Bradley shat the bed. A 20% improvement over his last games would have won it for us. Or ********ing Wondo with his limp ankle. Tighten that ********ing ankle my u-12 coach would scream to me...
Honestly, I'm not even mad. Belgium was the better team and they deserved to win. I'm upset we lost and I wish we would have won but what can you. We beat Ghana. We advanced out of the so called Group of Death. We over achieved IMO. If anything out of this game vs Belgium, hopefully Mexico saw how to protect a lead.
I'm very proud of the team. Belgum had the ball too much and had to many opportunities to score. At some point they were going to put it in. I want the people to remember that I said Green would score.
Starting in the 106th minute we saw the team we hadn't really seen since the 124th minute of the Portugal game. I just wish it could have shown up a little sooner.
This. All the Juergen haters can nit-pick to the n'th degree to their hearts content. But.... He beat Ghana. He got us out of the group of death. He brought on Julian who was the only spark we had when we needed it most. Pretty much ALL of his managerial moves paid off. .....but by all means, keep up the "fire klinsmann" threads on BS.
JK needs to show more confidence in players HE picked. I don't hate him, I love the guy. But, I think his lack of confidence is the only obstacle that preventing us from being a team with an attacking mindset. Having said that, I am very optimistic for the future.
I totally agree on the confidence part though not sure I love him that much. We'll see what he does next
I am going to rep you now. I started a whole thread about it. He was our 2002 Donovan this cycle and just didn't get in early enough. He was our best player when he came in. Nobody else was that dangerous. I was screaming for Klinnsman to put him in as soon as we went 1-0. It just came too late. Here's to 2018.
Hey man, as I said before, I watched him play. JK, Voller, Matehaus and Hoeness were my heroes. I just can't hate the guy. It does surprise me tho, that his coaching is completely different than how he used to play the game.
I really think Michael Ballack's comments on ESPN post match were spot on: 1. Physicality is not enough. The US play a very physical brand of soccer and they play it well. It will earn victories against many squads, including some (Ghana, Mexico) that might be slightly superior from a technical perspective. But against teams that are vastly superior in this department (Germany and Belgium being exhibits A and B) it is not sufficient. 2. To reach this next level, US players need to become better technically. 3. Julian Green's goal was massive, both for him and for the direction of the team. It demonstrates not only that the US *can* break down an opponent like Belgium from the run of play, but that it has the horses to do so. Both Green and Michael Bradley, who provided the assist, should feature prominently in the team the next four years.
Juergen showed confidence; he put out a 4-3-3 in place of a 4-5-1/4-2-3-1 and yelled at the players to push up the field the whole match... It's the players who either 1) don't have the composure/confidence to possess and play the ball and/or 2) don't have the technical skills to do so.
And 9 months later, here we are. Feels like I'm casually strolling through a ghost town that was once a crazy metropolis. We only get to see so many World Cups over the course of our lives... we must win 2018.
If you use 60 years as a time span between 20-80 years of age, most folks will only see 15 world cups. I'm probably down to my last 4 or 5, not a happy thought.
*I'd like to at least see us get past the road block of the round of 16 again. My point was that I hope we don't see the 2010 2014 pattern continue. Running of steam when we hit the first knockout round.