The United States men's national team has lacked for creative, technical players for its entire existence. Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan, decent but not spectacular players by global standards, are technical marvels by American standards. This makes it really easy to jump on the hype train for anyone with an impressive bag of tricks, and the latest hope for a creative American star is Darlington Nagbe.
Darlington Nagbe brings flair to the USMNT, but can he score or assist?
No one knows what to make of Darlington Nagbe, besides the fact that he’s wildly entertaining.
Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports
Ever since American soccer fans caught a glimpse of Nagbe at the University of Akron, they’ve been asking if he could play for the USMNT. He became a citizen in September 2015, and he’s just been handed his first national team call-up.
Let’s meet him.
Who is Darlington Nagbe?
Nagbe is a Liberian-American attacker who emigrated to the United States as an 11-year-old. He played college soccer at Akron under his current pro coach, Caleb Porter. He was drafted second overall by the Portland Timbers in 2011, and he's played for them ever since.
Describe him as a player in one sentence
Technically and physically gifted player who occasionally lacks an end product.
Show me something cool he’s done
Here’s the 2011 MLS goal of the year. It’s unreal.
And here’s a mixtape. Sorry about the Macklemore.
Nagbe might be MLS’s best highlights player. If you only cut out his best plays and put them into a five-minute video, he looks like Eden Hazard.
What youth soccer accomplishments does he have that we can fawn over?
Nagbe has not played youth international soccer for anyone. He has never represented his native Liberia, a country his family fled because of a civil war, though his father has since returned. In college, he won a national title with Akron and won the 2010 Hermann Trophy as the best college soccer player in the country.
Show me an instance of him screwing up so I can temper my excitement
So ... Nagbe does stuff like this a lot.
He looked like he was finally starting to put some of his finishing woes aside in 2013, when he scored 11 goals, but he netted just once in 2014. He was a bit better this season, scoring five times in 34 games, but he should have scored a lot more than that. He’s just an average finisher.
Nagbe’s assist numbers are also okay, but uninspiring. He recorded four this season and has never tallied more than five, despite being a first-choice starter in an attacking role for his entire career. Based on his raw talent, it feels like he should have twice as many goals and assists as he actually has.
And at 25 years old, with nearly 200 pro games under his belt, it’s fair to ask whether Nagbe will get any better. He might just be a fun-to-watch player who ultimately doesn’t have an international-quality end product.
How does he fit in?
USMNT newcomers
This is an unanswerable question. He’s played central midfield, right wing, left wing, attacking midfield, second striker and as a lone center forward. Ask 10 Timbers fans what his best position is and you’re likely to get five or six different answers.
He’s not good enough defensively to play central midfield, nor is he much of a long-range passer. He looks most comfortable in an attacking central midfield or second striker role, but he’s not the kind of decisive passer that Michael Bradley and Dempsey are. When he plays on the wing, he can often disappear from games if his team isn’t specifically looking to get him involved.
But Jurgen Klinsmann clearly has some idea, or else he wouldn’t have called up Nagbe. He starts players in positions they’ve never played before in their lives, so maybe he thinks Nagbe is a holding midfielder. Who knows.
Bust out your crystal ball and predict his future
Nagbe gets, at most, a short substitute appearance over the next two games. He’s given a much bigger opportunity at Camp Cupcake in January. Between that and his 2016 MLS season, Nagbe fails to impress Klinsmann enough to get into the Copa America team and early Hex squads. His exclusion from the side sparks a massive debate about what Klinsmann values in players. He doesn’t make the cut for the 2018 World Cup and a large subset of the fanbase turns a midfielder who lacks creativity into a scapegoat for the USMNT’s problems.
