If you have spent any time on US Soccer Twitter you have seen, participated in, or maybe muted an argument about players starting in MLS vs. players on teams in various European leagues. How do you judge which players are better?
I decided to consult a couple impartial judges: Football Manager 19 and FIFA 19. Now, I’m aware that if Gregg Berhalter was using FIFA or Football Manager to pick his team…it would be less than ideal. However, these games do put a ton of work into their ratings and shouldn’t just be discarded either. Andre Villas-Boas famously admitted to using Football Manager to help him find players when he was Chief Scout at Chelsea.
Here’s a brief passage from an article (linked below) explaining how EA arrives at their player ratings.
Now, these ratings obviously don’t take into account “fit” for the system Berhalter wants to run, personality, etc. but they do have some value in determining who the best players are for the US.
Interestingly, EA builds in some sort of coefficient for the league each player plays in. “If Messi were playing in the Irish league, his attributes would drop simply because he’s not on the highest level anymore,” Mueller-Moehring explained. I’d like to see the values for each league on that list sometime.
If you’d like a little more information here are a couple explainers on how these companies arrive at their player rankings.
How are EA FIFA rankings calculated?
How are FM Ability Ratings calculated?
According to Football Manager this should be the USMNT’s starting lineup.
CCV and Zimmerman have the same rating
And according to FIFA this should be the USMNT starting 11.
Overall, neither of those lineups are terrible. One problem with both services is that they don’t update very often. That means younger players on an upward trajectory are likely underrated (see: Adams, Tyler). It’s my understanding that EA does update some outstanding performers halfway through the season, but not everyone.
Berhalter Favorites
So are there any players that Berhalter “overvalues” compared to the ratings supplied by these games? Baird (66.5/64) and Zardes (66/73) are the two that stick out a bit to me. Football Manager is especially low on Zardes, ranking him below every other striker in the realistic USMNT pool. Aaron Long falls into this category as well. He is the lowest rated of the 5 CBs by FM and 2nd (tied) lowest rated by FIFA, but seems to be first choice for GGG. To be fair, it’s not like Long is rated way lower by the games – just a point or two.
Wil Trapp is the last player that may fit this category. Both games rank him well behind Bradley and FM has him a ways behind Adams. It’s no real shock that Trapp/Zardes make this list. Let’s just hope familiarity with Gregg’s “principles” doesn’t become an advantage indefinitely moving forward.
Most Intriguing
The player that I find the most interesting is Tyler Boyd. According, to both EA and FM he is the best winger in the pool behind Arriola. I wrote an article analyzing his game a couple weeks back and I concur with that assessment. I sincerely hope he gets a call up for the Gold Cup before he decides the US isn’t interested and chooses New Zealand for good.
Most Underrated
For me, it’s Tyler Adams. Before the adductor injury he was crushing it in midfield for a top 4 Bundesliga club. He had passed Pulisic as the best American player in the world and looked poised to be a breakout soccer star – not just an American one. Let’s hope he’s back soon.
Most Overrated
Bobby Wood. Poor Bobby. He’s injured now, but prior to that he couldn’t hit water falling out of a boat. He’s scored three goals this year and two of them were in the first half of one game. He was actually rated by Kicker as the worst player in the Bundesliga for the 2017/2018 season. Ouch.
Player Pool
Overall, I find that I agree with FM more than EA, but to be honest I don’t know how impartial I can be as a USMNT fan. The ratings paint the picture of a middling national team with no real world class players. Reality blows. Just as a point of reference to see how far we have to go…here’s a starting 11 of Spanish players.
I know Spain is a top 5 team (#9 in the official FIFA Rankings) in the world, but these are the type of teams the US is going to have to beat if they ever want to make a World Cup semi-final. We’ve seen them do it before (2009 Confed. Cup), and let’s pray we see them do it again sometime fairly soon.
Where does this leave us with the question of who should be playing? According to FM 3.5 players should come from MLS and 7.5 from Europe. FIFA says 5 players should come from MLS and 6 from Europe. We’ll see what Berhalter thinks in about a month.
PS – the last “full team” Gregg called in (vs. Ecuador) featured 6 MLS players and 5 European-based players…
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