We qualified, hallelujah! The tired legs from altitude (and maybe 3 games in 8 days) showed up in this match. Our defense let us down with mental lapses. On both goals, there were a lot of defenders standing still. No one moved to mark a man. Zonal marking on the corner with 5 defenders on the 6 yard line? We let a core of CR players attack the ball without us moving. Also, we showed a total inability to switch fields. Also, Gio may be brilliant, but he's terrible at any kind of defense. Here's to improvement and staying healthy. Here, here!
am i seriously reading people who watched tonight going after the CBs and not antonee? we gave up a corner kick header and a back door job where the LB lost not 1 but 2 people. the fact there were 2 suggests complete obliviousness. 1 guy maybe loses you. 2 guys you didn't even realize you needed help much less your man faked you out.
For the first 25 minutes maybe...after that CR wasn't really pressured. The physical difference began to tell in the second half. The fatigue factor came into play. Glad we're back in the Big Show. That's about as much enthusiasm as I can muster. Over three decades of US soccer stasis will do that to a fan.
If we didn’t fail to qualify last cycle this performance is viewed way worse. It’s great we qualified, which should be the absolute bare minimum, but our overall performance was a C- at BEST.
GA ballooned upwards. as a result the best talent team finished 3rd. we ended up 2nd in offense and 4th in defense. i don't see where we learned much from last time. we're back to wanting AR and SD wingbacks. go ahead and get the toaster ready. i don't think people understand why this does or does not work. the draw will define our chances. the hope has to be that the coach's steady sputter level of efficiency is better suited to 3 game groups than 14 game seasons. cause what the season exposed is he took 4 points off mexico then finished 3 points behind them, which is obviously 6 points inefficient someplace(s) else. you can go down the list and see we threw away a canada win, split with panama and CR, took 4 points from ES and Jamaica. lot of waste. the hope has to be that 4 team groups tolerate more waste. that some other team blows a a game and your sputtering draw looks better by comparison. in fact, the mexico result in retrospect looks anomalous. we did better against them than the 4th and 5th place teams. that anomaly gets us 3rd instead of 4th. or suggests we just threw away a ton of points berhalter fanboys want to act like can't be expected. one or the other. pick one.
The way he worked back to the goal mouth (and too close to the near post) was really bad. He plays (doesn't play) in the EPL?
Right. And the way Steffen was playing in this game, if you switched 'keepers, it might have been a 3-1 win for the U.S.
Steffen is neither athletic nor a commander of his area and the defense. His much hyped skills in distribution are hit and miss. He'll probably be out of contract at City in a year and will find a suitor in the Championship or another lower tier league like Belgium 1st flight or MLS. He's one of those guys that looks like Tarzan and plays like Jane, if that is still an acceptable turn of phrase. Otherwise, this was a glorified friendly, they got the job done. There's nothing else to take away from it. Everybody get healthy, go finish the club season and Gregg figure it the hell out.
i find a fatigue explanation amusing after couva. we appeared to literally repeat the rotational mistake but get away with it because the stakes were ever so slightly different. shipped 2 away goals tired in a deciding game and this time didn't even have a brief response to tighten the margin.
steffen to me hasn't looked the same since the knee. not as good in the air and drops it more often. i will be curious what GB does when turner is well. i cannot assume he gets handed his job back, considering he will sit for arsenal. wrong time to get hurt and make a money move with a coach who obsesses about shallow ideas of club form. i thought steffen played like the 3rd best US keeper this year. turner outplayed him at WCQ. horvath outplayed him at NL then got shunned for club playing time ("we know it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"). but GB fundamentally tries to go back to those he thought would work, undoing a lot of the practical learning he seemed to make, eg, wingback, 9, keeper.
He has been awful. Berhalter may not, but City will be looking at this shit and shopping around. They have a lot of quality sitting on the bench. I suspect they will at least loan him out after seeing how really bad he is.
this game didn't matter. you might as well try and parse out something from the 4th NFL pre season game. Pro athletes just don't care about these games. It's (usually) what makes them pros. Sure a Lebron or MJ or Tiger would bury a guy in a meaningless game but those guys are rare air even among the top of the profession. I love the discussion but it's mostly meaningless imo.
flaw in that is it tracks with how we played panama on down to the road loss. it's a steady diagonal from canada to honduras except mexico, not CR. CR fits.
Nah, I believe the xG differential stats @gogorath has been providing. The US for the most part took care of business in qualifying. They were probably unlucky not to finish 1st. I just can't get worked up about a meaningless loss. Even a 10-0 win would have meant the same pot for the draw.
yes. he ran to the post to cover the direction the ball initially went but was so oblivious he didn't see it had already switched back. which is why they could just whack it up the middle.
I think there was some of this. At halftime, the way things were going, the players knew they were going to qualify. I suspect that they switched off mentally a bit. It would be hard not to. It was obvious at halftime that Costa Rica would not score 6 goals, they weren't even really pushing for it, they were just going for the win. Not very professional by the U.S. players, but hard to avoid that mental let down.
M Robinson has been really meh. I’m hoping Richards gets healthy soon. M Rob should be on the roster but should not be an auto starter.
I gave a rep but it's ENTIRELY professional. Being professional means you don't risk a torn body part when you know it doesn't matter. I dunno, like I said, a few sociopaths like MJ or Tiger or maybe Ibrah would totally risk it, but 99% dont.
mis-managed you mean. this is first place talent finishing 3rd. particularly when the sales pitch is elevating the team that's pathetic. mexico might show up for qatar with 1/3 of the team on walkers. canada has half our talent. CR we beat on tiebreak -- a regression from NL -- and CR is clearly mid rebuild. i'd take the 4th preseason talk more seriously if we didn't send out the starters trying to get a result. and the irony as with couva is our chance at points here was probably better rotatiing.
Indeed. Miles Robinson gets the "he's homegrown! he plays in MLS he's solid against CONCACAF other rans!" rep. OK, do more man. I'm still not sure why Brooks has been frozen out and Richards apparently isn't doing enough (before his injury) starting for a solid Bundesliga more often than not.
The starters were sent out for a victory lap. Gregg got the squad qualified. I loathe the guy but I have to give him the dub here. Now, if we finish with 1 point in Qatar and go home early? Give me a pitchfork forged in the fires of Mt. Doom.