A thread for this competition. Looks like we are going to play a good deal of the senior team tomorrow night - per Twitter.
Ugh. As much as I love USOC, I wish we didn't have to contend with WCQ and Gold Cup callups. Looking ahead at our schedule and the call up schedules for Gold Cup... 06/14; USOC Round 4 (Minnesota at home) 06/17; @ San Jose 06/24; @ Los Angeles 06/28; USOC Round 5 (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 07/01; Portland (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 07/06; Philadelphia (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 07/11; USOC Quarterfinals (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 07/22; @ Real Salt Lake (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 07/29; Chicago (No Gold Cup Call Ups) 08/06; Atlanta 08/09; USOC Semifinals It simply doesn't make sense to try to play that many games with our starters. I doesn't make sense to use our starters in the early rounds of USOC and then hope we can get by with the second team in later rounds. For me, with as much as we need rest, with as many of our guys who are in and out of the squad with injury or call ups, and with our potential schedule being laughably congested between now and 7/11, it just doesn't make sense to use our starters on USOC until the quarterfinals - if we made it that far. The way Vermes is approaching this... the next several months are going to be rough, and August and September have the potential to be catastrophic.
Vermes said no SPR call ups for tomorrow. How many players are going to play 270 minutes over the three games in these 8 days?
My thoughts for tomorrow, this would have only 2 potential starters on the weekend starting. Porter - Blessing - Salloi Medranda Mustivar - Ilie SAS - Didic - Ellis - Juliao Zendejas
That's not as bad as I was thinking. I guess we cross our fingers and hope Minnesota isn't as effective against Juliao without Ibarra. I have a tendency to think a napkin and a gust of wind could make Juliao look silly, but that's just me.
up 3-0 in the early rounds of the open cup ... you'd think we would take out some starters and give them some rest. instead, vermes puts IN feilhaber. ridiculous. it was stupid that our starters were even playing to begin with.
Agreed, I was stunned when we played that many starters and beyond words (ok, a few choice fx#! words did come to mind) when our first sub was Benny. I just cannot fathom Vermes' thinking.
oh yeah, almost forgot, we should suspend gerso for that ridiculous dive in the first half. i know it'd kill our attack down the right side, but that was absurd. he must've taken two steps past the defender and then went to ground. it's one thing to dive when it's your only option (not that i actually want to consider cheating an "option"), but it's even more egregious when the better opportunity would result from staying on your feet. i mean, he was clear on goal. honestly, suspend him one game for bad simulation and bringing the game, and our club, into disrepute, and then suspend him another for terrible decision-making for diving instead of staying on his feet and having a clear chance at goal. yes, i'm being a bit hyperbolic, but damnit... i don't want to be that club. it's bad enough with dom's antics and flopping around up top every game, but now we've had latif and gerso doing it. enough already.
and why was roger out there? he was holding his back the entire game, and on the whole, has been pretty much garbage for us the last month. he had a couple nice moves/touches this game and put in his usual effort, but he's been giving the ball away with bad passes a ton this season. i think it would've done him a lot of good to not play for honduras (which he didn't) and then sit for last saturday and this game.
Haha, that's a classic move. Get fouled outside the box, but try to make it into the box before you fall down. Almost always results in a no call. Not sure why players try that. I can see why he's getting frustrated though. He's been getting fouled a lot.
Grouped with Dallas, Colorado, and Houston for the draw again... yawn. Playing the same teams year after year really is killing any excitement I have for this competition.
Nice result and all, but Jesus, with the lineups, we'd better win that 4-0. I can understand Zusi and Besler starting - they've played a total of 1 minute in the last week and a half. But the rest of the guys? Nah. No need to start Dwyer. No need to start Opara. No need to start Melia. Or Ilie. Or Gerso. Or Medranda. Get those guys some rest. Use your USL call ups. Evaluate. Don't you even want to test your depth against a depleted Minnesota lineup? SMH. I mean... it's almost hard to be excited about the result when you consider the lineup and the fact that we just slipped another game into our congested schedule. The guys are going to be dead in a month. Trying to find a silver lining: that was the first game where Salloi started to show some signs of promise. He looked a lot more dangerous and good on him for a bagging a goal. His performance definitely deserved it last night.
Do we want to close this thread out and treat it as a game thread, creating a separate one for the game on the 28th, or combine all the USOC games in here?
He was pretty vocal about his dislike of cross-country travel in the early stages of USOC. Bruce is the kind of guy that has enough clout with US Soccer than I saw more than just correlation when they started making the tournament more regionally based.