86' 2-1 Stoppage: the far touch AR seems to have a left leg -- cramp? Shorts in cold weather, ugh. Trainers attend to her, while the players keep themselves warm. Replay shows the AR running to keep up with the line, and she just comes up lame. 88' 2-1 The referees sub in (1 of ... how many do they get?) 4R(?) for AR. This is why they bring 4 (or 5?). No, the AR waves off the sub 89' 2-1 Drop ball to USA at circle right, Ertz backpasses.
I have but it was in youth soccer and there the sidelines, and the rest of the field, are often extremely worn.
90+1' 2-2 Hasegawa passes from 25m left touch to 22m mid-left, Ertz goes down but ball gets flicked over/past her. Japan do a delicate zig-zag ping, cross to bxo top center springs #_ past the last defender on the inside. #_ drives to 7m 6-left, taps across mouth, Momiki trails unmarked and blasts over Naeher diving, into roof. Welp, that wasn't what Japan had in mind, either, but it ended up as a 3-zig ping combo that froze our entire defense on the left side of our box. FT 2-2.
I don't follow this team well enough, so I really don't know the answer to this question … but is this defending typical of this team? It seems that this is one of the worst tackling teams I have seen from the US. They don't seem to reasonably clear any ball. It's a joke.
If the U.S. defense in the World Cup is like it was tonight, another quarterfinal flameout like in Rio might be the best case scenario. We've got 100 days to clean up our act...
100 days is an eternity in team development but the real problem is attitude. We, the US. is not playing hungry and that is what we need to do. In the first half when we were controlling the match we kind took it easy and passed the ball around the back supposedly drawing Japan out of shape but what it really did was allow Japan to adjust and prepare to defend. WE need to most often attack as soon as we win possession. While this might result in a few extra turnovers it also would mean that the opponent would not have time to adapt and retreat to defend. What we did for a large part of this game was waiting and not playing soccer. We were lucky that we tied as Japan failed to finish several chances.
Not until she decides to retire on her own or the US WNT suffers a bad defeat early in a big tournament and fails to advance out of their group. She has won a World Cup and that counts for a lot and gives her a huge cushion for future performance.
Somehow, quite possibly the defending was worse. And the US also had shifted back out of the 5-back. How have we so quickly forgotten that it was the defense that got us to the knockout rounds in 2015?
I disagree. Head coaches of national teams don't tend to stick around for more than a cycle, max two. Ellis' contract is through 2020, and I don't see her sticking around past that, regardless of the team's performance in the 2019 WWC and 2020 Olympics. The program becomes stagnant otherwise.