The quiet man

Every so often, someone in the US player pool gets his own little descriptive narrative that commentators can use in times of need. For instance, Chris Armas is "a terrier in midfield", Chris Klein is "a worker," David Regis was a "classy" defender and so on. You know what I mean.

So one of the emergent cliches is the "quiet" or "unnoticed" Pat Noonan. I think that what makes Noonan the George Harrison of the New England Revolution and now the US national team is that he doesn't fall into one of the classifications that we tend to use to describe strikers. He's fast but not a speedster, good in the air but not quite a target man, skilled but not quite a Cristiano Ronaldo-style trick machine.

Noonan had a very good couple of games, and Arena singled him out for praise in his recent conference call:

Pat Noonan, I think, is a terrific player. I really like him, he has a great personality. He’s good for our team on the field and off. He’s a real winner and a great competitor, as are all the Revolution players.... Pat, I think, had his best game ever for the national team against Japan. He played well on both sides of the ball. He was involved in one play that set up a goal. He was involved in a bunch of other plays that created goal-scoring opportunities, and, as I said, played well on both sides of the ball. He was a lot more comfortable on the ball and had a very good game against the right-sided Japanese players. He had a super game.

In terms of making the Germany squad, however, Noonan has a bit of a problem. He's been used as a temporary left midfielder, a position in which he's behind Beasley, Convey and Lewis in the depth chart. (O'Brien maybe too.) His best chance of making the squad is at striker, a position that he hasn't really yet played on the national team. For the moment, I think Noonan is on the outside looking in, but injuries and/or an exceptional start of the season for the Revs might change things.