Johannsson chooses USMNT

American Exports: The scouting dossier on newly committed USMNT candidate Aron Johannsson

July 30, 2013
Greg Seltzer
MLSsoccer.com

You can read the entire article at the link above.

 

The Icelandic Football Association is pretty upset about his decision. I dont blame them.

 

Whether he pans out or not, more decent players means more depth and more competition.

 

That has always been my view for club teams and school teams - more good players means better competition for spots and ultimately pushes the players. It is better for player development and should be welcomed. More and more, though, I dont subscribe to that thought for national teams. The teams are together for so little time that I doubt it has much impact on our US players' development. If we have too many players whose entire development has occurred in another country on our national team squads, how can we ever assess whether the US is improving at player development. And it comes at the expense of denying spots and valuable international experience, which is in itself important to player development, to players who have come through the US system. In other words, if Johannsson ends up taking playing time away from Agudelo, I'm not going to be happy about it because I doubt he has more potential than Juan, or a few other promising young forwards. You cant improve US player development by denying them national team competition. They need that challenge to grow as players

Personally I think it's time to get rid of citizenship based solely on a birth in this country. It is antiquated in this modern world with the ease of travel. It is citizenship by accident.

 

U.S. Soccer says FIFA has given it's blessing, and he may feature against B/H.
Amazing.

 

As much as I am on Iceland's side and dont really like the idea of Johannsson playing for us because there absolutely nothing American about him, at least he looks like an American - my favorite actor.

Soccer's Kevin Bacon

 

Remember the cult game from a decade or so ago. 'The 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon'? The rules of the game; name any actor or movie titles and within 6 films the person who's turn it was would try to connect them w/the prolific Mr. Bacon (whom the joke was that he could be connected to every film made in the past 50 years). Thanks for posting the separated at birth Mo, and in honor of his USMNT move let's try to play the game starting with what else... 'The Iceman Cometh' :shock:

1. The Iceman Cometh; The 1973 classic starring Lee Marvin featured a young Jeff Bridges.
2. Bridges won the Oscar for his reprisal of the John Wayne character, Rooster Cogburn in the remake of 'True Grit'. Matt Damon was a co-star.
3. Damon played a young pick pocket grifter in 'Ocean's Eleven' recruited to help knock off a casino by George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
4. Pitt had a prominent role in the very underrated 1996 drama 'Sleepers' in which a group of boys get sent to juvenile detention center and are brutalized by among others a sadistic guard at the facility. Who played the guard?? KEVIN BACON.

 

Good catch Mo.

 

LOL Joe. I had forgotten about that game. Well played btw

Okay, I feel kind of bad about saying there is nothing American about him. He spent a year playing soccer at the IMG Academy so he does have some American soccer training, and it sounds like he had a good experience. There is a nice interview with him here in this article by Ives. He even mentions Kevin Bacan. Also, sounds like his switching to the USA was totally Klinsmann's doing in terms of pushing him over the edge.

http://www.soccerbyives.net/2013/08/closer-forward-johannsson.html

 

Aron Jóhannsson is sizzling hot to start the season. You can check out his Europa League goal at noshortcorners.com.

 

A year from now this kid might be the hottest young goal scorer on the planet...just in time for Brazil! Wouldn't that be something? Him, Jozy, Deuce and Donovan up front? Still need some defenders, but, hey, we should be able to score, at least.