FanPost

Weekly Soccer Prophet: Is Veteran leadership overrated?


What's up everyone?! Remember when I used to do a series like this? Yeah well I got lazy but I have been thinking about doing this series again, except it's gonna be a whole lot scandalous with Hot topics that will sure trigger all of you and direct your hatred at me. With that said, let's get to the Hot topic of the week, which is Veteran leadership.

For every team in all Sports, you would almost always have a team that has a mix of variety within it, with it being youth and veterans. In Soccer, we have seen this in almost all teams, club and country. While it's good to have one of those things, it can be dangerous to have one of too many. Let's take veterans for example, they have been through a lot, whether it would be World Cup, World Cup Qualification, their Continental Tournaments and friendlies. It's good to have a great amount of experience on your team to try and get through games smoothly. That's the type of experience young guys lean to for help and eventually try and take a more leadership role from those veteran guys since most of them will start to age out.

However, having too many Veterans might cause a problem for a team that needed to look more fresh. This is where the United States Men's National Team kicks in. How many young and promising players that we were raving about after the 2014 World Cup were integrated into the team and ultimately made themselves established players? The only ones I could think of at the time were John Brooks and just later Bobby Wood. Of course Christian Pulisic came in early 2016 and is our best player at the moment. However, it wasn't enough because we still had plenty of aging players on a team with no replacements for them at the time due to a Lost Generation. Despite all that Veteran leadership, the team ended up watching the World Cup in Russia from their couches, because of too many aging players and a coach who screwed it up(you could also lay some blame on Klinsmann if you want to for those first two Hex games).

Now for the young guys, who bring a refreshing air to a team that got old. From November 2017 to November 2018, the majority of our roster has been youth, which helped expand the player pool more for US Coach Gregg Berhalter to look at. That said, you have to wonder what is going through Gregg's mind when he is deciding who to pick for his full strength squad, such as how many Veterans does he plan to include? Does he value Veteran experience on a team? Judging from comments he made during his Introductory press conference, his media tour and from January Camp and from including polarizing USMNT Vet Michael Bradley, it sounds like he does. So here is the ultimate question: is Veteran leadership overrated?

Personally I'm a little mixed on the subject as both sides who say it is important/isn't important bring up good points, as USMNT Legend and current Fox Soccer Analyst Alexi Lalas is on the side that says it isn't important. With that being said, judging from his roster selection in January Camp, it looks like Berhalter's future rosters, like the one coming out next Tuesday, will lean more towards youth but have maybe 2-3 guys for veteran experience. However, it's up to Gregg to not overly depend on Veterans just as Bruce Arena did during the last Hex.

So is Veteran Leadership important or not? As always, leave your comments down below to let me know your thoughts, follow me on Twitter @Chrisawesome63 and I'll talk to you all later. For good measure, listen to this song because I'm random

This is a FanPost written by a member of our blog's community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the feelings or beliefs of the blog itself or the staff.