There are some real engima teams out there for me this season. For example, any of you think Chicago Fire are terrible or terrific? Marco Pappas was completely awesome on Saturday. Did you see his moves on that goal? [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0vXMHVCFsw"]YouTube - Sporting Kansas City @ Chicago Fire - 3/26/11 Full Highlights[/ame]
Kreis can't build a national team like a club team. At the club level, you can pick and chose the style you want to play and then find the players to fit. At the international level, and especially for a country like the US, you have to make do with what you got. Who should Bradley have used instead? He wanted to rotate players in for this match. Lets not forget its a bloody friendly (where he gets players time and sees how they do in higher pressure situations). The guy just got a draw against ********ing Argentina... a loss to Paraguy days later while mixing up the lineup is perfectly ok by me. Also, Bradley has no control over how these guys train or what they do for 95% of the year. If we want a good national team, take the spain approach. Get the core of your team on one club and have that club play a VERY similar style that you will play on the international level.
this is exactly the problem with american USMNT soccer, we make a big deal out of getting a draw with argentina after being completely outplayed for 90 minutes and capitalizing on 1 or 2 opportunities. then we rationalize a loss to the likes of paraguay (who got CRUSHED 3-0 in mexico just prior) because bob was just mixing it up. its completely backwards, we should be upset that we have to scrape a few opportunities to pull out a draw and then be furious when we looked like chickens with their heads chopped off against an obviously inferior opponent. i'd rather be happy playing an opponent like argentina straight up and losing 1 or 2-0 instead of just sitting back and taking it like a cheap whore and getting lucky on a put back off a keeper flub. i dont know whether or not kreis would be successful in the USMNT role. i think the calling up of players creates a more level playing field than at the club level. at the same time i think the mentality and structure that kreis would provide is 100% different and a lot better than bob. whether or not that would translate to success...i have no idea. i think kreis would be more open to finding players that fit into a system that is more successful, instead of sticking with a bornstein, an edu, a klejstain, etc. we know what happens with those players are on the field and when they're interchanged, might as well go with a different angle.
Now don't I feel like a fool. My dad asked me if I was planning on watching the match last night. I was so sure that it was tonight that I didn't even bother checking the schedule. Even wore my US jersey to school today like I always do when they are playing (same with RSL on weekday matches, ocassionaly even on Fridays before a Saturday match). And now I find out that the match was last night and they lost. Guess I just have to tell everyone that I'm wearing it to show that I'm not just a fair-weather fan!
Not sure where to post this, but I just ran across Dario Sala's open letter to FCD fans. Its cool to see that type of commitment from a player after playing years are over. Got me thinkin, RSL seem to have a pretty close knit group right now, which players can you see retiring and staying in UT? Could be working for the team, could be otherwise. Jason already kicked things off by become coach, I could see Andy staying in SLC, maybe Javi as well. I don't know about others though.
i could see andy, with his family and all. i couldnt really see any of our central/south american boys sticking around, they have a love and passion for their home and their family that will pull them back. if a player like kyle or ned were to finish out their career here than i could see them sticking around for a while. thats really about it though.
Chris Brown is back. Seth Trembly came back to visit a lot but I haven't heard anything recently. Brian Dunseth and Ian Joy. Kenny Cutler came back last year. Brian Kamler is still here. Brown and Kamler seem to be here long-term.
Weird that you think that. I thought they looked pretty good in the Paraguay game. There was a huge difference in the US play and ability to possess and move the ball compared to the Argentina game. Paraguay had a nice goal of a set piece and a whole bunch of good saves from their keeper. Other than that, the US was better all over the field. I don't know if it's been observed before, but it's possible that you might be prone to overreaction, UPinSLC.
if the player doesnt stay here in the off-season, the chances of them staying post retirement are slim to none. Andy is one player I see staying simply because he is now an icon in the community and inserts himself into the local high school (Herriman). Most others will go back to what they really call home. Nothing wrong with that.
After our first half performance against Argentina anything would have been a improvement. The match against Paraquay was played much better and dispite the final score as a U.S. fan I was pleased with the level of play.
true, i do overreact. still, i saw a team that wanted to play possession soccer, wanted to pass it around, but outside of a 20 minute or so stretch in the first half and the beginning of the second half, really really struggled to do so. as a team they struggled to get distribution out of the back (ream i thought did a very good job, bornstein, boca, and at times chandler really struggled with this). they would pass it around the back line, but getting it up to the high midfield was difficult. once in the midfield, edu and donovan lost possession several times, either by lazy passes or by not knowing where to play the ball. i watched the germany vs australia match earlier in the day (an unfair comparison, but im going to make it anyways). the way germany pinged the ball from the back up to through the middle and to their forwards was a clinic. one, two touches, ball was out and on to the next player. simple passes, nothing fancy. when i watch the US i see players dancing with the ball, trying to make complicated turns into 2-3 opposing players, cute little flicks and heel taps. that stuff works in high school and sometimes college, but not at a higher level, and it should be coached out of them by now. edu, dempsey, chandler, bradley, they all played this way. you could tell paraguay players picked up on it also, as soon as any of those players touched the ball they were instantly surrounded by 3-4 defenders and had trouble getting the ball off their foot. this isnt hard, look around, receive the ball, open your hips, make 1 control touch if necessary and play the ball on to the next player. use your triangles and move the ball quick, the ball runs faster than your opponents. still, thats not the most frustrating thing for me. easily the most frustrating thing was how HORRIBLE we were on set pieces and corners. we must have had a dozen or more free kicks anywhere from 20-40 yards out from goal and i cant think of a single one that ended up with a dangerous opportunity on goal. pretty much every corner was useless. with a bigger/physical team like ours you would think that a decent portion of practice every week would be dedicated to getting results out of these things. a huge part of this was squarely on donovan who is quite possibly the worst distributor of free kicks and corners i've ever seen on a professional/international level. no matter how you measure it, we may have looked better but we absolutely failed to break down a defense and get more than a couple decent on goal chances. all against a team that got massacred a few days prior by mexico.
If you listened to Kreis in practice circa 2007/early 2008 you would hear "play simple" or "keep it simple" several times in a training session. You still hear it, but with much less frequency. Kreis is trying to make the exact point you are making here.
I decided to kill about five minutes looking at the Chivas forum to see how they enjoy their general wretchedness (yes, I remember the old days). And in the midst of the wreckage, I found this jewel of a post. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=23105720&postcount=35 It finishes STRONG.
I think Nick might stay here. He seems to like it here. Andy. I can see Andy having something to do with the organization. Will might stay here, especially since his fiancee is here, and he loves this organization, says he's found a home here. Maybe Nat. I think Nat's from Colorado, though, right? I wish Kyle would stay here, cuz I like Kyle. Wish Javier would, too. Want to keep them all. I could see Kreis sticking around here permanently. I've heard these people say they like it here in Utah, are falling or have fallen in love with it, support things around here, find lots of things to do around here: Kreis, Andy, Nick and Kyle, and to a certain extent, Will. The only player I know has said outright that he'll return back to his home when his career is done is Paulo, and that's because he's homesick.
its the exact way i learned to play from middle school all the way through varsity soccer in high school. i had some good coaches and they all preached the same thing, make the game simple. if you cant do the most basic and simple things within the game then you will never be a smooth running machine. you look at the best teams in the world, brazil, spain, argentina, germany, etc. they all play one or two touch, quick passes, get into space so you can receive a pass and dont make the game more complicated than it needs to be. very simple stuff. the advanced techniques they display all develop from the most basic aspects of the game. people think these great teams are so amazing because they can all do awesome tricks with the ball, but when you break down their game there is nothing incredibly fancy, they're just the cleanest when it comes to the simple games within the game.
I agree with this, but at the same time I dont Keeping the game simple is key, epsecially for possession. Short passes can wear a team down. With that said, there is a need for creativity from time to time. Even a "simple pass" can be creative. The best players of this on our squad are Andy and Javi. Their passes arent, typically, these amazing 50 yard bombs to a team-mates feet. They are, esepcially in the final third, sharp, crisp, and most imporantly they are a pass most others dont see. Spain has multiple players that are capable of seeing the field this way. A diagonal ball or a reverse pass here or there really makes the "simple" aspect that much easier. I too get frustrated when players try to do too much. However, there has to be space created in some way. We don't, at the moment, really have a creative mid capapble of making passes like an Iniesta or Xavi. We have guys like Dempsey and Donovan who typically recieve those passes on their club teams. Really, what I'm getting at here I guess, is the fact that we really don't have a #10 on this team. To play attractive, simple soccer there is a need for one or two players that really operate the team through the middle. Ozil at Germany, Pirlo (older days) at Milan/Italy. Kaka at Brazil. etc etc. As is, we have a fairly decent side but no player truly stands out as someone to run the show through. Thus, we stuggle to break down opponents. Its not just making simple passes, there has to be something built. I'd relate the US to our midfield when we dont have Javi or Andy in. We can still pass and possess, but its simply not the same. We dont have a purpose to the passes.
I can't believe that FCD is struggling so much this year. Maybe they underestimated Dax's value when they left him unprotected. Hopefully it continues through the whole year.....
Dax, JC, Pearce... they are a much different team without those players. also, its WAY early in the season. They could easily go on a 5 game winning streak or something like that and everyone will say "oh, FCD, we saw that one coming"
It's weird to see them playing with Shea as CB too. I watched most of that game last night and I was shocked at how disjointed they were. Yesterday also marked the second game this year that an FCD player has been shown red, both times on uncalled for challenges after stupid first yellows. it looked like, at full strength, they were forcing the issue, and making up for the lack of creativity and control that Dax and others gave them, with a very straight forward aggressive attack/defense, and it got them in trouble. They can be good this year. But after blowing up the team from last year could hold them back for a while.
I disagree, but I guess that depends on a couple of things. First, what your pre-conceived notion of a number 10 is, and that's a classic debate. And second if you are talking about the player or how the RSL system works. I used to have links to Youtube clips of Javi playing in Spain, and you couldn't ask for a more pure #10 in my mind. Our formation, and what Jason expects of attacking players on the defensive end does muddy the water, but from a skill perspective I'm not sure there is a more classic #10 in the league than Javi.
This made me laugh. Sounds VERY ominous. Must spread the reppidge. What he said. ... Lots of favorable results for RSL this week with all the ties. Too bad LAG won. We'll see what happens tomorrow with COL/DCU, though I expect COL to win.