After wining and dining Arsenal striker Folarin Balogun on a whirlwind tour through the heart of American culture a few months ago -- a dog-themed outdoor pub, spring training baseball and an Orlando Magic basketball game -- the United States men's national team finally got its man.
On Tuesday, FIFA approved the one-time switch for the 21-year-old striker to represent the United States after playing for England at youth level. And we'll leave it to former William & Mary winger Jon Stewart to sum up the general feeling among the USMNT fanbase.
Balogunnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!! #USMNT
— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) May 16, 2023
With 19 goals on loan at Reims in Ligue 1 this season, Balogun certainly feels like a massive get -- especially for a national team that hasn't had consistent striker production since the days of, I don't know, Billy Gonsalves? At the same time, we've seen plenty of other dual-national commits fizzle out for the U.S.: Aron Johannsson, Timmy Chandler, Edgar Castillo, Jose Torres, Julian Green and so on.
Balogun is better than all of them -- and he might even be better than Stewart realizes, too.
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A brief history of striker issues
One of my theories about American soccer's struggles is that we're always five years behind. We bought into the English model -- right around when the Three Lions were failing to qualify for the 1994 World Cup and way before their recent resurgence. We started to emphasize the importance of possession play -- right around the time when transitions and pressing were taking over. We hired the least-German German manager right when German soccer was conquering the world again. And then, ahead of the 2022 World Cup, we were bemoaning the lack of a proper No. 9 -- right when the best teams in the world had all but discarded the idea of a traditional target man.
Of course, then Erling Haaland happened, and the position suddenly seems as important as ever. And given the structure of international soccer -- little practice time, compressed tournaments with only a few games -- that could be especially true for the USMNT. Beyond the vagaries of the positional designation, the team just needs someone to consistently score goals, but a guy you can stick in the center and trust to take three or four shots per game simplifies things.
And it's never been simple for the USMNT. Since 1990, according to Stats Perform data, the U.S. has had 10 players feature in at least 150 World Cup minutes as a center-forward.
Here's the list, in order, along with the most goals each player has scored in a single season in a Big Five European league:
- Brian McBride, 754 minutes: nine goals for Fulham in 2005-06 and 2006-07
- Clint Dempsey, 387 minutes: 17 goals for Fulham in 2011-12
- Jozy Altidore, 379 minutes: 1 goal for Villarreal in 2008-09, Hull City in 2009-10 and Sunderland in 2013-14
- Earnie Stewart, 395 minutes: none
- Eric Wynalda, 274 minutes: nine goals for Saarbrucken in 1992-93
- Peter Vermes, 270 minutes: none
- Bruce Murray, 252 minutes: none
- Clint Mathis, 172 minutes: four goals for Hanover in 2003-04
- Robbie Findley, 167 minutes: none
- Josh Sargent, 158 minutes: five goals for Werder Bremen in 2020-21
The only player in Balogun's ballpark is Dempsey, one of the two or three greatest American soccer players of all time. And Dempsey wasn't really a center-forward; he played most of his minutes there after Altidore got hurt in the first game of the 2014 tournament. So, Balogun's current season is 10 goals clear of -- and more than double -- the best of any other American center-forward over the previous 30-plus years.
To put it in context, the three players who scored for the USMNT in Qatar -- Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah and Haji Wright -- have combined for 14 goals in club play this year. Wright has 13 for Antalyaspor in the Turkish league; Chelsea's Pulisic has one in the Premier League; and Weah still hasn't scored for Lille in Ligue 1 this season. Among other Americans across the Big Five leagues, Gio Reyna has seven goals for Borussia Dortmund; Jordan Pefok has four for Union Berlin; and Kevin Paredes (Wolfsburg), Tim Ream (Fulham), and Weston McKennie and Brenden Aaronson (Leeds) each have one.
Before Tuesday, USMNT players had scored 16 goals across Europe's Big Five leagues this season. Thanks to some paperwork being finalized in Switzerland, that number suddenly shot up to 35.
How does Balogun compare to everyone else?
Now that we've established that Balogun's goal scoring doesn't really even warrant comparison to any of his new teammates or any former USMNT-ers, what about the other players in Europe's biggest leagues?
Goals and assists can be noisy from year to year, so to get a true sense of Balogun's performance and what we might expect going forward, it's better to focus on his expected goal (xG) and expected assist (xA) output. We should also strip out penalties, which don't tell us much more than "his coach lets him take penalties."
Through 34 matches, Balogun has generated 18.6 non-penalty xG and created chances for his teammates worth 3.3 expected goals assisted. Across the Big Five leagues, only seven players have generated more combined xG and xA than Balogun: Kylian Mbappe, Haaland, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski, Mohamed Salah, Bruno Fernandes and Antoine Griezmann. Or, you know, seven of the best players in the world.
Moving forward, the big question with Balogun in Europe is how he might translate to a bigger and better side. Reims are 11th in Ligue 1; they average less than 50% of possession in their matches and sit near the bottom of the league for how often they complete their passes.
Balogun himself attempts only 17 passes per game -- 17th percentile for all forwards over the past 365 days. Five of his 13 non-penalty goals have come from moments where he ran behind a higher defensive line in transition -- moments that might not be as common were he to move to a bigger side or back to his parent club, Arsenal.
At the same time, you can flip all of those questions around: If he's lighting up Ligue 1 despite playing for a mediocre team, then shouldn't he be able to do even more with better teammates and more opportunities around the goal? I wouldn't say that Balogun passes the so-called eye test for future stardom; his highlight reel isn't filled with stepovers, out-of-nowhere through balls or thunderbolt shots into the top corner. No, it's all runs off a defender's back shoulder and savvy movement into blind spots inside the box.
Among the 31 players in Europe to attempt at least 80 shots this season, only three (Haaland, Lewandowski and Borussia Monchengladbach's Marcus Thuram) are taking better shots (as measured by xG per shot). The most valuable thing a soccer player can do is find space inside the penalty area -- and Balogun has been doing it over and over again this season. Plus, at just 21, he could still develop some passing skills and eventually create even more on-ball impact.
Michael Imburgio's DAVIES model sums up the on-ball contributions of players -- you get rewarded for goals and assists, and all the other stuff -- and then adjusts by the role a player occupies and his age. It provides a more comprehensive picture of player performance than just shots and chances created. This, theoretically, might punish a player like Balogun who isn't as involved in build-up play. But since 2017, only 11 under-22 seasons across the Big Five leagues have been as productive as Balogun's this year, per the DAVIES model:
-Mbappe and Federico Chiesa: three times
-Haaland, Vinicius Junior, Jadon Sancho, Lautaro Martinez, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka: once
Those are pretty much all of the best prospects of the past five years. While Sancho has struggled at Manchester United, the rest have already surpassed anything achieved by any American outfield player, ever. Mbappe, Haaland and Vinicius are going to be battling for the Ballon d'Or for the next decade; Chiesa led Italy to a European Cup; Lautaro is the best player on a Champions League finalist; Havertz scored the winning goal in a Champions League final; and Saka and Martinelli were the driving attacking forces for one of the most surprising Premier League title challenges in recent memory.
Balogun might not ever fit in back at Arsenal, where, under Mikel Arteta, there doesn't appear to be much room for another center-forward who isn't too involved in possession. Eddie Nketiah already fits the role, and he hasn't been able to find much playing time outside of when Gabriel Jesus was injured. But Balogun should get a shot at a Champions League club somewhere because it's not just that he is going to immediately upgrade the starting XI for the USMNT. No, it's because players who have been as good as him, against this level of competition and at this age? Those players tend to become stars.