I'm Back
It has been a while and I am feeling brash so I suppose I will hit you all with some knowledge. First off, congrats to JG for his refereeing exploits and I look forward to booking his Champions League appearances and mooching off of him when he becomes the world's premier ref a la Perluigi Collina.
On another note, I want to discuss the US. Now the last time I brought up our distinguished national team, The AR put me in my place verbally, so let's hope my current thoughts are perhaps more rational and less absurd. Having watched the first 2 US Gold Cup games (and I think FSC has succeeded in delivering worse national team coverage than Rob "SERVICE" Stone), I feel strongly about a few points. Initially, Benny Fielhaber, despite his frightening German surname, is the balls. That's just about the only way to put it. Even as a youngin', he has filled, for the time, being, the boots of Reyna in controlling the midfield and creatively initiating play in front of him through creative passes and seeing forward runs. The future looks bright for him.
That said, I think that the US team has disappointed thus far. Though it is hard to see how two clean sheets and two wins is disappointing, I feel we should be producing many more dominating preformances. Gooch getting sent off in the first match, and our failure to take advantage of clear-cut chances to close out the Guatemalans disappoint me. We should be killing these teams, and if we cannot, we stand the chance of large-scale embarassment at the Copa America.
1 comment:
Welcome back, Trudo!
I have to agree that the USMNT has not performed as well as one might have hoped. I didn't see the T&T game, but watched them play (and not well) against Guatemala. The US was fortunate not to have lost that game. After the US scored (and it was a really pretty goal) and Guatemala came out of its defensive shell, they really brought the game to the US. The US had one great chance to double the score, but Taylor Twellman (whose cross set up Dempsey's goal) missed a wide-open header. I mean he was wide open.
After that, Guatemala began playing a much more physical and open game and the US didn't respond. Where the fault lies in this I don't know, but the team did not react well to the change in tempo. One might have thought that by opening up the field, which everyone should have expected following the goal, the US should have been able to exploit gaps or openings in the GMNT defense, but this didn't happen. In fact, I thought as I watched the game that the Guatemalan coach's initial game plan, which worked OK in a late winter scrimmage, did the team a diservice here: had he played an open game for 90 minutes, he might have had a better chance than how he played until falling behind.
By the way, I don't know how you feel about this, but in my view, Gooch earned his two cards. I thought to myself while watching him slam into that Guatemalan player, "Uh oh! Here it comes!" and it did, the second yellow. I also am not too impressed generally with his overall play. In the game that earned him his "stripes," against Mexico and Borgetti, I thought he was lucky not to have picked up three or four cards (calling Graham Poll); he's always played a very physical game, grabbing and clutching. While maybe the foul called on him in the WC leading to the PK wasn't deserved, a ref coming into the match knows to keep an eye on him. The ref there might have been ready to call Gooch on his body checking.
As for Feilhaber, he's for real, has a great work rate. I also think other newcomers have shown well, including Bornstein
and Bradley, DeMerit. So there is talent. After the Cup, we might be in a better position to talk about Coach Bradley, though I wonder whether USSoccer would consider a change if the US doesn't perform better in the later stages of the tournament.
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