Nah, this guys career isn't on the decline. Will be fun to see where he is in two years. It won't be the WC. Another big swing and a miss. Luckily for him, there is no concept of form in MLS. 1820455287309926465 is not a valid tweet id
Hmmm.... how could anyone have predicted that a 34 yo CB would fall off? 1832538761063985404 is not a valid tweet id
The infatuation with Ream has been incredibly odd to me. He looks like an MLS lifer at this point. 1832519672018731011 is not a valid tweet id
Doing his best Long, Zimmerman, Robinson impersonation. How did he learn to do this so quick. That is some serious MLS pixie dust. 1832531011105587301 is not a valid tweet id
I say we run Ream into the ground until he is so embarrassed he retires. If his level falls off much more we could get a performance that would make Agoos blush. Id guess at his age, his decline due to coming to MLS will be multiple times worse than what we saw with Bradley and Altidore.
I thought I'd post these again. Your guys selective criticism gets in your way so often. One can only imagine what your response would be if this were Brooks or say Cameron. So as of Sep 2024, anyone paying attention would know that Ream will be a weak link against teams like Canada or better. 1832530263315738950 is not a valid tweet id 1832538761063985404 is not a valid tweet id
This definitely sounds like a guy that is focused on making the WC squad in two years. Different priorities. Nothing is wrong with that. “I could have stayed at Fulham, I could have played. But spending Christmas with the kids for the first time in their life [last year when he was injured], it was such a big eye-opener,” Ream said to GOAL. “That was the exact point where it was like, ‘You know what? I think we need to start exploring options’.” “My wife’s parents are retired. My oldest is 10, and they’ve missed out on a lot with him.” “How do we go back without going all the way back? We’ve been away from St. Louis for so long. It’s our hometown and where we grew up but we are different people now.” “So St. Louis is not somewhere we thought we would end up long term. We wanted to be somewhere different.” “Charlotte came about and it seemed like the perfect place for our family and kids to grow up.”
We live in a fact-free era. We hired an accomplished coach from completely outside of our existing structure. He's going to do a complete re-evaluation of the pool. And yes, that means taking a look at guys like Ream and Steffen. Maybe he'll decide that they still have something to offer the USMNT. Or he'll decide the opposite. What we don't want is the staff to go in with preconceived notions of the pool based on what the previous staff chose to do.
I am so looking forward to see Ream's decline out in front of everyone. Dude's career was poor outside one season and the overall view from fans thinking of him as almost a legend. He had the chance to retire from international soccer with an overly friendly reputation with group of silly fans, but he chose to toll the dice for some reason. I am looking forward to him tearing down that ridulous reputation.
Did Ream or any player have a "hurrah" at the Copa America? I remember a lot of "oh shit" and "that sucked" but "hurrah" is not a phrase I associate with that tournament.
That sounds nice and all, but I take a more holistic view. I deeply want to see the USMNT be competitive in a WC in my lifetime. I believe that the best approach to meet that goal requires a long term view of improving. Coaches are hired with the sole goal of improving the program over their 4 year cycle. When a coach has to balance winning now and building for the future, they are less inclined to hold onto old guys for too long and constantly looking for replacements. If we are developing better young players like everyone one here is telling us MLS is doing, then we should be looking to integrate young players faster, not slower like many on here want. I do see why Poch would want Ream's experience while beginning to work with the team, but I also know if Ream is playing for us in the WC, we have some serious problems. This is a significantly better problem than what we had with Berhalter, but any time spent on Ream, means the guy who will actually be playing the WC isn't getting time. I rooted against Berhalter's guys because they were going to hurt the team until they failed so bad even Berhakter had to admit it. I think the team is is better off long term without Ream in the team. I personally think it is disrespectful to the program to make a career decision that isn't about being the best athlete he can be and not retire from international soccer.
I dont think that at all. That is what Berhalter did for his first 3.5 years. I'm against wasting caps on players that don't have even the potential to help the team at the current cycles WC. It doesn't take 10+ caps to figure out players dont belong. We aren't talking about many spots as the top two thirds of our roster is a given at this point. The bottom of the roster should constantly be evolving. Based on your two short posts, it appears you are a cheerleader for whatever US soccer gives you and you clearly have no clue what I think.
Couldn't find just the clip of the penalty, but if you go to just after 50 second mark of these highlights, you can see old man Ream getting spun in circles before reckless Turner brings him down. That is text book MLS defending. Concacaf a pain about viewing youtube. Play starts around 1:50.
What is "wasting caps"? We are in the middle of a tournament, we will hopefully finish said tournament in March and then we have another tournament right after that in June. If you don't think Tim Ream is better than his alternatives on November 16th, 2024, that's fine, we can have that discussion. Whether I think he'll be better in June of 2026 is not really relevant at the moment. I'm not particularly confident in Tim Ream, but I'm also not sure I'm particularly confident in anyone else. "I'm against wasting caps on players that don't have even the potential to help the team at the current cycles WC" is a premise I fundamentally reject. I have no idea who the best CB's will be in 2026, it's a wide open position, but whether it's Ream, Robinson, Richards, Trusty, CCV, Dietz, Chase, Brooks, Zimmerman etc. we can just play whoever the best is come 2026. We don't have to play a pointless guessing game a year and a half early. Just play your best on the day and the chances will come organically. An example I'll use of this, is funny enough... Tim Ream. A man who was effectively abandoned during The World Cup Qualifying phase, and the pre World Cup tuneup games, yet walked right into our team in Qatar and was probably our best player of the tournament. I am a cheerleader for The USMNT, aka a fan, and that includes the players who play on it. I care more about winning than being right on the internet because I think I know what the roster will look like in 2026