While there’s been a lot of attention to the recent January camp and new national team coach Bruce Arena‘s look at a host of MLS players, several overlooked by Jurgen Klinsmann, a coreof players for the March qualifiers against Honduras and Panama could come from Germany, where Klinsmann championed their careers.
The commitment of European-bred players was recently
Of the eight players on German Bundesliga clubs, all but Aron Johannsson have been getting regularplaying time, and the same goes for Julian Green since his move from Bayern Munich to VfB Stuttgart, the second division leader.
In the last three days, Andrew Wooten,Bobby Wood and Green have scored goals, and Fabian Johnson, Christian Pulisic and Timmy Chandler have registered assists. All but Wooten, who now has 11 goals in allcompetitions this season for second division Sandhausen, were winners.
U.S. Abroad:
As a practical manner, players based in Europe and Mexico will have a leg up on their MLS counterparts. They’ll be eight months intotheir seasons as opposed to MLS players, who’ll have three league games under their belts before they come into camp four days ahead of the Honduras game in San Jose.
Pulisic, Johnson andBobby Wood are considered locks to make the U.S. squad for the March qualifiers. John Brooks had arguably the worst game ever by an American in international competition in the 4-0 loss toCosta Rica — he received a “1” rating (out of 10) from Soccer America — but his playat Hertha Berlin makes him a shoo-in to be called in for the Hex matches.
Chandler has been maligned for years, with some justification for his less-than-stellar performances with thenational team at outside back, but he’s having a career season at third-place Eintracht Frankfurt, where he’s started all 19 games. He’s suspended for the match against Honduras, which would seem tobe the only reason not to bring him into camp and make him available for the Panama game.
Green faces stiffer competition to make the March squad but he’ll have to considered forinclusion if he continues to start and contribute for VfB Stuttgart, which looks to be headed back to the Bundesliga.
Terrence Boyd (who is back in action and starting forDarmstadt after his transfer from RB Leipzig) and Alfredo Morales (who has started six straight games for FC Ingolstadt), who both came through the same young program at Hertha Berlin, arelongshots for March call-ups.
Eleven goals should be enough to earn Wooten consideration, if not for World Cup qualifying, at least for the Gold Cup. After all, how many American forwardswill be playing regularly in MLS this season?
More generally, until Americans break through in numbers on MLS teams, players who’ve learned all their soccer in Germany will be hard toignore.