USA Milan
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Supposedly Pulisic and Milan have agreed on personal terms and Milan is trying to hash out the transfer fee with Chelsea. Chelsea wants €25 million, Milan is offering between €15 - 18 million.
Yeah I think Chelsea will be happy with 20 million. That was said to be their valuation for a while. Of course, any variances in reported numbers could be due to who is reporting and whether the numbers are dollars, pounds or euros. AC Milan has long been the reported team most interested in Christian. But it will be interesting because Leao is the left sided player in the attack and I think the open spot for CP is on the right.
As far as McKennie, I have to wonder how credible that tweet is because I’m not sure Juvy would be interested in doing business with Milan?? But I heard Tony Meola make mention of this today, which makes me wonder if he heard it from another source and maybe there is some teeth to it.
The Athletic says that Lyon has made a €25million offer for Pulisic and are willing to include a sell on clause in the deal.
Yeah that kinda sucks. Milan better step up their offer. I don’t want CP10 in the French league.
Pulisic is what I feared he was always going to be: the best American ever but nothing more than an above average Euro player
ESPN says Pulisic doesn't want to go to Lyon, that he prefers Milan. The deal he agreed to with Milan is apparently for a lot more than Lyon is willing to pay him.
On other fronts, the Athletic says that Brenden Aaronson is going to get loaned out to Union Berlin. Union qualified for the Champions League next year, so if that goes through and he gets playing time that's a big deal.
On other fronts, the Athletic says that Brenden Aaronson is going to get loaned out to Union Berlin. Union qualified for the Champions League next year, so if that goes through and he gets playing time that's a big deal.
Why would you fear that,?
we can use an above average Euro player. It's a step up from the past, maybe the next Captain America will be a worldwide superstar.
How come none of these Americans ever go to Greece? If you play for Olympiacos, you pretty much play in the Champions League every year. Players sign with Olympiacos to play in the CL.
Because the Greek League is a much, much lower level than Germany or England or France. If you are good enough to play in a top league, why would you want to play in an inferior one?
Add to that, the reason why Olympiacos makes the Champions League most years is because they are typically the one and only one good team in the league. Players, especially high level ones, are competitors who like to be challenged more than just a half dozen times a year.
Add to that, the reason why Olympiacos makes the Champions League most years is because they are typically the one and only one good team in the league. Players, especially high level ones, are competitors who like to be challenged more than just a half dozen times a year.
That'd be a good move for Aaronsen and Union is an easy team to root for. A team that hadn't played in the Bundesliga until 2019, with a passionate fan base, that plays its games in a forest, who will now be in the Champions League
It’s a conundrum because Lyon is offering 10 million more to Chelsea. So what happens? I actually heard Lyon’s financials are a mess so…
How does Greece compare to MLS? Other than having the chance to play a few UCL games? In my mind, and maybe I’m wrong, I equate it to playing in Scotland for rangers or Celtic.
In the rankings that UEFA uses to determine how many spots in the Champions League each country gets Greece is currently ranked as the 20th best league in Europe. By way of comparison, Scotland currently ranks 9th.
My guess is that Milan will up there offer, at least to get closer to Lyon's. But at the end of the day, if Pulisic doesn't want to go to Lyon he's not going to go to Lyon. He has to agree to a new contract with Lyon before Chelsea can sell him to them, and if he plays hardball they can't sell him there.
Of course if he does that Chelsea can promise to keep him and make his life miserable. But on the other hand, that really wouldn't be much different than what he has put up with there the last couple years anyway.
But some Americans go to lesser leagues than England , Germany and France. Or they get signed in England then get loaned to lesser countries or go to England and ride the bench.
They do go to lesser leagues, but for the most part they are going to the lesser leagues that have reputations for moving young players up the proverbial ladder, places like the Netherlands or Belgium or even Scotland. Greece does not seem to have that reputation. There are players every year that move from clubs in the Netherlands to the top leagues. That seems to be a much rarer thing for players from the Greek league.
Everyone always assumes going to Europe improves players, yet some guys go there and ride the bench and then you never hear about them again. Look at Zack Steffen, people here said it's better to practice against Man City than play MLS games, yet an MLS player took his spot, probably because he was getting no game action.
The only reason I brought up Olympiacos is that I've heard players go there figuring it's a good way to get to play in the Champions League, because they are almost always there.
And I get that. All I'm saying is that for most players there's more to it that just those half dozen or so Champions League games they are going to get. Most of the people who go to a place like Olympiacos just so they can say they played in the Champions League are going to be older players who already know that they aren't going to play in the Champions League with someone like Bayern or Liverpool, so they go where they have to. Younger players who are still on the upswing in their careers are going to be looking for places with reputations of developing them as players so that they can then move up the ladder, maybe even if they are good enough to someplace like Bayern or Liverpool.
Or guys from smaller countries, you probably didn't notice, but they mentioned Levi Garcia of Trinidad and Tobago won a Greek Super League title with AEK, one of the years Oly didn't win 22-23. He scored 14 goals. Greece is not bad really, I've seen Olympiacos beat Man U, Arsenal, Man City, AC Milan, Roma to name a few.
As I said, it's currently ranked as the 20th best league in Europe. The fact that one team at one time won one game doesn't change what the league is as a whole right now.
And Levi Garcia is actually a prefect example of the kind of player I was talking about. Garcia was at Alkmaar for three seasons. He played in a grand total of 29 games in two and half seasons, including only four his last year there before he transferred to a team further down the table. He then played 15 games for Excelsior, including only five starts. So he moved down the next season to a team in the second division in the Netherlands, and he still only played ten games for that team.
So because he was obviously not good enough to play there he went to Israel to play for a couple seasons. And after a couple seasons there he moved to AEK. He might still be a younger guy, but he had a chance at a higher level league than the Greek league, and he wasn't good enough. He's not a guy who is moving up the ladder to a possible spell at a high level team in a high level league. He's a guy who is trying to find a good spot in a lower level league where he can carve out a good career.
People don’t assume that going to Europe makes players better. But people do assume that playing in Europe is the only way to get better.
There’s a reason why MLB teams promote players from A to AA or AAA before calling them up to the big leagues. Players develop when they are challenged by better players.
There are USMNT C teamers who had chances to play in Europe but elected to stay in MLS and, well, got passed up by younger players who developed overseas.
As Ric Flair famously said, to be the best you gotta beat the best.
Or like in youth soccer, there was a time when kids elected to play community based travel soccer instead of on a good club team. These kids won Travel league championships, then got to the high school level and couldn’t make the team or played JV for 3 years before quitting the sport. All because they beat up on the little sisters of the poor in the travel leagues and didn’t develop. Then mommy and daddy couldn’t understand why they couldn’t cut it in HS and blamed the coach for standing between their kid and a full ride to UNC.
PA West needs to revamp the travel leagues. Too many kids playing for towns where they don't live. If you dont want to play for your town, then go play for Century or Beadling, not Canon Mac for example. Those divisions should be based on geography. Then they allow pay for play clubs from WV in....and they arent that good but some pay for play club from Fairmont should be playing the Century or Beadling 3rd team and not CM, PT, USC, etc.
Yeah I’ll agree with that. Kids playing in a community travel league don’t want or need to be traveling 2-3 hours for a game. It’s bad enough that state college and altoona are considered PA west and families have to spend an entire Sunday commuting there, playing a game, and commuting back. That’s not what they signed up for.
My daughter played soccer for 12 years, and most of the time she played in rec leagues, She first just joined a league that played in a park across the street from us that cost $25 for the season, and they just gave her a t shirt, but to us it was just for fun, nothing serious, she played in that league for 4 years, and was about to quit soccer, then we found another rec league at an actual club SAC in Columbia, MD and she was pretty good, so the coach had her tryout for the select league, like a local travel and she made it, but her coach dropped her the 2nd year because she he said she didn't take it seriously enough
, so she wanted to quit, so I found a competing team for her to try out, and she liked that coach better, and went and kicked the previous coaches ass so by then she was a freshman in high school and decided to try out for the JV team, at this school like 80 kids try out for the JV team, and I said, "don't get upset if you don't make it" I remember taking her too the tryouts and there where people there that where bragging about thier daughters being on the really good travel teams, this one woman was telling us how she had hired a video team to make videos to send to college coaches, and I was talking to her and said my daughter had played only rec league and glorified local travel, so it was hilarious when my daughter made the 20 girl roster out of 80 kids and that girl didn't, the mother went ballistic and ran out on the filed and ripped the coaches new A-holes in front of everyone so then in 10th grade for the 1st time my daughter played in a higher level travel team, and we traveled to NY, NJ, PA and VA that year, but she hated it! She said the coaches take it too seriously as if it's the most important thing in your life, so after one year, she never played for a serious club again, just high school and rec, she was a two-year starter, 2 years pretty much never even subbed out, was honorable mention all-conference defender after transferring to a smaller school her junior year for non-soccer reasons., that team was bad though those years 3-9-1 her senior year, a lot of the kids that played on the better clubs never beat her out, eventually she played one year of college, NJCAA D3 and I think it caught up to her there, the players there where more serious and better than her, but she did score a goal in a college game, her team was really good, so she played in a dozen games, then the pandemic hit and she never played again. Actually I think it was a good career for her, she actually just wanted to have fun and hang out with the team as friends and never could stand coaches or players who took it seriously. I just think it's just a totally bizarre story compared to what some of you guys say, so I thought I'd share. But it was a fun ride, I think I went to like 300 games over that time, I was even assistant coach in the early years, with no qualifications, just because the head coach was a guy I worked with.I can understand somewhat that the State College/Altoona teams are in PA West because I think they are legit community teams and they have no one to play but for the life of me, I cant understand why they dont make the pay for play WV clubs play in the Saturday league vs other pay for play clubs. There's some Ohio teams in PA West too but I'm not sure if they are pay for play or not. Seem more like community teams. I could understand if there was a Morgantown Soccer Club run by and coached by volunteers, charging $100/year to play only for Morgantown kids, fine, they can play Canon-Mac I guess. But when you have a paid coach and kids are paying "tuition," they need to play on Saturdays. My kids do both and I would so much rather play local teams then having to go to Ohio or WV to play a team which would be absolutely fine in the lower Saturday leagues.
I always had the sense, and I could be wrong, that other areas define travel soccer differently than we do here in western PA. Here, a travel team is a team of same aged players from one community/school district who plays against others. So a Bethel Park travel team plays games against teams from Ringgold, or Elizabeth Forward, Trinity, BVA, etc.. That’s not helping those players get any better. Well, sure they get better because they are getting older and the ball is on their foot for 20 games or so a year. It beats doing nothing. But playing schools like that isn’t exactly pushing you, and training 3 hours per week in the Fall and Spring with a Dad coach who pulls a couple drills off YouTube and rolls the ball out, and with players who won’t make a HS team, isn’t developing you vs players who train year round with the best and play on weekends vs the best, and hypothetically have more pedigreed coaching that the tuition is helping pay for. Sure there are exceptions where players are athletically gifted enough to contribute at a good program, but it’s not very often. Believe me, I coached for several years and have several good friends still doing it, and every summer we prayed for that impact player who was a Diamond in the rough to come from a travel league or moved into the area. It never happens. But I’m sure there are examples out there.My daughter played soccer for 12 years, and most of the time she played in rec leagues, She first just joined a league that played in a park across the street from us that cost $25 for the season, and they just gave her a t shirt, but to us it was just for fun, nothing serious, she played in that league for 4 years, and was about to quit soccer, then we found another rec league at an actual club SAC in Columbia, MD and she was pretty good, so the coach had her tryout for the select league, like a local travel and she made it, but her coach dropped her the 2nd year because she he said she didn't take it seriously enough
Actually here where I live, there's really no geographic restrictions, you can join whatever team you want, I know people that took their kids to teams where they had to drive an hour or two to get to practice to get on the better teams, Personally a lot of what team our daughter played for was about being convenient to where we lived, we were lucky though as SAC, Ellicott City SC and Catonsville YS where close by and she played for all of those at one time or another, sometimes multiple teams in a year, one year I remember between indoor and outdoor she played like 70 games, SAC was decent, they have good travel teams, ECSC is mediocre, that's where my daughter played in her one year of real travel, but none of these where the elite travel teams in our area, I can't remember those exactly? There was a team called Celtic, Maryland United, some of my daughter's high school teammates played for those, the one who played for Maryland United her mother would come to the high school games and cuss out the players that weren't up to the travel talent level, poor kid was embarrassed. My daughter also did ballet twice a week and 9 months a year, and she wasn't obsessed with soccer, even though she was pretty good, she would never be dedicated enough for the serious teams, I'm not bothered by it either, Only one of the Soccer girls I know in her age group really went very far, she went to U of MD, the rest, even the girl that scored 36 goals in 18 games for Howard College never went anywhere beyond that.
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