Jill Ellis mentioned periodisation in her press conference. She comes accross well in those. She does not hide things like certain coaches who are just boring.
The line I bolded above is our main problem. Ellis is clueless and it is exposed almost every time we face a real team. The fact that she even calls in Lloyd at this point is exhibit A. The fact that we are still able to beat most on pure athletic ability but no real skill is exhibit B. We have a team of athletic muckers and Ellis is the main mucker cause she thinks thats what we should be. I have never liked her and think it was just an easy choice when the opening occurred. The fact that she has been allowed to stay is US Soccers fault. We really should be trying to improve our game at this point... like France has
People like to bag on Brien, but I thought the biggest problem was Horan. By a mile. She repeatedly received the ball with either no one in front of her or with token pressure - by that I mean someone playing 10 yards off her. And, she back passed like 90 percent of the time. She attacked on the dribble like, 2-3 times? If we're playing a 433, w/ an inverted triangle, those to 8's have to advance the ball. They can not just reflexively back pass to Brien with no thought of attacking. In Brien's position, she was kind of on a defensive island. She had too much defensive responsibility to be constantly receiving back passes. I'd love to see a chart of Horan's touches.
I think USWNT is too slow most of the time. Brian backpassed most of the time and slowed down the game. Look at France. It was when they surprised USWNT defense with speed that scored their goals. US got one back because of speed in the play too. Soccer is not like basketball which you play with the other team fully back in position. In Soccer, you try to get ahead by attacking when the opponent's defense is not quite ready. US threw away most of their chances in Mid and Defense passing the ball back and forth among themselves and had so much difficulties in feeding the forwards. US seldom has penetrating passes to the forwards like France in the recent game. US just passed direct to the forwards like playing basketball. It is the responsibility of Jill Ellis to improve the team in these aspects. Without improvement and getting rid of the past bad habits and mistakes in retaining the ball as the main purpose of play, the team will have a very hard time in the 2019 Women's World Cup.
Guess that’s why I don’t coach anymore...I thought Horan looked like one of the most capable US players on the field, lol.
The U.S. clearly had trouble breaking midfield pressure and getting the ball into the France defensive half/third. I do think there wasn't enough dribble penetration by the mids and outside backs. That said, it was a bit of a makeshift lineup for the U.S., so cannot panic too much about the match, but clearly France is a squad that can and will challenge us come the World Cup if the two teams were to play.
Fox being completely outclassed was an even bigger problem than it appeared. The US mids couldn't dribble forward too much because they had to be ready to go back and help Fox. It was an interesting illustration of how one glaring weakness can hurt a team tactically far beyond the immediate area of the weakness.
No, I'd agree. IMO, Horan and Press were the only two that played reasonably well. The rest looked the part of either being out of season, disjointed, and/or inexperienced.
This performance looked so bad because most of the players are out of form due to the long break. Fox and Brian won’t be on the World Cup roster.
After rewatching much of the match I feel that Press is rapidly becoming the "Josh Wolfe" of the WNT. That is she manages to make some great moves and beat several players and then screw up the finish or the cross or the final pass. I know a number of people on here feel she was the best player in the match and that may be true but she really produced zero dangerous chances and that has become the standard for her. Having said that there really was no one that played better and THAT is why we lost. When the best player on the field stands out because of her failures there is really no result, except a loss, that can be expected. This match should be viewed as exactly what it is, an early preseason match with no real meaning for either team except to get a few players started toward being ready for the WWC. There have been a number of posts that say things like "If we play like this we will lose in the WWC" and that is true BUT we will will not play like this come June. Players will not trip over the grass or the ball or their own feet and some that played will not be even on the team and several that did not dress will be important to the team in June. I believe that there is no way to judge the team's situation from this match but there were a couple of players that pretty much played there way off the team and not one that played well enough to assure their spot. The match against Spain will be interesting and it may be "interesting" in the spirit of the curse, "May you live in interesting times."
No, only one. Oops, sorry, it was two. Fox was subbed at 53 min and the second goal was scored at 57 min. Of course the US began to actually show a bit of life as soon as the sub was made I think because the mids could trust the defense a bit more.
None of the US midfied three played well on the night in term of attacking contribution. Lack of movements around them and passing options besides the safe ones.
That's also where the absence of Ertz shows. The team functions in a completely different way when she doesn't play.
lloyd actually looked ready for a wc year. hope she doesn't get too far ahead of ellis' periodization training. other than that everything looks par for the course in an ellis wc year...hopefully ending the same as the course ended in 2015.
I'm hoping the USWNT wins the World Cup and Ellis retires and just goes away, along with April Heinrichs. Because if the US does win the WC, it won't be because of Ellis's coaching, it will be just like in 2015, in spite of her coaching.
the 2015 WC squad had almost no injuries during the course of the tourney and a mixture of top quality, players in their prime & vets but right now, it's just not the injuries alone, but look at the ages of the attacking players; Morgan, 29, McDonald 30, Press 30, Heath 31, Rapinoe 33, Lloyd 36 compare that with the 3 top French attackers from this game; Diani 23, Cascarino 22, Katato 20 close to the same thing with Germany who's leading scorer last year was a 20 year old as well as England found another 20 year old hotshot to take over their #10 position so why hasn't Ellis been able to bring up more youth other than Pugh who's been on the team for 3 years now?......considering that Ellis got either; arguably the world's strongest league, NWSL or the over 100 team WPSL or even 1000+ college squads to choose from
I believe this game was a final tryout for certain players, Brian and Fox amongst them. We were obviously rusty and looked like we had never played together before. Emotions were also high, as no one could control their first touch for the first 30 minutes. Dunn at right midfield was a failure, but again, I think that was "try it to see how it works" . Dunn will be our left back. France were much better than we were. Their technical abilities were outstanding. Cascarino and Diame are exciting! Bussaglia has come into her own. France is definitely among the favorites. Although it's obvious we were not ready for this level of competition - partly due to layoff and lack of US team play - we have much to be concerned about. There are starters in half of the positions that are not good enough. It is an on-going problem that our defense rarely gets consistent, testing, play. Fans freak out about losing against younger male teams, but those games are a valid training tool. The main weakness of our current defense is the fast break. Our back line is easily overrun. Press and Horan must play. They are able to control the ball and actually dribble forward. Our midfield needs more quality. So, it's not the end of the world. But, as someone mentioned at the start, a flashback to preparation for the World Cup. But this time is worse.
When I calculated the average age of our team, I noticed this. Apart from the attacking players the team is quite young, but the attackers bring up the average age. This is the thing I saw that is a concern for the long term.
The French will test every team's back line, because they are good and quick in transition--which for me is the only way to be if you want to score goals. And the U.S. was playing a college player at outside back. Fox is an excellent athlete with a lot of promise, and I'm not really sure why Ellis decided to start her against a good French team. That's a good way to blow up someone's confidence, it seems to me. Isn't it better to give your young players starts against less formidable teams, let them get comfortable at the international level, rather than throwing a youngsgter into the fire as Fox was? I think so, but Ellis seems to disagree. She threw Pugh straight into international play--but playing one-dimensional speedy winger is not nearly as challenging as outside back. Horan /does/ play--she's been a starter for quite some time. Press has started some but not a lot and I doubt will start in the WC. Press is ideal as a false 9, IMO. She can play the wing but is better in the middle of the field in something like attacking mid role. Dunn could do that too--and does for North Carolina--but didn't do too much attacking against France. I think we could see a lot of Lavelle in the WC as she is attacking minded and can get forward. Having Ertz in the lineup will help a lot, too.