ursula
08 Sep 2005, 10:33 AM
About a month ago we saw a MLS all-star team sacrificed at the Real Madrid altar. A bunch of good players who never played together (some didn't even know each other beforehand) were slapped together had one brief practice then bam! weren't able to string three passes together or display any sort of coordinated activity together.
Last night @ Guatemala City we saw a group of MLS all-stars (and a couple of Reading all-stars) who have played together more than the ones who went to madrid mainly because many of these guys went to Madrid, try to play a coherent game against a motivated, desperate team. What we saw was a team, particularly on offense, who had trouble stringing three passes together, the result being no goals scored.
And we are surprised that this happened?
Is Arena surprised this happened?
I (me, ursula) tend to think that if you hope for success from a soccer team that has just been slapped together you had better make sure that you put those players where they are comfortable. That a coach has to be careful in being over rigid in setting a formation and the roles that he expect these new players to play. For instance if you have a speed forward who likes service on the ground that he can run onto then it would be best to find a midfielder who could be in place to do that. If you have a midfielder who likes to pinch in and run give and gos with his forwards and other mid, then if possible allow him to do that. etc.
Of course it's not quite that simple. I think Arena had two conflicting goals for last night's game:
1) To see if a bunch of players have the physical ability to play on the international level and,
2) To see if those players can play in a formation that he likes to use, the 442 diamond midfield.
What we saw was that on defense which is where a coach can most impact what the players do, and thus make the #2 goal easily attainable, he could get a fair evaluation of Albright, Marshall, Conrad, Vanney, and Hanneman. What we learned didn't surprise anyone really: Conrad played well in the Gold Cup against similar opposition. Albright has shown glimpses that he can do the same and like Conrad, he did. Vanney still looks lost at left back- no surprise there either. marshall was the biggest surprise mainly in that this was a step up in competition for him. He did fine. Having a veteran d-mid like Mastroeni also helped the defense.
It's possible that we learned that to go from MLS to CONCACAF competition is not really a step up for MLS defenders. That Arena could go deeper into his MLS pocket and come up with several more defenders who could play adequately in CONCACAF at their respective positions.
Ah, but that's the rub, their respective positions. To be fair to Vanney, he doesn't play left back in a 442 with Dallas. In the Gold Cup after the canada game, arena basically alluded to that. Yet we saw Greg out there again, doing what he's poor at. (Actually I thought he did better in this game than at the Gold Cup but that's not saying much.)
But Vanney is an example of what can go wrong if you ask players to both step up in competition and play a role they aren't used to, and so we now go to the offense.
I think outside of TT all the offensive players were asked to play against type. To varying degrees is was like asking, oh, orlando Bloom to play the lead role in a movie (substitute Clint Dempsey for Orlando here.) neither Bloom nor Dempsey are comfortable doing that at this point in their careers and it shows if they are unreasonably asked to do so.
Get what I'm saying? Asking Dempsey to be the a-mid in a diamond is asking for no offense. It's not fair to demand that of him in MLS and its criminal to ask him to do that in CONCACAF.
And of course doing so has huge ripple effects. Dempsey is not the one to lay through balls to Cunny's feet to run onto. That should have been Mr. Give-and-go himself. Convey. But Convey in this game seemed more concerned about staying wide than what he normally likes to do- pinch in and interact on the dribble with the forwards. (Contrast Convey in this game with how he acted in the T&T game. Big difference.) So Convey was nowhere near Cunningham and thus a possible good connection didn't materialize.
Quaranta, like Convey, is also not a true winger. He doesn't like to do the run-to-the-corner-and-huck-a-prayer-into-the-middle thing and he rarely does it with his club. He can play on the right side of midfield, but he's gonna want to move to the middle even more than Convey does and look to interact with his fellow attackers from there. If he doesn't do that , he looks to change the point of attack. But he had no "foil" in this game, no one who would play his game like happens at DC United, until Johnson subbed in, although if Convey had moved to the middle more than something would have happened.
So ultimately you had five attacking players who were out of place- with each other and with their responsibilities. From that it's hard to evaluate if a player can play internationally unless they really mess up with some basic soccer fundamentals. The only one who did that was Twellman and his encounters with his chest.
Arena should have seen all this by halftime. I'm sure he did. But he kept his formation, kept the players uncomfortable and thus missed a good opportunity to evaluate said players. He should have adjusted at halftime, gotten the attackers all closer together so that they could communicate and play off each other and not worry about the scoreline. Afterall, it stands to reason that if MLS defenders, playing in their correct positions, can play the CONCACAF game, then it stands to reason that MLS attackers can do the same. Instead we saw more of the same- the attackers all 20+ yards away from each other most of the time, sending hopeful balls that on their club teams would have connected but since their club teammates weren't there went to empty space.
Totally frustrating and I hope for the Costa Rica game Arena learns that he must adjust if he's gonna play so many new faces.
Last night @ Guatemala City we saw a group of MLS all-stars (and a couple of Reading all-stars) who have played together more than the ones who went to madrid mainly because many of these guys went to Madrid, try to play a coherent game against a motivated, desperate team. What we saw was a team, particularly on offense, who had trouble stringing three passes together, the result being no goals scored.
And we are surprised that this happened?
Is Arena surprised this happened?
I (me, ursula) tend to think that if you hope for success from a soccer team that has just been slapped together you had better make sure that you put those players where they are comfortable. That a coach has to be careful in being over rigid in setting a formation and the roles that he expect these new players to play. For instance if you have a speed forward who likes service on the ground that he can run onto then it would be best to find a midfielder who could be in place to do that. If you have a midfielder who likes to pinch in and run give and gos with his forwards and other mid, then if possible allow him to do that. etc.
Of course it's not quite that simple. I think Arena had two conflicting goals for last night's game:
1) To see if a bunch of players have the physical ability to play on the international level and,
2) To see if those players can play in a formation that he likes to use, the 442 diamond midfield.
What we saw was that on defense which is where a coach can most impact what the players do, and thus make the #2 goal easily attainable, he could get a fair evaluation of Albright, Marshall, Conrad, Vanney, and Hanneman. What we learned didn't surprise anyone really: Conrad played well in the Gold Cup against similar opposition. Albright has shown glimpses that he can do the same and like Conrad, he did. Vanney still looks lost at left back- no surprise there either. marshall was the biggest surprise mainly in that this was a step up in competition for him. He did fine. Having a veteran d-mid like Mastroeni also helped the defense.
It's possible that we learned that to go from MLS to CONCACAF competition is not really a step up for MLS defenders. That Arena could go deeper into his MLS pocket and come up with several more defenders who could play adequately in CONCACAF at their respective positions.
Ah, but that's the rub, their respective positions. To be fair to Vanney, he doesn't play left back in a 442 with Dallas. In the Gold Cup after the canada game, arena basically alluded to that. Yet we saw Greg out there again, doing what he's poor at. (Actually I thought he did better in this game than at the Gold Cup but that's not saying much.)
But Vanney is an example of what can go wrong if you ask players to both step up in competition and play a role they aren't used to, and so we now go to the offense.
I think outside of TT all the offensive players were asked to play against type. To varying degrees is was like asking, oh, orlando Bloom to play the lead role in a movie (substitute Clint Dempsey for Orlando here.) neither Bloom nor Dempsey are comfortable doing that at this point in their careers and it shows if they are unreasonably asked to do so.
Get what I'm saying? Asking Dempsey to be the a-mid in a diamond is asking for no offense. It's not fair to demand that of him in MLS and its criminal to ask him to do that in CONCACAF.
And of course doing so has huge ripple effects. Dempsey is not the one to lay through balls to Cunny's feet to run onto. That should have been Mr. Give-and-go himself. Convey. But Convey in this game seemed more concerned about staying wide than what he normally likes to do- pinch in and interact on the dribble with the forwards. (Contrast Convey in this game with how he acted in the T&T game. Big difference.) So Convey was nowhere near Cunningham and thus a possible good connection didn't materialize.
Quaranta, like Convey, is also not a true winger. He doesn't like to do the run-to-the-corner-and-huck-a-prayer-into-the-middle thing and he rarely does it with his club. He can play on the right side of midfield, but he's gonna want to move to the middle even more than Convey does and look to interact with his fellow attackers from there. If he doesn't do that , he looks to change the point of attack. But he had no "foil" in this game, no one who would play his game like happens at DC United, until Johnson subbed in, although if Convey had moved to the middle more than something would have happened.
So ultimately you had five attacking players who were out of place- with each other and with their responsibilities. From that it's hard to evaluate if a player can play internationally unless they really mess up with some basic soccer fundamentals. The only one who did that was Twellman and his encounters with his chest.
Arena should have seen all this by halftime. I'm sure he did. But he kept his formation, kept the players uncomfortable and thus missed a good opportunity to evaluate said players. He should have adjusted at halftime, gotten the attackers all closer together so that they could communicate and play off each other and not worry about the scoreline. Afterall, it stands to reason that if MLS defenders, playing in their correct positions, can play the CONCACAF game, then it stands to reason that MLS attackers can do the same. Instead we saw more of the same- the attackers all 20+ yards away from each other most of the time, sending hopeful balls that on their club teams would have connected but since their club teammates weren't there went to empty space.
Totally frustrating and I hope for the Costa Rica game Arena learns that he must adjust if he's gonna play so many new faces.