2016 FIFA U-20's WWC - Group Match # 1 - USA vs France (pre/pbp/post)

Discussion in 'USA Women: News and Analysis' started by MiLLeNNiuM, Nov 13, 2016.

  1. kernel_thai

    kernel_thai Member+

    Oct 24, 2012
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    NZ over Ghana was a bit of a surprise
     
  2. WWC_Movement

    WWC_Movement Red Card

    Dec 10, 2014
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Papua New Guinea
    Ghana has never been that great at the U-20 age level.
    Much better at U-17 level.
     
    MiLLeNNiuM repped this.
  3. Namdynamo

    Namdynamo Member+

    Jan 1, 2005
    Age cheating makes a huge difference at the younger age level but less and less so as you move up to the older levels.

    If you follow the youth male national teams around the world extensively throughout the years you'll know what I'm talking about.

    And lastly, before bone scanning was instituted for youth male world cups, the Ghanian boy's national teams as well as other African youth teams were notorious for age cheating and dominating the competitions. After bone scanning, many were caught cheating and they no longer dominate the youth competitions.
     
  4. Airox

    Airox Member

    Mar 14, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Replay clearly showed a fistful of Watt's jersey pulled on that play at the end. A clear pk if the ref had been in position to see it. I'm happy with the draw though.
     
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  5. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I still didn't finish watching the match, but I'll keep an eye out for it. What minute (roughly) was that?
     
  6. Airox

    Airox Member

    Mar 14, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Stoppage time at the very end. 90+3ish.

    I wasn't impressed by the ref, but I am thankful that the ref ignored the theatrical flop on the other end. In the end, I think it was a fairly even match and the final score reflected that. I know, that's not how soccer really goes, but still!
     
  7. kernel_thai

    kernel_thai Member+

    Oct 24, 2012
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    There was a ref?
     
  8. jnielsen

    jnielsen Member+

    May 12, 2012
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    When I sign up for this, no promo code entry is ever offered. Do I have to sign up and pay for the whole thing first before the site gives me a chance to enter a promo code? Leery to go thru the whole process and then have to cancel/seek a refund if indeed, the site never allows for entry of a promo code.
     
  9. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    No, you should never have to enter payment information.

    Just follow these steps:
    1) Go to the website: https://secure.foxsoccer2go.com/buy
    2) In STEP 1 "Choose your subscription type" choose the option (on the right), which is titled, "Promotion Code"
    3) In STEP 2 "Your details" enter your personal information for creation of an account
    4) In STEP 3 "Activate Subscription Code" enter the promo code "U20WWC"

    That's it. No need to enter a credit card or your paypal info.
     
    jnielsen repped this.
  10. PacmanJr_00

    PacmanJr_00 Member

    Aug 29, 2010
    Club:
    Southampton FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #35 PacmanJr_00, Nov 14, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2016
    Great effort, work rate, defensive pressure in the defending half.

    Very, very basic offensive attack and principles with a decided lack of offensive tactics, reading the defense, and true undertsanding of how to play the possession game to include basic support angles and movement.

    Case in point, 13th minute, Pugh gets the ball surrounded by defenders. Talent as she is, she has the ability to make some moves but not quite escape the pressure. What are her teammates doing? Eating popcorn and watching her work. No diagonal run from the forward to allow Pugh to play down the line. No support run from the outside back who passed her the ball. Nothing from the interior midfield.

    The central forwards entire approach to attacking was to simply stay on the line between the two CBs. The entire day...thats the best we can coach our forwards? Lots of defensive effort and high work rate from her though.

    In other words, they look just like every other ECNL team in the country.
     
    jnielsen, Namdynamo and MiLLeNNiuM repped this.
  11. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I didn't think that shirt tug was enough to warrant a PK . I certainly would have been unhappy if it had been called against us.
     
  12. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    After finally watching the match in its entirety, here are my overall observations:

    1) I really disliked the 4-4-2 in this match. Our midfield was constantly overrun. Against teams like France, Japan, and Spain, I would love to see the USA play a 4-5-1. Also, France played very compactly with numbers constantly around the ball. I think countries are beginning to recognize that the best way to beat the USA youth teams is to play compact. Our midfielders (like Ogle, whose name I barely heard) had few opportunities to create anything. When a USA midfielder got the ball they had 3-4 French players on top of them with few outlets; it was disheartening to see. I love to see strong midfield play, that's where all the strategy of the game is at.

    2) Passing was not clean, at times, especially in the offensive third. That's been a common problem with this team all year long. Also, I would have taken out Scarpa and Peterson at least 10 minutes sooner. I think they were a liability in the 2nd half.

    3) The one positive was USA's defense play, which was disciplined and organized the whole match.

    4) The two French wingers, Karchaoui and D. Cascarinoe were fantastic. They really made our defenders look bad at times.

    5) I thought the ref was not quick enough to the whistle, and let them play, but at least she was consistent throughout the match.
     
  13. WWC_Movement

    WWC_Movement Red Card

    Dec 10, 2014
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Papua New Guinea
    If this team does not score a single goal against New Zealand, I think we're all done with Michelle French.
    Well, we're already done, but even more done with her.
     
  14. jnielsen

    jnielsen Member+

    May 12, 2012
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Except the promo code is U20WNT. Thanks, it worked like a charm.
     
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  15. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Correct, my bad.
     
  16. shlj

    shlj Member+

    Apr 16, 2007
    London
    Club:
    FC Nantes
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    Working on transitions from defense to attack is really the coaching staff responsibility and it is worked upon at every football level I know from the U17 level. The tactical stuff is down to the coach.

    Either the players panicked under pressure or they were technically not strong enough to find the right answer / the off the ball movement around the ball holder was not good enough.

    But those players are a product of the youth football organisation. All organisation have different flaws, the French one does not produce goalscorers in general for example. The last great one being Pichon years and years ago.
     
  17. olelaliga

    olelaliga Member

    Aug 31, 2009
    In my opinion it was not an even match. If the French had any semblance of a finisher the game would have likely been a rout- 60-40 possession and more telling 17-3 shots. yes SOG were only 4 but the GK made some nice grabs on dangerous crosses. the potential for a lopsided result was definitely there. A statistic that might be of interest is the % time of possession in opponents defensive half. I admit though I got pretty sleepy in the second half and might have missed something. I intend to replay it soon.

    Seemed to me that the US played a simple strategy- bunker counter. You can call it an "organized defense", but it is what it was- a bunker. That was its strategy and why the formation was 442. The midfielders played defense the entire game with the ball popping out occasionally to the 2 "superstar" strikers in whom all hopes of any offense was placed. That is a very sad strategy. It seems to me that the plan was - don't get embarrassed.

    Of note: Canada decides that Jessie Flemming is better off playing for UCLA and possibly getting called to play with the Canadian WNT. She is exactly the kind of player the USA needs to develop- with exquisite touch, a nose for goal, perfectly weighted insightful passing and an unexpected "flair' in her game. For the last 4 months at least, the USA has Pugh training with younger college aged and high school kids to hopefully prevent a national embarrassment. Was that the best choice for her development? I like Pugh as a straight ahead athletic winger. She knows how to take a ball end line and angle back a cross. But she lacks creativity. I see a bit more of a spark of the unexpected in Sanchez, but she is of the same mold.

    The US put out no midfielder who could manage the compromised time and space of the international game, but instead those who could provide additional defensive strength. Consequently, they intentionally chose to eliminate midfield play from their attacking strategy. I believe there are creative midfielders out there who could manage the limited time and space. I am not sure that Katie Cousins could not have done so. Put Sanchez in as the 10 and see if she can combine better with Pugh. I haven't seen Luca Deza in the YNT program for some time. I see younger kids who might develop into Flemming-like players with her ability and some have been called to camps. I just hope the USA coaches are sophisticated enough to understand how to develop and use them to raise the level of our game above what we saw yesterday.

    My take: Overall poor showing from a supposed national powerhouse.
     
  18. WWC_Movement

    WWC_Movement Red Card

    Dec 10, 2014
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Papua New Guinea
    And this U-20 team (coached by Michelle French) hasn't scored a goal since we last landed someone on the moon.
     
  19. WWC_Movement

    WWC_Movement Red Card

    Dec 10, 2014
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Papua New Guinea
    Can she play soccer?
    Sign her up for the U-20 team in 2018.

     
  20. Airox

    Airox Member

    Mar 14, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    olelaliga, I feel watching the game that areas that you criticized were areas that they were intentionally practicing in a high level match. For example, bunkering. You can practice how to bunker all you want, but you'll never really know your performance until you play a strong meaningful international match. France was the perfect opponent to see how well this team can bunker. This World Cup is about development as much as it is about winning. The US got much needed high level defensive practice AND got a point against the perceived top competitor in the group. Notice what coaching staff and US players were saying all throughout the game "organize". Clearly they had one main area of focus - defensive shape. While we can all cry out for more attacking prowess, the coaching staff clearly decided to work on something else. They definitely picked it up and were willing to go higher up the field more in the 2nd half, but even then they fell back into the bunker fairly quickly.

    If I'm coaching bunkering then I want the other team to have all the possession. I want to force them to try to break it down. I want them to have a high number of (low percentage) shots.

    I believe French got what she wanted out of the game. Now we can discuss if that should've been the priority or not....
     
  21. olelaliga

    olelaliga Member

    Aug 31, 2009
    Ok this is good spirited fun.
    So I think we agree that the tactic from the initial whistle was a bunker counter. Do you think they chose the first game of the WC for which they have been training and preparing for at least 2 years to simply"practice" this tactic? I do not. I don't disagree that the coaching decision to bunker, with these players, was correct. However I think they made this decision because they well understood that they were the weaker team and if they attempted the "free flowing attacking soccer" That Heinrichs says our YNT will be employing, they would get their clocks cleaned by the french.

    I think it's sadly discouraging, that we felt it necessary to employ this tactic because we weren't good enough to compete using the style we are supposedly developing in these kids.
     
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  22. Gilmoy

    Gilmoy Member+

    Jun 14, 2005
    Pullman, Washington
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I think it was wise. France's W20s really are that much better than ours. No amount of fly-in camps will beat what France's kids learn in their daily environments every week. They're dedicating (sacrificing?) career-hours to do this instead of other future endeavors, and they should reap the benefits of that allocation in precious resources.

    The same dynamic works for us in women's gymnastics, and in some other sports like wbb and water polo. We should appreciate it when another nation really does out-infrastructure us. (Quality of instruction, not quantity of participants.)

    Don't get sad, get better. GDA/ECNL might be our attempts at getting better; this process could take several cycles to catch up to established academy/pro tier systems in Europe/Asia (and S.America in other sports like wvb). We'll always(?) have the societal model of encouraging our kids to remain on a non-pro path, whereas this tends to be a non-issue elsewhere in the world. It may be tough for a strictly NCAA-ish amateur to ever out-hour a non-US stud in a high-intensity learning environment. (It cuts both ways; they can't out-hour our capstone design courses.)

    I don't really expect any NT coach (at any age group) to teach any significantly new motor or cognitive skills. Players arrive fully-formed with all the skills they'll have, and the most you can do is give them a system that fits what they can already do. That being said, I do think we could have attacked with numbers and a bit more passing when we had the rare opportunities.
     
  23. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There is one important factor we need to keep in mind here. The fact that many eligible and exceptional U-20 players did not join the team because they didn't want to redshirt (i.e., lose) a year of college (e.g. Taylor Racioppi), or their university (e.g. Stanford) didn't allow them to take a redshirt year. Had things been different, perhaps the offensive prowess of this USA squad might be totally different, even in a 4-4-2.
     
  24. Namdynamo

    Namdynamo Member+

    Jan 1, 2005
    It's not going to make a much of a difference with the clueless Michelle French at the helm. You want proof, check out how talented the roster of the 2014 U-20 WWC:

    UNITED STATES UNDER-20 WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM ROSTER
    (FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Canada 2014: August 5-24, 2014)

    GOALKEEPERS: Jane Campbell (Stanford University), Rose Chandler (Concorde Fire), Katelyn Rowland (UCLA)

    DEFENDERS: Stephanie Amack (Stanford University), Brittany Basinger (Penn State University), Christina Gibbons (Duke University), Katie Naughton (University of Notre Dame), Kaleigh Riehl (Braddock Road Youth Club), Cari Roccaro (University of Notre Dame)

    MIDFIELDERS: Carlyn Baldwin (Braddock Road Youth Club), Nickolette Driesse (Florida State University), Rose Lavelle (University of Wisconsin), Mallory Pugh (Real Colorado), Taylor Racioppi (Player Development Academy), Andi Sullivan (Bethesda SC)

    FORWARDS: Makenzy Doniak (University of Virginia), Summer Green (University of North Carolina), Lindsey Horan (Paris Saint-Germain/France), Savannah Jordan (University of Florida), McKenzie Meehan (Boston College), Margaret Purce (Harvard University)
     
  25. MiLLeNNiuM

    MiLLeNNiuM Member+

    Aug 28, 2016
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #50 MiLLeNNiuM, Nov 16, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2016
    Yeah, pretty stacked team. What a let down that year. I remember thinking that Rose Lavelle looked like the best player on the pitch for us that year.

    I don't think the result against France was bad, considering that USA teams always seem to start out slow in tournaments. Remember what happened in the 2012 tournament? We barely got out of the group with 4 points, beating out China (who also had 4 points) on goal differential. Also, Germany shellacked us in the final group game 3-0. That was a horrible feeling; no one thought we'd go very far. However, we went on to defeat Germany 1-0 in the final.

    I would much rather see the USA with a strong defensive unit, winning matches 1-0 or ending in a tie here and there, rather than seeing them score a lot of goals AND give up a lot of goals in group play.

    Having said that, if Frenchy fails again, I'll be campaigning for Vlatko Andonovski to take over the U-20 (or even the U-17's). Would love to see him get a youth gig and work up from there.
     

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