Damn I thought we were going to replicate the magic of 2013, when we needed penalty kicks to get past Richmond in the first round and bored the world to death in the finals to win the prestigious us open cup.
I saw over in the Yanks Abroad Forum that Philthy is going in for Andrew Wooten. That's the sort of player that Kasper should be going after - non DP, scored a bunch of goals in the B2. We're slipping farther behind in relation to quality depth against our opponents.
Thinking a bit more about Wednesday's loss and Olsen's comments and the discussion here about them. I think the probable import of those comments is that Olsen views the USOC games as preseason like in that he is willing to tinker with formations and players to evaluate them. The result is secondary -- at least at the early stages. (Remember, when DCU made its run in 2013, the USOC was the only avenue tor Olsen to salvage a historically awful season, so he was coaching for his job at that point.) The basis for my thoughts go to the central midfield pairings in each game. Olsen clearly wanted to see Bustamante perform against MLS competition. For whatever reason, he decided that experience would be in the middle of the park. Against Philly -- a good, but not very explosive team, he paired Bustamante with Jara -- someone with high level experience. That worked -- barely. Then against NYCFC, a team that is much more explosive with Mitrica, Heber and Moralez, he pairs Bustamante with a 19 year old part timer who just had a bad run of form in the U-20 WC. The results were catastrophic as NYCFC ran around park like it was a scrimmage. If Olsen had been serious about winning, he would have paired Durkin with Jara or Segura. Instead, he told Durkin to boss the midfield against guys with great skill and far more experience than he. If you are trying to win the match, that's a strange way to get there.