(01-10-2018 02:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(01-10-2018 01:23 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(01-10-2018 10:50 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(01-10-2018 10:29 AM)VA49er Wrote:  

(01-10-2018 09:46 AM)aTxTIGER Wrote:  At least he isnt a creative, offensive player. If we had lost that to Mexico I'd be even more pissed. Since he is more of a destroyer/def mid I can at least reason in my mind that we can produce something similar.

Is losing Gonzalez a result of the US failing to qualify for the world cup?

That's probably a part of it...but I think once he got into the Liga MX ranks and the management started sinking their teeth into him about not being a "mexican" like they have done in the past with dual nationals, he was done. The older guys can shrug that off, but an 18 year old probably handles that much differently.

Luckily, as Tiger said, holding midfield isn't going to be a huge issue with McKennie, Adams, and Goslin looking a varying level of stability in that position. We're missing offensive firepower in the 19-24 rank outside of Pulisic though, so losing one of the few in that area would've been devastating.

There's also the issue that the US made no attempt to call him up for the November friendly against Portugal. We went extremely kid heavy in that, and essentially called in anyone who didn't play in the qualifiers, but we never once contacted Gonazalez. It did not sit well with him. Led him to believe we didn't see him as part of our future.

I don't think the World Cup plays a ton into this. It's a nice carrot for Mexico to dangle, but the reality is if he makes that roster, he barely plays. Even though we don't have a World Cup, we have a ton of friendlies coming up and a clear situation where we can legitimately play our young players together for a couple years. Given that opportunity, I think he'd have stayed. We just sort of shrugged our shoulders though and let him go.

I know several of the non establishment Presidential candidates are up in arms about this.

Yep...that level of indifference has lost us numerous higher caliber players in the past and needs to be changed. Truth be told, we would've been fighting Mexico for him for the next two years since we have no means to cap-tie him, so this is probably not a terrible thing IF we use the resources to win some battles on our end.

yup. Not worth fighting for that long for what is, at this moment, an 18 year old Kyle Beckerman.