Re: 8/20, WCQ: USA @ Guatemala, post-match {R} uhh...you're "pretty sure"...? I posted that (with a list of our games in Guatemala in a quote box) within a few posts of your post questioning me and only a post or two after JeremyEritrea's... why did you bother responding to JeremyEritrea's post?
We don't have that many soccer players. I would think we would only compare to a Brazil in terms of available population if all our "players" weren't culturally (or maybe monetarily) groomed into baseball, basketball, football, hockey, or.......... dammit....... swimming before soccer. We pretty much are Iceland and New Zealand... hell, Simon Elliot (as much as I dislike his play) is better than some in our national team pool.
I have supported teams that look good while losing and I have supported teams that look bad while winning. Trust me. The second one is better. And it is possible to keep looking bad while continuing to win.
Sorry but TONS more american kids and adults play soccer than hockey and swimming for sure. I imagine participation levels are actually higher than (or at least comparable) baseball, basketball, and football. Also, George Weah was better than any American at his peak. So, Liberia is better than us? Your Simon Elliot example is useless if its even true. I certainly wouldn't start him over any of our players even if he might make his way in to a 30-man camp if he were American. We are NOT "pretty much Iceland and New Zealand" Both of those teams regularly get beat by average national teams and don't regularly (or maybe ever, I don't feel like checking) qualify for the WC.
Looking bad and heading in the wrong direction are two different matters. I'm happy with the win. But I'm going to want to see some changes.
Re: 8/20, WCQ: USA @ Guatemala, post-match {R} Because I hadn't gotten there yet. I have a bad habit of responding as I read the thread. Every now and again, it leads to me deleting a post for redundancy reasons, but I overlooked it in this case.
Re: 8/20, WCQ: USA @ Guatemala, post-match {R} Sorry...looking at my post it may have come off as snappish (I hope you didn't take it that way)...I just wasn't sure why you seemed not have seen/read my post. (I have a bad habit of getting annoyed when it seems people are responding without reading the thread...it makes for too many repetitive posts and in some cases can perpetuate misunderstandings and wrong info. )
Re: 8/20, WCQ: USA @ Guatemala, post-match {R} You must be in a state of constant annoyance while visiting BS then.
Re: 8/20, WCQ: USA @ Guatemala, post-match {R} Pretty much (and for a lot more than just that one reason).... (BS does have it's good posts and info though, which is why I keep coming back. )
"Looking bad and winning" against crappy teams quickly becomes "looking bad and losing" against good teams, as has been observed this last summer vs. England and Spain. The "winning ugly" phrase is misused. One can steal a victory here and there in the short run but, in the long run, winning is directly dependent on the quality of play. To use an American football analogy - an NFL team can be outgained by 150 yards but win a game on an interception, a fumble and a punt return. Sooner or later, however, the averages catch up with you. Check the NFL stats at your leisure - consistently good teams have consistently good stats. They don't depend on a fluke to progress. And an "intentional elbow red" is as fluky as it gets.
It was only "fluky" for us to benefit from that red card if you believe it was a bad call. Otherwise, it was simply the US benefiting from a proper call, which happens all the time and is not a fluke. Just like it wasn't a fluke for Steve C. to get two deserved yellows and for Guatemala to benefit from them. Saying that we depended on that red card "fluke" to win the game is silly. And I'm not at all convinced that plays like the Onyewu header and the ensuing corner for a goal were any more likely to happen whether we were 11v11, 10v11 or 10v10. If you want to point to flukes that we benefited from, I'll give you three of them: 1. The non-call on Pearce's handball in the box that clearly should have been a penalty. 2. The miscalled offside against Guatemala in the second half (that Harkes assured us was offside...until he saw the replay). 3. The should-have-been-called advantage for Guatemala in the second half. The first of those three almost surely would have been a goal for Guatemala, and we were purely lucky that it wasn't called. The second two probably would not even have resulted in a shot on goal.
No, it was a good call but a bad/dumb play by Cabrera, who's experienced enough to know better. As to it not being a fluke, how often do you see an intentional elbow call being made in global soccer. Even beyond that, any "straight reds" are relatively rare, let alone in a non-threatening situation with no tactical advantage to be had.
OK, then. If that's how you define a "fluke", then the following also were flukes: 1. Cherundolo getting two yellows- How many times has Steve done that? Clearly, he's a veteran who knows better. 2. The Guatemalan keeper saving Gooch's header. That keeper was terrible, yet he made a fine save on that play. What a fluke! 3. Pearce had an exceptionally bad game. He doesn't usually. Total fluke. Look, I gave you the actual fluke you were looking for: the non-call on Pearce's handball. You don't need to make one up in the form of a properly called straight red. That wasn't any more of a fluke than any of the other correct calls made during the game.
He's using the wrong word in fluke, but I think what he is trying to say is game-planning for events which occur in a minority of games (sending offs for example) is poor game management. At least that's what I got from reading what he wrote.
Nonsense, that was not a CLEAR penalty. The US player's arm was in a very natural position as he tried to check his balance, it was ball to arm, not arm to ball, that's the deciding factor. Has a similar play ever been called a handball, yes, absolutely. I think it was a good no-call, but it could have gone the other way, bad luck for the Guats.
Coincidentally, was it against Guatemala that Eddie Lewis got red-carded for elbowing an opposing player in the face during a WCQ a couple cycles ago?
I agree with you on this. It could have been called but not all of the time and maybe not even the majority of the time. Pearce was spinning around and his arm was away from the body but the ball went to the arm not other way around. What I think might have been just as decisive from the refs standpoint was that the ball that hit his arm was off a weak header going to no one other than the keeper and something Howard was going to gobble up easily. I know the last part isn't criteria for determining a handball, but put all of the factors together and I believe the ref made a decision that would not be unusual.
Yea, that was at RFK back in 2000. I don't remember exactly what he did, but it was stupid and seemed to lead to an unofficial national team ban for quite a long time. McBride bailed us out in that one on a shot where he collided with the Guatemalan keeper, IIRC, so hard that it shattered his shinguard.
This is exactly why I'm right and you are wrong. In most sports (such as football), teams score so much that the final score is a very good representation of the relative play of the two teams. Soccer is not like that. There is so little scoring that level of play is not as closely matched to final scores. It is a fairly common occurrence for one team to dominate possession and to bomb the other goal with shots and end the game with nothing. And if you have a certain skill set (such as counterattacking or dead-ball situations) you may purposefully play in a way where you give up possession and number of shots. If you had been following the Earthquakes this year, you would know what it feels like to say "We killed the other team in every way except the final score. But I'm sure that that skill will tell eventually. Just keep playing like this and wait until next week." And you wait. And wait. And wait.
Just to throw some numbers out there, Iceland has a little more than 300,000 people and in 2001 there were about 4 million male youth soccer players who played the sport regularly in the United States from ages 5 to 17. That would actually be a greater number of players than even places like England and Germany. At that time Basketball was the number one youth participation sport among males, baseball second and soccer a very close third to baseball. Of course the environmental problems that result in us getting less bang for our buck per player are anything but easy to solve, but the first step is for folks to at least recognize that the problem is environmental in nature and not due to a lack of raw materials. I think some of them can be addressed in a short period of time while others will take a long time to change if they ever do. But the right first step in the process is almost certainly not "throw in the towel immediately." Too often that's the vibe I get from the soccer community. Now changing the US National Team coach is likely to have very little of a direct effect on that, but it is one of the few coaching positions in U.S. Soccer that can actually attract high quality foreign coaching talent and if some of that knowledge gets passed down to the folks around him (who presumably will still be around after he's gone) he could wind up benefiting the program long term.
The majority of our kids play soccer to let their parents have an hour or so to themselves or to socialize... so I don't consider that playing. We don't view soccer as seriously as other countries. I don't understand your Weah component. He grew up in a country that takes soccer seriously. If he grew up in the US he probably would have ended up on a NFL team, that's my point. The only reason the US has consistently qualified for the World Cup is because we are in CONCACAF and we get 3 spots. Our region doesn't deserve that. CONCACAF is filled with crappy teams other than Mexico, and it wouldn't be a shock to me when we start being unable to qualify in upcoming World Cups because Canada and Jamaica and countries that love soccer start to get serious. Hell, Guatamala just proved they should have beaten us if they had any organization. Maybe, like Mexico just started doing, their better players will stop sticking around Central America and go to Europe. Oceania teams have to play the crappy teams of another confederation to get a spot, hence Australia finally getting fed up trying to qualify as an Asian team. If we had to play Uruguay or Iran or Argentina to get to the World Cup (like Australia has had to do in the last three) we wouldn't qualify.
A double-yellow to a defender - let alone to the one giving up a silly yellow - is a far more frequent occurance than a straight red in a non-scoring situation. Ricardo Tregueno is an athletic GK. The save was expected. if you believe that he was exposed on speed and not the positoning, which is adjusted according to the coaching instructions. I believe it was more due to the bad spacing on the team. I have seen a few Guatemala matches and I don't recall them committing an intentionally violent "straight red" offense in a tight/tied game. A questionable hand-ball call/non-call PK takes place almost once each game. An elbow-red does not. In fact, I don't recall the senior US squad ever getting one (though, as pointed out above, Eddie Lewis did earn one 8 years ago), which makes it a very rare occurance indeed. WTF are you talking about? Teams score 2-4 TD's per game and those are, as a rule, directly proportionate to the amount of yardage gained.