Offseason Stealing Signals, Vikings & Bengals

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I don’t know when I’ll get this published, but I’m writing this intro Saturday morning after watching that U.S. Men’s National Team opener at the World Cup. And what a joy that was. I’m not some huge soccer fan, but I’ve followed the sport in some capacity for decades now. I’d heard stories about the 1994 team as a kid, and would’ve been in middle school when the women’s team won in 1999 on home soil, with Brandi Chastain famously scoring the winning goal in the penalty shootout. I was in high school in 2002 when the USMNT made the run to the quarterfinals. Landon Donovan was the first of several “best U.S. player ever” tags I was sure would bring us to new heights. That never fully materialized, but I went bonkers for his goal in stoppage time in 2010 to advance to the knockout stage. By then, I was pretty obsessed with FIFA the game, and around that time I lived with a former college soccer player who would go on to coach the sport. We’d watch big European matches on weekends. Anyway, the sense of pride for these teams, and players, has been real for decades. Some think Donovan, and Clint Dempsey after him, never lived up to the considerable promise; I just loved watching those guys, but I also loved dreaming on Freddy Adu. I was devastated when Oguchi Onyewu wasn’t really healthy enough for 2010; he could’ve been the best defender we ever produced, but after being a mainstay at the 2006 World Cup at age 24, he was only able to play in the first two games before missing the final two in 2010 as he was coming back from a ruptured patellar tendon during qualifying the year earlier. As fate would have it, he wouldn’t play in a World Cup again. The nature of these things being every four years makes it so a player like that, who is young at age 24 in one World Cup, will only play in one tournament in his prime at 28 and then he’s maybe over the hill at 32 the next time. I’ve often thought about what the optimal age would be when a World Cup rolls around, and I think you want to be offset from Onyewu, probably. For non-elite players, 24 can be too young and 32 too old, and you’d probably prefer tournaments at 25 or 26 and then 29 or 30 to both be in your prime. I would think for more elite talents, it’s a similar track, where they can probably contribute at 21 or 22, then eventually might play in their fourth tournament at 33 or 34. (If you’re Messi, you make your debut at 19, then turn 39 during your sixth tournament here in 2026.) But a lot of players are only in their prime for a couple tournaments, and you can’t have a whole roster of players all at peak performance at the same time. At any given moment, you have some aging, some too young to be ready, and there’s this balance. Probably at some point in the four years prior to or after a given tournament, your team is in better position, but that doesn’t matter. You get your one moment in an eight-year span. And you only get three matches guaranteed. In 2006, after the run in 2002, we were in the same group as eventual champions Italy, and earned a draw against them, but we still failed to get out of the group after three matches, and then that’s just it for many of the players who were part of the 2002 team that hoped 2006 could build on it. Similarly, the new Donovan or Dempsey has been Christian Pulisic for years, but he missed his chance to make a debut at 19 and be our discount Messi who got five or six career tournaments, because the U.S. outright failed to qualify that year. So…