What if the USMNT lineup was chosen by EA Sports? Crazy, right? Using player databases I found for FIFA20 and Football Manager 20 I put together what the US team would look like if it were chosen solely on the rankings from these two games.

Here’s a link to last year’s edition.

As stupid as this sounds…I don’t feel like it’s totally ridiculous. The companies that make these games put a ton of time, effort, and money into the production. Football Manager is even somewhat famously used by clubs around the world to help identify players.

EA doesn’t go as in depth with lower leagues and relatively unknown players for FIFA, but they do have quite a process for rating players:

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?

So without any further ado…who’d be in the lineup?

FIFA Rankings Lineup

So ummm who do we talk to about hiring a computer to coach the team?

The Football Manager 11

I don’t like this one as much.

Thoughts?

Neither lineup is bad, and I actually really like the FIFA lineup. I know Johnson is rarely healthy and may already have been phased out of the US’ plans, but a Dest/Johnson fullback pairing would be dangerous and exciting. It’s got Adams at the #6 and everything else about it is pretty standard. The lone change I’d make is swapping Boyd out for Morris. EA must have done these ratings before Boyd lost his mojo.

I don’t love Lletget at the #10, but who else are you going to put there? I guess you could argue Holmes, but Berhalter doesn’t like him and he is another #8 masquerading as a #10 anyhow. Creative midfielder and forward are the biggest holes in the US pool imo. I wonder why the team struggles to score?

The FM lineup is pretty close, but they seem behind the times on Bradley (and Wood tbh). I think he’s fallen off more than they do. The Ream at left back thing is iffy too. I’d bet that rating is lower when he’s played at LB than CB, but the database just gave the one number. FM also agrees with FIFA and would choose Boyd over Morris.

Aside from the Bradley anomaly, FM looks to favor European based players over MLS based players. This makes a certain amount of sense since FM is made by a London based company (Sports Interactive) while EA is based in Canada/USA. But who knows for sure? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Overrated Players?

Bradley was the first number that caught my eye, but another interesting rating was FM’s evaluation of Miazga. They have him at a 76.8 which is higher than Brooks. I love Miazga’s shenanigans as much as anyone, (How many times have I posted the schlong squeeze now? Add another to the total.), but I think it’s a stretch to say he’s better than Long, let alone Brooks. He’s a solid CB, but he’s not the passer that Brooks is and he’s not as good a defender as Long.

I also think FM is too high on Wood. He may be as talented as they rate him, but he has played so poorly for so long I don’t know how you can rank him ahead of Altidore or Sargent.

Anyone Underrated?

Thinking about the current player pool

Given the state of the team in the last two years it’s tough to make an argument that many of the players are better than these games give them credit for. FM’s 66.7 for Jordan Morris is harsh, but not obscenely so. Tyler Adams is probably better than the 76 rating he got from both games, but with him being out injured for the last 6 months the rating isn’t way out of line.

The sad reality is that the US doesn’t have many good players (yet). These ratings accurately reflect that.

Berhalter Favorites

How do some of the more controversial members of Berhalter’s “group” fare according to the ratings? The usual suspects here are Roldan, Zardes, and Lovitz. Fairly or unfairly, they’ve become the poster boys for “undeserved” call ups to the national team. Do these games agree?

Football Manager would definitely argue that Zardes is undeserving. He’s the lowest rated player (65.4) on the depth chart (outside of Ledezma who I threw on there because I feel like it’s coming soon) according to their rating system. FM is fine with Lovitz, but FIFA rates him as the worst (67) player on the depth chart. Roldan has a reasonable (73.3/74) rating in both games.

Comparison

Last year when I did this I chose Spain to compare player ratings. This year I’ll go with Belgium. No particular reason. Just wanted to look at the roster of a team that has an actual chance to win a World Cup. This is the lineup that started their Euro 2020 qualifier against Russia.

Pulisic would be a nice bench option for Belgium. Yikes.

As you can see the USMNT has a ways to go before we can be taken as a serious threat to any team with good depth and talent. I’m a homer and I think/hope some of the young guys could be good, but we are going to need 5-6 more guys as good or better than Pulisic before we are going to be a problem for good teams. Haste the day. *sigh*

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