If you like Cristian Roldan as a player, person or both, the decaying online bog formerly known as Twitter was not a pleasant place on Sunday afternoon.
“Roldán is NOT it…look at this amateur turnover,” opined one poster, an incriminating video clip from the US men’s national team’s 3-2 friendly win over Senegal attached.
“Roldan is not a serious player,” declared another in a similar vein, this time referring to video of a wayward shot. The same play led another account – one with, to be fair, a modest 582 followers – to thunder, “Cristian Roldan does not need to see the pitch ever again. He is not worthy to be on this roster.”
Tough crowd! Others applied that level of criticism to multiple MLS-based Yanks, with Charlotte FC’s Tim Ream and, in particular (and somewhat deservedly) Miles Robinson of FC Cincinnati also targets of withering friendly fire, the point for many being that head coach Mauricio Pochettino should not be giving these domestic-based dudes extensive minutes.
Was Roldan really THAT bad in his 45 minutes on the field at Bank of America Stadium, though? It should surprise you none that a proper answer to that has many more layers than you’ll easily find on Elon Musk’s everything app or a typical online chat setting.
Given CR7’s icon status on Puget Sound, we thought it was worth diving in more immersively. So we rewatched Sunday’s second half and kept a running Roldan journal, a Cristian chronograph compendium, if you will. At bottom, we collected some player ratings and data from across the USMNT universe, then offered our take.
Roldan and the Yanks have just one more warm-up test before the World Cup kicks off: A friendly vs. mighty Germany at a sold-out Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday.
*SEN = Senegal; players’ initials are used on second references*
