USA v Czech Rep. -- Bruce Arena's coaching and tactics {R}

He did what most of us feared...played Beasley on the right, and McBride as a lone striker.

 

We had tactics?

 

Square pegs, round holes, and lessons unlearned. Bruce's pre-game preparation - F. Bruce's midgame adjustments? They don't even deserve a grade.

 

i still can't believe he did this. i thought this was just prognosticating by 23 year olds who live in their parents' basement. this is an internet message board idea. 4-5-1???

NOT something an actual WC coach tries. Arena's legacy is ever changing.

 

regardless of the moves Arena made or didn't make, this team wasn't ready to play and deservedly got embarrassed.

I'm hoping Arena takes a good deal of blame for this but at the end of the day, we had arguably our best X1 players out there to start and we got rolled.

We have a lot of growing to do.

 

Please see post Mexico, Jamaica and Morocco threads.

Bruce? F.

 

What happen to his surprise tactics and formations he used in 2002???

The one thing that made Bruce Bruce was he had no fear of changing everything around.

He used the lineup that was predicted from months ago??? WHY?? Our play was predictable and our players were predictable.

 

Arena was certainly outcoached. You've got to giv ehim a bit of leeway though because I haven't seen that happen before.

Too many square pegs in round holes.

 

yeah but that doesn't always make for the best TEAM. if you force a "Best XI" out there when it puts people in bad positions, i.e. makes it difficult to succeed, then it's useless.

it's sad, b/c Bruce has always been about the best "team", not just throwing out the 11 best individual players. i mean, what if you're nation's best 11 are all defenders? that doesn't mean you start them all in one lineup.

 

I didn't predict the return of the W-M in the second half...that was unpredictable!

 

AZTECA 2005.

amazingly, this managed to blow that one out of the water. and even that was damn embarassing.

 

He made three tactical mistakes before the game: Reyna, McBride and Beasley. Oh yeah, and Donovan as a forward.

Reyna and McBride are way past their prime and Beasley has awful recent form. It would have been far better to start a young, hungry, hustling lineup. I would have liked to have seen Ching, Johnson and DEmpsey instead of those three with Landon as attacking midfield.

Looked like Bruce was playing a prevent defense from the start, which, like in the NFL only prevents one thing: you from winning. Really miserable player selection.

 

Hell, he got outcoached by the Panamanian and Jamaican coaches during qualifying. Bottom line is that he has stuck with his old toothless lions for far too long, and it caught up to us.

 

Outcoached by Bruckner.

Severly.

I thought the Czech strategy was brilliant. Essentially, they played the US's game. Let the opponent have possesion and counterattack like crazy.

We dominated possession, which played to our weakness--one touch passing and build up. We are not a good team when we try to play like Brazil or the Netherlands. We've seen it many times when teams like Grenada force us to play build up soccer.

Fortunately for us, the Italians are way too proud to let us dominate possession. Otherwise, we're toast. If they play like I believe they will (dominate possession, take it straight to us, underestimate us based on today's result...not today's strategy), we still stand a decent chance on Saturday.

 

IMO, Arena was thoroughly outcoached.

In terms of match preparation, the team didn't seem ready to play, and lack the determination we've come to expect of the US.

In terms of tactics, this was laughable, IMO. Any one of us would be able to ascertain the outcome of a sole forward [McBride], Convey on the left, and Beasley on the right. Pope was outpaced on several occasions, and is well on his way to becoming Jeff Agoos the Second.

This was a thrashing, and coaching certainly should take their share of the blame.

Here's hoping we can turn it around for the next match...

 

hey Bruce.. Come down off your high- effing horse.. you just took an ass whooping ..

 

Renya was one of the only bright spots....but we need our players on the bench to step up against italy because dmb, mcbride, convey, and mastro showed nothing.

 

What really drove me crazy was his silent Buddha routine on the bench while our team was out there crashing to defeat. And he sends Myernick to give specific instructions to the subs coming in...

And I echo the comments of everyone else here about going with the tootheless lions: Mc Bride disappeared; Pope got schooled; Reyna faded in the second half. Lewis didn't fit. Maestroeni was a disaster.

What a joke. Even Taylor Twellman would have made more of an impact than McBride today.

The only good thing is that they won't rehire his sorry ass for 2010.

 

Bruckner made him his bitch, allright. i haven't seen domination like that tactically speaking, in quite sometime.

 

This is a hard post to make, normally I am a Arena fan...but that was the worst coaching performance I have ever seen.

The formation was wrong, the players were in the wrong place, the had no idea what to do, I could go on but it is to painful, so I will try to break it down analytically

1) Formation was a 4-4-1-1. but they played like a 4-5-1, hitting searching balls up to a stranded BMB...stupid.

2) Beasley on the right in a 4-4-1-1...Can't even begin to think on how dumb that is.

3) Pablo and Reyna in the midfield in a 4-4-1-1. Jesus, you don't need a DM in that formation.

4) 2nd Half subs, he was half correct, he needed to bring on JOB and EJ, but not in a 3-5-2. DMB should have been the first sub.

5) Playing a defensive formation against a 4-5-1...That's high school stupidity, actually, most high school coaches know not to do that.


To be fair, I called for a 4-2-3-1, but not with those personnel. I wanted.

Dolo Pope Gooch Lewis
Reyna JOB
Dempsey LD Convey
EJ


I was so surprised...when he pulled this

Dolo Pope Gooch Lewis
DMB Reyna Mastro Convey
LD
BMB

Then he played it like a 4-5-1!!!

LD played way to high...
Dolo and Lewis attacked entirely too much
BMB had maybe three touches the entire game.
We had 1.......1.......1!!!!!!!!!shot on goal!!!!!

I really am too pi$$ed to go on...

Poobah

 

You can whine and complain all you want about the players and formations used by BA in this game. But, in the end, what really made the difference is CR had a whole team full of players with great technical skill and the experience to use it and we had one, Reyna.

 

This is perfectly expresses my long-held reservations with Arena. However, the team's overall success (to which he has largely contributed) has prevented me from publicly expressing as much. But a humiliating result like this was inevitable.

 

Bruce Arena: Post-Game One [R]

How dare Bruce Arena laugh in the post game interveiw. You gotta be kidding me. He they lose like 98 i am offical calling for his resignation.

Still in shock and nopw want Arena to be fired.

 

Besides what I've already stated regarding the technical difficiencies of most US players, the biggest problem was not the formation, it was that we got overly aggressive. I said several weeks ago that if we really pushed the attack and aggressively tried to score like so many BS posters were pushing, we'd get Morrocoed in the first 10 minutes.

Well, we got too many forward and they countered us putting a spot on cross to 6' 8" forward. The problem wasn't really the marking of Koller, it was the space allowed to the player making the cross who was completely unmolested as he superbly chipped that ball in straight onto Koller's big dome.