1) Cupcake no more

Time was the January team camps were something of a curio in American soccer – their strategic significance stranded somewhere between the years when the USA squad was a glorified club team, and the present era of tensions between MLS and Jürgen Klinsmann.

The three week camps, and the friendlies that punctuate them, come during the MLS off-season and in the midst of crowded European schedules, so it’s understandable that when you look at the players with one or two international caps to their name, they tend to be MLS journeymen who’ve passed through these January camps, always more likely to feature on the “possible” rather than “probable” list for future rosters. No wonder, perhaps, that these camps once earned the disparaging nickname Camp Cupcake – with their air of “prizes for participation”.

Yet the wave of US internationals who returned to MLS during the last World Cup year has changed the balance and stakes of these camps, and with it the sense of expectation and possibility that comes from them. The majority of the senior core of the team now plays in MLS. Also, the likes of Geoff Cameron, Graham Zusi and Matt Besler and latterly, Gyassi Zardes, have all made breakthroughs at the January camps, and with World Cup qualifying having started, a vital Olympic playoff coming up, as well as the Centenary Copa America this summer, this particular edition of the January camps has had a very particular charge to it.

Add in the underwhelming 2015 performances by the US and Klinsmann, and there’s been a definite imperative for this camp and the performances that come out of it to look more defined than the long noodling experiment of the post-World Cup 2014 period.

A patchy 3-2 home win over Iceland is hardly a definitive turning of the page, but it’s a start. And while there was the usual January shake up of personnel, surely – surely – even Klinsmann must be moving beyond experimentation for experimentation’s sake. All of the players at this camp should be considered a realistic part of the picture for the 2018 World Cup. That said…

2) Nobody quite seized their chance

It took until the second half against Iceland for any debutants to make an impression – and when they did it was an Iceland player. Aron Sigurdarson was a lively presence and deserved his goal in the 48th minute, when he took advantage of a horrible lack of concentration from US players as they were caught ball-watching on a quickly taken Iceland free-kick.

Before that, various fringe US players had had largely anonymous days, with one or two moments they’ll want to forget. The promising Dallas player Kellyn Acosta may have been deployed out of position as a full-back, but should still have done better with his own bout of ball-watching on the lead-up to Iceland’s opener in the 13th minute, and Ethan Finlay looked serviceable rather than inspiring. Lee Nguyen did nothing particularly bad, without suggesting he’s a long-term threat to Clint Dempsey.

In the second-half though, there were some intriguing cameos. Steven Birnbaum ended up scoring the winner with a well placed header, as well as an assist to help level the scores in the 59th minute. He had his share of blame for some lax defending from the US in the second-half, but his prowess on set pieces at the other end might have done enough to get him more minutes this Friday against Canada.

Most impressive though was the urgency and movement that arrived with the introduction of Jerome Kiesewetter and Jordan Morris for the last 15 minutes of the game. Morris is no secret, and the newly minted Seattle player provided his familiar burst of intelligent movement in the final third – helping pin Iceland back just as they were beginning to cause the US problems. And Kiesewetter’s speed and touch down the right suggested a fearless young player determined to seize his chance. He and Morris are said to enjoy playing together and it showed in their brief time on the field. And with nobody else truly making a compelling case, if Kiesewetter plays this Friday he has the chance to become the breakthrough player from the camp.

3) The biggest center-back intrigue happened off the field

This weekend saw two significant center-back signings for Klinsmann’s 2018 planning. Matt Miazga only got his chance in the New York Red Bulls team last year when an opening day injury to Ronald Zubar gifted him a run in the team. But by the end of 2015 he’d transitioned rapidly through the US national team youth ranks to full international status, and by the last weekend of January 2016 he had signed for Chelsea – and absented himself from the national team camp to do so.

And at the same time as Miazga was continuing his rapid ascent, John Brooks was signing a new contract with Hertha Berlin. Brooks is a young player who Klinsmann has given plenty of time to come good in the national side – to a degree that critics might call over-indulgence – and consolidating his toehold in German domestic soccer should keep him in his national team coach’s favor.

In the absence of that pair, Michael Orozco and Matt Besler started against Iceland. Besler has been here before – becoming an unlikely starter at the World Cup alongside the talented but erratic Omar Gonzalez. Gonzalez himself was last seen being unveiled as Darth Vader by Pachuca, after finding himself on the outs at LA Galaxy during this off-season. Whether he has the tenacity to win back the golden boy position currently occupied by Miazga is just one of the center-back questions to ponder.

On the field itself, Besler and Orozco didn’t do a lot to suggest they were going to make speculation about absent colleagues an irrelevance, despite Orozco getting a goal. Both were given the full 90 minutes to impress, and both failed, in a shaky US defensive performance. Klinsmann may be closer to his World Cup pairing at the back, but they weren’t playing against Iceland.

4) The midfield pivot is still an issue

It might seem churlish to complain about the midfield pivot in the 4-2-3-1 when said pivot has done what it was intended to do, and facilitated a man of the match performance from Michael Bradley.

So to accentuate the positive first – Bradley had another very good game against European opposition – helping his side to a third successive win over such opposition for the first time in 25 years. Bradley got into dangerous positions to act as playmaker, as well as providing his usual degree of danger from dead balls. Making him tick is always the USA’s best hope of a result against quality opposition, and with Jermaine Jones performing the defensive duties, Bradley was able to play without the burden of responsibility that sometimes sees him spread too thin on the field.

But Jones will not be the starter in that position at the next World Cup, and nor will Kyle Beckerman, who performed a similar limited role at the last World Cup. It’s arguably better to see Jones as a placeholder than it is seeing him be shoehorned into a center-back role, as Klinsmann has previously tried to do. And there’s also a case to be made that after the let downs of last year, Klinsmann needed his most solid midfield platform in place to make sure of any kind of performance against Iceland, particularly with other new moving parts in place in front of them.

But there was something symbolic about watching Perry Kitchen agitating in vain on the sideline to try and make his substitute’s appearance before the final whistle. In fairness Klinsmann had already given Tony Tchani a shot in lieu of Jones for the last 20 minutes, but there’s a real feel of a developmental bottleneck at that position that needs to be resolved sooner rather than later. Klinsmann needs to commit to a long term replacement for Jones, or at least become more serious about who the contenders are. If he was watching at home you could have forgiven Dax McCarty, to name but one, for shaking his head in frustration. He, Tchani or Kitchen might not be the answer, but seeing Jones in this context told us nothing new.

5) We missed a chance to see Darlington Nagbe shine

Darlington Nagbe played for 29 minutes against Iceland, coming on as sub to play out wide. It was a fairly standard cameo appearance under Klinsmann – long enough to potentially do something, anything, but not quite playing the player where he can do what he does best.

Nagbe’s not alone in being set a challenge like that by his international coach, but he’s also one of the few players in the emerging generation of US players who has the potential to be a potent weapon if deployed correctly (ask Caleb Porter what switching Darlington Nagbe to the middle does for your team…).

Of course, the same claim might be made about Nguyen, who played 90 minutes against Iceland as the notional creator in the center, but Nguyen has not reached the heights of his 2014 season with New England of late, and did nothing to suggest he should either replace the aging Dempsey long-term, or remain ahead of Nagbe in the immediate future.

It was clear against Iceland that Nagbe wanted to come inside at every opportunity, and clear that not giving him the freedom to do so meant he never touched his potential. He was muted.

His long wait for citizenship roughly coincided with his club coach finally trusting him to play in the center of the field – a move that ended up being rewarded with Portland Timbers lifting MLS Cup, after a winning run inspired by a liberated Nagbe.

Klinsmann’s yet to make a similar leap of faith. Nagbe’s in the national team picture, but for now, still too close to the edge of it.