If you have appletv+ the war for football is well worth a watch. Overly dramatic yes but a good retelling of the super league craziness.
Having watched this game you can see what he was trying to implement at Saints, just don’t think it would work at PL level or with a 5’9 striker
Watching this, the quality isn’t great, but we’d be swallowed up by this level of intensity (well, this season’s bunch of lightweights would, anyhow).
Makes sense, though. The US has a collection of interesting young talent, but they are desperately lacking a central striker...health permitting, he's already pretty well penciled in for the starting XI in the 2026 World Cup.
Yeah I mentioned during the previous international break that Southgste needed to put Balogun on the pitch for 5 minutes. We've lost a very good young striker there, and we don't currently have many at u21 level.
Presumes he would have been okay with cap-tying himself in that fashion, though. There are enough players who have gotten screwed over by doing so that I'd imagine he'd have wanted some sort of assurances that they weren't just aiming to cut off his options (which is exactly why England would have done it).
He's been the first choice striker for the u21s for a while. There isn’t much competition at that level currently. And off the back of the season he's having now, the transition to the senior England squad was just a matter of time. It's a fantastic time to join the US team though. He will be a poster boy for the World Cup and it feels like he could be a genuine missing piece for their team. So can't really blame him for that. For England even if selected for the squad, he'd still be in the shadow of Kane and Rashford for the next few years.
