Dethroned by Real Madrid, annihilated by Bayern Munich and then denounced and at the most deserted by their top iconic player, Barcelona enters the 2020-21 crusade with an unknown foot. There’s a new coach, a lame president, and for the first time in thirteen years, with no name to defend.
A reluctant Lionel Messi will spend the season at the club, but a handful of big names are gone. Your replacements will have to get temporarily comfortable with coach Ronald Koeman, high expectations and impatience at Camp Nou and the tension to recover after a disastrous season (at his discretion), it’s a lot to ask the top players. And since this week, an American has been asked.
Given the modest history of football in Europe, it might seem unexpected for a club like Barcelona to hire a young American at a time like this, but there is evidence that times have changed. Although Sergio Dest was about to be revealed as the last acquisition of Barca, the greatest strong evidence was not the age (19) or nationality of ajax Amsterdam’s former side, nor the fact that Barcelona had been granted the right to Dest in a fight with Bayern.
It was that, whatever his national team, the five-time European champion from Spain or the six-time European champion from Germany, Dest was going to have a young American teammate at his new club. Suddenly, one way or another, the United States is represented at the highest point of the global game.
Konrad of the Fuente angels, from Barcelona, 19, and Chris Richards, from Bayern, 20, are on the sidelines of their first teams. They’re prospects. But they are also symbols of this new American foray into the highest point of European football. We’ve been used to seeing American plos angeles players in old-world clubs since the early 1990s, whether they’re pioneers like John Harkes and Paul Caligiuri, or American-born European natives like Earnie Stewart (now America’s athletic director) (Football) and Thomas Dooley.
However, there was a glass ceiling that players sometimes simply can’t break. While American goalkeepers took more credit for the doubt, gardeners only climbed to a certain point in the ranks, betting regularly for groups in the middle of the table or threatened with relegation once they reached the highest even in recent years, it has been notable that an American has won minutes in the Champions League , and when the minutes came, they arrived for a club like Rangers or Schalke 04, who did not intend to do a remember when it was a big problem that Clint Dempsey signed for Tottenham Hotspur and Michael Bradley joined AS Rome?Just a few seasons ago, they were vital and revolutionary destinations for an American player. But combined, Spurs and Rome have won only one league name in more than 3 decades.
FC Barcelona / Getty Images (5)
Today, in a year in which the general has redefined himself, Dest is part of a cohort of young Americans who redefine the American player’s perspective, and the maximum seems to be on their way to fame. In addition to Barcelona and Bayern, there are Americans at Chelsea. (Christian Pulisic), Juventus (Weston McKennie), Borussia Dortmund (Giovanni Reyna), Manchester City (Zack Steffen) and RB Leipzig (Tyler Adams). Steffen, the doorman, is the 25-year-old. These groups are among those of Europe. , former continental champions and / or existing contenders with great global prestige. This amount of American representation at this point in the game is unprecedented.
“That’s how you start winning regularly. You want quality. And when your players play at that level, it’s quality,” American coach Gregg Berhalter told SiriusXM last week. Totti or Ronaldo or Christian Vieri, and you want their uniforms after the game. Now we have boys playing with those boys. They’re going back to the same clubs as those boys. It’s another level. “
Previously, the U. S. record in Europe probably the 2010 World Cup team was coached through Bob Bradley. Of the 23 players who won their organization in South Africa, only 4 came from MLS clubs (plus two from the MX League). But if there is a European quantity, not necessarily quality. Most were at best productive in medium-sized organizations, and only 3 were in the books of Champions League-ranked organizations: Oguchi Onyewu, who played only once for AC Milan; and DaMarcus Beasley and Maurice Edu in the rangers, where not a normal headline.
At the 2016 Copa América Centenario, after five years of tireless solicitation from Jurgen Klinsmann, only 11 of the 23 American players were in European clubs. Dempsey and Bradley had returned to MLS and Jermaine Jones in Colorado. Among European athletes, only two, a very young Pulisic and Fabian Johnson, were in the Champions League standings.
This now turns out to be an eternity in the evolution of Americans abroad. Four years later, in this season’s Champions League, the number of American participants can be successful in double digits (and that includes coach Jesse Marsch at Red Bull Salzburg). Many of them are in groups that have an eye on the 16th circular in August, Adams scored the goal that helped Leipzig qualify for the 2019-2020 semi-finals. package at this level of competition. Next spring, it’s pretty imaginable that this number will be eclipsed in a week without getting married.
For Berhalter and his colleagues at U. S. Soccer, this is obviously an exciting progression and they hope it bodes well for the national team. Also that this American invasion is not a coincidence. Why now, why not 10 years ago or 10 years ago, because, they say, it’s the generation of the Development Academy, this is what was intended to happen when the United States nevertheless standardized and professionalized the identity and progression of the player. DA was far from the best and in April, USSoccer abandoned the assignment due to the festival’s internal prices and problems, leaving the reins to the MLS.
But he was in position long enough – thirteen seasons – to influence one of the important variables that contribute to the creation of an elite footballer, so much has to be positioned precisely to produce an athlete capable of signing for Barcelona or Bayern, genetics and education to be seen at the right time, have paintings on the net and , perhaps most important of all, the determination and ethics of a player’s paintings. No ruling club or framework can take credit for all this (and US Soccer doesn’t try), and in fact it made a difference for Reyna and Pulisic to be the children of former professionals, and for McKennie who spent part of his training years in Germany.
However, it is also true that all three spent time at the Development Academy, as did Adams, Steffen and Richards, and joined on the other side of the puddle through Academy alumbs such as 20-year-old Josh Sargent, ahead (Werder Bremen). , The 22-Year-Old Reggie Cannon Defense (Boavis, 19-year-old striker Ulysses Llanez (Heerenveen on loan from Wolfsburg), 25-year-old defender Matt Miazga (Chelsea), 23-year-old defender Erik Palmer-Brown (Austria Wien on loan from Manchester City) Array, 20-year-old striker Sebastian Soto (SC Telstar on loan from Norwich City), 20-year-old striker Timothy Weah (Lille) and others.
“What other people are passionate about is what we see coming and what we’ve been passionate about for years. And that’s just the beginning. That’s the effect of a 13-year project,” Tony Lepore, director of children’s ability identity in the United States, told Sports Illustrated. “Academies are obviously emerging more players who are in a position to make this transition from academy to professional, and are much more prepared than ever. a position, but what we are seeing now is that they are in a position to succeed in the highest foreign titles and make a difference. They are young players who have a genuine effect and help their groups get results. “
The Academy has replaced youth football, taking players to an environment where they exercise exclusively for 10 months a year with committed and authorized coaches, maintaining an adequate ratio between matches and exercise (Lepore stated that before the USSDA, young groups of people trained 50% less than their foreign counterparts). He encouraged players to compete with older groups if they could, accelerating development In MLS clubs, he put young players in touch with first-team members, allowing them to work out and find out alongside adult professionals, and that has led to investing in larger facilities.
Lepore said that in addition to USSDA in Europe, 30 teenagers lately earn minutes in the MLS, 10 more on the first team charts and 120 other teenagers active in the USL, some as young as 15.
“We’ve got the ignition right now. They’re from the first team in the mls. They arrive in Europe and qualify for the Champions League. And inspire,” Lepore said.
“That’s it, ” said Berhalter to SiriusXM. And when you think of all those players. . . who are now starting to see the box and are starting to be professionals and continue to do wonderful things, is because in this specific case, US Soccer came in combination and said, ‘We’re going to have standards. We’re going to have specifications to review to expand players. We’re going to hold the coaches accountable. “That’s right, and the clubs have invested. MLS owners have invested a ton of cash in youth academies, facilities, coaches, and now you see the culmination of their work».
Another contributed to America’s decision, Football in 2016 to align national organizations for each organization one year old, from under-14 to under-20, this not only increases the foreign visibility of locals, Lepore said, but also helping them get used to plos angelesying with each other. It is intended to pay dividends at the top level. Although Berhalter’s defendants all plos angelesand other clubs, are not foreigners. usSDA products – they were teammates (and roommates) with the U. S. under-20s.
“Everyone’s story is unique. But what aren’t those unusual things?” said Lepore, referring to life cases, personality characteristics and the environment that can help forge a Champions League player in the long run. “There are coincidences. But I think there are. There are things that have had an effect on progression in the United States, but we knew it would actually take a generation to see a lasting effect. more non-unusual and less coincidental parts, you can see those themes. “
There’s a long way to go. The vast majority of players discussed here are just starting out at those big clubs and have a lot of work to do before incorporating automatic additions to the initial lineup. The United States has yet to produce a good faith global star or a FIFA Player of the Year. candidate, nor has this existing generation had the opportunity to perform at the higher foreign level. And good fortune is not a fact. Look no further than the African nations that have been sending players to European clubs for years to fight powerfully at the World Cup.
It will depend on football, and increasingly MLS and USL, nurture and expand players who will stay with Pulisic, McKennie and Adams in Europe. The hope is that this existing culture will not be a golden generation that eventually emerges from the If the unusual threads to which Lepore refers can be reproduced and maintained, and if football continues to grow in America, that hope deserves an expectation. American players are a smart price in the global market. , and primary European clubs will be more likely to invest if their smart fortune is not perceived as a turn of fate or a coincidence.
By now, American players moving up to more sensible soccer are keenly aware of their prestige and the stakes, they stick with others, inspire others, and are eager to see what happens.
“I think it’s an exciting band,” Reyna told Sports Illustrated recently. “And, you know, from Christian to Weston to Tyler Adams, Josh Sargent, Sergio Dest and all the younger ones, we have an intelligent young core. I think we can build anything with them for the next 10 years, who knows. We can be combined for a long time. So this is an exciting time for football and I’m excited to play with them.
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