I hope to see either a draw or loss. I truly do miss seeing the April bashers on here. Enjoy the match. And FWIW...Tsunami mentioned that in a San Diego Union Tribune snippet...the expected attendance for this match is hovering around the 4500 mark. EXCELLENT!!!
0-0 Final. Japan had more real chances to score than the US and BOTH US keepers looked like they were playing at the high school level as far as the decisions they were making.. Poor decisions and VERY poor clearances marked the entire US defensive performance. On the offensive end the US had a total lack of any finishing ability and the height advantage was never a factor with Japan winning the majority of the headers. Even taking into account the players that did not play and Japan's good play with great heart and the lay off the US looked pathetic. I hope it was just a fluke and there will be improvement more than other teams or we will not even make the metal rounds. Someone needs to tell Siri that foot skills do NOT mean kicking the ball WAY down field every time to the other team. Accuracy is more important than power and she is NOT showing that. April is not at fault for this one as the players stunk the place up and the coach can't be blamed for that. It is NOT a NT coach's job to teach skills. It is the player's responsibility to improve and work on their own and it looks, with a few exceptions, like the US players expected Japan to roll over for them so they were not ready.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/us/news/2003/01/12/usa_japan/ I don't think this is an auspiciuos beginning to the year. Methinks new, hustling yong blood is needed for US.
The biggest problem of this game is passing and composure of the defense including the GK. The team needs to learn how to pass the ball to each other.
This is the worst performance I've seen for this team. I'm not sure even the "old ladies" could've saved them this time. The midfield was a mess. And there was NOBODY in the box in the second half.
Can someone please tell me what is expected of a team that's been off for a couple months and only trained about 2 days together?
I personally expect them to exhibit their skills - if not complete team cohesiveness. It's not as if they're learning how to play the game here. Frankly, the rest of the world has gotten a lot better. We probably should have our women practicing together more. We can't just put in a couple of days anymore.
I expect aggressive individual play, particularly in the attack. Not holding back and playing nice in the box. I expect a team with the EXTREAM height advantage we had to win a good percentage of the headers. I expect a team with our overall size advantage to not be pushed off the ball so often. And finally: I expect a team that has dominated most of the world for so long to at least beat a team, like Japan, that is much improved but still not playing at the level of the top 15 in the world. Why do I expect this? Because it is a mark of top teams to play well even after layoffs and with short preparation. The US is NOT, at this time, playing like a top 10 team. But, maybe, this will change.
They need to get serious pretty soon. Norway, China, and Germany are all much harder than Japan no matter how much Japan has improved lately. Maybe some more time together will help out the ladies, but they need to snap back into the soccer world. The Four Nations Tournament is a good time to judge how we are before the World Cup but it needs to be a positive experience for the US if they have hopes of defending their World Cup Title. I haven't lost faith in them, but come on, it was Japan.
Come on, people! They only had three days' practice. They're right where they should be at this time of year. They're only working out the rust right now.
Lets not also forget they are in the beginning stages of infiltrating a lot of new, younger players onto a team that has a lot of aging veterans that will retire around the same time. I think we are jumping to conclusions... don't expect this team to be the '99 team because they're not. Add this to the fact that they just returned from the holidays, and all in all, I think they will be fine when it counts.
Lets not take this meaningless game so seriously. The point of this game was to see everyone play. Other than Canada this is the first decent team we've played since Norway in July. Lets not get ahead of ourselves with the "well if this is how thet're gonna play then we're screwed" hysteria. I think this game served it's purpose very nicely. (we'll except for the 0-0 result). It was a good game to gauge the keeper situation. Did i call this or what? those of you who lurk the KK will recall me saying that Bri wasn't on the roster so AH could see Siri and Beene play in a "real" game. I think Beene succesfully played herself into the #3 spot. She did not show her best out there. Siri was decent not her best, but you can see the difference between her and Beene. And I disagree with the comment made about her punts and goal kicks. She put a couple really nicley on CP and aly's heads. It's not her fault they weren't winning them. flooding the second half with subs is obviously gonna kill any sort of rythm. but i kinda think that was the point. "lets throw the kids in and see if the can swim". Yeah the team as a whole needed to be sharper. And I agree, WTF was our finishing? But I honestly don't see them putting up this type of performance at the FNT. I don't agree with about 20% of what April does. she does sometimes leave me going "huh?" But there is a method to her mayhem. I'll stop my BSing now and wait to see what beulah says. :-D
I also don't think we'll be seeing the same names on the FNT roster. When I first saw Bryan's name on the roster and not Benson or Pearce, I thought...... WHAT? But now that i think about it I think maybe April wanted to see her one more time against a quality team. I'd be surprised to see her name for the China tourny. I'll be surprised to see Tarply's name too. I don't think she's ready for it. I think we'll see a few other changes too. Or maybe i'm just full of crap. Was Rob Stone wrong when he said they will be taking 20 players to China for this tourny? I know he said for the WC but i think he also said for FNT too?
*shrugs* I didn't here that. I heard Wendy say that they wanted to get Siri and Beene each a half of play.
BOY WAS I WRONG!!! I just fast forwarded to this part and Gebaurer-Palladino said that Bri and what's her name weren't suited up and blah blah blah unless due to an injury situation or something like that. I think I am the first April Heinrichs basher to admit that I was wrong. Maybe some chodes should do the same.
To reiterate what has already been said by some... The team got together on Thursday after a long lay off. As far as we know the Japanese were in San Diego on Wednesday to play a match against some San Diego All-Stars or whatever they were called. Hell they have probably been playing together since the start of the week. In the meanwhile the NT'ers were probably still trying to recover from stuffing their faces during the holidays and thus were a lil' sluggish. It's the start of January for Pete's sake. If the USWNT was to perform this way come August..then I would start crowing about the players and Coach Heinrichs. But as of right now they are a tad rusty and uncohesive. Three days of practice after their last matches were in the Gold Cup several months ago does not lend itself to very crisp play. You just can't pick up where you left off and expect to be hitting on all cylinders. Today's match means nothing in the whole scheme of things.
You are missing the point. The diamond midfield clearly could not match up to the five midfielders that Japan was playing at. In the first half we played the outsides on the touch line and any ball in the middle was quickly taken by Japan and turned the other way. I was also disappointed with Wendy's commentary in the first half, she kept giving the US to much credit for "good play" when in actuallity they were getting beaten to the ball time and time again, when they weren't making bad passes and throwing the ball away. I don't give much credence to the fact that foudy, lilly and Hamm were gone, most of the players have been playing for a long time, and they just looked bad. Wagner had an especially bad game, 7 or 8 balls played directly to the Japanese in the first half alone.
i agree but, the missing of Lily, Foudy and Hamm very obvious especialy Lily who always run and beat one on one from the left side and send dangerous crosses throughout the game and the midfield organizer from Foudy also and the improvement of Japan side was also the factor in that game.