There was a lot of problems with this US team. One is no one can really pass except Bradley. That is a major problem. When he gets tired there is no other mid inside the field who is open to get a pass from the backs inside the field. The keepers distributions are very low percentage. When he targets a player. That player has no players in a back support position so the team loses the ball. When wing mid with the color is in his hair does what he always does on defense. He move inside the field when the ball is on the other flank. But when the ball moves inside the field he stays inside instead of opening up to his flank. So when the opponent pass to his flank their is no one to challenge the opponent. He should open up close enough to the flank to challenge the pass turn it into at least a 50/50 ball. He does the same thing in every game. What are our coaches looking at in the game? Klinnesman has too much security with this team. I think he probably tells his players they are only as good as their last game. He should also be under that kind of pressure especially when we play against Mexico. I am sure the Mexican coach is under that kind of pressure. Mexico did a job on Demsey in this game. How many years has Klinnesman had the team? Still no counter attack. I think it is time for a Beasley to go. When you sub the team should improve not get worse. Did the team improve?
I hate watching games broadcast by US companies. You never get a good view of what is happening. Also almost all of my experience is at the very lowest level of the adult game. But I think I see some real problems with the game plan. All I saw was a lot of coaching errors. It appeared to me that like Mexico the US came out initially in a 433 with Jones on the right and Beckerman on the left. Essentially relative to a 442, Zardes moved higher up the field and Jones tucked inside. Okay. But then Jones and Zardes switched positions. I don't want to say bad things about Jones, so I will just say as you would expect in an international match he was not a threat on the wing. It is not his fault that he is less effective at winger than CM. He deserved to be on the field, but he also deserved better coaching. That shift IMO had two players playing out of position. The team would have been more effective with Jones playing in Beckerman's position and either Woods or Yedlin starting in the right wide attacking role leaving Zardes on the left. Then the line of confrontation. We used a low line of confrontation, essentially putting no pressure on Mexico in their half--ever. Then when combined with no attacking threat on our left wing, it is quite obvious why we had difficulty attacking and Mexico was very dangerous. We were allowing Mexico to start attacking too close to our goal. To be clear, that meant that it was easier for Mexico to use its quickness and combination passing against us. They could start their attacking runs much closer to goal. To the extent the low pressure defense on Mexico was required for a soccer reason, it was required because we fielded an over 30 team against a quick Mexico team. Also it appeared to me that the game plan required Dempsey to play in front of everyone else, including in front of Altidore. That of course required more passing by Altidore and made Dempsey more isolated and dependent on everyone else's passing ability including Altidore's. I see a theme. Our game plan negated team strengths and made weaknesses more important. I see Dempsey as a midfielder or second striker, not a target forward. Altidore's movements always indicated to me a complete lack of understanding of how to play as a striker pair. Half the time he is switched off. He really does not support other players well. Another point. Guzan is a good goalkeeper and deserved a 5 rating. But a 5 job was not going to be enough in this match. We have a great keeper who is capable of playing at an 8+ level in international matches sitting on the bench. This year has been great experience for Guzan who likely has his best games still in front of him and is clearly the No. 2, but there is no rational justification for sitting Howard for this match. Guzan is the future, but he is not the best keeper this year. Some people have criticized Beasley's decision to win the ball that put him out of the play on Mexico's last goal. The way I see it Beasley would not have tried if the midfield line had been doing their job. Beasley didn't win the ball, but his pressure prevented a shot. He was essentially doing the wide midfielder's job while he was too tired to pressure the ball or cover behind Beasley effectively. Do I blame Jones for not having the speed to recover in the last minutes of the overtime period? No. He was running fast as he could. Do I fault Beasley for stepping up to put pressure on a dangerous attacker? No. I put this all on the coaches decisions. The shot that scored was a much lower percentage opportunity. And we had a good keeper, but yesterday good wasn't enough to win. In international play especially, good should never be the objective. But hey what do I know. I only coached low level teams for 20 years.
Howard definitely should have been 1st keeper. The guy above me got pretty much everything. It also seems like the Mexican team (in a general sense) has remarkably good weak foots. Alot of their mids and even defenders were able to pass and control the ball effectively with both feet, whereas the US team seemed a bit clumsy at times, having to move the ball to their strong foot to pass, which in general slowed down buildup play. This isn't a huge deal or too much of a game changer or anything, just something i've always noticed when watching Mexico play.
Howard has taken a brake from international play. Any player should be able to short pass with either foot. Long passing is another matter.
The way I would put it, Howard took a break before the start of the next world cup cycle. It is not like he declined to play during world cup qualifying. True he did miss the gold cup, but I would think a lot of coaches would have welcomed a chance to give some younger keepers some real matches instead of just friendlies. So you figure JK won't start Howard for the qualifiers either? The way the MNT is going, we might be eliminated this round. Comments will really start to get ugly is we lose our first match.
I'm half serious. Guzan is a solid keeper. If we are able to hold possession and score a few more goals, we don't need a super hero in goal. But we do need a few better-than-average field players. Tim Howard can't be much worse than Jozy up top.
What do you all think of a more defensive approach from the US? We're trying to play a style that suits highly technical players—but we don't have those yet. I'd argue that we have a lot of tough, smart, athletic types that can run all day and make a 10 yard pass (hopefully). At that level I don't see a problem as nations like Italy, Uruguay, and Serbia have certainly hung their hats on being defensive teams.
I think most people would say you always want to alter your team's playing style to fit your player's strengths. Captain Obvious I know, but create the most appropriate environment for players/the team to be successful. That said, I don't know what the US team's strengths are. Me personally...I would rather play a more attacking/entertaining style regardless of the results.
bunker and play man defense. Then counter off that. Much better then we are doing now. If we had the right players.
Either bunker and counter or high pressure. Right now, we don't really do either. Our line of confrontation is too far up to be bunkered. And too deep to be considered high. But put the right players in the right spot for whatever the heck we try to play. I manage/play on an old man soccer team. We tried to play a 4-4-2 and a 3-4-3. We couldn't score in a 4-4-2 and we got pounded in a 3-4-3. Mostly because in either system, the gap between our midfield and defense was too large on a counter attack from the other team. We switched to a 3-2-3-2 and have been unstoppable since. The extra line allows us to connect passes in the middle when our mids can't get back quick enough. Us 40 year olds aren't going to improve our skills much. And our fitness isn't going to get much better either. The US men's team is in the same boat. Until they can train skilled, younger players they need to find a system that works. This isn't u9 soccer where development is more important than winning. This is soccer at the highest level where winning is everything.
I don't think it is a matter of the US doesn't have technically skilled players. I think the situation is that JK is not selecting technically skilled players, except in the back line. Our entire back line is now comfortable with the ball. This was a key first step to a possession style of play and eventually improving the ball control of the backs was accomplished by using attacking players as fullbacks. If JK put together a lineup including our best technical players in the midfield and forward lines--and then they failed to adapt to a more technical style of play--then there would be a basis to say the US doesn't have technically skilled players. Off the top of my head I can name 3 capped players with excellent technical skills that JK knew about last cycle and didn't use: Adu, Feilhaber, and Torres. JK could have fielded a very technical team between those three, and Bradley, Donovan and Dempsey. JK didn't do it, not even one time in a friendly. Right now Mexico and Mexican clubs are having their pick of the top young American players with ties to Mexico. Mexico is discovering many of these US players, not the US. Others they are recruiting out of US programs. Whenever some fan complains that US MNT players are technically inferior to Mexico's players, that is what I think about. Some of the fans have no idea. Honestly if you were an Hispanic US citizen and potential future international star would you chose to play for the US while JK was the MNT coach with his apparent bias against Hispanic players and the technical-oriented style of play? JK has never actually tried to put a technically skilled team together. And his continuation as MNT head coach is going to work against the very improvements he is supposed to make. JK is apparently of the view that your side has to include a big DM "hard man" and another big "hard man" at the CF position. There is something to say for that view, but plenty of great teams have had DMs and CFs that were not giants of immense strength. IMO Roy Keane's picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of "hard." He is 5'10." As a 14 year old he wasn't given a chance because he was considered too small. He of course was determined to play and the rest is history. My summary is that the US has technically skilled players. What the US lacks is a head coach that wants and knows how to use them. Fans might not know it, but we adult players do know it. There is an American style of play and it is a blend of the best of the European and Latin styles.
Granted I was only half watching while doing other things, but the thing that struck me the most was the US guys struggling to pass the ball intelligently. I noted a number of times when the ball was passed behind a runner or other such obvious errors. Dempsey, love him as I do, would rather run at 3 defenders than square the ball across the box to an unmarked teammate. I don't know why. For Seattle he has great link-up play with Martins and others. Maybe for the US he feels like he has to do it on his own? Who knows? Anyway, across the board the passing looked amateurish at times. It was labored, lacked creativity, wasn't direct enough when countering and not patient enough when playing out of the back. Bradley included.
I think you can count the times the US counter attacked on one hand if the one hand had on two fingers on it.
Quite true. JK did manage to do the one thing I thought impossible--break the team spirit. Last time I saw the team so lackluster was the dismal 1998 world cup finals performance. Although it was the coach's responsibility and he was certainly blamed at the time, it later turned out not to be his doing.
Come to think of it, Steve Sampson set a h*** of an example for keeping things in the locker room. Using the press to motivate players in my mind indicates a coach who knows he has lost the ability to motivate his players. Doesn't matter who you are, every coach has to earn the respect of the players and keep it.
1. I can't conceive of any reasonable approach that is more defensive. 2. The team generally is defending as poorly as they attack. The goal yesterday was surrendered when the DM was out of position and ball watching. It is bad enough when any other field player fails to pick up his mark, but when it is the DM who fails to pick up the runner.... It is a mistake coaches get upset about in beer leagues.
At the current moment we are in a full blow identity crisis. Players have strengths (and weaknesses) and then you play several out of position and the strengths are mitigated and weaknesses become more exposed (Jurgen has succeeded at getting them out of their comfort zones). I have said this in a USMNT thread, I never hear Jurgen the tactician speak. I wonder how much of a specific game plan is set in place and yet even wonder more in game adjustments (in Mexico, Jones and Zardes swapped spots. Why?) And when Bradley went with that in 2011 it got him fired. In almost any meaningful match since 2013, JK has reverted to a 'possession-based bunker.' We do not penetrate beyond the middle third of the field.
I've never seen a slower counter in my life. Either there is zero speed on the field or somehow we have been instructed to turn around (as opposed to taking on a first defender) and start a possession build up. Inevitably, we lose the ball on a poor pass.
I'm convinced full tactical game plans are not implemented. A vision of what we'd like to do, perhaps. Details, tendencies of opponent are not studied and discussed, nor significant adjustments made. Players are expected to 'express themselves' on the field. Very much a forward's mentality when taking on a defender 1 v 1 in the open field
This thought had not occurred to me. (No game plan vs. failure to execute game plan.) Hard to believe, but explains why the attacking players are not combining well and not breaking down defenses. It also is consistent with prior complaints regarding JK as a coach. It did seem to me that there was no systematic movement off the ball which makes it more difficult for players to combine. (I was thinking even a simple rotational movement system would be an improvement. The north south passing intended to create space between lines requires a lot of skill and tactical awareness to actually work.) At a club it is different. A team that has played 20 matches together knows what to expect. An international team generally does not unless they are pulling their players mostly from the same club (like Spain). You may well be correct, but I am having a hard time accepting that any national team coach could be that unsophisticated. Even American Somoa had Thomas Rongen for a while.
Completely agree it's not the smartest thing from a result standpoint. My viewpoint right now is coming more from frustration due to us looking terrible since the start of the Gold Cup. If we are going to continue playing this bad (win or lose), why not just throw the kitchen sink at teams offensively? Throw more bodies forward...sure you may get beat by counters but that can't be any worse than our recent form. Against Costa Rica we never had anywhere to go forward with the ball once we won it. I personally thought we were too timid and didn't take enough risks. How is it possible to have Shea and Yedlin on the wings and rarely get to the endline? When I saw the lineup, that's the one thing I thought we could at least have some moderate success with.
"Full game plans" perhaps was the wrong choice of words "Attention to detail" is not given enough attention, especially when going up against peers with extensive tactical knowledge probably better describes it.
Traditionally the US strengths are in the physical and mental aspects. Which is why I am now voicing my frustration with the coaching errors that are negating the US strengths. In the past I assumed that the coach was dealing rationally with injuries or other problems that he did not want revealed to opponents. Now it is clear to me that my assumptions were wrong. An example of prior mistakes that I didn't comment on: JK's use of flank players on the right side that were too slow at the international level. JK for a long time paired a slow attacker in front of a slow fullback. It is one thing to be effective, but slow. Awesome passing skills and tactical smarts will allow it for instance. But slow and ineffective attacking is not what you want at the international level, because then you have nothing to counter the opponent's speed advantage on that flank. It particularly grated that JK refused to use Donovan, who over 30 and on his worst day playing a full match was still faster.