Since there's not many new Timbers posts these days, I'm just gonna dump this here even though it's off-topic: Caleb Porter has a job again. He's the new coach of the Revolution.
As much as I didn't want him back here, I'm glad he's got a gig and hopefully he can do good things.
As much as the optimist in me says "there's bigger moves yet to come, it's not even January yet", the skeptic in me says "why do I have the feeling this GAM acquisition is one of a series of around-the-edges moves that the FO is going to make and call it good".
I hope they can turn that GAM into something good, but my breath, it's not holding.
"We don't want to rush things and we believe that there will be better options in the 2028 summer window. We did pick up a midfielder from the Guatemalan league. He plays a 6/8. We want more competition at all positions." - Ned in February (probably)
It's not like he wasn't associated with the club in the summer and explicitly told the Colombian press that he would like to leave the Timbers and go to the Argentinean league. I mean, with $125k in GAM, we can probably replace our 2nd most promising player. But not now. In the summer window. Oh but wait, the summer window came and went, we'll get it done in the off-season. Oooo! We got striker in their 30s. Doh, season ending injury.
They've had $4 million+ transfers in recent history (although admittedly the Argentinian economy has been spiralling hard... My brother was just in Buenos Aires. $20 per night for a seriously 5 star hotel with all the bells and whistles! Said the whole trip was essentially free after airfare.)
So, are the Timbers becoming the next Blazers? Assembling a team that’s just good enough to get people to attend games and buy beer but no where near good enough to actually be competitive?
Anyone else surprised mabiala is still under contract. Ffs not another year with him.
We have a lot of moving parts. Especially if we are looking to move players still under contract. Like ivacic, yimmi and zuparic. One thing is for sure, there will be a lot of moves coming and I have a feeling they are going to come fast and furious, but I also think we will have some players longer into the start of the season than we would think or want.
Agreed with this. Although I'm optimistic, its kind of wild that they are also blowing up the development pipeline on top of the immediate changes that need to be made to the first team
It’s gonna be a bit grim if we start the season with the current roster. I don’t want them to bring in just anyone, but a demonstrated sense of urgency would be nice. Also, I don’t really get the hoopla surrounding the draft. We don’t generally get anyone who sticks with the team much less ever contributes.
MLB's a little different because it takes so long to get to the point where a draftee is MLB-ready, but other than that, MLS has always been the league where, to me, the draft is their least successful player acquisition mechanism. I mean, a first round NBA/NFL draft pick is more or less a guaranteed starter. MLS? not so much. This is all the first overall picks in MLS history:
And if those, presumably the cream of any given year's crop, were the #1 picks, the dropoff in talent from there is pretty stark. Better to just get players via trade or one of the 24 re-entry drafts that seem to happen every winter.
Yeah, the NFL/NBA drafts make sense because NCAA football/basketball are essentially the best second division/youth league in the world. Obviously any FBS school can probably beat any football team from outside the US because no one else takes handegg seriously so it's not worth discussing but a top 10 NCAAB team can probably give the top professional basketball teams from around the world a run for their miney.
The MLS draft, on the other hand, doesn't make any sense. You literally can pick up better, well tested, younger players from USL and that's before you go to pick up whatever kid has been playing professionally for Sao Paolo or Boca since they were 14. NCAA men's soccer easily has to be 50-100 leagues down the pecking order of where you are likely to find good talent.
I mean, again, the optimist in me notes that there haven't been all that many significant moves by any team in the last month or so, so it's not like the Timbers are behind the curve relative to other teams...
(distant voice in my head)...yet
Most teams don't do anything big until after MLS Cup concludes, which is conveniently right before the holidays and I assume some sort of holiday break, but I sure hope they hit the ground running in January.
I really do think Portland is going to go hard in the paint for mls free agents to fill the squad. Especially with how many depth players we really need. It's fast and simple compared to scouting and negotiating outside of the league and US. I honestly only see 2 or 3 players coming from outside mls and those will be dp's and Tam player. That's if yimmi goes.
I hope so, there's some decent talent to be had in that pool this year. How hilarious would it be if the Timbers signed Nico Lodeiro? It won't ever happen (Timbers don't actually need another Blanco-in-the-twilight-of-his-career guy) but my goodness that would be delightful from a banter perspective.
The only one I would really love would be Robinson from Atlanta. Him and Mcgraw in the back would be one hell of a pairing but I doubt it. Not at the money he wants. (Dp money)
Maybe gressel, acosta, or Acosta. Everyone else is old, or not very good. Gressel going from team to team is worrying though. Wagner is good but don't know if we need him.
The Neville pressers hedged pretty hard on radical roster changes. Ned saying this roster can do a lot more (no it can’t), and Phil saying not much is needed or something.
There has long been talk of the DP striker though. And it fits the player movement so far. Ned has a way of letting these things take three years (CB). But I do an expect a 9.
Otherwise I think it’s going to be a pretty dull and disappointing offseason followed by a pretty disappointing (but maybe catastrophically, so not dull?) season. Coach and kit sponsor sure weren’t good omens.
already regretting getting season tickets. With all the opportunity to free money up (Blanco, Mabs,Yimmi, Niezgoda), a new coach and to see so little action and know they are going to trod out this sheet as an entertainment option. FFS. Can I get a refund? And poor Evander to come hhere to play on what is shaping up to be a mediocre team while his old team is playing in CL must be cemetery frustrating and saddening.
To be fair, Blanco and Niezgoda are already gone, so that money is free; the question is what they do with it at this point. And the bigger question is do they do what they should and ax Yimmi and, to a lesser extent, Mabiala? And will they actually do something constructive with that money? Who knows.
the problem is we are a few weeks out from preseason and 2 months from beginning of the season and nothing? If waiting for the European window to open ok? Can only hope that is the issue around lack of activity. Why Mabs hasn't been let go is beyond me. Thought his contract was up
well, again no other team has made any huge move yet either, so relative to the league, the Timbers aren't really falling behind. I think we're all just impatient because we see there's so much they should/could do.
I would expect things to pick up after the holidays pretty quickly if they're going to. If we're still having this discussion on 1/31, there's a huge problem.
According to what I can find, Mabs is out of contract as of new year's eve. The fact they haven't announced his departure tells me that, inexplicably, they're talking to him about staying?
Except for Suarez to Miami, true, but most teams don’t need the complete overhaul that the Timbers need. Keeping my mind open, but also keeping expectations low.
Yeah, depressingly I have a feeling you're right. If a new DP shows up, it may not be until summer, which means a basic repeat of last season without the relief valve of hiring a coach 2/3 of the way through.
Which is too bad; I was looking forward to selling those tickets and paying for my entire season ticket in one stroke.
If MLS doesn't change its scheduling system, Miami will never play here when Messi's around; the way MLS rotates its interconference games means those two teams won't play until 2025 at the earliest, and if the pattern holds, 2025 would be a home game for Miami and the return game would be in Portland in 26.
We played at Miami in 2022, 2025 should be in Portland. Messi probably announces his retirement the weekend before they come to Portland - sell early.
3 home games against opposite conference teams, 15 teams in the east means we play each one at home about every 5 years, away about every 5 years. More expansion will make that less often.
Right - if we play each EC team at home once every five years, then the earliest/next time Miami comes to Portland would be 2026. The last time they were here was October 2021. But, to someone else's point elsewhere in the thread - even if MLS changes their scheduling system, and even if Messi is still playing in 2025, what are the odds a then-38-year-old Messi gets on a plane for 5 hours to play in Portland?
Not quite - we play them at home every 5 years (and away every 5 years) but on average we do one or the other every 2.5.
There are currently 15 teams in the East, we play 3 of them at home every year, 3 on the road every year.
That assumes no format change next year which appears impossible with the addition of San Diego.
I anticipate MLS will reduce the number of West vs East games to 2 home and 2 away starting in 2025, so we would only see every east team at Prov Park every 7.5 years with such a change and potentially delay Miami by another year. Only 4 opposite conference games would let each West (and East) team play 28 in conference games which is exactly each team in your conference twice -- so the question is do they keep the "2 rivals x 3 games" or move to fewer opposite conference games. They do better marketing rivalries than San Jose vs Charlotte, so I suspect it will be the East matchups that go.
Only having 14 teams in the West has allowed us to play everyone twice (26 fixtures, plus 2 "rivalries" three times for games 27 and 28, and then 3 East teams at home, 3 on the road for 34).
HOT TAKE: I don't care about the US Open Cup at all, and I'm fine with MLS being out of it - or trying, since it sounds like US Soccer is pushing back now.
MUCH MORE NUANCED TAKE: all I keep hearing about in defense of MLS staying involved in USOC is "it's the oldest cup competition in American soccer!", as if that made the tournament actually be of any quality at all. MLS being what it is now - a highly moneyed league relative to the rest of the American league structure - means that MLS had two choices: foot the bill to revamp the whole tournament to its liking/bring the lower leagues up to a higher standard, or bail on it entirely.
I can almost guarantee that the reason the Leagues Cup (which I also hate!) was created was to give MLS a more prosperous in-season tournament that avoided the inconvenience of MLS teams having to travel to Bremerton to play Kitsap Pumas at a high school, or whatever.
The fact is, with only a few exceptions, the lower leagues in the US just don't have the facilities to provide the kind of environment - broadcast, in-stadium, however you want to define that term - that it wants to provide for its players and fans. So MLS took what they saw to be the more profitable route, and chose to focus on the Leagues Cup.
And honestly, I'm OK with that - just not the "focus on the Leagues Cup" part, because that tournament is also kinda dumb. I'm just not one who believes that the US version of soccer has to exactly replicate the way the "big leagues" do it. We're already different - unbalanced schedule, playoffs, etc; given that, why should the decision to withdraw from a tournament that most MLS teams, in the last few seasons (even the four-time-winner Sounders!), started sending B squads to anyway be a big deal? What's the loss there?
If the US had a competitively viable lower league or two (and please don't confuse that with me wanting pro/rel, because I don't, for a lot of reasons), I'd probably feel differently. But the dropoff - in both talent and in facilities - is so steep between MLS and USL (again, with a few exceptions) that it's just not a tournament I can really take all that seriously.
Maybe I'm the outlier in that line of thinking, and I'm OK with that; I've just never seen the USOC as anything more than a small footnote, and I'm not losing a lot of sleep over it (potentially) not being a thing for MLS any more.
I guess I'd counter that by simply saying that I like the opportunity to see lower division American teams on the pitch, and think it's healthy to mix it up a little. Might bring visibility to USL teams / athletes and with that more funding, etc.
"Might bring visibility to USL teams / athletes and with that more funding, etc."
MLS has been in USOC for 27 years now, and that hasn't happened yet. And more relevantly, it hasn't happened in the last 5-8 years as MLS has gotten a lot bigger/more prominent. There's no reason to think that will start now.
"I like the opportunity to see lower division American teams on the pitch"
Cal FC sure seemed to enjoy it that one time /zing
But seriously, yeah, it's kind of fun to see the small clubs I guess, but for every Cal FC, there's a Fredric Piquionne (the very definition of "hey remember that guy?") four goal game against Wilmington. Not even a blip on either team's radar 10 years later. Is that level of play worth the schedule congestion and injury risk? I'm skeptical.
I would imagine that competitions like that would with time inspire more people to support more teams and just be better for the sport as a whole.
I personally love cup games. Last years Leagues Cup games were phenomenal - even if we crashed out against Tigres and Monterrey the atmosphere was brilliant.
But, it's a good point about too many matches not being the best thing for the athletes and maybe it's better to have less than more games all in all.
As in Europe with the "Super League" rearing it's ugly head once again :/
One other thing. Put away your personal opinion about Phil, I wonder how him being named coach might have an impact on the players. How many of them now want to stay because of his name and legacy as a player. How many of them will think he can open doors to bigger and better if they stay and do well.
I thought about that, but his last game as an Everton player was 2013 (he left United in 2005), and his prime was in those mid-to-late 90's United teams. When a large majority of the current roster - and most of the young talent in MLS - was either unborn or in the low-single-digit ages.
So it's not like a lot of them grew up idolizing him as a player; his reputation might mean something in the abstract, but this generation of players is a bit removed from knowing Peak Phil Neville in action. I guess he still does carry that cachet of being on those United teams, but I'm not sure how directly that translates with a 26 year old in 2023.
Since there's not many new Timbers posts these days, I'm just gonna dump this here even though it's off-topic: Caleb Porter has a job again. He's the new coach of the Revolution.
As much as I didn't want him back here, I'm glad he's got a gig and hopefully he can do good things.
As much as the optimist in me says "there's bigger moves yet to come, it's not even January yet", the skeptic in me says "why do I have the feeling this GAM acquisition is one of a series of around-the-edges moves that the FO is going to make and call it good".
I hope they can turn that GAM into something good, but my breath, it's not holding.
"We don't want to rush things and we believe that there will be better options in the 2028 summer window. We did pick up a midfielder from the Guatemalan league. He plays a 6/8. We want more competition at all positions." - Ned in February (probably)
Usually we at least hear rumors of players they are chasing before Christmas, but so far nothing. It’s getting old.
Hey now! You mean the rumors that Talleres de Cordoba has made an offer to buy Moreno isn't news?!? https://x.com/TalleresMP/status/1737267941354172913?s=20
It's not like he wasn't associated with the club in the summer and explicitly told the Colombian press that he would like to leave the Timbers and go to the Argentinean league. I mean, with $125k in GAM, we can probably replace our 2nd most promising player. But not now. In the summer window. Oh but wait, the summer window came and went, we'll get it done in the off-season. Oooo! We got striker in their 30s. Doh, season ending injury.
They would have to offer a lot, otherwise I highly doubt we trade him before summer.
They've had $4 million+ transfers in recent history (although admittedly the Argentinian economy has been spiralling hard... My brother was just in Buenos Aires. $20 per night for a seriously 5 star hotel with all the bells and whistles! Said the whole trip was essentially free after airfare.)
We ain't selling Moreno for 4 mil. It would take somewhere around 7 to 10.
That would make him something like a Top 10 outgoing transfer in league history and he's not that talented.
So, are the Timbers becoming the next Blazers? Assembling a team that’s just good enough to get people to attend games and buy beer but no where near good enough to actually be competitive?
I think they've already become that. That's who they've been for the last few seasons, and it seems to be the way they're heading this season.
Anyone else surprised mabiala is still under contract. Ffs not another year with him.
We have a lot of moving parts. Especially if we are looking to move players still under contract. Like ivacic, yimmi and zuparic. One thing is for sure, there will be a lot of moves coming and I have a feeling they are going to come fast and furious, but I also think we will have some players longer into the start of the season than we would think or want.
Agreed with this. Although I'm optimistic, its kind of wild that they are also blowing up the development pipeline on top of the immediate changes that need to be made to the first team
It’s gonna be a bit grim if we start the season with the current roster. I don’t want them to bring in just anyone, but a demonstrated sense of urgency would be nice. Also, I don’t really get the hoopla surrounding the draft. We don’t generally get anyone who sticks with the team much less ever contributes.
MLB's a little different because it takes so long to get to the point where a draftee is MLB-ready, but other than that, MLS has always been the league where, to me, the draft is their least successful player acquisition mechanism. I mean, a first round NBA/NFL draft pick is more or less a guaranteed starter. MLS? not so much. This is all the first overall picks in MLS history:
https://www.mlssoccer.com/superdraft/news/every-no-1-overall-pick-in-mls-superdraft-history
And if those, presumably the cream of any given year's crop, were the #1 picks, the dropoff in talent from there is pretty stark. Better to just get players via trade or one of the 24 re-entry drafts that seem to happen every winter.
Yeah, the NFL/NBA drafts make sense because NCAA football/basketball are essentially the best second division/youth league in the world. Obviously any FBS school can probably beat any football team from outside the US because no one else takes handegg seriously so it's not worth discussing but a top 10 NCAAB team can probably give the top professional basketball teams from around the world a run for their miney.
The MLS draft, on the other hand, doesn't make any sense. You literally can pick up better, well tested, younger players from USL and that's before you go to pick up whatever kid has been playing professionally for Sao Paolo or Boca since they were 14. NCAA men's soccer easily has to be 50-100 leagues down the pecking order of where you are likely to find good talent.
Can't help but notice that "brain trust" doesn't include our new head coach. Buckle up for a shitty February-April because we waited too long again.
I mean, again, the optimist in me notes that there haven't been all that many significant moves by any team in the last month or so, so it's not like the Timbers are behind the curve relative to other teams...
(distant voice in my head)...yet
Most teams don't do anything big until after MLS Cup concludes, which is conveniently right before the holidays and I assume some sort of holiday break, but I sure hope they hit the ground running in January.
I really do think Portland is going to go hard in the paint for mls free agents to fill the squad. Especially with how many depth players we really need. It's fast and simple compared to scouting and negotiating outside of the league and US. I honestly only see 2 or 3 players coming from outside mls and those will be dp's and Tam player. That's if yimmi goes.
I hope so, there's some decent talent to be had in that pool this year. How hilarious would it be if the Timbers signed Nico Lodeiro? It won't ever happen (Timbers don't actually need another Blanco-in-the-twilight-of-his-career guy) but my goodness that would be delightful from a banter perspective.
The only one I would really love would be Robinson from Atlanta. Him and Mcgraw in the back would be one hell of a pairing but I doubt it. Not at the money he wants. (Dp money)
Maybe gressel, acosta, or Acosta. Everyone else is old, or not very good. Gressel going from team to team is worrying though. Wagner is good but don't know if we need him.
The Neville pressers hedged pretty hard on radical roster changes. Ned saying this roster can do a lot more (no it can’t), and Phil saying not much is needed or something.
There has long been talk of the DP striker though. And it fits the player movement so far. Ned has a way of letting these things take three years (CB). But I do an expect a 9.
Otherwise I think it’s going to be a pretty dull and disappointing offseason followed by a pretty disappointing (but maybe catastrophically, so not dull?) season. Coach and kit sponsor sure weren’t good omens.
already regretting getting season tickets. With all the opportunity to free money up (Blanco, Mabs,Yimmi, Niezgoda), a new coach and to see so little action and know they are going to trod out this sheet as an entertainment option. FFS. Can I get a refund? And poor Evander to come hhere to play on what is shaping up to be a mediocre team while his old team is playing in CL must be cemetery frustrating and saddening.
To be fair, Blanco and Niezgoda are already gone, so that money is free; the question is what they do with it at this point. And the bigger question is do they do what they should and ax Yimmi and, to a lesser extent, Mabiala? And will they actually do something constructive with that money? Who knows.
the problem is we are a few weeks out from preseason and 2 months from beginning of the season and nothing? If waiting for the European window to open ok? Can only hope that is the issue around lack of activity. Why Mabs hasn't been let go is beyond me. Thought his contract was up
well, again no other team has made any huge move yet either, so relative to the league, the Timbers aren't really falling behind. I think we're all just impatient because we see there's so much they should/could do.
I would expect things to pick up after the holidays pretty quickly if they're going to. If we're still having this discussion on 1/31, there's a huge problem.
According to what I can find, Mabs is out of contract as of new year's eve. The fact they haven't announced his departure tells me that, inexplicably, they're talking to him about staying?
Except for Suarez to Miami, true, but most teams don’t need the complete overhaul that the Timbers need. Keeping my mind open, but also keeping expectations low.
Yeah, depressingly I have a feeling you're right. If a new DP shows up, it may not be until summer, which means a basic repeat of last season without the relief valve of hiring a coach 2/3 of the way through.
Also, schedule's out:
https://www.timbers.com/schedule/#competition=mls-regular-season&date=2024-02-10
No Miami for us
Which is too bad; I was looking forward to selling those tickets and paying for my entire season ticket in one stroke.
If MLS doesn't change its scheduling system, Miami will never play here when Messi's around; the way MLS rotates its interconference games means those two teams won't play until 2025 at the earliest, and if the pattern holds, 2025 would be a home game for Miami and the return game would be in Portland in 26.
We played at Miami in 2022, 2025 should be in Portland. Messi probably announces his retirement the weekend before they come to Portland - sell early.
3 home games against opposite conference teams, 15 teams in the east means we play each one at home about every 5 years, away about every 5 years. More expansion will make that less often.
Right - if we play each EC team at home once every five years, then the earliest/next time Miami comes to Portland would be 2026. The last time they were here was October 2021. But, to someone else's point elsewhere in the thread - even if MLS changes their scheduling system, and even if Messi is still playing in 2025, what are the odds a then-38-year-old Messi gets on a plane for 5 hours to play in Portland?
Not quite - we play them at home every 5 years (and away every 5 years) but on average we do one or the other every 2.5.
There are currently 15 teams in the East, we play 3 of them at home every year, 3 on the road every year.
That assumes no format change next year which appears impossible with the addition of San Diego.
I anticipate MLS will reduce the number of West vs East games to 2 home and 2 away starting in 2025, so we would only see every east team at Prov Park every 7.5 years with such a change and potentially delay Miami by another year. Only 4 opposite conference games would let each West (and East) team play 28 in conference games which is exactly each team in your conference twice -- so the question is do they keep the "2 rivals x 3 games" or move to fewer opposite conference games. They do better marketing rivalries than San Jose vs Charlotte, so I suspect it will be the East matchups that go.
Only having 14 teams in the West has allowed us to play everyone twice (26 fixtures, plus 2 "rivalries" three times for games 27 and 28, and then 3 East teams at home, 3 on the road for 34).
Thank goodness.
In other news, what's up with MLS attempting to pull top tier teams out of the U.S. Open Cup?
HOT TAKE: I don't care about the US Open Cup at all, and I'm fine with MLS being out of it - or trying, since it sounds like US Soccer is pushing back now.
MUCH MORE NUANCED TAKE: all I keep hearing about in defense of MLS staying involved in USOC is "it's the oldest cup competition in American soccer!", as if that made the tournament actually be of any quality at all. MLS being what it is now - a highly moneyed league relative to the rest of the American league structure - means that MLS had two choices: foot the bill to revamp the whole tournament to its liking/bring the lower leagues up to a higher standard, or bail on it entirely.
I can almost guarantee that the reason the Leagues Cup (which I also hate!) was created was to give MLS a more prosperous in-season tournament that avoided the inconvenience of MLS teams having to travel to Bremerton to play Kitsap Pumas at a high school, or whatever.
The fact is, with only a few exceptions, the lower leagues in the US just don't have the facilities to provide the kind of environment - broadcast, in-stadium, however you want to define that term - that it wants to provide for its players and fans. So MLS took what they saw to be the more profitable route, and chose to focus on the Leagues Cup.
And honestly, I'm OK with that - just not the "focus on the Leagues Cup" part, because that tournament is also kinda dumb. I'm just not one who believes that the US version of soccer has to exactly replicate the way the "big leagues" do it. We're already different - unbalanced schedule, playoffs, etc; given that, why should the decision to withdraw from a tournament that most MLS teams, in the last few seasons (even the four-time-winner Sounders!), started sending B squads to anyway be a big deal? What's the loss there?
If the US had a competitively viable lower league or two (and please don't confuse that with me wanting pro/rel, because I don't, for a lot of reasons), I'd probably feel differently. But the dropoff - in both talent and in facilities - is so steep between MLS and USL (again, with a few exceptions) that it's just not a tournament I can really take all that seriously.
Maybe I'm the outlier in that line of thinking, and I'm OK with that; I've just never seen the USOC as anything more than a small footnote, and I'm not losing a lot of sleep over it (potentially) not being a thing for MLS any more.
I guess I'd counter that by simply saying that I like the opportunity to see lower division American teams on the pitch, and think it's healthy to mix it up a little. Might bring visibility to USL teams / athletes and with that more funding, etc.
"Might bring visibility to USL teams / athletes and with that more funding, etc."
MLS has been in USOC for 27 years now, and that hasn't happened yet. And more relevantly, it hasn't happened in the last 5-8 years as MLS has gotten a lot bigger/more prominent. There's no reason to think that will start now.
"I like the opportunity to see lower division American teams on the pitch"
Cal FC sure seemed to enjoy it that one time /zing
But seriously, yeah, it's kind of fun to see the small clubs I guess, but for every Cal FC, there's a Fredric Piquionne (the very definition of "hey remember that guy?") four goal game against Wilmington. Not even a blip on either team's radar 10 years later. Is that level of play worth the schedule congestion and injury risk? I'm skeptical.
I would imagine that competitions like that would with time inspire more people to support more teams and just be better for the sport as a whole.
I personally love cup games. Last years Leagues Cup games were phenomenal - even if we crashed out against Tigres and Monterrey the atmosphere was brilliant.
But, it's a good point about too many matches not being the best thing for the athletes and maybe it's better to have less than more games all in all.
As in Europe with the "Super League" rearing it's ugly head once again :/
One other thing. Put away your personal opinion about Phil, I wonder how him being named coach might have an impact on the players. How many of them now want to stay because of his name and legacy as a player. How many of them will think he can open doors to bigger and better if they stay and do well.
I thought about that, but his last game as an Everton player was 2013 (he left United in 2005), and his prime was in those mid-to-late 90's United teams. When a large majority of the current roster - and most of the young talent in MLS - was either unborn or in the low-single-digit ages.
So it's not like a lot of them grew up idolizing him as a player; his reputation might mean something in the abstract, but this generation of players is a bit removed from knowing Peak Phil Neville in action. I guess he still does carry that cachet of being on those United teams, but I'm not sure how directly that translates with a 26 year old in 2023.