The brackets look like this: In the East regional - USA vs Austria In the Southeast regional - Chile vs. Nigeria In the Midwest regional - Argentina vs. Mexico (best potential matchup, IMHO) In the West regional - Spain vs. Czech Republic East meets West and Southeast meets Midwest in the Final Four.
Please inform Wenger of this before he gets Vela a work permit. While your at it tell him to send you a check for your brilliant contribution.
This will be the Spain-Brazil matchup of the quarterfinals. I seriously considered driving 8 hours round trip from Toronto to see this match and then drive another 10 home, the next day - but decided against it.
You can look at it like "it can happen to anyone" or "damn, we could have had a chance at the final". I'll choose the former, to prevent insanity.
Yeah, I was thinking about the first, not about the second. Now, thanks to you, I think I may just cry.
I think this tournament pretty much showed that we couldn't chalk up an automatic win against anyone. Poland was obvioulsy an A game, and Brazil was an exciting win, but Uruguay and Korea certainly could have beaten us, and Austria did beat us. Had we advanced, I wouldn't have chalked up a W against either the Czechs or the Spaniards. Plus, Wallace, Valentine and Bradley were all out in the semis even if we advanced and Seitz and Altidore might have had some lingering injury issues. Who knows what our lineup would have looked like.
If we have a real coach, we can run over both Austria and Czech. Mexico and Argentina will be close games.
I'll believe you when you show me that Mexico and Argentina are starting 2 players the caliber of Valentin and Beltran.
The reason Beltran is started because a real coach will get the first right back--Quavas Kirk on the team. Beltran is NOT supposed to make the team, but I would take him as backup and drop Ward. From the game I watched that Beltran is OK until about 65-70m. Anyway, Sarkodie showed speed and strength in Brazil game aginst Jo but the problem is that Sarkodie and Sturgis are both short so Rongon wants a taller Valentin who had all kind of trouble to handle Austria's forward who scored. It is tough for freekick defense if your back line only have one tall player Wallace, but if you have Kirk there, you have no problem to put Sarkodie there.
Hey Tourney was a success in my eyes. Didnt see many of the games, but Adu seemed to prove himself, that he can be a star. Zizzo and Rogers caught some eyes. And Altidore proved he is really good. 17 yrs old 4 goals 5 games No Penalties. He scored from the top of the box, he scored messy tap in goals, he scored using his head. Great positioning, strength, speed, ball handling (he's no Henry, but he can dribble).