Unorthodox Yank said:

Wrong. Before 2004 Garcia has always, to my knowlege, been deployed primarily as a center back. This goes all the way back to his days at Indiana, where he was (i think) played mainly as a sweeper. The ONE exception you could make to this is 2000, where he played on the right side of a 3-5-2 formation. But even then his main responsibility was man-marking, which he did a damn good job of.



He only switched to being a right back for the start of this season. Although he wasn't horrible at it, most would agree that he wasn't exactly stellar either. However, it wasn't exactly easy to move him into the center when you had two very good center backs playing very well (Shavar Thomas and Jimmy Conrad.)



That all changed against San Jose halfway through the season. We replaced Thomas with Nick in the middle just to mark Donovan out of the game. Which he did, contributing to our victory, and, i believe (i cant remember the score), our shutout in that game. We never switched back, and made it to the cup.



As for his chances with the nats. Like I said, if he gets another chance with the National team, it will be as a center back, not a right back. In fact, he already HAS gotten a chance or two with the nation al team, and i believe he even played as a center back in THOSE games.



But, as Superdave pointed out, he IS in competing for what is arguably our deepest position, with Bocanegra, Gibbs, Pope, Berhalter, Onyewu all competing right now, along with people like Chad Marshall to come on in the future.



Does he have the ability to do it? Sure. Right now, I doubt that there is a better man marker in MLS than Nick Garcia. That almost puts him at the same level of Cory Gibbs right there.



That said, do I think he'll actually establish himself somewher? I dunno. That, to sound as vague as humanly possible, all depends.