[washingtonismoney]

Yeah, there's been a definite lull of top-tier talent playing in Europe over the past few years, due to MLS paying big bucks to attract or retain American stars -- which, by the way, isn't (in my mind) the unmitigated Bad Thing as it's sometimes presented as. And also, again, due to the gaps in the '90-'94 generation. (Which in some cases is about talent unrealized as much as not having talent at all. Juan Agudelo is, like, 90% of an all-time great U.S. forward.)

But then, pick it back up at the '95 players and you start to see movement. Matt Miazga went from New York Red Bulls to Chelsea (well, really, Dutch club Vitesse Arnheim, but who's counting.) Erik Palmer-Brown just signed with Manchester City. Weston McKennie is a starter at Schalke, etc. It's not mere happy talk to observe that the talent picture looks better with younger players. The question U.S. leadership should be asking itself is, was the lull from '90-'94 and the subsequent (seeming) rising tide from '95 on just random cycles? Was it deliberate policy change? etc. Fortunately there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be picked to improve development. There are a lot of obvious problems that have relatively simple solutions. (Implementation is hard, but I'd rather have a problem with a defined solution and a difficult implementation than a problem whose solution is totally unknown.)

[washingtonismoney]

Yeah, there's been a definite lull of top-tier talent playing in Europe over the past few years, due to MLS paying big bucks to attract or retain American stars -- which, by the way, isn't (in my mind) the unmitigated Bad Thing as it's sometimes presented as. And also, again, due to the gaps in the '90-'94 generation. (Which in some cases is about talent unrealized as much as not having talent at all. Juan Agudelo is, like, 90% of an all-time great U.S. forward.)

But then, pick it back up at the '95 players and you start to see movement. Matt Miazga went from New York Red Bulls to Chelsea (well, really, Dutch club Vitesse Arnheim, but who's counting.) Erik Palmer-Brown just signed with Manchester City. Weston McKennie is a starter at Schalke, etc. It's not mere happy talk to observe that the talent picture looks better with younger players. The question U.S. leadership should be asking itself is, was the lull from '90-'94 and the subsequent (seeming) rising tide from '95 on just random cycles? Was it deliberate policy change? etc. Fortunately there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be picked to improve development. There are a lot of obvious problems that have relatively simple solutions. (Implementation is hard, but I'd rather have a problem with a defined solution and a difficult implementation than a problem whose solution is totally unknown.)