Pre-match: USA vs Mexico -- Gold Cup Final Sun 7/7

There is a pretty strong correlation between the best teams and playing attractive football. Grit and desire doesn’t do very much when you don’t have the quality to play creatively and pass quickly and effectively.

 

Every game against Mexico is a must win. We beat them last year. We should beat them today.

USA!

 

Lol oh boy......


And I bet you also though Rapinoe had an outstanding tournament and deserved that Golden Ball?

Have you ever touched a soccer ball in your life? We ain’t trying to win a World Cup championship game and will do anything to win it... We’re trying to grow a soccer program that’s stalled... Winning a BS gold cup isn’t going to all of a sudden make us contenders.

 

Italy was one of the top teams for seven decades playing a style that was often quite ugly to watch.

 

My comment you quoted referred explicitly to our past history in this tournament in the knockout rounds. Those weren't expanded tournaments.

Mexico doesn't get to play at home, you're right, but they do play in front of crowds with a higher percentage of their own fans than we do (in the vast majority of games, in any case), and certainly more than any other country they play. But I don't give a shit about that because that's never been a rationale for me one way or another.

How should we improve, then, relative to the top 20 if our only official tournament other than WCQ and the WC is this Gold Cup? What should we do? Go to San Salvador and try to play 90% possession jogo bonito on a field that would be more suited to moguls than soccer if it weren't so flat?

The Gold Cup is in the US because we've got the best fields, best stadiums, best infrastructure and pretty much every country in CONCACAF has a significant diaspora here, particularly the larger countries. And, because CONCACAF makes the most money because of all that.

Excuses for Mexico barely getting to the final. I disagree with you on the US' play this tournament--as I've said, I think they've improved and increased their cohesion throughout the tournament, regardless of some periods of poor play.

 

I said a pretty strong correlation. I didn’t say in every case. And when you say they didn’t play an attractive style, your talking about relative to Italian standards and expectations.

 

Pre-game crowd behind the Fox crew is 99/1 Mexico lol

 

Just setting the stage to complain that "Yeah, our 3 goals were good, and we won handily but I want to see that for 90 minutes, not 10. There's no progress here. And, Mexico almost lost to Martinique and Haiti, anyway, so they suck right now."

EDITORS NOTE: I don't think the US is going to win handily while scoring 3 goals.

 

Oh great, another game played in Mexico City. I'm overly tired of our "home" matches that feel like we're playing in a foreign country. Next USMNT game should be held in Whitefish Montana.

 

Another away game.

 

Well I somehow don't think CONCACA$H would agree to that lol

 

Well, there's also no correlation between playing pretty, possession-oriented, combination-rich soccer and being a soccer power for a long time.

Uruguay, Italy, Czech Republic, England & Yugoslavia were soccer world powers for decades, playing a style that was not based on possession or fast passing.

On the other hand, teams like Hungary, Portugal, Peru, Colombia & Romania only had short-lived success playing visually pleasing soccer.

Whether you reach lasting success or not does not seem, to me, to correlate at all with the style you play.

 

did any of those guys play in 2017? maybe dempsey?

That is because Berhalter has limited the pool. He started with a January camp and has only brought in obvious euro guys plus Ream.

 

Glad Cannon is getting the start. Somewhat surprised that Miazga gets it over Zimmerman. Pretty much as I expected (Morris over Boyd, was hoping for Cannon on his form).

 

and they had technically sound players capable of playing as pretty as just about any other country.

 

60-40 is very optimistic.

 

That's funny shnagg. Rep!

 

I hope the women’s win today gives the men some added focus and drive tonight.

But at the end of the day, and someone said it, if they don’t play well, that needs to be exposed. It’s the absolute only way things will ever get better. Getting a misleading win as a result isn’t going to help this program.

If they get outclassed, everyone will ask why are the women winning and not the men (even though anyone who actually plays knows this has always been the case), but hopefully that will force more changes on the men’s side that I think need to happen.

 

Mexicans come out for their team no matter what....lets face it the US doesn't have that die hard of a fan base, and this team was left without a coach for over a year and a half with nothing to care about, don't color me shocked if US fan enthusiasm is particularly low at the moment.

 

I’m not saying anybody has to try and emulate Brazil or Spain. But, playing an attractive and entertaining game should be something to aspire to. This whole debate we are having also hinges on how we define attractive play. I don’t think any of the countries you mentioned have played “unattractive soccer” in the same way teams lower in the pecking order do. Once again, I’m talking about what our aspiration should be to play.

 

And when we have the quality, we’ll play more attractively. Not the other way around FFs.

 

And trying to play attractively doesn’t help us at all - it actually hurts us.

 

Depends on how you define the fan base. I would say it's not that it is not die hard, it's just that it's not large. Those in the Chicago area who don't want to go to this game probably do not count as part of the base.

 

I wasn’t talking about this moment for our national team. I was commenting on the broad strokes that post made about grit and desire being the only important factors. Relax.

 

This is correct. And, unless anyone wants to argue that, regardless of this Gold Cup roster, the US has the quality across all positions, with depth, to pursue "attractive football" against the best in the world (or, against the ones that hack, push, tackle and muscle the most) then this conversation will get us nowhere. I will note that, as of the end of 2018, we had ZERO players in the Guardian's top-100 players in the world (a panel of 225 experts from 69 countries made the calls). I doubt anyone can really argue that we're particularly close to having the extensive quality necessary to play "attractive football" in the way those arguing for it probably think it's supposed to look.