With that in mind, the way to create a roster for a tournament such as the Gold Cup should then be obvious. First, pick the standouts, stalwarts, starters and general leaders of the current team, regardless of their age. And then fill the rest of your needs with the most outstanding players (and those players that show the most potential) that will be less than 30 when the next World Cup rolls around. Given yesterday's post on the ages of the current player pool, it should be easy to evaluate Bob Bradley's roster against this metric.
Players that belong on the team regardless of their age include, due to past contribution, current form and likely future contribution, include Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Oguchi Onyewu, Steve Cherundolo, Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, Maurice Edu and Jozy Altidore. Bradley included all of these players and it would be tough to argue, ex ante, against including any of those nine players in the 23 player camp.
That leaves 15 spots to be filled with players that are both plausibly able to contribute now and in the future, with some mix between greater experience and youth to be expected. We'll give Bradley a free pass with Jermaine Jones (29 years old), as his dual citizenship and relatively recent decision to play for the US have left him with less chance to carve out a spot than other guys his age. I'll also give him a free pass with the two back-up keepers he called into camp (Nick Rimando is 32 and Marcus Hahneman is 39). Brad Guzan wasn't available and goalkeepers tend to have longer careers. Let's see how he did with the remaining 12 roster spots.
Of those 12 spots, he filled 10 of them with guys on my list of "not old players". There were some pretty questionable selections among those 10, including Jonathans Bornstein and Spector over younger guys like Gale Agbossoumonde, Edgar Castillo and Omar Gonzalez (Timmy Chandler was reportedly injured). But he was, technically, going with younger players.
The two spots that didn't go to the young guys went to Clarence Goodson and Chris Wondolowski. The selection of Goodson is more understandable: he had 18 caps coming in and has shown himself to be somewhat dependable against easy opponents (although I still would have gone with someone younger who is likely to contribute in 2014, for example Omar Gonzalez) but Chris Wondolowski is the real head-scratcher. He had barely played and never scored for the team, and is 28 years old. Bradley could have done better. Yes, Charlie Davies was hurt for the beginning of training but he has since been scoring goals for DC United while Chris Wondolowski sits on the US bench. This would have been a nice chance to get Davies back into camp where he belongs, for the first time since his accident.
While I disagree with many of Bradley's selections (Robbie Rogers and Sacha Klejstan are not guys that are going to take us to the next level of international soccer) I can't give him an F. For the most part he went with younger players (albeit "his guys", not the ones I would have chosen) which is exactly what he needed to do in a tournament like this.
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