When I coached, many many years ago, I had a remedy for that. Every time I saw a player standing still when not open or not in position to receive a pass with another player looking to pass I added 10 20 yard wind sprints at the end of the next practice. After a couple of week of that I heard a LOT of players on the field yelling to others "MOVE!!" The match is thankfully over. CP and a couple of others looked mostly OK but the rest looked like they might compete in a decent rec league. Based on this pathetic performance I may not even bother to watch the next match. Italy will not, I think, just be going through the motions. They have something to prove to their fans and coaches so they may well really stomp on the US.
This may indeed be our golden generation. That being said, we are a generation or two away from world dominance. And that's just players. How about the coaching?
Thoughts -Bobby Wood is lazy and needs to get onside when a play initially breaks down instead of walking back. -Pulisic is going to have a frustuating career surrounded by garbage -Someone needs to remind Brad Guzan he is not Ederson, and we are not Manchester City. Stop trying to play out of the back repeatedly. This is not Atlanta. -Please make short passes on the GROUND when in tight spaces. lobbing it back and forth wastes precious time on the ball and allows the other team to close you down. Thats if they even bother to since we are inept. - We have issues
Clearly WTF90 is a winning strategy. Hopefully Bagholder recognizes this and we find "the right midfield partners" for Wil.
Oh, I agree. That's one third the thrust of my "can we start playing the people who actually perform," argument. Center mid, keeper, back. For some reason forwards have to produce for us -- and a young forward can even jump queue by scoring. But the same ruthlessness is not applied to the lines of the field behind them. Play well or I'll find someone else. I don't get going out there game after game with DMs who can't win balls and break up possession. This to me is where I get into pecking order politics, "pedigree" over "performance." Like I said elsewhere, this should for the time being be renamed a U20 Team or U23 Team and treated accordingly. We have other options around the world besides you. We have a class coming up right after you. And another. And another. I kind of feel like we have this odd, rote dynamic of settling quickly on a unit even though this is not a veteran unit coming off of a world cup knockout stage. This is a team that missed the world cup and at the moment loses and ties most of the time. How on earth does that support the dibs system Sarachan is running. There needs to be constant experimentation, selection pressure, emphasis on performance. What bad rebuilding team runs their selection like they won conference last year? What team that loses or ties calls up the same basic people? Like definitional insanity.
Mckennie, Adams, Wood, Guzan, Acosta, Yedlin.... all trash. Just too dumb to play at the international level. Stop calling them in until they actually accomplish something. Pulisic and Sargent are literally the only 2 that shouldn’t be fighting for a spot in the starting 11. Saief and Lletget need to be in every camp. Those 2, along with CP and Sargent, actually have decent soccer IQ’s. Weah is just too streaky. So much potential and I hope he figures it out.
I totally disagree. I want the team challenged. What makes me violently ill is we then saddled them with an MLS reject caliber head coach for six freaking months after the World Cup. Bad enough the first six months, infinitely worse that we then did nothing for the past six. I understand Earnie needed time, that's fine, what isn't is that Earnie wasn't appointed for 8 freaking months which caused this cascade of events. If he wasn't interested in the winter of '17-'18 we should've moved on. We have the best young generation of talent we've had in at least fifteen years, and we wasted a crucial year of integrating them together under a new coach and new regime, instead allowing a placeholder to fiddle around for an entire freaking year. Totally unacceptable. The schedule was fine, it was everything else that was a problem.
This is what happens when you have an interim coach for 13 months: the players, who are not that good to begin with, stop giving a care.
I agree with your comment. I have said this for years; we don't play a style of soccer that matches our "culture." The US is the most aggressive country on the planet and we come out and try to play defensively. We are Tark's Running Rebels, not Smith's Tar Heels with the four corner offense. Until the idiots at USSF understand this we are probably toast.
Abso-effing-lutely! He made a fantastic pass 2 yds behind his intended recipient to kill what otherwise was an excellent flowing attack down the right.
Steffen and Horvath going forward. Hamid and Gonzalez in the pack. Poor Guzan. This was your last match.
Sarachan puts Wood and Green up top and tells Pulisic and Weah to play outside dmid. The two guys who know how to score in that selection are Pulisic and Weah. Weah is a better 9 than Wood because Weah knows how to move the line and he can dribble some when needed. Let's hope we see something like that with Italy. The only players not getting time out of those who dressed were Cannon and Delgado.