1. Jermaine Jones: a center back no more
When United States national team manager Jurgen Klinsmann moved Jermaine Jones to center back, most of us scratched our noggins.
He’ll be a few months from 37 years old at the next World Cup. Yes, Klinsmann has told us repeatedly why he loves having Jones on his team, for all that contagious fearlessness. Fair enough. But is that commodity in such low supply around his team – C’mon, Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley don’t look like they are afraid of much in life either – that it makes sense to ask a 33-year-old midfielder to learn a new position on the fly?
No, that never made much sense.
Well now we don’t have to worry about it anymore. And if you’ve seen Jones play center back, you know why.
His positioning and instincts were somewhere between “average” and “completely erratic.” And that wasn’t the worst part! He was beaten repeatedly in the air for the United States and for New England, where coach Jay Heaps asked Jones to play the position as a stop-gap during a busy stretch.
But his heart clearly wasn’t in it. He kept telling us that he believed he could help the Revs more in midfield, and he that he still believed he was up to the midfield job for Klinsmann’s national team.
Jones will miss some time now due to a groin injury suffered last week. When he returns, safe to say it will be in the midfield, and midfield only.
2. Defensive nightmare, the uncontested cross
When goals are scored, we tend to pay a lot of attention to the culprits closest to goal, the defenders who were beaten inside the penalty area. We do so with good reason, of course.
But there is a devil in the goal concession details that gets less attention and reduced public scorn, even though it is frequently a devil of equal destructive power: what about an uncontested cross that led to the goal?
Watch Juan Agudelo score recently against Toronto, where the pressure on London Woodberry’s cross is painfully slow to arrive. Woodberry has time and space to get his head up, pick out his
target and arrange a pinpoint delivery to a U.S. international striker.
How about this late Chicago equalizer a week later against Columbus. Crew defender Waylon Francis needed to be closer to the Fire’s Eric Gehrig, who could have written in a poem in the time he had to line up this important cross.
If Philadelphia ever wants to content in the Eastern Conference, the Union certainly cannot let midfielders or outside backs get unchallenged crossing opportunities like this one, which arranged an important Chris Pontius equalizer for D.C. United. In this case, the pressure was hurriedly arriving, but the proximity of defenders and a quality switching pass from United’s midfield gave Taylor Kemp enough time and room to line up his service into the penalty area.
You get the point. Center backs who can reliably challenge for crosses are great and all, but they aren’t superheroes. It helps when the opposition attackers out wide can’t take their sweet time in lining up those deliveries into dangerous places.
3. Decision in KC: Dwyer or Nemeth? Or both?
The best player at surging Sporting Kansas City over the last three matches isn’t the man who stands as an early frontrunner for league MVP (Benny Feilhaber) or the man who scored 22 goals last year (Dom Dwyer). Not at all.
Sporting KC’s man of the moment is Krisztian Nemeth, the Hungarian international who has recently found his feet in MLS, and in a big, big way.
Nemeth’s contributions to the team’s comfortable 4-0 win over Dallas last Friday cannot be overstated. Among other things he was responsible for: Sporting KC’s first goal; the foul that led to Sporting KC’s first goal; two yellow cards shown to Dallas’ Zach Loyd before halftime that changed the game; a beautiful assist on one other Sporting KC goal; arranging other chances through either direct or indirect involvement; generally being a handful for FCD’s entire back line.
Loyd and center back Matt Hedges both had atypically bad matches, and Nemeth was largely responsible.
The decision KC coach Peter Vermes now faces once Dwyer regains full health: move Nemeth back to the wing, where he played before Dwyer’s recent injury? Or keep him in that target spot, where he looked like a world beater on Friday? His ability to bring others into the play – basically, a target striker’s most important responsibility other than the obvious, scoring goals – is a serious difference maker.
The other option would be a switch to some sort of 4-4-2, but Vermes has a long-standing attachment to his 4-3-3. That goes all the way back to his days as a player in Holland, where the 4-3-3 is as much a part off of the landscape as tulips or flood control. In other words, that seems unlikely.
4. The Emerson Hyndman story
There was a time when some players rolled their eyes at then-manager Schellas Hyndman’s habit of including a kid, and a very small kid at that, in some portions of FC Dallas’ practice sessions.
Thing is, that kid was Hyndman’s grandson. And the other thing is, that kid was darn good.
I remember watching a couple of practices where Emerson Hyndman would jump into the game. He was not involved in the “full practice,” or not that I saw, anyway. Rather, it was in certain passing drills. Hyndman was 12 years old then– and he was tiny as a 12-year-old. So on the one hand, he clearly looked out of place physically, an itty-bitty thing next to these grown men.
On the other hand, if you really watched his decisions with the ball and speed of execution, he really didn’t look out of place at all.
Hyndman is now running the midfield for the U.S. under-20s, who have a match remaining in group play of the ongoing FIFA under-20 World Cup in New Zealand. And he is doing a fantastic job of it.
Hyndman, just 19 years old, made 11 appearances last year for Fulham as the West London club finished mid-table in England’s second tier.
Two quick thoughts on Hyndman. You wonder if greater body of U.S. soccer supporters might regard him a tick less because he’s at Fulham rather than mighty Manchester United or Arsenal or some other heavyweight club? And you wonder if that is changing now as they watch how he can organize and command a midfield?
And about those concerns over Hyndman’s size: First, his grandfather, the former FC Dallas manager and noted martial arts master Schellas, is a tough guy. So was Emerson’s dad. So, Emerson has that element in his genes.
Plus, Hyndman is about the same size as Xavi and Andres Iniesta. You’ve probably heard of them, and perhaps seen the way they can dominate a midfield for Barcelona or for Spain. If you haven’t, you’re in luck: they’ll be part of the midfield plan this weekend as Barca faces Italy’s Juventus for the 2014-15 UEFA Champions League title.
5. The Little Five
5a. I’ll try not to pull a muscle patting myself on the back for this one, but Brad Evans sure looks OK right now as a center back, eh? He just got a call into Jurgen Klinsmann’s national team.
5b. New York still plays some of the best soccer in MLS; witness how they went cross country to control stretches Sunday at CenturyLink vs. Seattle, which ain’t easy to do. But finishing remains an issue. Perhaps this is too much put on Bradley Wright-Phillips, but maybe the rubber meets the road on this team’s fortunes right here: As he goes, so the Red Bulls go.
5c. You know it was a tough call for FC Dallas midfielder-forward Tesho Akindele, who has announced his intentions to join Canada for upcoming matches. On the one hand, he’ll be a lot closer to the top of Benito Floro’s depth chart with Canada. He would be much further down the pecking order with the United States. (Akindele was in the U.S. camp in January, still working out the best use of his dual eligibility.) On the other hand, the United States’ ongoing chances of World Cup qualification are much stronger than Canada’s, and that was surely a consideration, too.
5d. Robbie Keane has been healthy enough to start just 4 of 15 matches for the Galaxy this year. Now, having been called for an Ireland friendly and Euro 2016 qualifier, he’ll miss at least two more matches. That’s good news for the rest of the West. But it’s also something to think about for the Galaxy, who have a big decision to make on a 35-year-old striker who will be out of contract this year.
5e. A heads up here: Chicago, sharing the basement in the East not so long ago, is unbeaten in three games and has climbed all the way to fifth in the conference. And now former league MVP Mike Magee is getting closer to a lineup return. Magee Magee played 60 minutes last week on rehab-loan to Saint Louis FC. Is Frank Yallop finally getting it together at Toyota Park?
Steve Davis has covered Major League Soccer since is first kick in 1996. He writes on-line for World Soccer Talk and Fusion TV’s Soccergods, and co-hosts the weekly radio show/podcast ESPN Soccer Today on 103.3 FM in Dallas. Davis is also the radio play-by-play voice for FC Dallas on 100.7 FM.
