USA bent but did not break. I will bet that they will make some adjustments and play well Tuesday. Mids and backs need to find ways to get the ball to Freddy and Rogers. They are dangerous when they have the ball but you can't do anything if you are not given the ball. I expect Tim Ward will figure that out an play better next game.
Well hopefully the next game is on regular grass with a decent ref. We didn't play very well but it doesn't help that our guys couldn't lay a finger on a Korean without them flopping and a foul being called.
First I want to say: I don't understand why there are too much space between our full back and center back.Korea was utilizing this gap to play long ball or through ball to connect the forward in the whole 90 mins. Our positions was too static: Jozy always stay in the front; Adu didn't come back deep to reiceive ball(I had hoped for seeing Adu come back to do some 1-2 pass with MB or DS,but none). Adu was the palymaker, so he need to be more active. We don't need him to dribble everytime.Sometimes a quick touch then quick simple pass can open the space(There were always one or two players around him so why not use this situation? Every good playmaker can realize this). I hope next game we adopt 4-4-2 instead of 4-3-3. 4-3-3 need mid players have outstanding interrupting ability, but MB and DS cannot handle it.this led our 4-3-3 look more like 4-5-1. If using 4-4-2, I hope One forward should be a little more free to help the playmaking in the mid and create combinations chance.
http://www.ussoccer.com/articles/viewArticle.jsp_1245185.html Post Game Quote Sheet: USA vs. South Korea Head Coach Thomas Rongen On getting a point out of the opening game: Well we are not happy with the way we played tonight, but we’re happy with the result. Quite frankly, we are lucky to have come away with a draw against a very good Korean squad. Korea was strong and fast and quite frankly we didn’t do our part to match up with them tonight. On the performance of goalkeeper Chris Seitz: Chris Seitz was outstanding today. I can’t put the blame for the goal on him, and he probably made about three saves that Korea could have put away and changed the game completely. On why Danny Szetela was subbed for in the second half: We felt that we weren’t getting enough possession through the midfield, and Dax has proven in Major League Soccer that he is very capable of keeping possession and making good passes. We had a difficult decision to make about to bring him in for, and since Danny was holding a yellow card we decided to go ahead and take him off. On the play of Josmer Altidore and Freddy Adu: Jozy and Freddy didn’t seem to be on the same page tonight. We shifted to almost a 4-4-2 in the second half but we just weren’t creating enough opportunities for ourselves, and they weren't the only ones out there who didn't play their best games. Midfielder Michael Bradley On preparing for Poland: Obviously with today’s result against Brazil, Poland is in the driver’s seat in this group. They’re a tough, physical team, but we are ready to mentally move past today’s game and on to prepare for them.
4-3-3 is fine for this team because they are physically superior to most teams they play. It's just that Rongen needs to accept when that is NOT the case - and switch to Plan B.
Wonder if anyone asked him about leaving two subs on the bench in group play?? Not that we would see it on that site if someone had....
Dax McCarty couldn't put the proper weight on any of his balls and most often sent the ball right to the keeper to kill any possession we had. I thought he was atrocious for the most part. I think he only started winning balls because half the Korean team was cramping up. Tim Ward was the worst player on the field offering neither speed, nor position, nor ball skills. The ref and the ARs were so blatantly one-sided that it was beyond believe. Lots of calls on non-fouls and lots of non-calls on definite fouls. Really hurt the US rhythm. But regardless of that, our attack was completely toothless with only Zizzo looking like he wanted to go at the Koreans. I knew our backline was going to be our weakness. I just had no idea how slow and tactically unaware they were. How many offsides lines can you blow in a row to give the other team dangerous attacks? I just thought that our midfield and attack could make up for it. But Rogers was nearly useless out there---where was Ferrari? Jozy had every call go against him. Freddy played okay, but his role as captain and leader of the team demanded that he do more. Szetela was being reckless. McCarty destroyed many a possession by hoofing the ball with no weight 30 yards too the keeper. Uggh....I am just so disgusted. I take no solace that South Korea is the second team I support for soccer because the display that the US offered was so disappointing. After all, South Korean finishing was so atrocious it is hard to get excited about them especially after the ref called a ridiculous number of fouls in their favor. But they showed much more than the US today.
Well, we didn't do ourselves any favors with the "Where is Lord Stanley's Cup" and "If You Came to See the Expos..."
More quotes from USA and South Korea http://fifa.com/u20worldcup/matches/round=249401/match=58865/quotes.html
I was at both games in Montreal today. The US played very poorly as many have said. I saw the Canada-US friendly in Ottawa prior to the tournament which was a bit of a B-team friendly for both teams and some of the American players impressed me but they didn't make this team. The only American who impressed me tonight was the keeper. The Koreans played a pretty exciting version of long ball with the strikers timing their runs to burst past the slow American defenders. They were also able to pass quite well in the offensive zone and string together some nice plays. Finishing was of course their downfall. The US were extremely lucky to come out of this with a tie, 3-0 would have reflected the run of play. The Koreans did dive a lot and the ref bought it to some extent though he wasn't as bad as the ref in the previous game (who was actually a Premiership ref) who bought everything the Brazilians were selling. The Americans dived a bit too, though not nearly as much but it seems to me the US teams are in general diving far more than they used to. There were very few Americans at the game which is surprising when one considers the amount of Americans living or holidaying in Montreal and the proximity to several large American cities. Of the 4 teams that played in Montreal it was the team that by far had the least amount of fans there. There was a support group of 30 or 40 Americans (Sam's Army?) who chanted but you couldn't hear them unless you were directly in front of their section because of the noise of the Korean supporters and general audience who were mostly supporting Korea. There were smaller groups of Americans scattered throughout the crowd but they didn't seem that numerous. Almost all of the other fans seemed to support Korea. There might have been some anti-Americanism in that but I think a lot of it was due to the fact Korea was playing so well and the US were so poor. The support for Korea seemed to build throughout the game I think largely because everyone felt they deserved a goal and victory based on their play. The American team will really have to up its playing level or they will be three and out. Poland looked very strong today, in fact the strongest in the group based on today's play. I am sure Brazil will also not play so poorly in their next matches so the US team really has its work cut out for it. Of course, Korea also has to play the same two teams.
I think a lot of us had the same feeling watching this. Watching our wings running in straight lines, up and down, rarely varying until they got the ball and nearly always doing the same thing when they got it (running real fast, then sending an errant cross in). I was annoyed when it was said in the past that we were too robotic, but I think it's clearly that we are. I don't know how much is coaching, how much is the system from young 'uns on up, how much is the players themselves and whom we choose to select, but creativity, and rapid and often intuitive thinking on top of everything is just absent. It's the same nonsense over and over, always seeming to be out of ideas. It's disheartening to see that 8 years after Donovan came through, we seem to be regressing in the players we're developing. There are more good one's, by and large, but there don't seem to be anymore truly creative one's than there were 8 years ago. Thank God we got Feilhaber, and Nguyen through last time, maybe we'll get lucky w/our next cycle, but I didn't hear good things coming out of that failed cup tournament last week.
Well, here is my take First of all, I am a Korean American (I dont know why I should say this all the time before posting, but it seems like a time-honored ritual nowadays to clarify my ethnicity or nationality to have my objectivity justified...being objective by the way is simply impossible. So lets refrain from using the word objective from now on I didnt see the match, and thus I dont have any opinion regarding the referee, but if there is any sound theory out of this, this might be it: (By the way, this is something I noticed when I actually went to the stadium to watch the A match against Uruguay in Seoul a couple of months ago.) The referee, especially in soccer, is unfortunately biased to certain extent, not necessarily against a certain team, player, or a coach, but often times against team that whines, b!tches, moans, dives, and put on a lackdaisal play. As in basketball, both teams need to watch out how the referee calls the game in the first few minutes or so: is he calling the game soft? Or is he letting a lot of plays get played out on their own? Once you realize how the referee is calling the game, then you should, accordingly, modify the game/tactical strategy. My pet theory is that while the US team is not known for whining and moaning, Korea team is, in general, known for outhustling the other team on a regular basis. Because the Korea team can't finish (as many of you guys have witnessed in today's game...sigh) and arent really good technically, they need to hustle and they almost ALWAYS need to outhustle the other team just to have any decent chance of winnng matches. And I am assuming that, based on numerous accounts posted here and a series of games I watched against the U.S. team, Korea hustles more, getting to the ball faster and seemingly running at a full speed all the time. Thus, it becomes natural that the referee could have well been biased for the Korean team for today's match. Fair? Hardly. Understandable? You should be to some extent. As for the diving, almost every team dives collectively. Were Koreans diving in this game? Certainly. I dont need to watch the match to tell you that some of the Korean players did dive at some point or another with the sole agenda of trying to gaining a favorable impression of getting fouled. But perhaps not as much as many of you guys assumed them to do so. When a player is running at a full speed, any slight contact will throw the person completely off-balance, and while the player at the end of giving the contact may feel "outrageous" about getting a whistle for a soft contact, the player at the end of receving the contact may feel justified. After all, it wasnt his fault for running at a full speed. The referee is a human being, and with that, we should expect that the referee was biased against one team or the other in virtually every match. What I did see, however, today was the highlight clip posted on the Korean website, and I believe that there was the off side goal that nullified the second goal scored by Korea, which some of us feel "very questionable." But we do know that a majority of offside calls is always questionable, and I havent seen Koreans b!tching about the call posted on the korean website. You just deal with it, and I dont feel that Korea was robbed at all. The call could have gone either way, and no matter how many times each of us may play the replay of the call, the call is final, and you just accept that the fact that questional call became irrevocably the off side call once the field ref decided to whistle for the off side call. The end of story. If you wanna to whine about the call, well, write a letter to the FIFA organizational committee, or boycott attending the game itself all together. As far as the game was concerned, I believe that the US team missed its leader today. Although missing a single great player wouldnt necessarily put an A team automatically a B team in most cases, for today's game, missing that single player (what was his name again? Smith? Johanson?) DID make the US team look like a B team compared to the usual caliber of A team. Prior to the match today, there were a handful of articles and reports on the Korean sports newspapers about the missing player and how that missing player may tremendouly give an advantage to the korean team. Well, I also believe that the player was the key to the game today. More than anything, I think the lack of that ultimate player made all the difference to the lackdaisal performance of your team. This is what I noticed: In the level of under 20 play (U 17, 18), the US matches well with the Korean team. I remember watching the breakout performance by Adu a couple years ago, when he singlehandedly tormented the Korean team on U 17 level. He literally picked us apart, and we ended up losing 6-1. Having said this, I strongly feel that the US team is either losing its quickness that is very evident in U 17, 18 level or other teams are getting ahead of the US team in the speed and quickness area when the team moves up to U 20 and national team level. I dont know what it is. Maybe the US players are eating too much BigMacs or steaks as their body is filled with masculine hormones when they are reaching the age of post teen. Or Perhaps the team cook for the Korean U 20 and National Team level makes a wonderful Kimchi dish that somehow gives them some sort of hyper hormone. But for whatever the reason, it seems like all the technical, coaching, infrastructure, speed, and program advantages the US seemed to enjoy in U 13, 15, 17, 18 level just vanish at the end. This is something the US organization need to consider.
Re: Well, here is my take Funny. But I was kinda thinking the same thing. We certainly had some guys out there who were more athletic in an NFL sense than anybody for Korea -- Rogers, Altidore. But overall, it was hard to say that we were the more athletic team. In contrast with the U17 match in '03, where Freddy and Co. shredded a South Korean squad that was in every way overmatched.
SportsCenter had the Szetela goal as #1 of the Top 10 Plays. Wow, it deserved it but a soccer goal as #1?
If Poland play the same way against us, we will get killed. There is no chance that defense will hold up against talent in open space. I'd also expect Ward and Beltran to be severely caught out of position.
Great post. I thought the same thing re: Adu playing with Korea. He would have fit into their game much better. We have a weakness in our program at all levels, which is that we are static and extremely predictable on offense. To Bradley's credit, he has specifically attempted to address this with the senior nats so far. However, the problem is much more deeply rooted in our soccer culture and shows up on every level. Adu is getting way too much flak on here and in general. He's not going to be a global superstar in all likelihood, but he still shows signs of being a very good senior Nat team player. He needs an environment without pressure where he can be taught by experienced hands...exactly the opposite of what he received in MLS the last four years.
That's if they both start. I'd give Igwe a go at left-back, move Sturgis to right-back and play Sarkodie or Wallace at center-back along with Valentin.
You are talking about a US youth development system in which our current starting center mid for the US Men's National Team (and game winning goalscorer vs. Mexico) was not ever even A PART of this system 3 years ago...He was NOWHERE on the radar. (Because he was exactly the type of player you just described) Essentially, we have a bunch of doofuses running things...
Trash the boys all you want but they showed some heart. They played like crap the first half, regrouped and made a good game of it the second half. When a team shows heart and does NOT crack it should be recognized. I would rate the team a 2 the first half and 8 the second.
welcome to the rest of the world Syracuse. News flash from 2003 onwards: most of the world have taken a decidely negative view of the US - doesn't help with the Bushwhacker you have in office
anyone know if this is true: just posted to Wikipedia: On 01 July 2007, Szetela's agent (Roy Messing) told that, Turkish Giant Galatasaray SK signs four-year contract with Danny Szetela.
When playing against a 3-5-2 you have to know that the strength of the defense is up the middle... the space is made on the flanks by diagonal runs toward the touch lines (which tends to pull the center apart) or by very athletic and dynamic flank play... we got a little of that on the right and none on the left... couple that with an inability to play to feet and the fact that most passes that were "controlled" were popped up in the air (whatever happened to close control?) meant that we couldn't play through the middle, either... sad really... rand