plays for Augsburg at the U-19 level.

I've been trying to watch him for a long time. He's been in some camps. He was one of the alternates for the Concord Calf Tournament. And I was super impressed. I'm interested to get your thoughts, but not a perfect prospect, but he's got tons and tons of tools. And again, it makes you wonder, you know, why did it take him so long to break through into the roster? He's, I think, clearly has a lot more tools than any of the centerbacks we brought in. He's probably about 6.3, maybe pushing 6'4.

He moves well. He has great vision. He's super comfortable on the ball, good feet. was breaking a lot of lines with his passes. He just, you know, kind of in terms of the mold of a modern day centerback, he kind of ticks all the boxes. He is a little undisciplined going into challenges, but plays with a ton of confidence. I thought he was one of the few bright spots in these three matches. So I came away really impressed in thinking that this is probably one of the best centerbacks in our youth pool.

I mean, he's definitely got more tools than I think the majority. of centerbacks in our pool. And to me, I kind of walked away wondering, you know, why isn't he getting called into Germany camps? Because, yeah, I've watched, I've definitely watched their age group. And I think he's at that level. And I think he, as a 2006-point player, I think he got the most U-19 minutes in the German Academy set up last year

than any other centerback. So I think there's lots of reasons to be. excited about him. Yeah, he's the big winner of the Jezac Cup for me. I know somebody who watches the German youth landscape pretty closely, and they didn't rate banks, so I never really looked for

tape on him, and he was my first time watching him like it was Marcus's, but not a huge sample size, don't want to get, like, overly confident in his level or anything, but if this kid isn't good enough to get

a German call-up based on talent, then Germany has a golden generation of centerbacks on the horizon because his combination of size and quickness, especially his lateral quickness, was outstanding throughout the tournament. And I think the questions that you have to ask, like Marcus had all of the tools, a lot of the tools are there. It is just like there was that the decision making on some of his defending looked like it could potentially be a little sketchy.

And then I would love to see more of him kind of spraying the ball along with the field. He did have some good distribution, but it was mostly like fairly, like he was good under pressure and made some nice passes and some good line-breaking passes that were mostly on the ground, but it can be interesting to see if he has even more in his pocket in regard to on the ball, because if he does, he's pretty serious centerback prospect. Yeah, let's let's ask him to like keep that under wraps for a little while longer. you know, if he's got the, if he's got the diagonal switch. I think he looks like he could be like a yellow card machine

is the way that he kind of plays right now. That would be my, that was the biggest worry from the couple of games we watch. Well, maybe better to rein a kid in than the, I don't know, yeah. I'm thinking about U-8 soccer. Figaroa, is he going to be back in time for the U-17 World Cup? Yeah, I don't think. we know anything about it basically we had a small conversation before going live about it just

because i was i didn't know myself i didn't like everything regarding his injury is kind of hush hush generally not a good thing but who knows like he could come back any day now like we we kind of don't even know what the injury is outside of knowing that it's a leg injury so um yeah like it's just kind of a wait and see scenario um i'm not usually optimistic given that we're sitting here at the end of September that he's going to be able to get back in time for the U-17 World Cup. But it's not, he's not ruled out as far as I know. Okay. Cruz Medina.

What's going on with him? There was so much hype about him. What, like a year ago, a year and a half ago? And I'm not saying you guys were the hipers. There was just hype in general. Well, like, what's happened? This is coming from a guy who used to think Richie Ledesma and Alex Mendes was going to be. like, you know, nailed on national team players.

So I'm not criticizing anybody or anywhere, just what happened to Cruz. I mean, I think it's kind of the same story, right? As with Alex and Richie, you kind of have a kid who has lots of tools. When you have lots of tools on your tool belt, it's pretty easy to look very good playing against 16-year-olds. And as you age up a kid, get harder to do that. and I think as you move up and you become like you can't do what you want at will anymore it potentially gets frustrating and like the whole game kind of starts to pass you by

Cruz this has been like kind of in the pipeline for him I think like we're always kind of hoping that he could like get back to the form that he exhibited like 18 months ago now where he when he was at his peak and like he was just kind of doing what he wanted but even then, even when Cruz Medina was at his best as a 16 year old or whenever it was, it was kind of like he did

it in spurts and then for the rest of the game he kind of struggled to affect what was going on and when you have a player like that it is often the case that as they grow up they start to put it together more often like Geo Raina is a great example of this right

like Geo Raina U15 games were often extremely frustrating because he'd do like six like otherworldly things a game and then for the rest of the game he's just like dribbling into guys and stuff like that or yelling at teammates yeah yelling at teammates i mean that's just the new york soccer thing but yeah i mean cruz is an example of a guy who so far like you know in the last year has taken a pretty hard turn into other direction where um he's just struggling to affect the games that he's playing in positively at all at the moment there's definitely still flashes, like not a complete write-off. But if you're looking at this group, like, man, is it hard to write him into a starting roster right now? And I think, honestly, if we're going based, if we're naming our World Cup roster just off of, like, how, just off of player performances in the last, like, say, like, six

months a year, whatever you want to call it, like, he's, he's borderline tilting off their edge of the roster. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'd agree. I think that, you know, for the many faults Nexpro has, I think what it is offering is for top U-17 players,

we're getting an earlier look at how they can impact games against more grown men, more physical players. and I think that we're just seeing, as we've seen with a lot of prospects that we've kind of fallen in love with at the U-15, U-16 level, that there is a threshold that I think you need to hit physically to be able to influence games, especially in, you know, some of the positions he's playing and he's just struggling to do it. And it's kind of now trickling into even when he's playing against kids his own age. So, yeah, I'm in the same camp as Hartman. I think if we were looking at this kind of from a clean slate, he probably wouldn't be on my top.

You know, my 23 man roster, or he'd be on the fringes. I mean, he's going to be there for all the reasons Hartman mentioned before. And kind of Gonzalo has his core that he's going to stick with. but yeah, I just haven't seen it from them in the last 12 to 18 months. Okay. Medina at San Jose, San Jose Earthquakes, hasn't appeared yet in MLS this season, right? Yep. How would you guys think we should define a good class here?

And first of all, when we talk about this class, are you just talking about the 06 birth year? Or are you talking about 0607? Is that too pedantic? I mean, I don't think so. I get pretty pedantic about this stuff, this stuff. But I think at this age group, at this level, I'm kind of mainly thinking about the 06s. There's probably going to be one, maybe two, 07s on the roster

and looking like an 08. But it's really not until, I think, the U20 level where you kind of start to mesh the classes together. I think right now they've been primarily looking at 06s. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about in terms of grading, the class. I'm thinking about the 2006 class. Yeah, I agree. It's like U-17 class is like, it's the birth year of the U-17 World Cup, which in this case is the 06. And you can include the top like couple 07s in that, but you're not, you're not, when I talk about this U-17 class, it's not necessarily

a reflection on the full 07 birth group birth year. Like it would be when we're talking about the U-20 class whereas like if the u20 class is like say that the main birth year is the o3 is the oldest group that would be allowed to to play in the in the last u20 world cup at that point it's like you're talking when you talk about the u20 class you're talking about the oh threes and oh fours it's an older group there's more ability to like the difference between a 19 and 20 year old is like significant way less significant than a 17 and 16 Right. Makes sense. Makes sense. So how are we going to define a good class here from this age group?

I guess the last U-17 World Cup we had, we had Gio Raina on that team, Joe Scali. Ricardo Pepe was 03, and he was on that team. Yeah. I like to like, we've had one U-17. class in between. They just didn't get a World Cup because it was the COVID year, the 04 class. But in terms of like how I think about classes, both like classes and birth years, I'd like to keep it pretty simple, just straight up compare them to the last, say, like five groups. And comparing them to those last groups in terms of where they were when they were a U-17 team, not where those kids might be today. But, you know, if the class is better than three or four,

it's a good class of those last five classes. It's a good class if they're worse than average. It's a disappointing class. And from where we are now in the development of our youth national team programs and the Development Academy, which I still call it, I think we should be looking at like every two, we should be looking at every two-year class and feeling confident that they're like cumulatively raising the ceiling and the floor of,

the national team program. And on the ceiling side, I think that means having a few guys that are like universal blue chips, you know. A few? Yeah, like for a two-year class. So like, I'm not saying that they have to become like, they have to meet their potential. Like Carlton would be an example of a guy who was a blue chip in his U-17 class, right? Yeah.

So for a wave of nostalgia just washed over me. Yeah. And so like, you know, two or three and then on the floor side and hopefully two of them hit. And then on the floor side, I think it means having like 10, let's call it 10 plus 10 to 12 solid like high level prospects that, you know, who knows what they become. But at the very least, they, as professionals, they could push the back end of the of the pool. I think that's a little optimistic for where we're at right now. I mean, I think a class that does that is probably pretty damn good. So I think I'd probably like what I'd call a good class right now is, yeah, maybe someone with one or two players that could raise the potential ceiling of the group and maybe more like a half dozen potential floor raisers.

I mean, that, you know, we're not talking about a very big, you know, senior national team here. So one class has the potential to do that. I think that's somewhat significant. I think also we have to acknowledge that the ceiling and floor is much higher than it's been. I was just going to ask about that, yeah. So I think we, while if we want to keep that going, we need each of these classes to continue to push it. I completely acknowledge that. But I think there was a pretty big spike and jump in talent level,

I guess probably starting with 98 and 2000, where the ceiling and floor just kind of rapidly jumped up from where it had been. And I think that this class to me is still, it lacks depth and it has very clear weaknesses, but I still think that there's five to ten players that could impact the senior national team pool, and I'm not too disappointed by that. All right, we're going to take a little break

and come back for the second half of the episode for patrons. If you would like to become a patron of the scuff podcast, the link is in the show notes. You get the Monday reviews. You get Friday content every week, including the last 45 minutes of this episode. We know that the 04 and 05 birth years, and the 06, as we've talked about in the first half of the episode,

are a little weak compared to the birth years before them. But we're going to talk about maybe there being an upswing in 07 and very good signs for 2008 and 2009. So we'll talk about that. We'll get into six specific prospects, three chosen by each Matt and Marcus that they're excited about. Spoiler alert, one of them is Kavin Sullivan, and we're going to have a pretty fascinating discussion about him, I think.

and then there's also a short list of players that I want to talk about that I'm going to bring up for them. There may be some overlap between the two lists. If you are a patron, we'll be back in a minute. If this is it for you,