I think Bergman is a clear upgrade. Thorpe is less strategic than Bergman, and Team USA needs players who are more strategic.
That said, he is not the key. The key is for SVB and Gorst to play like two of the five best players in the world.
Team USA has enough talent to keep it close and even win, but yes, Team Europe would probably have to play below their standard. We know it happens in all sports. So there is always hope!
He is living on past glory. Matchroom making him a captain the past two years was a grave mistake.
The qualification process is too tight. Young players in particular don't have the financial means to travel to many many big events globally.
I think one solution could be adding a sixth player, basically an apprentice. Shaw has argued for six-man teams to give teams depth in case of injury, illness, a player feeling stress. The sixth player could be a young and promising player who plays a limited role, but gets to experience it.
We've gone over this before. Young US players have no reason to be suspicious. Nobody who is young has earned a spot.
Lukas was on the verge of doing so until he got hurt. One could argue he deserved a spot last year, but if he did, it was marginally so. He had no real big wins to speak of.
A few years ago, Shane Wolford got on the team and did OK. Then he basically dropped off the Matchroom map.
The only other young player who met the criteria this year was Nathan Childress. He did nothing to earn a spot.
Good post. I agree with most of it. We understand that Team USA will, perforce, have some guys on it that had very weak campaigns in 2026, but that does not mean that they don't deserve their spots.
I agree that Justin is better than Billy strategically, but only by a little. Billy is definitely a top five American strategically, too. His great imagination and phenomenal speed control are part of what make him so tough to beat at both bank pool and one pocket.
The idea of going young was introduced by Johan Ruijsink during his first stint as coach of Team USA last decade. He went with the young, untested, and largely unproven Tyler Styer in 2018. Most of us on the forum were quite surprised by the selection for, on merit, Tyler probably did not belong. Then we saw what Johan saw. With Tyler playing well, Team USA won the Mosconi Cup in 2018, and a year wiser, Tyler helped them win in 2019, as well.
Unfortunately, no coach since Johan has taken a chance on a young player in a similar manner. Correction: Wolford was young when selected and, relative to expectations, was probably the top performer on Team USA. Still, we seem to refuse to develop players for the future at the Mosconi, and I think it is a mistake.
