Pre-match: January 2025 Camp & Friendlies v Venezuela (Jan 18) and Costa Rica (Jan 22)

There are probably lots of things that will never happen that would impact Marsch in various ways if they did happen which they won't

 

They’ll be our Scotland

 

No, they're too good at soccer.

 

The only Canadian province I've ever heard that it wanted to secede from Canada was Alberta.

The rest of Canada vehemently opposes joining the USA.

If many of the comments online are to be believed, many are willing to wage guerrilla conflict against the US to prevent this from happening.

 

I mean, Quebec has a whole political party dedicated to secession, but if you mean secede and join the US, then yeah, no provinces are looking for that.

Anyway, on topic, games soon! Yay!

 

49.42% of Quebec voted for independence in 1995 and they're governed by a successionist party on and off since 1976.

 

I was talking specifically about Canadian provinces not wanting to join the USA. So far, the only one in that has expressed interest in joining has been Alberta.

Obviously, Quebec wants to be its own country entirely.

 

That would be all of them.

More likely that Washington State and New York City would join Canada (not really).

 

Eneli is the only defensive midfielder on the roster so it wouldn't exactly be surprising if he got 180 minutes there...

Emeka Eneli on his role with the USMNT:

“We haven’t gone over tactics much yet, but I've been playing in the pivot, as the 6.

I haven’t played right back at all; I played the pivot all last year, so I feel more comfortable there.”#RSL | @rslshow | @kslsports pic.twitter.com/WhZ5tqBiPo

— Carson Lantz (@CarsonLantz) January 13, 2025

 

Poch vs Klinsmann on January camp...

Speaking with Diego Luna and Emeka Eneli at USMNT camp today and both emphasized Pochettino’s message that it doesn’t matter WHERE you play if you’re playing WELL.

Eneli said Brandon Vazquez asked Poch if a move to MLS would hurt his USMNT chances and he said “No, why would it?” pic.twitter.com/9FFGL9MbgF

— Caleb Turner (@calebturner23) January 13, 2025

Klinsmann:

“The main reason why the Federation does the January camp is because they have two television slots to fulfill.”
“So they find two teams. Whether from Scandinavia that have a similar break or South America or Central America.”
“Fill them in with two names and get two games out of it. So they can fulfill that TV contract.”

Former USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann on the January camp 🗣️

“As coaches, we didn’t want to have the January camp either,” he said.

“January camp is there to reduce the amount of off-time for the MLS players because it’s too long.”

“The main reason why the Federation does the… pic.twitter.com/gVq4TzHo2o

— GOLZ TV (@golz_tv) January 7, 2025

Klinsmann: “Did I suggest the Federation to get rid of it? Yes I did. It didn’t go down well.”

Klinsmann: “Did I suggest the Federation to get rid of it? Yes I did. It didn’t go down well.”

“They said we have to fulfill these two dates for television contract. We have to do it, it’s simple as that.”

— GOLZ TV (@golz_tv) January 7, 2025

Klinsmann: “I didn’t see much of a sense, shooting them up from 0 to 100 and then they go back to their MLS teams and maybe be even more prone to injury.”

“Because MLS teams haven’t even started their season yet. So they slow down again and then their clubs shoot them up again.”

— GOLZ TV (@golz_tv) January 7, 2025

 

He was so full of scheisse.

 

I think there is a point to be made about going from neutral to fifth gear in a couple of weeks without even so much as a club preseason. Combine that with it being a B-Team even in the old days, and the guys not knowing each other, and the game was usually a sloppy waste. (I'm told the point was the camp, the game only existed for psychological reasons, something for the players to focus on and build towards.) But . . .

Yeah, either that, or someone at USSF told him some BS to get him to shut up. In JK's time, MLS actually had a lot of players who either were meaningful parts of the team or plausibly could get there in the near term. In this camp, we do come a lot closer to pure pointlessness. There is a small core of guys (the CBs and I think the two young keepers we actually care about) who probably don't need this camp because they will get others, and besides them, I wouldn't put 50/50 odds of even one guy getting meaningful PT in the next WC.

I agree with Meola that "Camp Cupcake" is something of a slur, a cheap shot at guys who are in fact busting ass to make the above physical transition and show something to the coach. But Camp Longshot might fit, and with each passing year Camp Longshot gets a little closer to Camp Hail Mary.

 

I have no doubt that Jurgen didn't want to do the camp; Jurgen didn't really want to spend any extra time working at all.

I also have no doubt that US Soccer had a tv obligation and that was used to shut Jurgen up as a final no to his request. After a while, you get tired of arguing and "The contracts that pay you salary say we have to" is a wonderful, bulletproof, shut the hell up and go do it, Jurgen.

But the dude also played a LOT of MLS players so it couldn't have been a "I don't need to see MLS players" but more of a "wait, why do I have to work in January when no one else does?"

 

Camp Cupcake is also an opportunity to get the coaches together and go through the training routines without the pressure of an upcoming competitive match.

 

The thing is there has been such a drastic shift just in this cycle when it comes to A team opportunities for January camp players that it's sort of hard to know exactly how to think of these camps. We're talking about what things were like during Klinsmann's time, but obviously Gregg gave a lot of A team opportunities to January camp players as well.

I went through the numbers quickly, and in most camps going back 20 years now, including the January camps from just last cycle, we generally had somewhere around 10 players per January camp who would play some meaningful role in A team games that year. That would include maybe 2 or 3 guys who barely had any caps coming into the camp but would break into the A team that year, while another 6-8 guys would have already been integrated into the A team prior to that, but would remain in the picture or take on an even more prominent role there subsequent to that.

But all of a sudden, in the 2 camps we've had in this cycle so far, there have been by my count 2 players in each camp who subsequently played any meaningful role in A team games that year -- let's say at least 2 appearances in games with a number of regular YAs available. In each case, 1 of those players had fewer than 5 caps heading into the camp (Zendejas and Aidan Morris respectively in '23 and '24) and 1 was already well integrated (Zimmerman and Miles Robinson respectively in '23 and '24).

If we expect that trend to continue (and it seems a lot of people do) then the January camp starts to feel mostly irrelevant. That is, maybe someone like Freese or Tolkin breaks into the A team, and maybe one of our veteran CBs at this camp remains in the A team picture. But if you think it might go back to the way it was even just last cycle, then I'd expect people to take a lot more interest.

 

Watching the returns come in made for riveting viewing for those of us with easy access to the CBC. Halloween, IIRC.

 

Did the team nutritionist approve all this BBBQ

Bridging generations.
Building for the future.
And BBQ. 🇺🇸#USMNT x #U20MYNT pic.twitter.com/Gdb4kbSc8s

— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) January 14, 2025

 

2-3 players just feels like how it used to be before Klinsmann.

 

So the criteria I'm using here is players called up to the winter camp who came in with fewer than 5 caps, and then managed 5+ additional caps in the subsequent 12 months, at least 4 of them outside of a domestic winter camp, and at least 2 of them in A team games (i.e., games with a number of regular YA starters available, though that will be a bit subjective).

Here are all the January camp breakout players I identified from the past quarter century based on that criteria.

2001 - Landon Donovan, Josh Wolff
2002 - Pablo Mastroeni, DaMarcus Beasley (& arguably Carlos Bocanegra)
2003 - Tim Howard, Bobby Convey, Danny Califf, Richard Mulrooney
2004 - Kerry Zavagnin
2005 - Jimmy Conrad, Clint Dempsey, Eddie Johnson, Pat Noonan
2006 - none
2007 - Jonathan Bornstein, Ricardo Clark, Justin Mapp
2008 - Brad Guzan, Maurice Edu, Sacha Kljestan, Jozy Altidore
2009 - Stu Holden, Robbie Rogers, Charlie Davies
2010 - Alejandro Bedoya, Robbie Findley
2011 - Tim Ream, Brek Shea, Juan Agudelo, Chris Wondolowski
2012 - Geoff Cameron, Graham Zusi
2013 - Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, Mix Diskerud
2014 - Deandre Yedlin
2015 - Gyasi Zardes
2016 - Steve Birnbaum, Darlington Nagbe (but no starts that year)
2017 - Kellyn Acosta, Jorge Villafana
2018 - Zack Steffen, Tyler Adams, Wil Trapp, Marky Delgado
2019 - Reggie Cannon, Nick Lima, Daniel Lovitz, Aaron Long, Walker Zimmerman
2020 - none due to COVID, but Brenden Aaronson & Mark McKenzie likely would have qualified
2021 - Matt Turner, George Bello, Miles Robinson (& arguably Daryl Dike)
2022 (+Dec. 2021 camp) - Jesus Ferreira
2023 - Alejandro Zendejas
2024 - Aidan Morris

A few guys who just missed the cut because they had exactly 5 caps coming into a January camp: Brian Ching in 2005, Brad Davis in 2013, and Cristian Roldan and Sebastian Lletget in 2019, among others.

That number hasn't changed too much from year to year, I don't think. But it's the number of players with 5+ caps heading into the camp who remained in the A team picture that year that's drastically decreased this cycle.