I've read a few times that we were lucky to get this win. How so? With all that possession, Mexico did nothing. Their two best chances came after the goal. A 1-0 win for the US isn't surprising at all.
Here's what bothers me. If Spain scores the same exact goal that we did last night, every football pundit and Eurosnob on the planet would be picking their jaws up off of the floor and marveling at their wonderful teamwork and vision. We do the same and it's luck. I'm sorry, but American fans have a complex about our football. We played cynical at times, but that goal was an absolute thing of beauty. Boyd KNEW Orozco was there, and had the balls to pull off a back heel in front of net on the road. That took stones, and it worked. Shea ripped his defender to shreds with the nutmeg. It was class, and the Mexican fans can take their embarrassment like men and admit that they got exposed on that play by the Yanks. As far as the rest of the game? Mexico had two clear chances that they should have finished. Chicarito's unmarked header, and the fantastic stop by Howard near the end of the match. Outside of that, they didn't do much against our back line, and there really weren't a lot of nerve-wracking moments overall. Our defense was composed and managed the Mexican attack. Not bad for the B-Squad, and I'd love to see Cameron and Johnson be mainstays on our back line.
"Help" is the operative word here. In the past, FIFA rankings have, in some form or fashion, made up half of the seeding formula. Past World Cup performance has made up the other half, with teams that advance ranked from 1 to 16 based on when they go out and overall record, and nonadvancing teams ranked according to their place in their group (all 3rd place teams treated as tied, all 4th place teams treated as tied). In point of fact, FIFA did not deny us a rightful seed for 2006. We were on the outside looking in under the old formula, and on the outside looking in under the revised formula. (I hypothesized at the time that it might have been an attractive feature of the change, that they could make it without altering who was seeded.) In any event, we will certainly need another World Cup like 2002, which saw both an unusually strong finish by the U.S. (ranked 8th) and unusually poor finishes by fancied teams (e.g. France out in group stages) before we can even contemplate seeding again, never mind the extent to which FIFA has stuck their thumb on the scales to try to make it difficult for us (and Mexico) to achieve rankings as lofty as we saw pre-reformulation. As such, the FIFA rankings really are relatively worthless to the U.S. right now.
Waited for that result for years! Down South the el Tri fixture is incredibly important to many of us. And our way to proudly strut around Mexican dudes at work or out playing on the weekend.
Yeah what was lucky or surprising of a game where even if they weren't clear chances, had the most possesion and threaten the most against a team that scored in there only offensive play.
The only problem is the USA are 35th in the provisional October 2013 FIFA ranking. Top 7: Spain, Germany, Portugal, England, Uruguay, Italy, Argentina.
Please continue. I was just impressed with how well you illustrated your point about American fans having a complex.
what? provisional october 2013 ranking? what are you talking about? its so up in the air. the deal is win gold cup 2013...and it makes a difference. We could have a major jump just from winning this friendly. I think we could move up a good deal based on what has happened so far.
It's great to get FIFA points, but there's no way in hell we are going to be seeded in 2014. Whatever formula has been used in the past, if we move into the top 7 in such formula, FIFA will come up with a new formula to give them the result they (and most of the soccer-loving world) desire. That's how FIFA operates- they are above any law, rules or system.
The problem with your scenario is that Spain would have spent most of the game making multiple passes and dominating the opponent with tons of scoring opportunities, if their goal just happened to be an own goal by the other team or some play similar to the goal scored against Mexico they would get all that praise for all the stuff they did before the goal. It does not take a “EuroSnub” to recognized we played like shit most of the game and came up with a great result based on a nice counter and a nice play by Shea and Boyd with great positioning by Orozco. No different if that clearing by Bekerman would have gone in and we won 1 -0 with that goal, now that would have be much funnier.
whoa whoa whoa...I meant the higher ranking puts us in a different pool...it would help not to be in a group of death.
I still don't completely get this Darkism, maybe I'm dense. Does this mean we stole the Floodlights, or we performed the robbery under the Floodlights? Either way, I'm good with it
We're too low in the FIFA Rankings now to have any chance at being seeded in World Cup 2014, and this game will be out of the FIFA Rankings by the time the draw for World Cup 2018 is done. For some countries the FIFA Rankings influence how difficult a qualifying path they have, but not for us because of how weak most of CONCACAF is.
Disagree. Our goal was made of luck and skill. Shea was lucky his heavy touch didn't put him over the end line. It was a very good cross and a good job by Boyd to keep it alive and a good job by Orozco to get a shot off. If Spain scores that goal it's the same reaction from me. Some Eurosnobs might give them more credit than deserves, but most know the game well enough to call it like they see it.
I like reading about The "The MLS Soccer League" in my "The USA Today" Except, well, they don't have much info about it apart from the standings...
I feel like it should be noted that an increasing number of MLS players have started referring to the league as "The MLS." Or maybe that isn't a recent trend, but I've been noticing it a lot more in the past few years.
I've see a few posts suggest that this US lineup was a "B-" team. I'm going to nit-pick a little, but that's selling the players a tad short. 1) Reliably regular recent A-team starters who started at Azteca (6 of 11): Howard, Edu, Jones, Donovan, Gomez, and Johnson. 2) Regular recent game-day members and/or part-time starters who started at Azteca (3/11): Cameron, Torres, Beckerman 3) Fringe Nat's who started at Azteca (2/11): Castillo and Williams. The only certain core A-teamers missing were Boca, Bradley, Dempsey, Cherundolo, and Altidore. Rotational A-team part-timers Goodson and Onyewu were also missing. That's a B+ lineup not a B- lineup. Yeah, a minor nit-pick. Now, during the second half it may have shifted to a "B-" lineup with the addition of backups Beasley, Boyd, Zusi, Shea, Orozco, and the token minutes for Corona. But all of these guys have been part of JK's squads during the last year and are certainly part of the current B team. I do agree that Mexico fielded basically a "A-" lineup.
Nope- won't do that either. Once the seeds are set into Pot A, the other Pots are grouped by confederation to ensure that no teams in the same confederation (other than UEFA) can end up in the same group. I'll run the math again in 2013 before the draw, but FIFA tends to group CONCACAF together with AFC (usually four teams each), which is bad for us because we then have no chance of drawing a weak Asian team into our group. We got pretty lucky in 2010, drawing easily the weakest CAF team, arguably the weakest on paper UEFA team and probably the second weakest seeded team (after the host). Actually, this makes the play-off games very important for CONCACAF because if we wind up with 4 and AFC with 4, we're 99% guaranteed to be in the same pot (unless Mexico gets seeded . . .) but if we wind up with 4 and AFC has 5 and Mexico isn't seeded, there's no way to pair us with AFC. That's the winning scenario for us.
With Donovan only playing the first half, it's essentially (IMO the game was wno in the second), a game missing Donovan, Dempsey, Cherundolo, M. Bradley, and Boca. How important are those guys to our starting 11 is the real question?