There’s an old adage that coaches will fall back on when asked about a referee’s decisions and how it impacted a game. In some form or another, it centers on the notion of doing enough with what the team can control so that the decision-making, as far as it relates to the game’s result, is effectively taken out of the referee’s hands.
A similar approach can be applied to a coach’s roster decision for an upcoming camp or competition. If a player is performing so well and so effectively, mastering what he can control, then there’s really no decision left for the coach to make at all. It’s all rather organic.
That’s essentially what a few strikers in the U.S. men’s national team player pool are doing with a penultimate U.S. camp on the horizon and the World Cup dangling in the not-so-distant future.
