Games: 10 3W Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico 3T Bosnia, France, Peru 4L Ireland, Brazil, Colombia, England Multi-goal games: 2 (2 vs. Bolivia, 2 vs. Colombia) 1 goal games: 5 (Paraguay, Ireland,France,Mexico,Peru) 0 goal games: 3 (Bosnia, Brazil, England) Goals Scored: 10 3 Wood (1 PK) 2 Sargent 1 Zimmerman, Weah, Green, Adams, Acosta Assists: 7 3 Antonee Robinson 1 Corona, Miazga, Weah, Acosta ***Of the 3 goals not assisted, PK goal was won by Adams, Shaq Moore slammed a cross off a defender which Green took advantage of, Josh Sargent stole a pass from GK and scored.
Random thoughts: 10 goals over 10 games is pretty putrid. Almost a third of our goals (3) came against the worst team we played. Wood was the scoring leader, but a PK and two goals from the run of play in 4 starts and 4 sub appearances is nothing to write home about. Jozy still offers way more and would have shown better had he been in the team. Antonee Robinson's 3 assists came against Bolivia (bad), Mexico (scrub selection) and Colombia (good). These 10 games have been one long boring blur, and I honestly don't remember Robinson doing much, but 3 assists in 3 starts and 3 sub appearances is nothing to sneeze at.
It comes from an inability to make plays all around the field. Too many players who can't advance the ball to the needed areas and attackers who don't have the creativity to get us scoring chances once we get the ball up the field, which doesn't happen that often. We have no style of play. The coach throws the 11 highest rated players together into a lineup. We use athletes like Yedlin who contribute nothing offensively or troncos like Miazga who keep us pinned in our half without the ball. We use poaching CF's at winger because they run fast and use one of the worst CF's in the Bundesliga because he is employed by a Bundesliga team. I think we don't have the players to play a good offensive style right now, but I do think the players are there in the youth player pool. They just aren't ready yet. It might take another few years. I also think we could do a much better job with our style of play and put more guys on the field who can make plays, but we choose not to.
Yes, we've had periods in U.S. Nat history where we couldn't score in a whorehouse, not for lack of scoring chances, but this current team never even approaches the whorehouse.
I think that would be the next level of analysis (not saying you're obligated to do it)--looking at the stats on how many good scoring chances they created and the expected goals. I have the feeling that most games under Sarachan, they've created very few clear cut chances and probably actually outperformed the expected goals, but it'd be interesting to see the actual stats.
Oooh, this is kind of ugly: We had an average of 9.7 shots per game, 3.1 shots on target. 8 of our games we had 3 or less shots on goal. Our glorious game against France we had 2 shots total, obviously one on goal. We had a laughable 30% possession. Half of our games we had possession in the 30's. It's a damned miracle we scored at all.
It would be cruel and unusual punishment to go back and review these games. It definitely feels like we outperformed expected goals.
You omitted the Portugal match, which was one of the most satisfying games of the awe-inspiring Dave Sarachan era, that resulted in a 1-1 tie. Neverthless, the results - which from the eye test to me is 3 satisfactory performances, 7 unsatisfactory, and 1 n/a (Mexico) - have been about what you'd think they would be under a college level coach/MLS assistant. I do think finally getting a real coach into the program, even if it's Berhalter, would cure plenty of ills. Vis a vis from an offensive standpoint, the issue has so much been that 4141 w/ a light press that just means when they receive the ball from deeper there's little outlet up top and often no 10 type either to link. The 442 was flat so they couldn't connect and they had poor overall ball winners to counter with much. One of the actual satisfying matches where they played the 352 against France, I think all the central mids were defensive types, so no 10 there either, otherwise they could have carved out more chances to supplement that organized defensive effort.
We've played bunkering, steal-a-point soccer (Which we didn't manage to do anyway, outside of a hugely lucky match against France) with about 10 players getting 75% of the outfield starts, because for some embarrassing reason we went 400 days without hiring a coach. For an entire year of meaningless games (but mostly quality opponents) we focused on the product instead of the process, which is a complete joke. It was an awful decision to let DS continue to coach the team after the WC, and an even worse one to let it go on as long as it did.
I mentioned in another thread that average goals per match under Sarachan has been the lowest under any coach in 30 years. After the England match, it's dipped down even further. Though, I should note that 11 games is a small sample size, and that previous head coaches inflated their numbers by feasting on CONCACAF minnows, which Sarachan has not had as an option. If our friendly schedule for 2018 had been easier, and Sarachan had gotten some blowout wins over St. Lucia or Barbados, then no doubt Sarachan would have more fans calling for him to get the permanent job.
I don't know what people expected. They wanted the USSF and US Soccer to purge all of the veterans and go with the kids. There were always going to be growing pains. We just started a player against Italy that has never played a professional first team game. And people are surprised that we're not scoring goals? Maybe after another year of this folks will realize that Jozy Altidore was actually pretty good. That he scored 41 goals in 110 games for the USMNT. And he's only 29. Maybe they'll realize that the "in his prime" version of Michael Bradley was darn good. And replacing him was never going to be easy. Maybe they'll realize how good they had it with Tim Howard, who some people couldn't wait to replace. Maybe they'll realize that the centerbacks they couldn't wait to dump like Omar Gonzalez were actually pretty good. And to be frank, this has nothing to do with Dave Sarachan. He's always been a lame duck placeholder. The players know it. He knows it. The administrators know it. Kudos for Dave Sarachan for sticking around this mess for so long. We shouldn't let Dave Sarachan become the scapegoat.
Agreed. I thought that Sargeant had some good moments, but his youth and inexperience was pretty obvious against some classy Italian defenders and midfielders. Guy has got to play against a better class of player professionally in the near future to really make the jump to a guy who can compete when asked for the senior USMNT.
If you had told me in advance that we’d be throwing out our inexperienced youth against top tier countries this is about what I would have expected—maybe even worse. I’ve watched years and years of our A-teams bunker, scrap and fight to pull out unlikely results against top tier countries. Why should I be mad when the young ins can’t do the same? For me this past year has been about trying to pick a few young guys out who can help us for the next cycle—that’s it.
I guess I'm just following you from thread to thread agreeing. Tenorio's article for The Athletic has a similar tone and I completely agree. I've said it before, but there is a solid chance a lot of this age group never even materializes. So to start playing them so much before they even have a career is mind boggling to me.
This. The issue of USMNT vets has always been somewhat like the issue with democracy: They are "the worst" except for all the others... But Sarachan or say "lack of a coach aggressively trying to push the team forward with their given plan, and their job riding on the results" is also to blame. If there was a plan to the deployment of players, working to creating a side that would mature into the next WC campaign, there's a high likelihood players would play based on ability and future results.
Yea, we have player pool issues, but some of it is down to selection as well. We have veteran midfielders like Feilhaber, Nagbe, and Nguyen who are capable of playing decent soccer. Sure, they may be old and they may not play in Europe, but they can do a job. I'm not an expert in Hyndman's game and I guess him being at Hibs isn't a ringing endorsement of how clubs rate him, but I'm mystified about his lack of opportunity with the NT. Slick on the ball and athletic. Can deliver the final pass. Seems to have a lot of what we need in the midfield, yet he gets no chances while we trot out people like Acosta, Trapp, and Delgado (decent MLS players, but not international standard tbh). Like you, I'm not too high on Bobby Wood. Great work rate. Decent athleticism. Can uncork a good shot every now and then. That's about it though. Very limited skill on the ball and in distribution. Jozy is better and I think Sargent is already showing signs of being better. We have issues at winger, which is to say we don't really have any good ones other than CP.