"Last fall, Jurgen Klinsmann's decision to play Jermaine Jones at center back made sense."
That is nonsense. The position change was never about the need for a center back, it was always about that being the best shot for Jones to make the 2018 World Cup.
"The sight of Jones running around in central defense, missing assignments and occasionally wandering upfield as if he were still in midfielder mode left many U.S. fans uneasy about Klinsmanns latest positional experiment, but you could certainly understand what he was trying to do."
No, you couldn't understand what Klinsmann was trying to do. Jones will be 36 1/2 by the 2018 World Cup, but Klinsmann loves him, so we get this completely unnecessary center back experiment with Jones taking up valuable minutes at that position.
At this point last cycle, guys like Besler weren't even on the radar and Gonzalez hadn't even been capped, forget John Brooks. Yet even before Ventura Alvarado we had (from the list I made after the last World Cup, with 2018 age):
Matt Besler 31
Geoff Cameron 32
Omar Gonzalez 29
John Anthony Brooks 25
Tim Ream 30
Matt Hedges 28
Shane O'Neill 24
Michael Orozco 32
Steve Birnbaum 27
Probably a half a dozen college kids and homegrowns will also come into the picture over the next few years. And there are already plenty of guys new to the league who are not really playing yet (Justin Glad, Conor Donovan, Tommy Redding, etc.). If Brooks came into the picture at 20, maybe Barbir or CCV or Miazga or EPB or some teenager we don't even know about yet will make the roster. All would make more sense than a 36 year old Jones out of position, at least to pretty much everyone but Klinsmann.
