I suffered through a second viewing of the US vs. Argentina to understand one point - Why could the US not hold possession? The findings: 1. Argentina pressed fast and high on every turnover, particularly in deep midfield. 2. Bradley and Beckerman were consistently unavailable as outlets to defenders. 3. When they were available, they made little attempt to hold the ball, instead passing back. 4. Defenders had no other options other than the long ball. 5. Defenders, particularly Yedlin and Cameron, were not great in distribution. 6. Wondolowski is a terrible target on the long ball, with no sense of how to run or position himself to receive. Breaking this down a bit, it was fascinating watching Argentina's change in style. They have employed a Bielsa-style press, and it has transformed the dynamics of their team. The wrinkle in Argentina's high press is that Higuaín does not provide as much of the on-the-ball pressure you see from other forwards. Instead, he pushes the ball in one direction, and then the attackers behind him swarm to press. Messi was a recovery machine. Lavezzi had a lot of recoveries on the left side. Most of the time, Argentina's press led to long balls from the US defense. If a heat map could show events for "passing channel denied" the US midfield would be lit up. Argentina denied US defenders passing outlets, and none of the US midfielders made that particularly difficult. And this gets to the heart of where the US's biggest weakness is, IMO. Midfield movement off the ball looked amateurish against Argentina. There was no spacial awareness. There were no short bursts into seems where they could receive passes. There were no triangles. There were a lot of stagnant squares. In American football terms, Zardes and Zusi ran a lot of deep routes hoping to connect 1v1 on a long ball, but underneath there were too few crossing routes to give defenders options. So long ball it was, especially from Yedlin and Cameron. People tend to criticize US players' on-the-ball skills. They are not elite, and Argentina dominated 50/50 challenges. But I do not think this is the biggest issue with American players. Movement off the ball is. That flaw made Argentina's press effective, and Argentina was able to capitalize where other teams in this tournament could not.
I say a combo of both. One part of being a technical player is being more mentally superior than your opponent. Our team was not mentally superior. Argentina clearly had a better soccer IQ
Thank you for having the bravery to review that snuff film we called a semifinal for the sake of science. A small addendum. I think Nagbe really could have helped provide that outlet in the defensive midfield where messi does the bulk of his damage dragging defenders out of position while improving his own and creating spaces for his amigos to enter and join the party. Part of the fear of showing for the ball is the constant awareness of where Messi was and part of it was the knowledge that our mids had that they would just turn it over if they did receive the pass. This is all a connected organic mass of problems that goes to a lack of movement off the ball, a lack of comfort on the ball and no true target forward to keep the fullbacks honest. Even Rojo was getting in on the action because we had no true threat to stretch the field. To go back to your American Football analogy the defense saw no deep ball threat so they were able to stuff the box and prevent us from playing out of trouble. They settled in and scored a couple goals then played keep away passing amongst their backline while we got tired. chasing the ball. It was really smart strategy. They wanted to save their legs once we started hacking them so they let us have the ball more and we were able to threaten some later on with pulisic and Nagbe keeping possession better than Wondo and Beckerman could but by then the match was out of hand. IMportant not to concede that first goal.
Most of us already knew the emperor had no clothes. Our Achilles heel is our coach. Unfortunately I doubt if he is all that exposed as far as Sunil goes. The outcome was never in doubt, but our flaccid attempt at a response was a foregone conclusion given the line-up. The Bedoya and Wood suspensions were a coaching error. Wood should have been pulled before he got the yellow and even Donovan was pointing out how gassed Bedoya was for a full ten minutes before the card. Even at that, he had some line-up choices that would have been bold and courageous that did not have to include Wondo or Beckerman. The rest of the senior players surely knew what would happen when they saw the starting line-up. They play football for a living and they knew that neither Kyle Beckerman nor Chris Wondolowski were up for the job before the first ball was kicked. Our Achilles heel is the football savant that thought that starting line-up was a good choice even given the choices available.
If the players know that the coach is incompetent, why aren't they at least trying to tell Gulati in private?
I think we have improved in this aspect with our forward players like Wood, Zardes, Morris, Pulisic but we don't have many midfielders who are good without the ball. Nagbe is good at floating into the space he's given but outside of him I can't think of any on the roster right now. We do have some coming up through the ranks like Hyndman but we're gonna need more of these type of midfielders to pop up somewhere.
We also had no/not good enough holding/possession midfielder(s) in the middle of the park. Demps is not going to be that guy in this game. Bradley was never going to get the time as long as he and Rasta were supposed to both watch the space in front of the backs. And Rasta scares no one with the ball at his feet. Jones is about the only "regular" that might have helped muscle the ball out into open field possession now and again and we know the name of that tune already. It's why I was hoping Besler would go in LB and push FJ up - even not at his best, he is a better dribbler than Bradley or Rasta, and would have been able to at least penetrate himself once in a while when the channels were close. OMD would have been more helpful earlier too. While Zardes actually had a pretty decent game and worked a few cute moments with Yedlin, Zardes only move (which worked at least 3 times) was acceleration around the outside back. But he was not going to show for the ball and turn under pressure. I was thinking a 4 of DY- Cam-JAP-Bes with Bradley/Rasta in the DM holes (I would not have played Rasta, but it was clear Jurgie was going to) with FJ - CD - OMG in front of them and Wondo?? (I would have played Zardes there, I think, or maybe even Clint there with OMG in the hole and Zardes wide right.) Zusi had a good game, but we just needed more ball control out there - or we had to play a much more aggressive counter. The first goal was a bad break/great play, but it felt like we came out playing neither fish nor fowl. If we were going to route 1/long ball it, we need to commit to it stronger. We tried to string a lot of 5-8 yard passes together - and got nowhere as a result.
Nice summary. Two words : Barcelona and triangles. The US player still has much to learn why small triangle drills matter and always under pressure.
Good stuff as usual from Susaeta. One thing that stood out to me, that I have not seen mentioned anywhere is that we tried to press Argentina and failed miserably, leaving acres of space in behind us. It was as if we tried to play the exact same way we did in previous games, regardless of either the superior opponent, or our own personnel limitations.
I was pointing that while your analysis was spot on, the problem with that line-up is not a program wide Achilles heel, rather a really poor choice of players on the field. That midfield is always going to get run off the pitch by any competent international team. One speedy guy was never going to be enough to keep them honest. Zardes should have been up top. Beser at LB, Johnson on the wing, Nagbe for KB. I think Geoff should be alongside or playing Mikey's spot, he is not the long term solution for us at Center back. I have watched a bunch of Geoff's football games and his mistakes at Center back are the same and happen at a troubling high rate of frequency.
Off-the-ball movement is one reason I'm excited about Hyndman. He keeps his head on a swivel, moves quickly into open space, and make himself available to receive a pass. He is not without his weaknesses, but his strength is somewhat rare in our pool.
Every good youth club team in SoCal does this, and some do it very well. It's making and using quick, collective, off the ball movement that is not taught or learned. Susaeta has that dead right. We're not limited to the completely predictable station to station passing we used to be, but quick, sustained, collective movement to open up, and pass and receive in, space is a critical skill we still seldom display. It's necessary to a counter-attacking style, too.
Klinnsman did try before to get us playing the possession game with possession players. Remember his early use of Mexican League players. JFT was a technical tidy possession player with a good soccer IQ. JK tried to integrate him into the team for while but it never worked out. First he asked more of Torres than he was comfortable with, second Torres was surrounded by other players that could not play possession as well as his Pachuca teammates (he was expecting passing options that never came), and third Torres did not get "stuck in" on defense. He was a square peg in a round hole on our team. I think back to when GBS first joined Columbus. He would make passes expecting a runner that would have been automatic for Boca Jrs. only to see the ball roll away. Eventually they got on the same page. Nagbe alone will help on occasion, but he will be limited by the players around him.
This is why I said we'll need more of these players to pop up. A midfielder with a great physical presence and good off-the-ball movement isn't common for us and Jones is the only one I can think of right now. I would like to see how a midfield of Jones, Nagbe, Hyndman would play together
Agreed. Triangles in tight space was drilled to me in high school back in 1988. Nothing new. It takes way more than that at this level. Varying movement along with confidence on the ball to create the time and space for gaps to develop. Argentina compared with us is on another level or several levels. I'm really unclear how we get there from here. Until we do we are what we are. A decent side that can certainly beat you here And there but unlikely to ever Have sustained high level success.
This deficiency in off-ball movement,, to be in position to receive a pass, to allow us to play out of pressure, has been a weakness forever. It often shows up when we play Mexico away - especially when Mexico is trying to press us. The way we have compensated has been with superior athleticism and speed. We do not seem to have an edge these days over nearly as many teams as we used to in terms of either athleticism / strength nor speed. And our technical ability has not progressed enough to be able to possess the ball and pass our way out of pressure. So we truly are neither fish nor fowl these days against a team as good and technical as Argentina, who also are as athletic as we are, overall.
Imagine how in 3-5 years Nagbe and Hyndman would work as a double pivot with a true 10 operating underneath a mature Wood or Jordan Morris with Zelalem, Novakovich, de la Torre, Perez and Wright on the bench. Using space and movement and ball control to manipulate the opposing defenders and advance the ball through the midfield is what they do best.
There was nobody to send the ball to and Argentina knew it. Put Morris and Pulisic in there and Argentina has a problem. If I remember correctly, Germany beat Argentina to hoist the World Cup trophy on a Schurrle dribble down the touch line wide with a cross in to Gotze. In our game, Pulisic made penetration from the end line once and coming in from the wing once and Zardes had two decent crosses. I believe those were our only penetrations into the box.( Who says soccer isn't erotic.)
You have to have players who are young and fast enough to get to the area of the triangle. That's not Bckerman anymore. He knows how to play. That is not the problem. Many Euros after the WC thought Beckerman was our best player and they were referring to his ability to close space on the play. Klinsi just doesn't seem to be able to let go of these players because he hasn't trained up their replacements.
I fundamentally take issue with how you frame the conditions of the loss. This, I think, is a huge problem with various "revolutions" in US soccer, the focus on what the team cannot do, and the vision to remake the team into some other image. While there is a romanticism to reforging ones weaknesses into strengths, the more likely outcome is to yield poor results and effect little change. Fundamentally I think the more rational approach to change is diversification of skill set, without forgetting ones core competancies. The goal should therefor not be to change the style of a national team, but to diversify it. So how does that pertain to the defeat to Argentina? Fundamentally the US has competed against elite nations through the following approach: 1) Defensively lockdown the center of the field and force teams to play outside in. 2) Win the set piece battle 3) Counter with pace We accomplished none of these things. And while I agree with you that off the ball movement in midfield is a clear weakness that must be addressed, it is important to consider it as a diversification of our current strengths, not as the new hallmark of the team. In all likelihood we were going to have to go long successfully to beat Argentina, the problem is that Zardes, Zusi, Wondolowski and Dempsey is not a stable platform to do so. If we try to out Argentina Argentina, or out Spain Spain, it will be decades before we can ever hope to reach that goal. Fundamentally the match is asymetrical between our nation and theirs. We need to leverage our strengths to win. Which isnt to say that working on weaknesses wont help us, it will help offset their advantages, and give us advantages against nations who have a similar set of strength. But fundamentally, the major, and unforgiveable difference between the teams was that argentina played to their advantages and we did not play to ours.
It won't work in 2016. The game has changed. With the concentration of a few nations' stars at the elite of the elite superclubs, these players have seen whatever it is we are trying to do before we do it and at a higher level than we could hope to do it. They are just as fit as we are when maybe in Alexi's day this was not the case. They are taller, faster, stronger and can physically compete with us stride for stride. Strategies from 1994-2010 won't work anymore. We need to PLAY them, even if we lose. I think we tried to play them the other night and just didn't have the pieces but next time it should go a little better. You have to be able to defeat your marker 1v1. You HAVE to be able to make properly directed and weighted passes in and out of traffic. You HAVE to be able to turn shots on goal. You HAVE to have these fundamentals through the vast majority of your roster to compete with these sides. Old school USA bunker-counter is dead and will remain dead. The future is NOW and it's time to move on from the past.