Yeah, and a few people around here wanted some of them shot for rooting for El-Tri. They're a testy bunch around here.
JK is making mistakes even in defense but is only partly at fault. Goodson had no one to take his place when he gave up that last goal playing in back. Ream was a bad choice and others including Boca had to be used there at this stage. Chandler as potentially good as he is abandoned the left quarter of the pitch undefended when he went forward with cover not being good enough yet. Our Confederation team was our best lineup at the time but Bornstein was at LB (who will not play for the NT again) and was always a disadvantage. Chandler, Lichaj, and 2/3 other German-Americans can play there now depending on whether Dolo is at RB or not. Gooch and Boca at 100% are still the CB pair JK will depend upon now but the future will soon be upon him and he'll have to come up with two reliable CBs as depth. Is an uninjured Whitbread one? Gonzo? John? Parkhurst? Who really knows?
You'd think I was hacked if I changed the way I posted. Maybe you two can take a warm shower via PM or something?
Pass. Mike, we go back a ways. We didn't agree on Bradley, but you're still one of my favorites. And we probably agree more than you think on Klinsmann not being the revolutionary he and his supporters want you to think he is.
I am no Klinsmann apologist, I share the vast majority of your concerns, just not in the same degree. The one thing I absolutely disagree with is the BS, redneck, flag waving garbage "patriotism". If any of our MLS players are as good as their Bundesliga counterparts than they need to get over there and prove it, or shut the hell up.
For those of you who are upset with the harsher language being used in this thread, I invite you--once again--to confine yourself to the more closely moderated News and Analysis forum. For those of you who cannot refrain from engaging in personal attacks, I'll remind you that there are limits to that, even here. If your primary purpose in coming to BigSoccer is to slap people around, then take it World Rivalries. This is a thread for discussing Klinsmann's coaching. It's not a thread for non-stop complaining about how the other side is clueless, monotonous, or mean.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/s...-coach-klinsmann-keeps-approach-positive.html This may be of interest to some.
According to the commentators during todays Man Utd vs Blackburn game the kid playing left back for 'Rovers was born in Nashville, TN....
Interesting potential replacements for Cabrera. Looks like Klinsmann and Reyna are cleaning house. U.S. U-17 head coach candidates
I'd still like to resume the conversation that dominated the previous thread " So, after six games, what have we learned about Klinsmann?". The conversation based around whether the style Klinsmann wants us to play is a style we can play. I still think that, right now, we don't have the players to really play that way successfully against even average teams. We shouldn't be teaching these guys to play this style at the senior level. They should already know how to play that way once they get there. That's what youth teams and development academies are for. There isn't nearly enough games/practices/time for us to try to train them into this. We need to be prepping for World Cup Qualifying/the World Cup A team should always play the way that suits it's players, and the situation, best. It should never be players trying to fit a style that a coach is dead-set on playing, or the coach trying to force it down the throats of players who simply aren't suited to it. The time to train a player into a style is when they're young.
All that argument is based on, is whether one thinks our players are 'skillful' enough at the technical side of the game to play that way or not. There is no way to really prove who is right until Klinsi's done. That is the truth. The side that argue BB had our guys playing the best 'style' and 'tactics' got to see how far we could get under him and this way of playing the game. Now it is Klinsi's turn to see where this leads us. We'll see....
I agree, when you are asked to play a particular style by a coach for 5-6 years it is normal to think that is the best style they can create, however is that the only way they are capable of playing? I feel that is a fallacy in that it is self limiting. I would hope that style is the least of our concerns. Chemistry and tactics will tell the tale.???
The simple fact is that we don't have time to be training these guys to play this style before games start counting. We've barely been creating chances this way against mediocre teams. It just makes a ton more sense to train players at the youth level to play this way and then bring them into the senior team when they've become good enough, not training players to play that way. The senior national team doesn't have nearly enough time for that.
In the 10 matches in 2011 pre JK we averaged 12.3 shots with 3.9 on goal. In the 7 matches in 2011 of the JK era we have averaged 10.3 shots with 4.3 on goal.
Hardly any of the shots under JK, on goal or otherwise, have been real chances. And I'd say we should wait until 10 matches in to make a direct comparison. Three matches can make a fair amount of difference. I could be wrong in saying that of course.
This is where I have difficulty understanding such reasoning. We should go back to what we were doing before when most everyone has been saying what we have been doing hasn't worked and we won't progress doing it?? So now we are saying trying to get them to play differently is wasting time when we should be playing like we were and change just a little? How is that little going to be taught and how are they supposed to adjust to that little change?? How and what are those changes and is what we are saying that if we change it a little so as not to overtax their intelligence nor their ineptitude, we will wind up with a world-beater team?? I just do not get it?? Guess my intelligence is being overtaxed as well.
It wasn't the style that fell short, so much as it was Bob Bradley's tactics, particularly as they relate to our defense. Bob's tactic of sitting deep and booting the ball long to guard leads made a LOT less sense when we lost DeMerit and Onyewu, and were forced to put in Jonathan Bornstein, because our defense wasn't good enough to hold down the fort. Keeping the ball in order to kill off games ( Not as a way of attack) would have made sense, as it would have kept the opponent off the ball and given them less chance to expose our backline. I think that's definitely what we need to be doing, along with the pressing high up the field that further reduces the amount of time on the ball the opponent has. The recent Gold Cup final is exactly what I'm talking about. We were pretty good offensively, scoring two goals, one of them a beauty. However, once we had the lead, we didn't do the right thing with the ball. We booted the ball long and reorganized our lines. This made no sense considering Landon Donovan was our lone striker ( a false nine) that game, and was clearly never going to win any of those aerial challenges. Keeping the ball on the ground to keep possession would have made more sense. Moreover, our backline didn't press high up to reduce Mexico's time on the ball, but we didn't sit deep to deny their speedy players the space in behind to run into. As such, they had time on the ball to play passes, and they had dangerous spaces with which to play them into. Not a good idea when you're facing speedsters like Chicarito and Gio Dos Santos. Again, these are things that fall down to tactics rather than overall style. It's not hard to just be less ambitious with the ball to kill the game off. As I've said before, plenty of teams do it everywhere. Breaking teams down with that kind of slower ball movement is a whole 'nother animal. Pressing is also not a hard thing to do, and something we've been doing under Klinsmann. It already led to a goal, with Buddle's goal against Slovenia.
I brought this up the last time. If you take bobs last 7 games and jks first 7 games bob is actually ahead.. Not by much