Sin Hombre wrote:Not sure where Dempsey being the #4 best player in 2012 in the PL is coming from.
Here - from BBC -
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/17822161 ... He was the 4th highest goal scorer in EPL that year.
Fulham is not one of the better teams in the league. They finished 7,8,9,12,16,17 in Dempsey's 6 seasons. Clear mid-to-bottom half team.
Wait, how does that matter? He wasn't scoring against Fulham! I didn't say that Fulham was any good anyway.
Scoring 50 goals in the PL is great by Indian records but nothing too impressive by European standards.
Come on. Doing that in 6 years and about 200+ games is certainly impressive. I would guess that only some 40 or 50 player have scored as many in EPL in 200 odd games, though I assume he would only fall somewhere in the top-100 goal scorers in EPL history. Now, you made the accusation that he was not a top-50 player in the world at any point in his career. None of us said he was, anyway. Dempsey is a world class player, and was among the top-50 or top-100 players in the world for a period in his career, maybe a couple of years. None of us said he was as good as Messi, Ronaldo, or Rooney. To say that he is just a "big fish in a small pond" or whatever, and equate him to Sunil Chhetri or something was just not right, and that's all I complained about.
Pulisic has not made the step-up to be a starter at BvB. He has started 4 games in his entire career so far for Dortmund. In fact, his coach Tuchel just came out this week and said that he will have to wait for chances. There have been numerous examples of young stars at 17/18 fizzling out. Kiko Macheda (who?) even won United a league title with his goals as a kid. Adnan Januzaj was capped by a top 5 squad in Belgium at 18 and his career has gone nowhere since.
I haven't seen those guys. I saw this guy play. He is good. If the BvB coach had to even say that a 17 year old will have to await his chances, you know how good he is! How many 17 year olds would ever get mentioned by a good European club's coach? Again, I didn't say that he is the next Neymar. Not sure why you are taking pains to say that he might not make it! he may or he may not. Who knows. So far he looks as good as advertised.
Jay no offense but I do not think that you have seen many youth systems in the world. Most of the coaching in the US is the worst of English practices with very little emphasis on technique and individual ball skills and a lot more of silly parents pushing for results. As someone who has lived a lot of my life in Western Europe and now live in the US, I can safely say that the US is still decades away from best practices. The father-generation grooming is actually one of the silliest things you can do as far as coaching is concerned. I know there has been desperation for decades now for the US to have a bonafide "soccer" world class player but Dempsey was not one and Pulisic has potential but has a long road ahead for him to get there.
There you go again, saying Dempsey was not a world class player. That is certainly offensive. What do you mean? A player who would have been rated in the top-100 or top-200 in the world for several years (easily) is not a world class payer? Than who is? A guy who had the 4th most highest goals in one year in EPL is not world-class? A guy who was the best player for several years in a national team that has been rather consistently in the world top-25 for some 25 years is not a world-class player?
And I did misstate it when I said US has the BEST youth league. I only meant that it is the largest in the world and probably among the best well-organized too. Coaching and general level of training of players is another thing, and of course US is nowhere near western Europe on that. The reference to the dads was not to imply that they are good coaches to groom kids, but just that unlike 3 decades ago when US dads used to totally discourage kids away from soccer saying it is a sissy game and stuff like that, they are actively encouraging kids to play football. It makes a huge difference.