My buddies and I were posted up at our local sports bar, because of our cheers for our team and how loud we became as the game progressed, grown men at the bar got butt hurt with all our noise, one even closing out his tab and leaving. Which of course I just continued to sing and clap even louder. IT'S THE U.S.A. BABY!!! Again, the talking points have been covered. I will add this, we need to play more skinny. Too often our players are in that standard American 4-4-2 and our best player is marked by 3 defenders out wide, our other players are not around to show, to triangle pass out of close quarters. Bruce must make sure CP resides more central over wing duty. We need to make sure the spine of our team is on lock and not a revolving chamber of back passers and or kick n run dudes. We need more soccer brains out there and that is definitely something our past American players had in spades is more players that saw the field better. Players that perhaps are not God's gift to the sport technically, that 90's era types, but they were still very good at the sport and knew how to keep the ball on the deck and link up. These current players often just look like a team of good players that have little clue how to share the field with each other, run for each other. We need Dempsey and CP link up type creativity. Like how we just took Honduras to the shed earlier this year. On that day, our play was thinking ahead and it showed! Bruce, get more soccer savvy players out there, WCQ is not the time to experiment normally and we need results come October but we have got to find the players that can gel, play faster and still display that most American of all traits, grit.
Jozy playing well once doesn't constitute that he plays better with any one partner. I can't think of him playing with anyone in more 2 games that I can say "Wow, playing these 2 can create problems for any opponent".
Bradley hasn't been exactly tearing it up in Serie A, La Liga, EPL, or Bundi. He's at the moment, an average midfielder in the MLS. Is he even the top midfielder in MLS? Why do we continue to structure the team around him? He certainly deserve his accolades, he served the US very well for many years, but's simply time to move on. We desperately need a fresh young coach with an attitude and some guts. One that is not afraid to make the difficult decisions, and is willing to hit the reset button and start building the team around Pulisic. Put the right supporting cast around him, to maximize his talents. Let's be honest, Pulisic is not just potential, he is talents and he's here and we have him. Make good use of it.
All this debate about Jozy (and I on the whole think he is very good), has not touched on the real glaring problem with him, he necessitates a partner. He is absolutely useless as a lone striker and that completely limits our options and forces weird compromises in other areas of the team, like central midfield. We have been getting absolutely killed in central midfield because every team we play outnumbers us there and Bradley +1 is never going to be able to handle the load no matter how many partners we try. We clearly need to at least try a 3 man central midfield and playing with one striker, but that quite frankly mean sitting Jozy. 4-4-2 is an outdated and naive formation that is not suited to our personnel on the whole imo but we are handcuffed into it if you feel Jozy is a must start.
I think Jozy can play alone, if the US mimics what Toronto does with Pulisic as Giovinco. If those two can build chemistry, it would be massive. If you want to say that's two strikers, that's fine but the results are what we both want - an attack to reckon with and solid support behind them.
Finally some foreign media does the US media's job for them. Of course we then have a poster making the (half) wrong conclusion based on the right criticism. Repped anyway. If the discussion on these boards starts with the succinct criticism, we'd be here a long time. Forwards should get behind the defense - Honduras' forwards did that - and mids should pass thru the midfield - Honduras mids did that without any pressure from our mids. All you have to do to beat USA is to play in midfield against Nagbe, Acosta and Bradley. Game over. Pinto handed us the game the minute he stopped doing that. We are told all this stuff is a work in progress with our young midfield. OK. Next lesson Panama?
Quite interesting. It shows how badly was the fullbacks positioning before the subs: both DMB & Zusi kept staying forward too long, ruining any offside trap, allowing the Hondurans to break through. It also shows a funny battle between Bradley and Pulisic: with CP moving forward and centrally, both ended up stepping on each other toes, and since Dempsey dropped back and to the left, he was often screened out of the action. The team should have pressed higher, but that's a risk when playing a team with fast guys like Honduras, and when you have defenders like Gonzo who can't deal with a dribbler. In that first half we often looked like this: ---------------------------Guzan----------------------------- -----------------Gonzo----------Besler--------------------- ---------empty for Hondurans to run into--------------- ---------Zusi-------------------------------------------DMB ----------empty for Hondurans to run into------------- -----------------------------Nagbe---------Acosta--------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------Pulisic/Bradley--------------Dempsey ---------------------------------Morris----------------------- With acres of space on our right for them to run their attacks. That mess was somewhat corrected in the second half, though.
He has a poor competitive match record against decent sides. We do however have T&T away. He can do something there.
But that mimic includes a 3 cb formation. My lineup for Panama -----------------morris---pulisic -vfana--zardes--Bradley--Delgado--Yedlin ------------Besler--gonzo--Cameron ------------------gk:guzan I could see Altidore over Morris. Hard to say. In the above formation you could drop villafana (who I'm not so sure about anyway), add Jozy and play a 433. How exactly you would deploy Demppsey Wood,Jozy Morris doesn't seem so clear. Having zardes in there gives the flexibility to use Zardes as an ad hoc winger - there's plenty of midfield support if he moves there.
It's OK to acknowledge the point that he scored a very meaningful goal against Panama in this very fixture last Hex.
That would highlight, as someone else mentioned, 3 in the back, which would be the only other way to accommodate a partner for Jozy. I don't like this option because although it seems sensible in theory, in practical application for the USMNT it means 5 in the back and full on bunker + long ball mode. For my part I think 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 makes more sense, but I am fine with anything other than the status quo 4-4-2 empty bucket thing.
I like it. I think US Soccer developed an inferiority complex from the 4-0 pasting we took from Argentina that it is now trying too hard to overcome with "compensation" driven more by fantasy than anything else. Argentina was sitting 5th in comnembol quali's recently. Just putting dribblers and track stars on the pitch isn't the answer. Heck, Chile beat Argentina in Copa 100 with Vargas at cf. Costa Rica pasted USA with Urena at cf in Red Bull Arena. We looked like a fossil against Honduras. Here's a secret only I know : Klinsmann put Dempsey and Wondo up top as strikers in a diamond against Argentina with Bradley as the metronome and an aging Beckerman as the dmid. Jones had conveniently opted out with a red card in the previous game. And, oh yeah, I just have to suspect that Klinsmann secretly always wanted the USA to look like they didn't know how to play and were in need of German tutelage. What other explanation is there?
Remember, goals against "minnows" don't count even if nobody else is scoring them! Also, he only scored because he was keeping (fill in better option) off the field. Also, assists don't count because forwards don't help if they don't score.
I see a lot of defense, and not much of any attack in that lineup. Are we camping for a 0-0 draw? This is what I want to see against Panama. -------------------------Wood--------------------- --------Feilhaber-------------Pulisic--------- Fabian-----------Bradley------------Yedlin------ ----Besler-----Miazga----Cameron ----------------Guzan------------ * Wood must start. He's the only one on the roster that can run behind the defense and get a shot off * Felhaber in the midfield to link up with Pulisic and feed Wood, or Fabian and Yedlin as they make runs from the WB positions. You can also start Nguyen here, instead. * Bradley sit on top of the D to help with coverage in the middle. His only job here is to break up plays, steal the balls, and move the ball quickly to either Feilhaber or Pulisic. * At this time, i would rather see Miazga here instead of Gonzo. Miazga showed well during the GC, and we already see what Gonzo is (and his limitations).
By the same token, Bobby Wood is much better as a lone striker as opposed to a forward in a 2 or 3-man line. He's not particularly good at combining with teammates. I don't disagree about us losing the midfield battle, but the 4-4-2 diamond formation ripped Honduras apart last time at home. Panama, at home, is a similarly-weak opponent, so that's why he could be useful. Aside from that, if we go 3-5-2, there's another striker to use with Jozy, so it's not as if we're forced into a flat 4-4-2 formation with him. I agree that you need to plan around him. He doesn't just slot in. Pfft. Only guy I like there is TJ McConnell, for obvious reasons. I was hoping you'd ship him so I don't have to care at all.
Clever. You said "Jozy's ability to score against Guadalupe, Trinidad, Costa Rica B, et al is great. Right now, we need forwards who can score against Panama." The other poster pointed out that Jozy not only can score against Panama, he did score against Panama in this same game four years ago. Your response: "He has a poor competitive match record against decent sides. We do however have T&T away. He can do something there." So yeah, you didn't "state" anything about his scoring against Panama. You just ignored it as inconvenient.
I'm not sure why preferring Wood over Jozy gets such heated reactions. Not sure why it's controversial to suggest Wood, this cycle, scores bigger goals than Jozy. I also prefer that Wood can get in behind the defense and more importantly, creates more gaps with his movement. And in style of play he's generally hungrier to get off shots around the 18. None of that has anything to do with what Jozy historically has done for us. He's one of the top strikers we've produced. But this game's not about career achievement awards, it's currently about win vs Panama or we might not go to Russia.