Michael Bradley

@GrantWahl said it well, ” Michael Bradley’s progression up the ladder is impressive. MLS at 16, Eredivisie at 18, Bundesliga at 21, Premier League at 23. #avfc #usmnt”

Jozy Altidore has signed a six month loan deal with Turkish club Bursaspor. Altidore was getting limited playing time at Villarreal this season and needed a move to give his career a jump start.

Freddy Adu is now going to Turkey as he has joined Rizespor of the Turkish 2nd division. This is a good move if Adu plays. hardy har har

Reading signs American youngster Erik Opsahl. The 18 year old has trained with DC United, Bordeaux and Chelsea USA.

Still Rumors:

Eddie Johnson is going out on loan to Championship side Preston North End until the end of the season. Currently at Fulham, Johnson is not seeing much playing time and needs to see regular action to stay on coach Bradley’s radar.

Charlie Davies is in talks for a last minute loan deal.

picture source: http://www.avfc.co.uk/

Americans continue to move around Europe as Jermaine Jones is the latest to pack his bags and head to England from Germany. After a recent outing with the coach at Schalke 04, Jones secured a loan for the remainder of the season to Blackburn in the Premiership.

Jermaine reached out to Bolton’s Stuart Holden for advice. “I called Stuart Holden at Bolton and asked him about moving. He said that football in England is the best,” Jones said. “Stuart told me I needed to take the chance. He said Blackburn is a good club with good players.”

Jones needs playing time at the club level to get more call ups to the United States national team.

The move is important to get Onyewu back in shape and see regular playing time. While it was great to see an American at a major European club, the injury and competition left little chance of seeing the pitch, which has done nothing but hurt his career.

On a less exciting and confusing move, Edson Buddle has made a move from the LA Galaxy to the 2. Bundesliga club FC Ingolstadt 04. His contract will run till the summer of 2012 and has joined two other Americans, defender Amaechi Igwe and Freddy Adu.

The move is a bit frustrating for MLS fans because Buddle ended the 2010 MLS season as one of the top strikers in the league. The move to a team that is in the relegation zone of the German second division does not speak volumes of the quality of either the player or the league. If FC Ingolstadt do fail to stay up this season, Buddle will be playing in the German 3rd division. Not where we expect players that just made the US World Cup team.

While the recent activity of US players in the January transfer market is better than past years, the clubs have been mediocre at best.

Robbie signed a two-and-a-half year deal that runs through the 2012-2013 season but is still waiting on a UK work permit to finalize the transfer.

Findley left Real Salt Lake this season as a free agent. Robbie was part of the US National team at the 2010 World Cup…not completely sure why.

Astroheader loves to see young US talent get a chance in Europe but it comes with concerns. Of the players that have succeeded in Europe, many more went to sit on the bench and their careers more or less end without any real playing time. We hope Robbie gets 1st team exposure and that Nottingham Forest (currently in 8th) can get promoted to the Prem.

Lichaj was born in Downers Grove, Illinois and was part of the IMG Soccer Academy and played a year at the University of North Carolina. Aston Villa signed Eric in 2007, but has spend most of his time on loan to smaller clubs to hone his skills.

Lichaj has earned a spot on the Aston Villa senior team this season and signed a new 3-year contract. He has only got into one competitive match so far, a Europa League qualifying match in August.

Eric was called up to the Poland National Team through his parents which are Polish residents but decided to represent the USMNT.

Hopefully some time on the national team will help Lichaj gain experience and earn more time with his club team.

Bradley stuck with mainly a European based team because he did not want to disrupt the MLS teams that are challenging for playoff spots (what a nice gesture, rolls eyes).

What I like about this roster, some of the new players or less experienced players.

• Holden, who is one of the only European players that sees regular playing time, rarely sees time for the USMNT which baffles me
• Edu is in the same boat as Holden, should be a stater but Bradley is clueless
• Jermaine Jones will finally get the chance to play US after all the injuries
• Interested to see how the defense does

Concerns with this roster:

• Which keeper will start? Howard and Everton are having a horrific season and Guzan rarely sees the field
• Our strikers, or the lack thereof. 2 of the 3 on the roster don’t play regularly for their clubs. We really need to find a solution before 2014 or not bother even attending

And the roster:

Goalkeepers
Guzan, Brad Aston Villa
Howard, Tim Everton

Defenders
Bocanegra, Carlos Saint-Etienne
Cherundolo, Steve Hannover
Goodson, Clarence IK Start
Lichaj, Eric Aston Villa
Onyewu, Oguchi AC Milan
Parkhurst, Michael FC Nordsjaelland
Pearce, Heath FC Dallas
Spector, Jonathan West Ham United

Midfielders
Bedoya, Alejandro Örebro
Bradley, Michael Borussia Moenchengladbach
Edu, Maurice Rangers
Feilhaber, Benny AGF Aarhus
Holden, Stuart Bolton Wanderers
Jones, Jermaine Schalke 04
Shea, Brek FC Dallas

Forwards
Altidore, Jozy Villarreal
Dempsey, Clint Fulham
Johnson, Eddie Fulham

US Soccer just announced that they will extend Bob Bradley’s contract through the END of 2014.

I will admit that Bradley did some good things in the last several years including leading the USMNT to a 38-20-4 record, the Gold Cup (yawn) and the Confederations Cup final.

Two things bother me;

1. I believe Bradley royally screwed up in the World Cup playing Findley and Clark. Anyone that saw a game of soccer some point in their life could tell from the WC warm ups that Findley (missed open goals many times) could not get the job done and Clark (he was on the field but never really there) was a waste. Yet Edu, Gomez and Holden sit on the bench and watch us scrape through every game… oh wait, that made us the awesome team that everyone loved to watch, that could not secure a game till the last minute. Then we lost to Ghana….again…effing lame
2. The second is the US Soccer Federations lack of balls to go out and get a real world class coach. Don’t give me any BS that Bradley fills that spot. If he did, Fulham and Aston Villa would have picked him up. Fulham stumbled around for what seemed like forever getting turned down by candidates till finding someone and Villa is still using a caretaker manager even after Bradley made it public that he was interested in the job. It sounds like Bradley came back to US Soccer because no one in England wanted him and US Soccer welcomed him with open arms. Obviously Bradley isn’t that awesome.

Where was all the talk about the candidates the US Federation was looking at? There was a 2 second rumor about Jurgen Klinsmann but he must have turned down the job fast since they announced Bradley 2 days later. And why not a 2-year contract? That gives the US 2 years to find a proper candidate with time to prep for 2014.

My hopes for 2014 just went down a bit.  The only hope we have is that Bradley uses the upcoming talent on the U-20 team properly in 2014. If we waste another World Cup on crap selections it will be time to find a new federation president. I am amazed on how long everyone sits around and watches Sunil Gulati waste our time.

UPDATED … Early comments on twitter and facebook dont look good. Not too many happy US Soccer supporters at this point. The US Soccer’s facebook post announcing the extension is full of negative comments about the move. The Big Soccer forums have multiple threads all voicing disappointment on the decision and calling for Gulati to be removed.

A paragraph at the end of the story caught me by surprise:

“Such a wealth of talent a little more than a year removed from the failure in Egypt, when it appeared the cupboard was barren, can be credited to U.S. Soccer’s expanded search for talent. Rather than rely on the U.S. residency program or college programs to supply players, Rongen and others at U.S. Soccer scouted Europe, Mexico and elsewhere for prospects eligible to play for the U.S. Combined with the improvement of the MLS academy system and more young players bypassing college for professional opportunities abroad, it has created a deeper and better pool of players.”

The important sentence being “Rather than rely on the U.S. residency program or college programs to supply players, Rongen and others at U.S. Soccer scouted Europe, Mexico and elsewhere for prospects eligible to play for the U.S.”

Ahhhhh, what? Are you telling me the US Soccer Federation has not been scouring Europe and other places for US talent since the beginning of time?

Hey, Sunil Gulati, there is this fantastic site called Yanks Abroad. They have these weekly previews and recaps of all the US players playing in foreign leagues. Im not talking about the Howard’s and Dempsey’s (they do have articles on the top players as well), but all the players the average soccer fan has never or rarely heard of.

Overall I thought that the World Cup this year was disappointing. When is the next time we will get a road to the semis with no soccer powerhouses on the schedule? But after reading that US Soccer has not been tracking US players in Europe until recently, is just depressing.

To coincide with the upcoming launch of his online merch store, Edson is holding a t-shirt design contest. Here’s my entry along with an explanation of the concept. If you like it, help out by tweeting “@EdsonBuddle, Gabe Shultz should win the t-shirt contest!” or something similar but perhaps more sincere.

Email your design to shirt@edsonbuddle.com to enter

This shirt is designed to answer the question, “Edson Buddle, are you serious?” that so many naysayers asked when he were called up for the World Cup.

“Yeah. Me.”

It’s not only a statement about Edson’s great trials and success, but also an empowerment to the person wearing the shirt. “Me” can be anyone… it’s about feeling confident and strong.

A funny thing happens when the parameters for success are so clear: focus can become so intense that the bigger potential slips away. The World Cup is huge, but Group C was a saga unto itself. After a dangerous close call with the English, USA fought through another self-imposed struggle to secure a draw against Slovenia. Surely the Americans were taxed, but their goal had yet to be met. The Algeria game was a must-win for the United States to survive the group, and the build-up for the team must have been tremendous. One more match. Then the match came, and it was a struggle so epic, with a climax and outcome so dramatic, it felt like a fairy tale. After years of physical and emotional exertion, the goal was achieved. USA wins, and they lived happily ever after.

While it must have felt like a triumph to parallel a legendary final, in the broader picture, it was not. The tournament was just beginning, and with only days to recuperate, the Americans were spent. They said they were ready, but we all remembered that anything beyond the group stage was a bonus—and we could read between the lines. Beating Ghana (or anyone at this level) was just too much.

The USA fell out of the Cup because of a goal. Not the one from Asamoah Gyan, but the one in the Americans’ heads.

Their obsession with a less-than-lofty goal ultimately led to a dead end, even with a gift of a round of 16 bracket. Would they have played differently with far-sighted and slightly vaguer hopes? I think so. With longer-term goals, people perform to maintain greatness, not simply achieve it. There are few ups and downs; indeed it’s a completely different mindset.

To be fair, the American objective in the abstract was enough to satisfy. It was a step up from 2006, and required hard work to achieve. In this way, the tournament was a success. In fact, I can’t remember anyone criticizing Landon Donovan for setting the team’s sights too low. We universally nodded in agreement; the goal had merit.

Yet today, in spite of meeting that very goal (exceeding—USA topped the group), the word ‘disappointment’ echoes on broadcast and social media. Disappointment? USA leveled its aim and hit the target we all accepted. Two ties, a win, and a loss aren’t spectacular, but it’s more than we expected in a group that was harder than we supposed. The team won on foreign soil (twice, ahem), scored many times in the run of play, outmatched a world power, and in the most grim moments showed surprising belief in itself. The only disappointment I feel is that everyone (players, coaches, media, fans, and me) once again lowballed the Americans’ potential.